Trump’s War and the Imperial Presidency

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Welcome to another episode of The Oath in the Office, starring Professor Cory Brechnighter. I'm John Fiegel saying, I hope everyone out there is enjoying their war. We're certainly not talking as much about Epstein. We're not talking at all about 92,000 jobs last month, and it's a pleasure to be with you at a time when, well, it's not really a war, is it? It's an excursion. Now, it's a Trump set. It's an excursion, because that which is more like a Costco run.

You know, in a couple of days we went from total victory to oops gas prices. This is why I am so glad Professor Brechnighter is doing this podcast, because I need someone smarter than me, more moral than me, and a better break dancer than me, to make sense of the world. Professor Cory Brechnighter is the author of The Oath in the Office, a guide to the Constitution for future presidents, as well as the presidents and the people.

“He is a man who enriches the lives of students in the Polyside Department at Brown University.”

Professor Brechnighter, welcome back.

Thank you, John. It's pleasure to speak with you. As always, I'm really looking forward to the discussion today.

There's so much to discuss, and we'll talk about the war, of course. We'll talk about that anthropic story. We'll talk about the status of Homeland Security. But I also want to talk about a unifying theme, and that's the idea of the imperial presidency. And I'm going to draw in particular from a discussion that I had with Daniel Ellsberg from my book. We're really warned about so much of what's happening, the unification of the danger of the presidents, for in policy power, as Commander and Chief,

and the use of certification of what's supposed to be Congress's war power. We talked about that last week, and how that intersects with shutting down civil liberties at home. So I just would urge, if you're a new listener and you're coming to us, subscribe, but we're so happy to have you with us, and John, what a pleasure to speak with you. Well, thank you. So we got a lot to get through today, and I have a lot of dumb questions professor, because the war goals are changing like Trump cheating on his golf score.

First, it was destroy our Rans nuclear program, which I was told we obliterated a few months ago, then it was toppled the regime.

Then it was destroy their missile factories, then it was, well, Israel was going to attack them, and they would have hit Israel back, so we had to. Then it was destroy their Navy, the global economy is feeling this, gas prices have gone up, markets are diving. Everyone's predicting a recession now, energy prices surging across Europe and Asia. I mean, Donald Trump has done something really impressive for a professor. He's created a 1970s style energy crisis in about 10 days.

But one of the most striking things about this conflict so far is how Trump contradicts himself. Constantly, one day, he says it's going to be over soon. The next day, he agrees with the Secretary of Yager Meister Hegsev, that the battle is just beginning.

“I have many questions, Cory, but from a constitutional perspective, how dangerous is it?”

For one individual with that level of inconsistency, to effectively control the warmaking power of the United States since Congress doesn't care. Yeah, I think that's a great way into it. I mean, when he's erratic and normal circumstances, it's bad. But when you're talking about the purpose of the war, the war aims, which seemed to differ day to day. And as you said that in saying contradiction between saying the war is almost over and then backing up the Secretary of defense, who seems to say we're just getting started.

But now Iran has Tomahawk missiles, which they're using to bomb their own girls' schools on the first day of the attack.

I mean, it's just beyond the cult, it's amazing how many adults are putting up with this.

And that was quite a moment where they were both on Air Force One, Hegsev and the President, and the President said, "Well, it must have been Iran that bomb the school." And you just see the look in Hegsev's face, who knows that that's almost certainly a lie. And tries to cover by saying, "Well, we didn't wear the only party that doesn't intentionally bomb." Obviously, he is not willing to totally cover for the President. He's continuing to love. He's now saying we're investigating.

He knows damn well. He knows damn well. The fact that he's heard. And by the way, Pete Hegsev's a big fan of murdering civilians. If you were in a fishing boat off the coast of Venezuela, over a thousand civilians in the region of already died. I mean, Pete Hegsev's claiming to care about the rules of engagement or as false as claiming to care about the Bible. But I mean, the framers of the Constitution, as you've taught us, we're very suspicious of concentrated executive war powers. These non-stop shifting statements show exactly what they wanted Congress, not a single-fallible human leader deciding what America goes to war.

And yet, they found a way around it, right? They found a way around it. Like, it seems if Congress is going to gradually surrender their war authority to the presidency over the past several decades.

Yeah, I think now there's a lot to unpack here, but the first thing I think to unpack is that the erratic differences, as I was saying before,

like they might matter a little when it comes to domestic policy. But the reason why they matter so enormously in foreign policy is because the president really is the sole person in charge of this war as commander and chief. And yet, the purpose of the war is so unclear. And so in his erratic statements, you see the danger of allowing a single person who's prone to arbitrary statements and action. And the frameers to go to your point thought about this, and we talked about this to some degree last time, but I want to really focus on the erratic statements and what it has to do with the founders vision and how it really contradicts them.

What they were worried about was a rush to war, one person making a decision and just to remind listeners, we've talked about this before. In Britain, in England, the king had two powers to initiate war and to carry it out.

“The rumors divided up. They give the commander and chief power to the president, but the question of who initiates or starts the war goes to Congress. Now, what does this have to do with what we're talking about?”

The whole point is that the discussion about going to war is going to be had by a group deliberating on what the point of it is. And seeing how, once we get into a war, it's going to completely reallocate the resources that are meant for a domestic society.

We never had that debate, even though the frameers designed the entire system around it, he just usurped it.

We talked at length last time about how the war powers act has been well-intentioned, but misguided way of empowering a president. But the bottom line is when he come back to the constitution and the founding, he is the nightmare of the founders. He is the warning of those who oppose ratifying the constitution, because rather than having a deliberation and a clear plan, he's just out there acting in this wild way. And here's the sick thing about it, as Commander and Chief, having destroyed the declaration of war power, which is supposed to go to Congress.

“His erratic nature is translating into policy, into the battle plan, and who's supposed to stop it?”

Now, this goes to your other point. Pete Heggseth, who brags about this sort of macho vision of war, who dismisses war criminals and war crimes as something that's in the way of a fighting force. And uses just all this hyper-masculine language to obscure the fact that even if we go to war, they're supposed to be rules. And one of the main rules is to look out for civilians, and that's obviously not just been wrong. There's no more laws of engagement now, Professor, no more woke rules of engagement.

Do you hear that when he said it last week? What is frightening, especially in the context of the story that we're talking about? Let's assume that it wasn't targeting the school, there's no evidence to suggest that. But the fact that you have a secretary of defense, who's so indifferent to civilian death, makes us wonder if they're being careful at all about making sure that this doesn't happen. I'll say one question, you know, is this a war crime? That's going to come up a lot.

And it isn't a war crime if it was an intentional, the rules of war and just war theory talk about the idea that as long as the indirect effect of weapons aimed at military targets are civilian deaths. That isn't necessarily a war crime. But the more that Heggseth talks about his indifference to civilian life, the more questionable our actions become. And we certainly start to move closer to the worry that if there's not a war crime of intent, there should be an understanding that a kind of recklessness and a reckless indifference to life.

If not technically a war crime, it's certainly something that this country shouldn't be involved in.

“I think the very fact that Heggseth this month said all on our terms with maximum authorities, no stupid rules of engagement.”

He's indifferent to law. He literally is making it extremely easy for a future war crimes tribunal to put him away for life by saying that. He's boasting about it, Corey. Is he not? I mean, is that not an official announcement to all of our allies that they know it's lawless and they don't care?

Well, I'll tell you. I mean, here's the technical truth of the matter. First of all, there's a real question about who he would be tried by.

I mean, it could be, I guess, a domestic court if it turns out that he's committed a crime. It's unlikely that the international criminal court, which often handles war crimes, is going to indict American Secretary of Defense, maybe it's possible. There's certainly have been those who have urged it. Oh, I don't think it's happening next three years. But here's the, this is a real dilemma in the law that so much of just war theory is centered around the idea that the war crime comes from intentional targeting of civilian.

So, for instance, crimes against humanity or genocide require this intentional action.

So, I mean, here's what I'm struggling with, and you know, you could tell me what you think that I think it's horrible, horrific, even evil, actually, his indifference to the suffering of human life.

But yet he might, with his statements, be careful enough that he's avoiding any serious charge of a war crime.

“Now, something turns out, and I think he knows there'll never be a war crime struggle.”

Because this country doesn't hold people accountable for those things, and never has. Yeah, well, we've had, we've had, right, at the highest level. We certainly have had trials of Vietnam, for instance, those who engaged to the United States. We just killed a million people in Iraq in this century, and no one got fired for any of it.

So, I mean, I think that he's quite comfortable in realizing that, and he may be quite comfortable in realizing that the Democrats would never have the fortitude.

To actually demand any kind of accountability. Once these people are out of office, I mean, when have we ever seen accountability? The Confederates? Yeah. I ran contra the Iraq War.

We love letting him get away with it. Yeah, I have to say, one of the most profound experiences of, not just my professional life, but my life period was that for my book, the presidents and the people I interviewed at length, Daniel Ellsberg. And Ellsberg was really reluctant, actually, to end of his life, to talk a lot about Watergate. And in fact, he told me that I have to read everything he's ever said about Watergate. And if I ask him a question that's been said, he's not going to be happy with me.

So, I had to go and read all of his work. He actually found a couple of instances where I had missed stuff that he wrote in the 70s or something, but I did pretty well. Anyway, why am I bringing this up?

“Because, you know, when you think about the big problem that we're on, which I've called the Imperial Presidency, that's how he referred to it as well,”

it's the problem of, first of all, a decision making system in the defense department and in the executive branch that we can't see through that's not transparent. And that it inevitably will result in lawlessness abroad, and the prediction was and carried out at home too. And, you know, how do you stop that? Well, he did have a technique that I think works, and it's not exactly war crimes, but it's leaking. And when he leaked the Pranagan papers and let us know that for decades the Vietnam War, like this thing that we're about to get into, had no clear purpose, wasn't winnable.

And that that was all known. His accusation to the American people was to witness this reckless indifference that the entire government was showing. Now, was that going to result in a criminal trial of the Secretary of Defense or of Nixon? No, but at least it was a way of shining a light that the American people could see. And when we had this period of time of forcing Nixon's resignation of pushback against presidential power, it was so much because of this one act that he leaked this, the Pentagon papers, which he had worked on, the secret history of the Vietnam War.

And some listeners will know it well, others, you know, younger listeners might not. But, you know, that's the kind of accountability truth and shining a light on all of this. So when you and I talk about a truth commission, in addition to hopefully trials for those who have committed crimes, that's the kind of accountability that we want to see. So what is going on in this process of planning this war that led to the killing of well more, you know, the numbers are coming in. It looks like, well more than 150 school children was it in difference was it that they knew but pretended not to know. I don't think it was voluntary, but let's find out.

“And the shining of the light, I think, will cause the outrage of the American people that we've seen before and push back against presidential power.”

According to U.S. intelligence, Russia gave Iran intel on U.S. military positions in the Middle East, actual intelligence on American ships and aircraft and installations.

And shortly thereafter, this is again from American intelligence, Iran destroyed a 1.1 billion dollar U.S. radar system and cutter and a 500 millionth ad radar in Jordan.

That's 1.6 billion of American military hardware that you dear listeners paid for gone because Vladimir Putin has decided he can play, I can kill Americans and Trump won criticize me because he knows he can. And how does the White House respond by calling questions about its stupid and by lifting some Russian oil sanctions. Russia is literally Vladimir Putin is literally helping Iran to attack America and Donald Trump is giving them preferential treatment. Cory, if an erratic and corrupt and historically dishonest president is willing to act unilaterally and Congress is politically divided or cowardly.

Does the constitutional system have any effective way to prevent an unnecessary or reckless war? Well, one theme that we've been carving out is that as the American people see that this president, well, I mean there's no other way to put it, but is a liar.

And the more that we and our allies burn oil fields in Iran and oil prices spike, which by the way Vladimir Putin loves, he has lots of oil and these thrilled to see oil prices spike.

The more we see the lie that this is really about anything, but the president's wins his personal enrichment.

“And there is no plan to either stop foreign wars or, you know, here's the thing, and the framers predicted this, when you go to war, you mess with your domestic priorities, so if the domestic priority was ever inflation.”

You know, that's increasingly out the window with this supply-side spike to oil scarcity and oil prices increasing. So, yes, that's what we see, the problem of this imperial presidency, unconstrained by Congress, no purpose. And we're talking about simultaneously destroying the international system, there is no rule of law, by the way, in the international system. The other war crime we could talk about, too, is the attack itself is a crime of aggression, apart from the specific war crimes that might be happening within the war itself.

There is also the lack of justice and the legality of the war itself. And all of that has to be Trump, he's, it's like a trifecta, you know, let's say if I can get all three domestic priorities like inflation. The lawlessness of the international system, and then the chaos, if not war crimes, of civilian death.

“I mean, it's just a disaster from this president, and it is all caving down, and the one thing that I hope, it's, yes, how can we stop this?”

Well, what we're doing, trying to make this all transparent, the American people as a whole, seeing the lie, that's the way to hold them to account, because if we elect a Congress that does something, because of this outrage, feels our outrage, that is a way to stop them. Courts, and all of that might happen after, if he, you know, is still on this planet after he, it's no longer president. Maybe we will see some sort of accountability. The court has made that hard, but I think the real accountability has to come from the American people.

In terms of the specific mechanisms, it's very unlikely right now that this would happen, but there are two things that could happen. One is, the Congress can use the war powers act. They're going to need two thirds to stop this war. We talked about why this was, but they could vote. It goes to the president, he'll veto it. They need an override of the vote to stop the war. But legally, that would be the end of the war, and at least even if he didn't stop then, it would be so clear that he's violating the domestic war.

There wouldn't be some amorphous conversation. And then the other thing, this is really to go to your point, is the spending power of Congress is quite powerful.

They could tomorrow revoke that power for the war. That's not going to happen right now. But as outrage builds in the scenario that I'm carving, maybe that true tool could be used to withdraw support. Democrats would be hounded for, you know, being anti patriotic, but the more popular the war becomes, it might become palatable to use that very real mechanism of cutting the funding off. The power of the person doesn't rest with the president and rest with Congress. Right. Well, let me ask you about that, because we've talked about that many times. And obviously, this is the part in the show where I always say that America has not legally declared war since December of 1941.

We have not legally declared war in almost 85 years. So knowing that they don't care about the Constitution, could Congress realistically, if they wanted to, a different Congress, a Congress that cared about this, could Congress limit funding for specific military operations.

“In order to force a president to come back and see authorization, could that happen?”

Not only could they, but that's exactly what I'd like to see. To reclaim the, you know, the way to reclaim the war powers to reclaim the funding power.

Now, if we start to talk about a different Congress, this would never happen with this one.

One colleague suggested to me the idea that, you know, now we allocate multiple months and advance for a defense budget. What if we set the default to every month there had to be an approval, then rather than trying to pull back funding, there would be a debate every month about whether to continue this ridiculous war, illegal war, obviously. And I think then that would put a different kind of pressure on Congress that sort of scenario. And money could be allocated again, yes, for specific purposes and not others. And what I don't want to skip ahead to the other story, but for instance, ensuring that your money is not being used for human rights violations.

You're going to allocate it to the defense department, but I can't say this enough. The power of the purse is with Congress. We're not seeing them use that at all. They're just handing over power after power. But as we watch this illegal war, maybe it's time to rain it back in. And if Congress wanted to ensure that future presidents couldn't lodge destructive murderous conflicts this easily. Couldn't they tie defense appropriations to explicit congressional approval for new conflicts, right?

They're not going to stand up to this guy, but they could if they wanted to make plans to make sure this doesn't happen again. Yeah, we talked extensively last week about the political question doctrine and the question of even if the president's acting illegally.

And courts aren't enforcing the law that, you know, what's to be done?

Well, one answer would be to recreate the law so that courts did have a role and to make that explicit.

“But I think in other arguably more powerful ideas, the one that you just suggested, which is to tie the allocation funding.”

This is just common sense to the legality of executive action. And if the war is illegal, that should trigger the idea that there's no funding, you know, unless, for instance, there was an override by Congress. So those two things should be traveling together, allocating money for war and making sure that war is legal. And we've got to come up with techniques of doing that. And if it was one vote, you know, about legality, then maybe we'd have a chance that they'd reclaim the power.

I mean, I don't want to hide from what you said either, though, and I want to emphasize that this Congress is cowardly.

They have abandoned their duty. They haven't even voted on the legality of this war, you know, that's their duty. I just want our listeners to imagine if Congress had been forced to debate and vote on war with Iran before the bomb started falling. Just try to imagine in America where that was the reality. Yeah, I mean, this isn't some recent problem. You know, I'm focused on Ellsberg today because it's so much of his interview really, you know, sticks with me.

But, you know, one thing that he did in his biography, Daniel, this is Daniel Ellsberg again, who leaked the Pentagon papers about the secret history of the Vietnam war, showing that there was no clear purpose that it likely wasn't winnable and that people in the executive branch knew it. Well, he went first to Congress and really tried to get attention there and when he was essentially, you know, had some interest, but it wasn't fully supported even by Congress people that you would think would be on his side and more politically aligned.

“That's why he had to go directly to the American people.”

So, his Congress going to do this on their own, reclaim this funding power, tie it as we're suggesting to the legality of the war common sense, probably not on their own. And even a new Congress might not do that, but if we the American people in the way that Ellsberg galvanized the American people at the time can galvanize ourselves to demand that, maybe there wouldn't be a chance. And let's not forget, you know, that war was stopped, eventually partly as a result of Ellsberg's heroic actions. We have so much to get to. I mean, I want to talk about Christy Nome. I want to talk about our Pete Heggset thinks robots should be allowed to decide who lives and who dies.

Before we wrap this up, Corey, I just, you know, one argument the founders made was that Congress represents the people. And therefore, a decision to go to war should require broad democratic consensus. I'd like to think there are some Democrats that can bring this argument to our Republican friends. I don't know if they will.

“But when Americans watch a president change the reason for a war day-to-day, what should our Republican friends understand about why the Constitution intentionally divided war power?”

Is in the first place. What do we just need to say to our clueless right-wing coworker or loved one? You know, it's such a tragedy that we're talking this way, of course, you're completely right about this Republican party. But Republican parties of the past, you know, pushed democratic presidents to seek war authorization. In fact, there are past examples of Republican congressmen bringing suits against presidents for failing to respect the war powers. During the Clinton era, I believe, is one example during the Obama era. And, you know, unfortunately, that breaks down in a very partisan way.

We've also seen Democrats not Republicans opposing Republican presidents, but not Democratic presidents.

I'll give a shout out to my amazing colleague at the University of Pittsburgh, Jules LeBell, who brought two of these suits.

And, you know, he was able in one of them to get a group of Democratic congressmen to oppose a Republican president and vice versa. He could get a group of Republican congressmen to oppose a Democratic president. We've got to somehow break through that and see that the danger is the war power itself, being you served by a president, taking away from Congress. And the more the American people can break through, in this case, yeah, a rough partisanship. The closer we'll be to the framers in this, you know, they had a lot wrong, but this they had right, that it should be Congress to declare its war.

We'll have to see how many people will need to die needlessly before Donald Trump pulls the troops out to clear his victory and blames it all on Joe Biden. We do have to take a very quick break. Professor, when we come back, let's talk about murder robots. Turns out, Pete Higgs, Seth, is a fan. The people who make the murder robots, not so much. This is the oath in the office. By its core again, this episode is sponsored by Princeton University Press. Before we continue, I want to tell you about a new book from Princeton University Press that I think will be of interest to many of you.

If you've been listening to our discussions about executive power, constitutional crises, and democratic guardrails, you may be wondering, how did we get here? The making and breaking of the American Constitution offers a historical perspective. It traces how the Constitution has been constructed, interpreted, and at times strained, from the founding to today's political conflicts.

Welcome back to the oath in the office. I'm John Fughal saying, so the Pentagon is now in a legal fight with the AI company and Thoropic Professor, because the company insisted on two safety rules for their Claude AI system working with the Pentagon.

“Just two safety rules, just two rule number one, don't use our AI for mass illegal surveillance of Americans, and rule number two, don't let robots make autonomous decisions about killing humans without a human giving oversight.”

That's it. They just pretty much said, don't build sky net, please. And apparently, this was too much for Pete XF, who thinks safety guardrails are a woke conspiracy plot by big seatbelt. So what did the government do? They labeled anthropic a supply chain risk. And then went to war using their AI anyway. Normally supply chain risk is a designation used for hostile foreign adversaries telling our contractors don't do business with China or Russia or North Korea. But now it applies to companies whose radical agenda is don't let the murder bots run unsupervised. I mean, I mean, this should be huge news. This is like McDonald's refusing to put plutonium and a happy meal, and the government says their anti-business.

Anthropic is suing the government. I don't know who to root for. We've spent years quarry worrying about big tech controlling society, but now we're seeing something different government pressure on private industry AI companies to cooperate with national security priorities, whether they're legal or not.

“Constitutionally, what should worry us more? Corporate power over AI or government power over the corporate power of AI. Yeah, I go about both and on that. That's a real of improv right both and.”

Or yes, and yes, you know, it's the danger of this enormous power, not just of corporations, but of this amazing technology AI clawed in the case of anthropic. And the worry is that amazing technology combined with a tyrannical government, you know, that's a recipe for fascism and for the shutdown of civil liberties. I look at China as a parallel where social credit is evaluated based on whether you impart criticize the government or not or compliant or not. And AI and technology is being used to survey Chinese nationals to see if they are loyal or not. Now you might think well, that's dystopian. That's so far from the United States. It's an authoritarian regime.

Well, look at what's going on here. What they wanted was two specific things. One was to be able to use the AI in this autonomous warfare and the other was to track American citizens. So just to highlight the connection from the last discussion.

When I talk about the Imperial Presidency, I should also mention Arthur Sustinger's book, the Imperial Presidency.

What we're really talking about is the combination of the war power with domestic repression. And wow, that's what you're really seeing them demand from anthropic. And thankfully, they fought back, anthropic is a company with mixed reviews to say the least. I'm going to lawsuit against anthropic with a number of other authors because they stole our work to train this AI, but yet at least they stood up. And yet you have open AI seeming to make a deal at the same time. I'm not optimistic about any of this. And just the fact that headsets defense department was trying to do this, you know, show us the Imperial Presidency isn't some paranoid worry. It's a real thing that's happening right now.

I'll say, you know, anthropic is not anti-military at all. They literally said we want to help national security.

We just don't want to build a domestic mass surveillance machine or a murder algorithm, which used to be the kind of thing every saint human agreed on, Corey, when a private company refuses illegal government demands tied to military or intelligence operations. What constitutional protections exist for that company when they're only government with its own justice department wants them to break laws. You know, I think that we've so often given foreign policy, the Department of Defense, the CIA, lots and lots of leeway, we the people through Congress, just allocating funds and not tying them in a specific way as we need to.

And we need not just a revival of the oversight power and how these funds are used as I'm again skipping ahead, but as we saw in the case of Homeland Security finally Congress doing a tiny bit of that.

“But I think that right the allocation of the funds again has to definitely be tied any DOD funds should be tied through the law to not surveilling American citizens and violating their civil liberties isn't that obvious thing right?”

I haven't done that clearly and you know, maybe there's litigation that will dig up past laws there are laws that might do some of this, but you know, we've got to really make it explicit that this especially new technology can't be used for this purpose and we the people through Congress are not going to pay for destroying our own civil liberties.

And hexeth just basically through a public tantrum because the AI scientists who built the thing said robots shouldn't decide who lives and who dies. That's not radical. That's that's the bare minimum to keep Terminator from being a damn doc in memory. In practical terms, constitutional terms. Is this anthropics, is this a free speech dispute? Is this a national security dispute or is this a corporate regulation issue? Yeah, I don't think it is a free speech issue because you know, if government contractors can be, you know, paid to do various things that they might not agree with and if they want to take the money they often, you know, this just realistically companies do things all the time they might not agree with.

“But I think it's bigger than that. It's related to all of our civil liberties because what we're really talking about is the ability of a corporation to use its technology and combination with the government to shut down all of our rights.”

You know, the idea that we even have a vestige of a democracy, if we're in the world of China, we're being surveilled by AI that's going to tell Pete Hexeth if we're loyal to him or not. And you and I are definitely not loyal to Pete Hexeth. So our social credit score would be extremely low if they get away with this. And you know, what's the purpose of Congress? I should say, too, you know, the framers were obsessed with one question, this whole separation of powers, having a president on the one hand in Congress and a judiciary article is one, two and three.

That was all about one thing protecting liberty. That was supposed to be the point. But they assume that people in each of those roles would do their jobs and so that if one of the branches like the presidency fell off and started trying to suppress liberty. And other two are leads one would stick up for it. And what we've got is really, you know, all three branches, especially Congress doing nothing in the face of a president who, as you said, this should be from page news every day trying to shut down our civil liberties using AI.

“I mean, again, we'll get off of this topic, but like the debate isn't even.”

Even debating should robots kill people, the debate is should robots at least check with a human first. And that's the controversial position. All right. Now, let's talk about another threat to humanity. And that's billionaires who are flooding our elections right now. And the York Times had an article on the scale of billionaires campaign donations is overwhelming US politics.

It turns out the times analysis found that 300 billionaires and their family members donated more than three billion in 2024. That's 19% of all contributions.

So roughly of every five dollars spent in that entirely campaign that we know about not even get the dark money of every five dollars, one dollar came from these 300 billionaires, about 10 million each. That doesn't count the money again, the billionaires gave through dark money groups they don't have to disclose their donors. So most Americans, Corey, think citizens united created unlimited political spending, but legally speaking, that's not quite true.

“I've just been learning about this, but can you tell us a bit about the speech now dot ORG case of 2010? And how that, that actually made today super PACs possible?”

Yeah, there is a confusion about how this all happened that we have billionaires and study from the New York Times and as the data comes in, it's just without question that you've seen an explosion in the amount of money that billionaires are spending on election.

And it all stems from this year 2010 around that period where two cases basically paved the way.

One is very famous and we all know about it since United, which said specifically that a corporation had a free speech right to spend the unlimited funds from its own treasury on third party ads and on campaigning. It couldn't go directly to the candidate, but it could be used in this third party way. And then, a lower court asked the question in a case called free speech now versus the FEC, whether or not that logic that was in citizens united extended to the ability of a billionaire to give money to a super PAC, which is a kind of corporation corporate entity in order to then spend unlimited money.

So we're no longer talking about like, and at the time people were skeptical citizens united was really going to make a difference because shareholders are going to push back on public corporations, for instance, that tried to intervene in elections. That was the thought. And so maybe this isn't a big deal, but this smaller case, not a Supreme Court case, totally paved the way for what we're seeing now by protecting these super PACs and billionaires.

You know, it turns out when you have a billion dollars spending a million or two on a campaign that you care about isn't a big deal or even more than that.

And you know, that's flooded our elections. I'll go back to the founders, the anti-federalists who warned about this constitution, and it's dangerous, worried about a system that's being given rise to an oligarchy of extremely wealthy people who would control things in a way that doesn't have anything to do with the interests of the people.

I'll say one other thing, which is there is some hope in it. Free speech now, because it's not a Supreme Court case, could potentially be reversed.

And as we start to see and publicize the danger of this system, we can see how even if we retain the idea that corporations can give money, that this idea of super PACs being a free speech issue has been a disaster. Free speech is based, that's the great brown professor Alexander Michael John put it, it's based in an idea of self-government, but if you undermine self-government, that can't be the way to think about it.

“And that's what we're seeing, this fake idea of free speech giving rise to super PACs that's undermining our democracy.”

And as we talk about systemic fixes to all of this, we talk about Congress's role, we've also got to talk about the danger that the court has played in enabling this oligarchy.

Well, this is what confuses me, because I mean, from a constitutional perspective, why did American courts decide that unlimited spending from outside groups doesn't count as corruption?

I mean, it just seems like an aristocrat class that believes that money is speech, and oh well, born rich, you get more speech. I don't think it's a total accident that people like Clarence Thomas are receiving money from billionaires and then finding that billionaires basically have more rights than the rest of us when it comes to democracy. It's one thing to be a billionaire, but to exist in a system in which being a billionaire is able to collapse a system by just flooding elections and by undermining the few protections that we had.

And let's not forget, we've had moments where John McCain and Russ Feingold who I've interviewed actually for your child John for serious exam. They actually crafted ways of curbing all of this influence, and it's the courts, partly the Supreme Court, but also this lower court decision that's crashed through it. And you know, part of the solution here is court reform, but it also is gearing up with new legislation. And if we need to be, I mean, I've long been an advocate since 2010, and in fact was proud to sponsor a conference that resulted in state legislatures in Rhode Island.

The state legislature being the first state legislature to call for an amendment to ensure that the, well, the way we put it then citizens united was reversed.

“And now I think we've got to focus in particular that superpacks are not protected by the constitution that they can be abolished by law.”

We need an amendment to do that. I mean, you know, a handful of billionaires have disproportionate influence over our elections. Thousands of people are dying in Africa because of USAID cuts because of the influence of one billionaire, which has led to literally no exaggeration thousands of human deaths. I mean, this is a system where individual voters have equal votes, but wildly unequal political influence. And our current constitutional doctrine doesn't seem to recognize this is a democratic problem.

Does it? Yeah, I mean, and again, it's not even the Supreme Court. It's this lower court opinion. It could be reversed possibly legislation could cure it an amendment certainly could cure it.

“And if you want to focus in on the problem, we talk a lot about billionaires, but I think your question actually highlights a really important point, which is there's one guy that we can look to and we could say to ourselves like,”

Should this ketamine using erratic, you know, wild person who came into our government and destroyed entities that existed for decades, that in children, you know, that people weren't starving abroad, including USAID, should he have the influence that he has? Do we really, you know, we wouldn't trust this person a babysit your kids, much less to run our government. And yet, why does he have that kind of influence? It's because not just because of his billions, but because of a system that allows those billions to have such a huge influence that he could get a role like that.

As a result of enormous amount of money that he spent to get Donald Trump elected. I mean, this brings us back to my favorite subject to discuss, we need public financing of elections. That's it. I mean, we have to have it. Yeah, that's right. And there are localities in New York, for instance, has an extremely generous system of public funding and starting to figure out how to make it possible to, to just open up the terrain. So it's not just billionaires using politics as a play thing, but it's citizens listeners to this podcast, I'm sure, are civically outraged at what's happening to make it easier for them to jump into the arena.

That's what I want to see. You know, part of what we're talking about every week is the destruction of our of the law of democracy that is happening right now. We're always honest about it, but you know, we've also got to show hope of the future and public financing there are ways of doing these things. You know, I want to say to the listeners, I know how sexy public financing and murdering AI bots are, but I think we need to get to the moment everyone's come for and that is talking about Christy gnome. When we return, Christy gnomes departure and congressional oversight, I can't wait to discuss this particular subject, we'll be right back on the oath in the office.

If you don't remember all the civics classes you may have taken in school, you can get the answer to that question and many others by listening to civics 101.

The claimed podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. Civics 101 is an entertaining way to learn about how our government works, or at least how it's supposed to work, and you'll hear a lot of surprising stories along the way. Hosted by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capoteche. Civics 101 will help you understand a bit more about what's going on and maybe even make you a smarter citizen.

“You can listen to civics 101 wherever you get your podcasts and tell them the other in the office sent you. Hey, it's Cory. If you're like me, you may need to take a break from the 24 hour news cycle to recharge and renew your mind.”

Why I recommend listening to how to, with Mike Peska, the longstanding advice show and the ambinominated best personal growth podcasts. Back for a new season with the new host, how to with Mike Peska, finds answers to your most pressing questions. If you're a fan of Mike and you might recognize him from being a recent guest on the oath in the office or from his award winning reporting or from his role as host of the longest running daily news podcast, the just. Each episode of how to follow security of a listener invited guests to tackle a real problem with help from world class experts who actually know what they're talking about.

If it has ease dropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silence, you've got questions, they find the answers. Follow how to with Mike Peska on apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell them I send you. Welcome back to the oath in the office. I'm John Fiegelsing with Cory Brechnighter. Christy, known is out. Pushed out after a lie, congressional scrutiny over spending controversies, and of course, the murder of American citizens on the streets.

The deeply unqualified in a moral and dim Mark Wayne Mullin has been tapped as her successor where he will do exactly everything Christy known did. It is interesting that there's a lot of issues with money here and oversight daily beast reported that ice ordered 2,500 pickup trucks and SUVs with ice is logo painted brightly on the side and words like defend the homeland and this infuriated the agents because they've been saying these vehicles are a little too conspicuous. We're in unmarked cars now and they can still follow us. Think about the millions we spent by having Christy known's 28 year old deputy ordered 2,500 SUVs with our money that are now going to sit in a garage somewhere, Cory.

I don't even know where to begin, but Congress pressing a cabinet secretary to resign after spending concerns.

“Well, how quaint is that with all that bad bodies, right? I mean, it's almost like a throwback to an earlier year of government oversight. Is that a fair characterization?”

I love it. It is quaint and we're always looking for help on this show and I actually find it here because this is how it's supposed to work. You have an abusive secretary of homeland security.

You've spent money, the example you gave and then I'll give some others. She has money on this ridiculous ad campaign that was clearly an ad campaign for her own branding and pretending that this was somehow a public service. It was solely about herself, starring herself and she was asked whether Trump approved these various things and claimed he did and it's unclear if he did, but he was clearly embarrassed about it. I spent money on these planes and the hearings they showed, these lavish bedrooms. I guess her on these planes and she was asked, "These are deportation flights."

This is for deportees, these let no, of course not. They were for her and for her cronies. And, you know, as Senator Kennedy and other Republicans dug into her, I thought to myself, this is exactly how oversight is supposed to work. That you have money allocated by Congress, used and abused by a homeland security chief. And, you know, Congress isn't happy about it. And then what's the result? She's forced out. She's fired.

“And that's how it's supposed to work. And that's just a little piece. And I like how you put it of the quaint memory of how this used to work.”

But it shows it could work again, if again, to go with our theme, Congress would do its job. I mean, wow, I'll have to thank the saver of democracy, Tantilles, who only had the bravery because he's on his way out the door. But I mean, when oversight works, as it appears to have worked in this case, I guess that tells us a bit about the resilience of American institutions.

She wasn't really fired. She was transferred elsewhere in the agency. We are still paying her salary. She is a powerful witness and they don't want her talking.

So it seems like they've just moved her deeper within the administration where she can be kept far away from microphones. But I mean, you know, oversight has become extremely partisan.

What tools this Congress actually have, Professor, when an administration refuses to cooperate with investigations? You know, the classic theory of political science is that you have oversight committees looking at each of these agencies.

Let's also not forget how vast the federal government is. It's more than two million employees of the federal government and divided into various agencies.

“And one of the primary roles of Congress, since it's funding after all to go back to our previous discussion, all these agencies, is it supposed to look into wrongdoing?”

And the classic theory of how American politics is supposed to work. And people used to say, does work. I think that's clearly not happening right now. Is that just transparency shining the light, looking at all these things. It's not that it's happened in every instance. I talked about Daniel. I was trying to get Congress to do its job about the Vietnam War that didn't work.

He had to go directly to the American people. But in many other instances, it does work. And this was a small glimmer of where it does work.

Now, who have they replaced known with this, you know, individual. It's famous. I watched him threaten the head of the teamsters to a fight in a congressional hearing in Bernie Sanders had to actually literally, you know, stop Bernie Sanders broke up a fight between head of the unions and his hump from Oklahoma. Yeah. And, you know, so that it's not that I don't want to be too optimistic or naive. We've replaced one disaster with another. Yeah. Well, he has much of a disaster. I'm not sure. At least he got to see what it is if you really go out there in your own narcissism using money that's supposed to be allocated for the public good for your own narcissism. Of course, which he'll be remembered for in her obituary and her political obituary is going to this Gulag in Al Salvador and taking, you know, smiling and taking pictures as people were experiencing human rights abuses clearly.

“Just sending innocent people to be tortured and posing. I mean, I think the only thing Mark Wayne Mullin has on her is that he will not be shooting commercials of him writing a horse that costs the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.”

But I mean, you know, again, he's got two first names zero homeland security experience. The qualifications to run homeland security for those who don't know involve being on Fox News a lot willing to lick boots on Fox News a lot, believing that conflict resolution means meet me outside. And being totally jacked, bro, and that's it. I mean, this guy's like a NASCAR driver who got banned for punching the car in angry. He's the guy who, you know, thought that the eye atola of Iran, Kamini was the same eye atola home, any who took American hostage is a 1979 and died in 1989.

That's the guy running homeland security now. So, I mean, I don't expect anything to be different. I think the job is still going to be, you know, do whatever Trump wants and ultimately be Trump's fall guy. Take a talk for a whole episode about how these, let's say lackluster, cabinet members, Trump has the cash betels, the Pete Heggsets.

He didn't want to have smart people. He wanted to have obedient people that would never tell them, President, that's illegal.

So, I don't think any of these cabinet realize that they're fall guys, but the Department of Homeland Security has enormous power over immigration surveillance, emergency authority.

“How important is the leadership of that department to shaping our civil liberties?”

Well, it turns out enormously, you know, when I talk about the idea of a self-coo of the president destroying civil liberties and destroying the other branches, ignoring oversight, that can't just happen if the members of the cabinet are still devoted to the rule of law. If you think some of what we saw unexpectedly in the Trump's first term was people who Trump assumed were loyalists who really, you know, at some point were like, look, I'm not going to just do this president's bidding and break the law and ruin my life and reputation forever.

And they did push back. And there's a long history of that. The most famous examples, Elliot Richardson, refusing to fire Archibald Cox, who was looking into Nixon's wrongdoing. Now, what's the thing that makes the difference? It's partly all you're getting, but it also, let's go back to Congress, is that principle to officers of the United States, including all cabinet officials, have to be confirmed by the Senate. And in the case of Richardson, he had promised the Senate and his confirmation hearing that he would not fire Cox, the investigator looking into Nixon's crimes.

And that promise, in the end, was why he refused to do it. And so if you don't have Congress looking for people, turning people down who have no integrity and demanding integrity from them, at the hearings themselves, is very little check. And so, you know, the theme here is clear, you know, where headed towards dictatorship, partly because of his Supreme Court that's enabled this president through the immunity case, but also from a Congress, not using its various levers. We've talked about spending power, and now I've really got to focus on the confirmation power, and you know, they're not doing their job by demanding those who don't have loyalty.

That's the only, the only child predator they haven't protected, the only child predator they haven't protected, the only child predator they haven't protected, right?

All right. I mean, and Pam Bondi, I got to say, you know, talking about protecting child predators, she made that her homework. A future law school case study, Pam Bondi. I mean, and again, I want to remind our listeners, this is all happening. Well, DHS is under scrutiny for the murderous of Alex Pretty and Renee Good and the killing of Keith Porter by an off duty ice officer and the killing of 23 year old Ruben Ray Martinez shot by DHS almost a year ago, which was only acknowledged by DHS like two weeks ago.

But Cory, as these families are waiting for accountability from the government, whose agents fired the bullets that took the lives of their loved ones, it looks like DHS is doing what they do best. They're just changing the name on the office door. It's going to be the same policies, the same chaos, just with a different less telegenic reality TV contestant competing to keep the job.

It feels like in this version of America, the flunky's in the henchmen aren't fired for breaking the law. They're fired for breaking the illusion.

When you stepped back, like these stories we've been covering, the AI policy, this illegal war, the billionaire election spending, the cabinet oversight. Does this point to a common theme about power in American democracy? You'd like to touch on Professor Brechiner? Well, I love this point. I was thinking about Christina and all that. I talked about what would be in her political obituary, and one thing we've got to put in there too is the way that she said after these two murders that these were somehow domestic terrorists.

“Without any evidence, it couldn't be anything further from the truth. And I think the thing about that was, even for Republicans, even for Trump, it was like, what are you doing?”

That's not. There's nothing behind that. And what does it do? It's not that she somehow wasn't doing what the president wanted.

It's that she just wasn't good at the lying and wasn't good at even the veneer of legitimacy. She just, you know, was so bad at hiding her fascism, I guess, that that, you know, was a step too far. But let's not forget, this is all at the behest of this president and at the behest of a Congress that's given up all power. And so yeah, we're replacing one face with another, and things are not going to improve. And let's not forget either, you know, that, yes, this administration is covering up these two murders of American citizens.

And we shouldn't stand for that. That's what the no kings rallies are about. So many of you have written to me. I spoke to one of the groups organizing no kings in North Carolina shout out to Ash County. And you know, we've just got to keep holding these people to account and shining a light on what they're doing. Amen. Professor Brechnerider, it's always a great pleasure. Thank you so, so much for joining us again. I want to leave with this. I don't want anyone to be worried because they want us to be full of fear.

“Please folks, be brave, take breaks, take mental health breaks in the news if you need to. Democracy needs you. So, so despair is privilege, okay? But we should still be concerned.”

And Corey, what should citizens be paying attention to right now if they're concerned about the long-term health of democratic institutions? I mean, I don't want to just put all my eggs in the basket up. The Democrats will save us in midterms. No, we've really got to, and this is the theme of this podcast and why we're doing it, as citizens, you know, and our public officials shouldn't be trusted to do this. We have to demand it of them. And as we have public officials on the show, this is what we're going to talk to them about.

In short, the powers of Congress are reclaimed that the light of transparency is shined on abuses and as much as democracy seems to be in the dustbin day after day. We've got to not lose the idea of it. You know, I'm really a believer in ideas. This is where my idealism comes from. My optimism. It comes from the idea that, you know, at the base, when the constitution says we the people, it means it. When the first amendment talks about the right to free speech, it means it. When we kept the decision whether to go to war from a president, we did that for a reason. It's because we the people are better at making these decisions than a dictator is.

And even if we've lost that democracy at this point, the idea remains and that's what I want to help us reclaim every week.

“Professor Brechner, thank you for talking me off a ledge every single week. What is the best way for our listeners to follow you and to keep up with your work all week long?”

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And it's just such a pleasure. Cory, I always feel a bit better about the future of this democracy after we speak. We will see all of you next time on the oath and the office.