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Journalist Nathan Stone and Producer Josh Carmody invite you to sit down for deep dives on the rapid changes happening in Trump’s new America.
00:03
After being unable to confirm President Trump's appointees for months, Republican senators changed the rules on confirmation to bypass their Democrat opponents. This led to 48 appointees being confirmed in a single vote last week. Meanwhile, the White House has created a new pathway to immigration. The Trump Gold Card gives the wealthy a fast pass to live and work in the United States. Despite having nothing in common on the surface, these two events connect.
00:32
both point to a growing consolidation of authority in the office of the president and the capitulation of congressional powers. Welcome to the politics of New America. On the show today, the Senate seeds more of its power as the president straight up usurps immigration powers from Congress. I'm your host, Nathan Stone, and with me for the first time tonight is executive producer Hannah Payton.
00:57
Hannah, welcome to the show. I say welcome to show, but you're with us all the time. Yeah, I am usually there as like a silent witness to the recording because it typically happens in my home where the recording equipment lives. um But I try to my best to keep quiet. know, I find I find ways to sort of let Nathan and Josh.
01:21
see how I'm reacting to stuff without just shouting my rage at the state of American politics. oh Today you can shout. You can shout your rage to the sky. And we've got, I think, a more fun show to do this on. We're not talking about anything overly uh disturbing or depressing today, other than the continuing
01:49
a transfer of power between Congress and the executive. that's par for the course for this show. That's our bread and butter. is- So you texted me about an hour ago with the topic of today was going to be, and uh I didn't look it up, but I just saw Trump gold card. And my first thought was, huh, isn't gold card like-
02:14
not the best credit card. Like it's good, but like, you know, there's black, there's platinum. Like I was, that was where my mind went. It's like Trump money visa. Yeah. Oh, see. I was a little confused about the, how, how it could be that good of a credit card, but now I understand. Well, in a strange way, Hannah, you're, you're actually right about this because, uh, the Trump gold card is only the beginning for the truly, truly elite of the elite.
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of people who want to buy their way into the United States. The Trump platinum card is coming. he is just like doing the credit card system with immigration. Yes. Yeah. So this is this is a little bit wild. And for anyone who hasn't looked this up yet, we're going to be talking about the Trump card a lot today because I find it really interesting. Also, it's a big problem in a lot of ways. But
03:11
If you go to trumpcard.gov, you can get a good look at this thing. It looks kind of exactly how you would picture of it. There's a big Donald Trump on the card. It's got his squiggly signature. It's got Lady Liberty behind him kind of peering over his right shoulder and an eagle just popping up by his left side. It's a wild card. Of course, it is entirely gold. Unlock life in America.
03:42
It does look like an Amex card. does look like an Amex card, right? Exclusive privileges for individuals or for business. Mm Yeah, we're going to be hitting on on the Trump card. We're also going to talk a little bit about the 48 confirmations from the Senate of Trump appointees that came in one single vote after Republican senators changed the rules around confirmations because they could not get
04:12
the Democrats on side. And uh we're going to kind of talk about how both of these things are actually giving more power to the president and taking power away from Congress. But before we do any of that, I did want to hit a little bit on kind of the biggest news of the last week, which was uh the cancellation of uh Jimmy Kimmel.
04:42
And his show. Yes, this I did hear about. Yeah. So. The the thing I'm not going to go too far into it, because we actually have a great episode on the FCC and Brendan Carr and how the FCC works and how this is all going to play out. We basically uh said as much on the episode of the things that they can do. But what we saw with Jimmy Kimmel is.
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actually kind of the perfect example of how Trump's federal appointees are able to weaponize systems and departments to strong-arm both the public and private sector.
05:38
With Carr, I think one thing that people need to realize about him as a person is that he is a true believer. He is a 100 % rabid attack dog of a man in the Trump administration. uh He is the type of guy who absolutely is not going to be finished with this, and all of the calls
06:07
on him to resign after this, all of the, you know, the the Democrats trying to to pull him up um to to testify and explain and everything that's going on with them trying to put pressure on him. I guarantee you. I guarantee you. Oh, no, it's having erectile dysfunction. Poor Hannah's Yeah. So the thing you need to understand about Brendan Carr is that
06:37
He is a true believer in the Trump administration. He is an attack dog. This, the pressure that's come on him from Democrats in the last, you know, days following the Jimmy Kimmel firing is not going to faze him and it's not going to dissuade him or discourage him or intimidate him. This is a man who is
07:05
I think uh excited to keep doing this and to keep applying pressure, all the pressure that the FCC can bear upon these companies. ah I would expect him to continue to do that because he knows there's not a lot of ways that the Democrats can remove him. uh And right now the FCC is
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very imbalanced. So usually what you have a uh majority of FCC chairpersons from the party in power, so the Republicans in this case, and then you have a minority from the Democratic Party or the party out of power. In this case, though, uh we've got some empty seats.
08:03
by the Democrats. So whatever power influence and just sheer roadblocks that they could usually throw up from internally within the FCC to slow Brendan Carr down just aren't there right now. So I would expect this to keep going. I would not be surprised to see them pressure other networks. I do think this is just the beginning. And if you would like
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kind of a bigger primer on the FCC. Please do go back and check out our FCC episode came out a while back, but the information and it's all still still good. So that's unfortunately just a little bit of bad news for anyone expecting. Maybe this was an outlier. I think this is just the beginning of the FCC going after companies that it can. uh And wasn't this the second sort of like
08:59
Commentative comedian that went down recently because yeah, I'm censorship Stephen Colbert show uh Was is not getting? Renewed I believe so he didn't get pulled off the air, but he you know he he got basically canceled at the end of the season I believe and This this is such a good example ah if you want to know how this kind of political weaponization works because
09:28
Brendan Carr didn't actually do anything. The FCC didn't do anything. Much like the mafia, uh the FCC kind of walked into uh Nextar, the cable companies, the companies that were airing, the regional companies that aired the show, and said, oh, hey, I know you're going to be merging soon. And it'd be a real shame if...
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anything were to happen with that merger because that would cost you billions and billions and billions of dollars and
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The easiest thing and the immediate response from any kind of corporation to that threat from the government is going to be to fold. However much they lose in subscribers because of this, however much uh Kimmel's show was making them, it's peanuts to their shareholders. uh When you consider that this company, these two companies,
10:37
uh That that were involved in this we're in the middle of a merger right so it's all about fiduciary responsibility it is it is and What what this has though is this isn't just kind of uh you know a direct strike on on a couple of companies and specifically one comedian show this is a shot across the bow of the entire industry right this is a
11:07
If you air programs that we don't like, we're going to find a way to hurt you. And that's honestly probably the more chilling aspect of all of this, is that there's no... There's really no recourse for the Democratic Party or for any kind of watchdog groups, because the FCC is muzzling these companies.
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without actually doing anything, right? You're going to go to the courts and say, oh, the FCC sort of implied that we were going to lose, you know, we were going to lose out on this merger, right? It's so coercive, but it's also so effective. And this isn't just something that can happen in the FCC, right?
11:59
We have Trump appointees to every conceivable uh part of the federal government and every conceivable department. And it only takes someone like a Steven Carr, Or a Brendan Carr in that right position and with weakened opponents to start putting the screws to people.
12:27
and start using federal regulations ah to get the outcomes that the president wants. Yeah, and it's a way of controlling education and controlling um the like what information he wants out there. Like he's going to I read that he's going to make an announcement tomorrow about uh the evils of autism. yeah, but he can just but the
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point with this is he can just put that out there. And this and with the FCC bullying and pressuring people, there's no one. There's going to be no one left to say why that's incorrect. Well, and and the FCC was an institution that was fairly independent for the longest time, right? Not to say that it was totally free of politics. I don't think there is an institution in the United States that is, but
13:26
It was kind of about doing the job, And about enforcing regulations. This new administration is all about using regulations to enforce its own policy rather than just fairly, ah kind of neutrally judge what's going on. So it's...
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really troubling. again, it's terrifying. It speaks to this growing, growing power of the executive, right? Because this doesn't happen if, if, you know, Trump isn't already offended by by Kimmel, you know, he months before ah this, this one incident, uh he had he had put out something on truth social, you can look it up that basically said that
14:25
You know, Kimmel was going to be the next one to go of the these late night talk hosts. They really rile them up for some reason. But it's it's just it's it's startling at. How quickly these institutions have collapsed in the face of. What is basically like a hostile takeover? uh American institutionalism was based, I think.
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so much on trust, on the trust of reasonable people being in these roles, people who were qualified, bureaucrats, and people who really cared about radio and television regulations. I guarantee you Brendan Carter does not care about radio and television. I guarantee you he cares about his agenda and Trump's agenda.
15:21
And this has been a refrain on the show, especially lately. it's about, um yeah, it's been this refrain that we see over and over again on this show that America is based on the trust that people will be reasonable and make reasonable choices. And the policy, there aren't policies in place to enforce certain protections or there's policies in place that protect against
15:51
Yeah, yeah, if you've listened to the to the show really at all uh one of the the things that we really get into is is institutionalism and and how it is broken down, but yeah, you're exactly right Hannah Political norms are such a huge part of the American system and it came from the fact that
16:20
It wasn't really designed to accommodate political parties. Political parties came on the scene very early. And so they kind of broke the mold a bit, and it's just kind of been chugging on ever since. But what we've really seen it struggle with is this new hyper partisan era that we've been in for the last probably 30, 40 years at this point. it just keeps getting more and more pronounced.
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until we had the Trump administration, which there's really no precedent for an administration like this. yet we see time and time and time again on this show that it just cannot accommodate and it cannot function with this kind of bad faith uh actors in these positions because it was never
17:17
designed to accommodate them. There aren't checks and balances in the places where there really needs to be. And the ones that were in place don't function if one party controls every facet of the federal government. Because again, that wasn't the plan. That was never supposed to be possible. It was supposed to be individuals representing their individual constituencies coming in and creating
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uh Talking and compromising and arguing and together coming up with
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laws and policies to shape a nation. There was never any idea that there should be this grand coalition of one party versus another. uh So yeah, that's kind of all I wanted to get into with Kimmel. But it's one of those things that is more and more concerning the more you look into it. I'll be interested to see when the next
18:24
Domino falls in in that uh You know in the row here uh But to get to kind of one of our main topics here uh after months and months of stalling of negotiations Republican senators Changed the rules on Senate confirmations to bypass the Democrats. So if You're not
18:54
up on Senate confirmations and look, I don't blame anyone. Yeah, don't blame anyone who isn't up on Senate confirmations. Basically, uh how it worked before this rule change is that you needed not just a Senate majority to confirm. And this is, I should say,
19:23
This changes some of the rules on confirmations. It doesn't change the rules on every confirmation. It changes the rules very specifically for sub cabinet confirmations, uh, as well as the confirmations for ambassadors. So what that means is, uh, Hannah, if I'm the president and I want to send you to, uh, Italy to be the ambassador, I, I write up a little thing saying that
19:52
This is Hannah's my gal in Italy and I send that to the cabinet or to the Senate. The Senate calls you in, asks you a bunch of questions about why you should go to Italy. You know, how are you going to help American-Italian relations? And you answer them as best you can and they argue about it for a while. And usually there's some kind of political grandstanding, but eventually you tend to get through unless they find out you've been doing something real naughty.
20:23
most uh appointees will eventually get confirmed. Now, of course, there's been a slew of questionable, I would say, appointees as well that we've seen both in Trump's first administration and in the second one. But for the most part, it's, you know, eventually this does get through. um
20:52
So yeah, that's that's kind of ambassadors sub cabinet positions are anything below a uh member of of the cabinet. So this can be, you know, deputy directors. This this can be all sorts of managerial positions through any number of federal agencies. And these are still important positions, mind you, they're still. uh
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influential, they're still powerful. And so it's important that these rules have changed. Now, you used to need 60 votes to get through to get through a confirmation. And that was kind of at the cabinet level, as well as the sub cabinet and ambassadors, everyone needed 60 votes. And that's, I'm sorry, out of how many Senate members, senators? So altogether, um
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There are 90.
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98 senators, I believe. So about 60 % vote. Yeah. Let me just double check that before I... Oh, no, of course. Yeah, I can't do basic math. So there's 50 senators. Or sorry. No. There are 50 states, 100 senators, two from each state. I knew that in my head. Couldn't pull it.
22:26
Yeah, so you're looking at 60 % to confirm. Now, the current state of affairs meant that there aren't 60 Republican senators. There are 53 Republican senators, 47 Democratic.
22:50
And, uh...
22:54
Is right? Well, 53, 47, 100. Oh, yeah, yeah, there is. I'm sorry. Yeah. OK. So, yeah. So 53. I got a D in grade 11 math. What are you doing? So you should. That would have been great for me as a math score. Yeah. So. There's 53 Republican senators, they
23:24
didn't have the numbers to confirm. And the Democrats refused to confirm any of the Trump nominees. This is actually one place where the Democrats could actually gum up the works for the Republicans and kind of slow their role a bit. And those spaces are fewer and fewer. Yes. Yeah. The Democrats haven't had much luck anywhere in really opposing the Trump administration.
23:53
This is a place where they had. And so there had been rounds and rounds and rounds of negotiations uh until the Republicans kind of threw in the towel on talking to the Democrats anymore and moved to, in fact, change the rules altogether. Now, the fun thing about that is it takes or it took 60 votes in the Senate to
24:24
uh approve a To confirm an appointee It only takes a majority to change Senate rules Of course, so despite not having now they did get the support of a few Democrats for it because Democrats are nothing if not a party eternally divided but they
24:50
That's our big problem, would say, the left in general. Yeah. They got the numbers, of course, to change these rules.
25:05
So.
25:10
What it also allows them to do is batch nominees. Now, batch nominees they could do before with that 60 votes. Now they can do it with just a simple majority. So does that mean they have like a bunch of nominees that they vote on all in one go? Absolutely. And that's what they did just last week. We got 48 confirmations in the last week. And some colourful characters in this. uh Kalistra Gingrich, Newt Gingrich's wife.
25:41
Yeah, so I don't do you remember gingrich? The name is definitely always stuck out to me because it just sounded like if the Grinch was a salamander I Mean that's that's basically it. Yeah, you've you've you've got him there uh If the Grinch was a salamander uh Yeah, and I'm also interesting uh Have you heard the name Kimberly gilfoyle? I have but I don't know the context
26:10
So she is God, we could do an entire episode on her because she is so interesting. So she is going to be the new ambassador to Greece, which sounds like a really nice job, I have to say. Yeah, I mean, you were offering me Italy. I'm pretty into that one. Yeah. Yeah. No, look, I know somewhere on the Med, right? So she.
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She was originally married to Gavin Newsom, the California governor. We've been talking about him quite a lot. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, he's made himself part of the news a lot, uh Now, she, but more interestingly, after she and Newsom split, she moved to New York City and became a Fox News anchor.
27:07
At that point, she started uh dating Donald Trump Jr. This is about 2018. It also became a fundraiser for Trump himself. uh so she also... I'm just waiting for you to say something even worse. Well, she was part of the uh sexual misconduct allegations that...
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happened at Fox News and she left that network. um And ended up paying a multi-million dollar settlement settlement to an assistant to to avoid going to trial for it. And then she was so she was a defendant. Yes, yes, she she was a defendant in that. Yeah. In twenty twenty four, her relationship with Trump Jr.
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kind of fell apart because he started messing around with a younger blonde socialite. so they split up in 2024.
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Trump in early 2025 announces that he's appointed her to serve as ambassador to Greece. uh
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Yeah, yeah, is kind of part of the story. Allegedly that either Trump Jr. or his new girlfriend kind of want her out of the area. And mean, if you're going to be exiled, again, being Ambassador to Greece, not a bad way to do it. yeah, this is, and that's just a couple of them, but I think they're interesting characters.
29:15
What I want people to know about this whole scenario isn't so much that the Senate changed its rules, the Senate has changed its rules in the past. In fact, the Democrats, uh about a decade ago...
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They, uh...
29:34
They made a change, a similar change actually to...
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confirmation for executive branch nominations.
29:50
and most judicial picks. then Republicans, so they lowered those judicial and executive branch nominees from 60 to 51. And then Republicans under Mitch McConnell in 2017 during Trump won, took the same step for Supreme Court picks.
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basically made new rules for debate time for most other nominees, basically limiting how much time you could spend arguing about it. So both parties have done this in the past, but each time they do it, it actually weakens the Senate's voice overall, right? The Senate, because of those higher thresholds for
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for appointees and for confirmations, they had set themselves up to be kind of a uh moderating factor in American politics, right? Where it was so unlikely that a party was going to have a majority of 60 plus senators that the picks that you made for your cabinet, for the judiciary, for ambassadors, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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had to be at least like kind of okay for both parties, right? Now, the Senate is going to serve, especially in times when the president is of the same party as the Senate, they can serve as basically a rubber stamp for all of these kind of lesser officials. And- Oh, I'm sorry. Did you say the exact number they lowered it to? Is it just 50?
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Oh, for the, uh, like the new, uh, the new rules? Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a simple, uh, 51 majority. Okay. Yeah. So you still need a majority. was worried you're going to be like, and they changed it to 30. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised, but yeah, that is, yeah, they, just, just the simple majority. And that might lead to some really interesting times if we.
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again get a president who is not of the same party as the majority of the Senate. uh In those cases, and that's happened before many times, but in those cases they really have to be kind of political with their picks and choose them wisely. But in the current administration, the Senate now finds itself just as kind of a uh rubber stamping, uh you know,
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part of the process of these nominees and Democrats, you know, again, 47 out of 100, right? So 47 % of the Senate has basically lost its voice when it comes to these confirmations. They can still argue, they can still make salient points about someone's readiness to, you know, assume whatever position they're being nominated for.
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but they can't actually stop anything anymore. They can't gum up those works. And this could easily backfire uh on Republicans, right? Because now these new rules uh under a Democratic controlled Congress with a Democratic president would have just as easy a time steamrolling Republicans if they were in the minority. The problem being, like, as we've mentioned, Democrats and again, like
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leftist politics in general is much more divided. like the Republicans, like at this point they, we need to
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We need just one Republican out of, like, if there's 53 of them, then I guess we need just three Republicans to not vote with the majority, and that's gonna be really hard to do on the Republican side. I can absolutely see three Democrats being like, mm, I don't like this one. Yeah. I think you're right that Republicans are better at towing the party line.
34:27
than Democrats are, and you kind of see that everywhere. The Democratic Party is... Like, both parties are what you would call, I think, in other countries that have kind of more parties that form their governments. They call them big tent parties. I don't think that's a common term in the United States, but basically it means that you have broad coalitions that come together under a single party banner, and those, you know, they all kind of...
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make a bit of a compromise ah to achieve kind of their at least close to their overarching goals. And we see in politics generally, and this isn't just an American phenomena, conservatives do this better than liberals and leftists do it. Yeah, I think you can see that in Canada, where we have two major parties, but we also have smaller parties that are big enough to make a difference.
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And it's all about who can, which of the bigger parties can get the other smaller parties to sort of like, purge together. Yeah, and recently, our last election was a bit of an outlier in Canada, where we had almost a very American style two party election. But generally, there's there's at least three to five parties that that win seats in in parliament and
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Just the way that our parliamentary system works, those smaller parties can hold a balance of power and, you know, punch far above their weight. It's so different in the United States than from most liberal democracies, just this strict two-party system, uh that it really doesn't lend itself well to what we would consider
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know, bipartisanship, what we would consider that kind of big tent thing. But it's also a fact, I think, of just the incredible polarization of right and left, that the right has the Republican Party that has traveled right with them, right? The Republican Party has moved further to the right. And that is going to alienate some.
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on the conservative side, but not enough. But the Democratic Party has also moved rightward, right? So maybe they pick up a few ex-Republicans, but they've lost so many uh progressive and leftist voters that it really hasn't made up that difference. And that's why we see the fact that Trump has never polled particularly well as a president. He's never been particularly popular.
37:22
And yet we're in the midst of his second term. And that's because the Democrats don't really have a solid foundational base like the Republicans do that will always just back them, Democratic supporters kind of come and go depending on which way the party is trending at the time. And I don't blame anyone for doing that. It's...
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I think it's awful to kind of that hold your nose and vote for this party because even though they're against what you stand for, they're not as against what you stand for as the other party. That's that's a terrible way to do a democracy. But that that's, think, where a lot of left leaning voters in the United States find themselves. I think that we're seeing more and more of that in Canada. Like, I still have the ability to be like, well, like, know, like, I don't really love.
38:18
the Liberal Party, which like we call the Liberal Party. It's our it's our centrist party. And but a lot of people are so understandably afraid of what the Conservative Party and what the PPC are up to that they're voting liberal when they actually want to vote NDP. Yeah. And the last election was a perfect microcosm of that. We saw the NDP, this there's a social democratic party in Canada, basically collapse.
38:46
ah Now, a lot of that too was that the party was very uninspiring and propped up a very unpopular government for a long time. they had to own that. yeah, you had a lot of people doing that, hold your nose and vote liberal because if not, what are the conservatives going to do? And it's really funny because the liberal party in Canada ah is not a leftist
39:16
government in any any way shape or form uh and and liberalism in its classical roots is not particularly leftist either it's it's Been kind of lumped in to a leftist category because I think it's it's not conservatism Yeah, it's just like the contrast that it's it appear. Yeah, it's it's really funny conservatism tends to anchor our political views in that we view things as opposed to it and and agreeing with it right conservatism
39:45
I guess is a little bit more stable in its political views, right? And liberalism can lean left sometimes, lean right more often, and kind of fit in that middle section. And because of that, it's seen as left when it really isn't. uh But to, not to digress any further, but just say, Nathan, I've taken you through quite, I really like-
40:14
I've really pulled you into the weeds. Yeah, no, I it. I've really gone on some digressions. Please, please center us back and get our GPS running again. Yes, I'll try my best here. The problem is I love digressions as well. So just to kind of finish up on this this Senate issue, the point that I had been trying to make, and I don't know if I got there beforehand, but basically the Senate has ceded power here.
40:44
And the Senate and the House of Representatives, Congress as a whole, continues to cede power and what they're not ceding to the executive, to the president, is being actively taken. So that's my very clever segue to the gold card. So the gold card on its face is pretty funny.
41:13
find it very humorous. find it like the kind of thing that the Simpsons, it would have been like a throwaway joke on the Simpsons that one time where they had like they viewed the future and Donald Trump was the president. Oh, absolutely. Like it's it's giving like like you said, Simpsons family guy. feel like South Park would absolutely. Oh my God. Yes. Count on this. South Park is going to go absolutely to town on this. So this actually came to us. The gold card was created
41:43
as executive order. Now, if you know this show, you know I love a good executive order. And this one is pretty darn good. It's shorter than most, but basically it sets us up here, if you go in and read the executive order, uh the section one, purpose, the why are we doing this, is great. Basically, uh it's Biden's fault, of course, because the
42:11
Prior administration had disastrous immigration policies, produced a deluge of immigrants. And you start reading that, you're like, where are we going with this? Because this is a pathway to immigration, this gold card. This is increasing immigration from a certain cohort, or hopefully trying to do that. It's a 1 % cohort. Yeah. So after a little while of
42:40
blaming the previous administration, it actually gets to the point. says, is a priority of my administration to realign federal immigration policy with the nation's interests by ending illegal immigration and prioritizing the admission of aliens who will affirmatively benefit the nation, including successful entrepreneurs, investors, businessmen and women. I'm surprised you didn't put captains of industry on there since we're living in the new Gilded Age. So that is the...
43:10
the stated uh purpose of this. Now, the rest of it kind of goes into how this is going to work. The Gold Card Program authorizes an alien who makes an unrestricted gift to the Department of Commerce um to establish eligibility for an immigrant visa using an expedited process.
43:35
to the extent consistent with law and public safety and national security concerns. The requisite gift amount shall be 1 million for an individual donating on his or her own behalf and 2 million for a corporation or similar entity donating on behalf of an individual. So it's a hefty fee, but what do get for that hefty fee? Well, you get an expedited uh visa. And this is now.
44:04
I should I should preface here. I have never gone through the process of getting a visa for another country. I've never had to do that. And especially an immigration visa, I know takes a ton of time. And yeah, I also have never done it. And even when I uh applied for my UK passport, uh my mom did it for me. There you go. Yeah. So it's it's the kind of thing that
44:35
isn't something that I know of personally, but I do know that the process is quite long and arduous and, uh you know, fraught with kind of little pitfalls. But this is a way for the wealthy to buy their way into America. Now, they do say that anyone going through this program is subject to screening by the Department of Homeland Security, so I assume that means
45:04
that there is some kind of background check that you go through. um Now, like that background check involves a bank account check. Just falling here. Yeah. Yeah. Now, uh this this kind of falls to the secretary of commerce and the secretary of state alongside the secretary of homeland security on the security side of things. uh They basically have 90 days from
45:34
when the executive order was signed, which was September 19th, to figure out the process by which this will work, kind of the implementation of it. And...
45:50
They're going to establish a process for the applications, for the expedited review, and then for the issuance of these gold cards.
46:03
and also kind of just set up the the payments and everything. It's funny, keep whenever I look at this EO, I kind of laugh a little bit because it's just so very Trump with this. We mentioned the platinum card at the beginning of the episode and that hasn't.
46:28
That's coming soon, right? It's listed on the website is coming soon. So I suppose that will be its own executive order. Yeah, I'm looking at the website now and even it is like comically Trump. Like, I mean, for one thing, it's written for octogenarians. The font is like 140. The part where you like filling your information is the entire like it takes up your entire screening. Yes. And it's like, my name is first last.
46:54
from region and I'm interested in the Trump gold card for myself and my email is and that's all the information you need to give them to apply for gold card. Well, to be fair, right now it is a waiting list. But yeah, it reads like a mad lib, honestly. You you're just filling in and you're just trying to make something funny here. um But yeah, this is this is for a very
47:23
particular demographic. think it's kind of funny because you're, you know, they mention, you know, always with immigration issues, cartels and gang members and this kind of thing. And I have to ask with this gold card, are we just looking to swap out the cartel members for the cartel bosses? Because I feel like those are the people who could apply for this.
47:51
Well, if we're going with the Gilded Age reference, I feel like he's just building his own Misses Asteris 400. That's not bad. That's not bad. Yeah, it's...
48:08
It's funny in a lot of ways, and I really don't blame people for finding the humorous side of this. uh I do want to talk about, though, the uh seizing of power that this represents. And this isn't something that's been covered a lot on the news, and I'm a little bit disappointed by that. Because this is actually a bit of a big deal.
48:38
And the reason this is a big deal is that uh Congress, the people who represent the people of the United States ah in the House of Representatives, uh
48:55
Congress has power over immigration. And not only power over immigration. uh Supreme Court precedent recognizes Congress as having plenary power over immigration. this is- plenary? Okay, I was gonna say, because I know you're a big crossword person, so I figured this might have come across your desk. But no, plenary is a fantastic word that I wish was used more.
49:24
But it's also the type of word that you only hear in very legal documents, right? You're going to hear this in a courtroom and nowhere else. But plenary uh has a very simple uh definition, and that is unqualified and absolute. So doing the very simple translation here, Congress has absolute power over
49:54
immigration.
49:57
uh giving it complete authority to decide whether foreign nationals may enter or remain in the United States.
50:07
So.
50:11
That's a big problem for Congress because what Trump is doing through this executive order is making new immigration law, right? Because this is what this is. This is a new program. This is a new pathway to immigration. This is a law uh specifically eating Congress's lunch on immigration. And that's...
50:41
so important because executive orders, again are bread and butter on the show, we love them to death, cannot and should not be allowed under any circumstances to create new laws. That is not the executive function. It's so important that Congress retains the ability to create laws and that that be a purview to them and them alone because if the executive
51:10
gains law-making power and it's upheld, Congress ceases to have any point or relevance. And although this is a funny, silly thing, this is a direct power grab from Congress. And it sets a terrifying precedent for executive orders. Executive orders...
51:39
should deal with the running of federal departments. ah And occasionally, declarations of national emergencies. As we've covered, we got a great episode on national emergencies as well. National emergencies create powers for the president. The more national emergencies there are, the more powerful the president is in real terms, sheer authority.
52:07
But executive orders themselves and the way that the way that the Constitution frames the executive is not as a branch of the government that creates laws. Only a branch of the government that decides how laws and how government agencies, federal government agencies
52:36
interpret and uh comply with those laws and enact those laws, right? So for example, if you have a uh group of friends come together and you're all deciding on what kind of pizza you want at your pizza party, right? You get together, you take a little vote. You're just like, oh, I want meat lovers, I want Supreme, whatever. The president is
53:05
In this case, the guy phoning the pizza place and putting in the order. That's how the president is supposed to work, right? The president should not be the one deciding unilaterally what are the toppings on the pizza. maybe, hopefully that's a good analogy, but it's about as simple as I can put it. I mean, the correct pizza order is pepperoni, jalapenos, zizi on the sauce. Oh, I don't know about that. That's...
53:35
I don't know. I'd try it. I tried. I'm not going to write it off. I've never had that. Pepperoni should always be crispy. Yeah, that we can agree on. It's soggy and wet. That's for me. No, no. So I'm I'm a I'm a supreme guy. I'm just the like you throw everything you got on that pizza. That's what I like. I want it. I want it buried in toppings. Yeah, so. This. This is.
54:04
part of a larger issue we've had and we've been covering on the show for quite some time about Congress ceding its power to the executive.
54:16
This Trump gold card plan, I'm going to go out on a very, very uh tiny limb and say this is going to end up in court very quickly.
54:28
If not from uh Republican lawmakers, definitely from Democrat lawmakers. This is a clear overstep of executive power. And a lot of Trump's executive orders, they're kind of, they walk the line. You're just like, you know, it might be a little bit of an overstep, but also, you know, there's a pretty decent argument to be made that he can do this. This one, I don't see it. I do not see the argument.
54:57
for allowing these gold cards to exist without Congress having been the ones that authorize this. Right? That's the kind of thing is you could do this. You could have these gold cards, have these platinum cards, have platinum black cards, supermax cards, go wild. But Congress has to be the ones, uh you know, bringing this into law.
55:27
And where the executive is doing this, the executive branch.
55:34
is just kind of a step beyond the pale for me as someone who follows this and is honestly really concerning. I'll be interested in seeing what Congress, uh sorry, how lawmakers respond as well as uh how the kind of interested public responds to, right? Do we get a challenge from
56:04
any of the more kind of progressive legal firms that deal in federal law. uh Because this is something that I think everyone should be concerned about and that really isn't getting much attention because of the sheer audacity that is the gold card. The underpinnings behind it are quite sinister. So yeah, that's kind of where I wanted to go with that one. I'm sorry, we kind of started funny and then it's just like, oh yeah.
56:32
I'm not talking right now so that no one has to edit out the sound of my cat trying desperately to make out with my face.
56:43
I mean Yeah, cats gotta do what a cat's gotta do. I guess is it feeding time. I? We're about 10 minutes to okay All right, well we've been going for a little while Hannah So I think we're gonna about wrap this one up, but I'm super glad you could join me for this This has been a lot of fun
57:09
Yeah, yeah, I'm glad as well, especially because like I get very involved in uh recordings for our other podcast, BoobTube. And like I'm here, I'm sitting here when you and Josh record, but like I don't really feel as involved in that one. And I like, you know, it is sort of something that I'm trying to sort of, you know, keep running and make happen. So it's nice to actually feel more like part of it.
57:36
Well, that just means I think we'll have to do this again and get you on here anytime that Josh can't make it. But thanks so, much for listening, folks. And until next episode, keep on keeping on hanging.
58:05
Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, give us a five star rating on your podcast platform of choice, and tell all your friends. The Politics of New America is hosted by Nathan Stone and produced by Josh Carmody. You can follow us on Blue Sky at Politics New America. This episode is sponsored by Leverage Assistance. Finding the right assistant can turbocharge your career, your business, and give you back precious time every day.
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