David French: MAGA Is Making America Less Free

- Hello and welcome to the Bull York Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'd like to welcome back to the show

“a opinion columnist 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. - Well, I'm much of discussing, 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 we're calling, Gabriel and others office. The Venezuelan 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 tentative center

appreciate the audience that engage on that. Let's go news on some of the other stuff, way 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 Osterke's story. There's a legal ruling about that that reflected back to that story and talked about just the perniciousness

of the policy by the administration. So why don't you just click 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 a young Muslim woman. She's bundled up for the winter and 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's several other plain clothes officers. They kind of gather around her, leader away, shackle her, leader away. And if that was a video of an arrest for say a violent crime,

you know, 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 or 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, one of the school

to call what was happening in Gaza genocide, like very standard rhetoric, like very standard rhetoric. 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. - Like even in the Trump administration. - She's got to be texting ISIS or something. - Yes, she's texting ISIS.

She's shoplifted, like something else is going on. But no, it's the court proceedings unfolded 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-ed over through the United States of America. It was an op-ed engaging in bog standard pro-Palestinian rhetoric.

Like the most standard pro-Palestinian rhetoric. It wasn't even written in in a flammatory way. It was pretty dry to be honest. And no, in fact, she 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 issued 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, Normie Republicans who are desperate for Normie Republican to kind of unite

behind around 20, 28, 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 ten-pot dictator that this is- - The worst.

- This is the worst last week in the account net. - I mean, this is inexcusable. Like these people, and what we found out is, and what the courts found out is that there were factual findings

and investigation of all this is that the administration worked with a pro-Israel activist organization

Got a list of about 5,000 people

to further scrutinize who had engaged in a pro-Palestinian rhetoric or anti-Israel rhetoric.

“Whittle that down to between 100 and 200 people”

for it 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.

It's just volcanic, some people are even calling it, the constitution is 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--

- It's said Shapiro, even like in the more mainstream

of the right wing, maybe like he wrote this, you put this. Like, 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 citizens only was totally alien to them. I mean, that's just not the way that the United States was in vision.

- Well, all of them were born in a foreign country for starters. - Well, I mean, and it's so funny, Tim, one of the things I feel like this is my nerd moment. Like, this is the nerd moment.

Like, I've been waiting for my whole life.

I've 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 it was just waiting in a corner, Tim, to like pal, on the right moment in American history, to be like, this is also relevant because it is.

What's so interesting is we're refighting a lot of the fights around the founding. And it's the Trumpest right that is essentially trying to reinvent the founding of the United States, to pull, you know, for all their talk and Trump won

the 1776 project and all of their tattoos about patriotism and all of this stuff. A lot of these guys are essentially trying to unwind big parts of the founding to make America less free in more showvinistic and nationalistic.

- And more white. - But we have, you know, going back to the Alien and Solution X in 1798, you have been like Thomas Jefferson, principal author, 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 in Jefferson, he 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 the 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, the Declaration of Principles and the Declaration of Independence, which does not limit unalienable rights to Americans,

or all men are created equal. All of this is said that from the founding, this idea that non-citizens and our midst have no rights at all, it's just to 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 can class of political prisoners in the U.S. - Well, I wonder bring this up for three reasons. One, I wonder let you nerd out. Two, when I did I did rant about Marco Rubio, not being the normian administration last week on the show.

I was focusing on his failures in diplomacy,

“which I think is the main job of Secretary of State,”

as far as I can tell. - But he's got a lot of hats. - Yeah, I left this kind of aside, the immigration part of it, which is maybe where he's shown his most authoritarian impulses.

But the other reason I wonder bring it up is I mentioned on the show, the story of Mariam Thomas Sebe 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 and article from the nation. And I've now been emailing her a little bit. And so I just wanna say up front, this story is so insane,

it's similar to the Remesa Ostrog thing that it's like, "My source for this is what she is telling me," right? And so is impossible. 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.

but I do just wanna say that. So the story for people who have this that the last time I mentioned it, there was an online smear campaign,

“this is kind of really similar to the Ostrog story,”

but instead of being about being the Israel was about it was kind of the pro-Shah Iranian crowd. Mariam Thomas Sebe'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.

This kind of petition went up online, that they were targeted, they've been detained from California, they were sent to, while Mariam and her son are in Dilly, the husband's in a different detention center somewhere else,

so they've been separated. Now, 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 taking 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 tenth 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, talked about weeks in the Austria case, they've been in detention for 150 days.

- Unbelievable, unbelievable, I mean, now again, I will do the caveats, but at some point, this is what happened

with the Austria case is the government

has to put up or shut up. In other words, when you go into court, there's gotta 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, Steven Miller, people who hate America.

If you read the op-ed, you would see that she doesn't have a lot for Israel. - Right, right, you did. - You know, 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.

- Right. - And if you can't debate a Tufts PhD student on this matter, who's the snowflake here, right? I mean, like, come on. And so, and so, here you have a situation

where once again, you had this sort of hate America. And then you hate America is not a grounds for, what does that even mean? Who's defining that, right? - But that's an idea. - Trump hates America

in some ways. - And unless you're defining it... - 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 gonna 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 aligned

to 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, in prison. When they're not actually accused of a crime.

- Indefinitely. - Indefinitely.

“- That's what she said to be in the name of us.”

She's like, "Well, I've been in for 150 days." - Even if Rubio's detention order with somehow constitutionally valid, 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, hand-in-feet, like criminal defendants coming into a courtroom of people who 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, 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 actual criminals in the United States.

- Yeah, way worse. - It's staggering. - Way worse, hot. - It's staggering. - Another thing that Martin said in her email

is like that the conditions in the metal trailer prisons they're in are crazy and delay. And we've seen that reporting from other people,

like Jonathan Blitzer, so it's horrifying.

I'm gonna keep on this time of service story for people and let folks out there's nothing they can do. But, you know, to your point about the way that the administration's now acting, one thing that we've been saying,

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 Mullen DHS”

where they're doing less of like the ASMR immigrant cruelty porn. But then yesterday they're back, this is probably the picture you were just referencing. Workway and Mullen post the picture of the Haitians, you know, going onto a deportation flight shackled.

And, you know, talking about how it's keeping the country safe. That's like, these people came to the country legally. - Yeah, I came to the country to a legal process. It's like, okay, it's fine if you're gonna 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, no, I think it was Jesse single 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 bio and 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 significant 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 going to kind of sweaty down here in the bio and boy, as I mentioned on the show.

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are more with promo code doublework. That's MACK, WEL, D-O-N, dot com, code to the board. I asked you to be on this yesterday at an email from a reader that was like, why isn't there more focus on,

yeah, obviously Christian should believe in treating everybody with dignity, it's fundamental to the faith, but just it was a rhetorical matter. A lot of the people that are being deported and that we're treating like this are Christians.

It's sending them back to places. I mentioned the story yesterday about the couple that got sent to Guatemala back to this, kind of gang ridden part of Guatemala, they were from and the two parents get killed

and the baby is left there, next to a bleeding out mother. And a lot of cases like these are Christians that we're doing next to. - Oh, absolutely.

And what makes it even worse, Tim. There's a recent, you know, I've just gotten some information about refugee resettlement for persecuted Christians.

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, for zero. - Zero, zero and what high on my guess.

- You and 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 high. - Zero is too high. - Zero is too high.

- Zero is too high. - Zero is too high. - Zero is too high. - Zero is too high. - Yeah.

- For every persecuted Christian, we persecute.

You know, the number is deep into the negatives. It really does demonstrate,

“they just a total upside down morality right now,”

in which so many Christians are approaching politics, and just totally upside down. And 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 closed 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 video. It's a gentleman that was so performative and his Catholicism, one of my people, unfortunately,

in this case, that he went on to kind of a Christian

broadcasting QVC to sell little totems from saints to old ladies and did a lot of performative legiosity and demonstrate just how Catholic he was. Sanctaneous 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 an illegal immigrant”

in the country and got to experience some of that brutality and he described it on the pierce Morgan show. - I didn't really understand the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality as an America, they're wearing a man in which they arrest you,

they put your manacles, your hands, your feet, changing together. I mean, everybody is arrested as 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 Blasée,

when people talked about their trauma, a little bit kind of cavalier when people talked about, you know 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 Yenoplas, is one of the architects of Trump as a guy. I mean, this is a guy who you remember, I remember this very well 2015, 2016,

and 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, 2017, you know, think of him as like the Tucker Carlson-esque slash Nick Fuentez-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 gonna be staggering.

But if instead, we can have a modicum event for 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 any empathy for that, then we're gonna guarantee you 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 or not good guys. That's who we learn about brutality.

- All right. - 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, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, - I don't know. - I don't know, not even one. - No, exceptions, Tim. - All right, well, I haven't done it.

I just wanted to check with you. - And then you get to this, and you're like,

You know, that's that old statement, you're reaping.

Ha ha ha, here I go, and then you're sewing. What the heck, what is happening? And just this is another example. - So people got mad at you, it was the anti-empathy crowd. That was mad at you, who was mad?

- I anti-empathy crowd, and then some people are like, how are you giving any credence to myless words? He's a clown, he's an evil clown. - Well, yeah, he's been an evil clown, but as I was explaining to some friends of mine

who were 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's 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 Yenoplas, evil crown prince of maga for many years, also Milo Yenoplas, 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.

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visit hymns.com. You talked about the friends that you heard from, you actually are an interesting space. Somebody, I forget about what,

“somebody put together like a list of people”

who's following is the most balanced. And you were like number three or something. So you maintain a lot of mild Republican friends, they lost my number. You know, I've got a handful and I still talk to you.

And you, like basically, it's like you still talk to a lot

of people who are still Republicans, and then you also have a ton of people in Niagara world that are like really deeply hate you. You're hearing from both groups, I guess, totally indifferent to all the time.

All the time. And so even said, you can talk about immigration stuff, but just kind of broadening it out to the state of play, as we kind of had the labor day, look at it in the mid-term.

And just wondering what you're hearing anecdotally from people in your life about kind of a Trump two, Trump experiment, does it change since last year? - Oh, yeah, it has changed.

I would say the 180 from December of 2024 to right now, a sort of Normie Republicans is head spinning. Because December 2024, I would think, is 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. And so she loses narrowly, but decisively, the Republicans feel like, okay, I held my nose for Trump,

but look at what I've gotten. I've gotten the defeat of DEI. Wokeism is on the run. It's the vibe shift.

We've won a cultural battle for the first time in a long time.

And then it was by 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 headset 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 disaster were already all there. You know, this was not bring coming in with Mattis and Tillerson, et cetera.

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 normie

“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 and to continuing to support the Republican nominee, even though he's arguably outside a Donald Trump, the most corrupt politician

in America, they're tired of the endless clownery. 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 to MAGA people,

like a Marjorie Taylor Green, they're the ones who are out. - Well, because to be on the fringe, you believe some things.

You might believe 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, but there is a difference. - Look, here we are at September.

Things can change between now and November, but I think if present 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 a close to double digit, a cross-off victory in Georgia, if you get a double digit or close to double digit, a Cooper victory in North Carolina. What you're gonna see there is that's your very clear

tangible evidence that a lot of normie 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, argue a reddish swing state. This is a Trump victory state. He's probably gonna win in a swing state by 10. And yet a lot of the Democratic world in media world is gonna focus on some DSI 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 510 points, that's your future right there.

“And there also, I think, the leading educators”

of the discontent of a lot of Republicans, not of the base, the base is still gonna support Trump if they turn out. But of a lot of the people who previously would have said, it's gonna take a lot for this person to cross the aisle.

It's gonna 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 Hopium for a Friday? Do you have any friends who are Republicans?

So like, I'm just, I might have to do Talorica or is that 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 Talorico.

I know Republicans who have Texas Republicans

who've never voted for Democrats,

who are gonna vote for Talorico. Now, that anecdote should not give people too much Hopium. I'm very, I'm very lary of Hopium in the state of Texas. It's Lucy with the football 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 centrist 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 not just that Republicans nominated a corrupt guy. They nominated a corrupt lazy guy, you know.

So here's Talorico who's doing everything he can do to try to win 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 armally online trolls who are 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, Talorico 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 this election. There is no contest in this election. - I guess you could take this from political or illegal standpoint like the Trump ego stuff.

I'm retacking to Ben Terrace later today. There's a great profile in 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 like, let's do it from a legal standpoint

because I did this frustrated rant on the next level of Sarah and JVL this week.

Once you'll 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 coming 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. - It is frustrating to me, but there are also good reasons

why this system exists. So essentially the way the court system exists is an unlawful action has 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,

then to make it even a weird or in some circumstances, the 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 towards, 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 system. - Yeah. - I don't know what I mean, it's weird, it's not 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 back seat to no one and I love the constitution. But the founders were not all Jesus, you know, they did not get everything right. And one of the things that they got wrong

to our great shagrant is that Madison, in particular, and others believed that 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.

- partisanship, yeah. - 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,

'cause then he'll lose his primary, right? And so, this is where you want to-- - We're gonna like if Jeffery's become Speaker, but the Democrats don't take the Senate, so they can't actually pass a bill to stop it.

Does Jeffery's 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, it's very difficult, it does get very difficult,

'cause congressional standing is not something that is traditionally necessarily available, it's only available, not 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 gonna 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 of democratic buying. - Yeah, God willing, I don't know, they just did a continuing resolution, 'cause they don't want to have a shutdown fight, they might winp out.

- Well, that's a whole another set of questions.

I mean, you know, but the bottom line is,

we underestimated, before 2016, the extent to which the American experiment itself

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 a 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. - Huge 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.

You know, there's multiple ideas right now, regarding how we can avoid they're ever being another Donald Trump. My dream goal, my wish. - Othera.

- I want to change the first sentence

of Article II 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 II, those says, the executive power shall be invested in a president, but it doesn't define the executive power in an anti-veteralist writing under the name of Keto back.

All those years ago, accurately said, this sentence is vague and explicit. - Wait a minute. This is who Keto, the institute is not named Keto. The institute is named after Keto,

the ancient thinker, and so was Keto, the anti-veteralist. So we're going all the way back, right? - Okay, that's right. - You've got a lot of Keto's out there. So this Keto said it's 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 freestanding thing? The grants him independent authority and this is where so much mischief

has been poured into our system. It's through this concept that there exists something called the executive power that is different in a part from executing a law. - Yeah.

- And that's created enormous problems. And I know that's a reach goal, Tim, but look. - Yeah, that feels challenging. - We will break out of this deadlock, had some point. And American history tells us every deadlock breaking,

requires substantial legal reform or you will go right back to where you were before. And so we have to be thinking about this. I mean, this is an urgent matter. The other thing, let's just imagine

what can we do about mass-partants? Well, because a part in power is horrifically broad, nothing much. But one thing that you could do is, if you did actually break the log 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 I think it's important to think about these things”

'cause we're going to need. If we want to have a healthy democracy, we're going to need a period of accountability and reform. - Amen to that. One way to actually get power,

we'll do some of these reforms, you have to win elections. So I do want to-- - There is that, Tim. - Well, yeah. So there is the political side of that. I'm doing a lot of that next week

that what the Democrats should be doing to be more successful on the political side. So let's talk about the legal fighting. There's this 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 enjoyed. 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 TMI never liked 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.

as far as midterms and 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 began 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-alctoral 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 can skip through that. I think they're going to, well, whatever, we'll see what happens, but the Senate is where this is.

And then you end up in a Texas where Republicans control the state or Iowa. And that let's say Tolerico wins by 40,000 votes or 20,000 votes or something, you know? - In the control of the Senate's at stake.

- Yeah, right. - You will see, I'm gonna issue as close to a promise as I can possibly issue. That if the Senate stands or falls on James Tolerico in a 0.2% 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 conspiracy theories or not convinced, but carries them out anyway because of a market 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 a buttoned opportunities for shenanigans.

- Right, 'cause all these different districts. - Just a buttoned 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 like I know, 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 DE 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 News Max

and say the federal contested 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 Bartaroma 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 times speech a couple months ago. This was obviously a sensitivity for the network,

given that they'd pay $800 million give or take in fines

for their lives. So about the 2020 election, Fox executive sent a text to producers, time then the couldn't go to air. Bartaroma took the screenshot and sent it to the White House, she got fired.

So maybe Fox behaves a little better this time, I guess. This is, I mean, they have about 787,000,500,000 reasons to behave better in the selection cycle. So I hope you're right. - Over on the board, take suit me and Sam,

we're gonna go through Maria's highlights and little lights just for kicks.

“Okay, just rapid fire two, I think there was this vote.”

I just curious your take on in the house this week. It was the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act. It was basically amending the Higher Education Act of 1965 to that would prevent colleges from having access to certain funds if they participated in a non-expressive

commercial boycott of Israel. Or if they were obstructing students unreasonable from participating in academic programs in Israel. I thought this was interesting to ask you about

just a free speech guy because as I was reading about this this week, the wording non-expressive boycotts, since from this 2022 ruling about how a boycott,

saying you're gonna boycott as first amendment,

I don't know.

“- Well, this issue is so complicated, Jim.”

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 resulting a 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 is railways, you know, no is railways, jet-snational 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 it in other contexts. It's bad, no, no, no, no, no.

If you want like non-discrimination provisions that protect people from discrimination

on the basis of national origin, sex, race, sexual orientation,

et cetera, you can't say this discrimination good, that discrimination bad.

“So I think a lot of these Israel boycotts”

actually run a file of non-discrimination law 'cause it's national origin discrimination, if you say. - It's interesting 'cause 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 be hard to do action as Congress having a word about that. - But I am, let me put it this way.

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, you're always gonna have rough edges

where they rub up chicken. But as a general matter, think about it like this. In the 1960s, there was a guy who ran a barbecue shop. I believe he was 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 absolutely 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, no, that's different. - Yeah, sure, the coffee shops, nori. Like, there's some disgusting things that have you and I just haven't done this. And it's just the canvas participation stuff.

I don't know. I caught my eye this week, that's all to be continued. The, I do wanna end with the LSU just worth there. You posted this yesterday. I bet to teach my law of war class today at Lipscomb.

Today's discussion topic, if the SEC decores were on LSU football and invades Louisiana with Thomas Aquinas believe the war was just discussed. For people don't know, LSU is advancing a very noble pursuit which is that there were some,

there were some fifth year seniors that were unfairly discriminated against when they were not aware that the NCA was gonna change the rule and give them additional year of eligibility.

So these, if you're seniors declared for the pros, but they really wanna get 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 is saying, come on back home, baby.

Man, Kiffin is here. We're doing hot yoga. You know, we're doing, we're, we're yelling, really inappropriate, cuss, we're a chance. Clemson fans, we need the best defensive lineman possible

to make sure that, you know, we have Louisiana supremacy and football to me, open and shut case a very noble Louisiana judge that I'm gonna be nominating for the Supreme Court if the Democrats ever get in power. Rule of the yesterday that LSU has the right to do this.

He was a baton, Rouge judge, certainly no conflicts there. The attorney on behalf of the LSU players said that the SEC and NCA are trying to prevent LSU from getting these players were getting served a cold cup of gumbo and they were gonna have to drink it cold.

And I don't know. She was like, Tim seems like this is not gonna be a situation to me, David. Let's say you. Tim, in these last 10 years, you have displayed such an admirable

freedom for 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 found her on the shores of LSU type football

as a part of a come on, Tim. Tim, see this one for what it is. This is like bringing in the Hessians to put down the 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 short time, Tim.

threatening to kick out LSU.

“And Tim, all I'm gonna say is welcome to the Lane Kiffin”

excuse.

You are just on the first hill on the roller coaster.

I'm loving it. And so you do think that Thomas Aquinas would approve of the SEC attempt. Some people responded with just jokes. But some people actually went through the Aquinas analysis.

And the most interesting was one of the rules for adjust 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-TV, to all of the people who disagree

“with the Honorable Judge in Baton Rouge.”

David French, I appreciate you very much. Oh, I heard good news about Nancy. I bet you're right. - Yes. - Yes, two years from the end of our 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 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, thanker doctors. And can I say something to him? - 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 that man and the idea, the idea that men like him and women like him are not welcome in this country is an absolute enathema. So I want to give a shout out to my Palestinian West Bank doctor or 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 your family too David. So I'll give the 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've had enough to bat and lose for laying kiffin experience.

I'll see y'all on Monday with Bill Crystal, though. Tigers, peace. The board daily is brought to you. Thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzley Skipper and with video editing

by Dante De Chico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.