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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.
00:02
The second article of the U.S. Constitution begins by vesting the power of the executive with the president of the United States. It's a simple idea that becomes more and more complicated as you attempt to unravel exactly how much power rests with the executive. Since the days of Nixon, right-wing political thinkers have been pushing the unitary executive theory. Under this formerly fringe view of the Constitution, the president has total control over the executive branch of government.
00:31
including the multitude of federal agencies, and the power to expand and contract them at will. The Trump administration has seemingly embraced the theory as the president runs roughshod over previously independent federal agencies. But this power is a double-edged sword, and Trump's expansion of powers is threatening the nation's reputation and risks throwing the federal government into unending chaos. Welcome to the politics of New America.
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On the show today, we discuss the unitary executive theory, Gavin Newsom's trolling, and the DC crackdown on a fictitious crime wave. Joining me is special guest, Deidre Stone. Hello. Welcome back. I feel like by this point, I am officially like an honorary producer. You definitely are. I'm up to two shows now. That's true. That's a lot of shows. That's a lot. It is. Deidre, my wonderful wife, is taking the reins.
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tonight and the reason for that of course is Josh partied a little too hard with RFK over the weekend. I told him not to drink all that raw milk and so now his stomach is feeling a little rumbly so we hope he gets better soon. you think brain worms are contagious? 100 % yes. Oh no. Yeah it's just all brain worms now. So before we hit our main topic which is gonna kind of be
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the unitary executive theory and DC a little bit because I want to go into kind of the history, the weird history of DC that makes this kind of takeover possible by Trump. It's actually really quite interesting. But I wanted to start off tonight with a little bit of lighthearted news because we don't get a lot of that on the show. And that is Gavin Newsom and his troll job of Trump. And I just
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want to kind of get your opinion on it because I'm so knee deep in this stuff that sometimes I feel like I miss the forest for the trees but as someone who is kind of seeing it casually on social media and seeing it play out kind of through the lens of how other people are commenting on it and you know it going viral and in various social or in various places what do you think? So most of what I've seen of
02:54
Newsome's trolling has been screenshots of I think blue sky or Twitter posts or Shared on other social media platforms and so I've only really interacted with it by seeing screenshots of I don't know if they're on blue sky or Twitter I'm assuming blue sky at this point But my god are they fantastic like
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I don't know if he's writing them personally or if he's got just like a team of interns on this. I kind of hope it's personal. Like I just, I aspire to that level of pettiness, but the yeah, it's brilliant. The tone is bang on. Also, I love the jabs about his time, about Trump's tiny hands. He's really going hard on the tiny hands. Like, I, I feel like I remember, I think it must've been John Oliver bringing that up like,
03:46
I want to say back in Trump's first term, like that's an old meme. And like, yeah, that level of petty is just, it's beautiful. And I think that is exactly how you really dig into Trump is like kind of meeting him where he is in a way. Well, that's a lot of what I've, I've taken out of this because for so long, the Democrats really haven't known what to
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do about Trump, right? They can be snarky on social media, they can do weird holding up little paddle signs at the State of the Union thing, but it's all kind of fallen flat. Newsom seems to have kind of got the thread, which is so rare for the Democrats, because what he's doing so effectively is just holding up a mirror, right, to.
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uh, the, the ludicrousness that is Trumpism, but at the same time, he has to, he has to go into the mud to do that. Right. He has to be as ridiculous. And while I think that if the democratic party is going to seriously contest, uh, you know, the Trump administration, they kind of have to play this game, right? This is where American politics are right now, which is.
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not a good place, right? It's not great that you have the governor of the country's largest state basically just trolling the president with his own style and intonation and doing it really, really well. But it paints a very bleak picture of where we are. And this is not to say that the Democrats should take the high road. I don't think they should. I don't think there's any high road left to take. The high road's on fire. Exactly. And the high road is
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how you lose at this point, right? So it is refreshing to see Democrats kind of willing to fight that fire with fire.
05:53
from your reaction to it. do think, you know, caught attention in a kind of an organic way, right? Because you don't have a lot of personal. I can't say I'm actively following. Exactly. Social media based out of California, let alone the governor of California, minus maybe occasionally following the former governor.
06:19
Yeah, and it seems it seems to have resonated in a way that that Democrats are really having an issue with the party's polling is just trash right now. Democrats have have worse, you know, party polling than the Republicans do, which shouldn't really be possible at this point in the presidency. But people just don't like the Democrats. Their own base doesn't like the Democrats, right? Because the Democrats are very tone deaf to their base. They
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have traditionally taken their base for granted. And I'm not going to pretend that Newsom is some new type of Democrat. He's not. He's the corporatist Democrat that we've known for years and years. But by taking a more populist stance, which is not something that we've seen on either whatever passes for the American left, is something that's worth kind of talking about.
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The ability that he has to fight in the trenches with gerrymandering, the way that Texas is, and being able to kind of take the lead for the Democrats in saying, if you do this, I will do this better, I think is going to really play well, because honestly, the response that we've seen,
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by the Democrats, the Trump administration so far has been anemic at best. Like the response, at least at like the federal level seems to be very much the we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. That could just be the party slogan at this point. So it's odd to call this refreshing, but at least somebody's doing something. Somebody with actual power.
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or the ability to affect actual change beyond like the general public trying, like protesting these movements and like trying in their own way to push back against what the Trump administration's doing. Like at a certain point, you kind of need the people at the top to do something. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a sad state of affairs that
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the only way that they have to effectively fight Republican gerrymandering. And if you've listened to our last show, you'll know gerrymandering is voter suppression. It's just a funny name for it with a funny history. Listen to that episode if you haven't. But the argument of Gavin Newsom is I can suppress voters better than you. And it's getting him a lot of praise because this system is so
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fundamentally broken at this point that you have competitions now between states and who can suppress the can mender the most jerrys. That's it. So I just wanted to mention it because it's such a weird and wacky situation, but it's been a little bit of a good news story and I don't get a lot of good news stories. It's a little funny too to see California actively looking to gerrymander like this.
09:40
Just coming back to the governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, I believe since he's left the office of the governor of California, he's worked with organizations in an attempt to push back against gerrymandering. and California itself does have kind of a commission as well that looks at this, but I think Newsom has kind of an over, the ability to overrule them in this case. A lot of blue states,
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do have independent electoral commissions. And unfortunately, it hurts them more than it helps them. It is absolutely the right thing to do for democracy. However, in this age where we don't really know what American democracy is anymore, are we just, are the Democrats going to be a serious opposition to the Republicans? Because the Republicans aren't going to do this. They are not going to have independent electoral.
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They are not going to give up this power. Maybe that's why the red states are the ones that don't have them. So if you are a Democrat and you have set up one of these electoral commissions, you've basically disarmed yourself of the tool of gerrymandering, which again is voter suppression and you should not suppress votes that is highly undemocratic and you can't really call yourself a serious democracy if you do it. However, this is where we are.
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Uh, which is not good, but I think I've just talked myself out of this being a good new story. All right, let's, let's move on because I'm just going to get onto gerrymandering again, because it's, it blows my mind every time. But I, what I really, really wanted to talk about is the unitary executive theory. And it's a simple theory with complex repercussions with kind of an intimidating name, but the unitary executive theory is.
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championed usually on the right and only when there is a right-wing president, right? Only when there's a Republican president. We don't want a Democratic president having that kind of... dear God, no. Can you imagine the authoritarian communist Democrats getting a unitary executive? But what it really means is the idea that the president is...
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the total and final word when it comes to the executive branch. And in a way, it kind of makes sense depending on how you look at it, right? The theory coalesces around the vesting of powers in the president. for example, or sorry, so Article 2, Section 1, Clause 1.
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of the Constitution is the executive vesting clause. And it simply states, the executive power shall be vested in the President of the United States, who will hold office for a term of four years. And that's a pretty simple statement. feel like simple statements have been a real problem, especially with the Constitution, though. Yeah, you've listened to some of our episodes. Oh, me too. Yes.
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The issue is, it goes back to one of the fatal flaws of the Constitution, in that it was left vague. And it was left vague because it's not perfectly written, for starters, it was a work in progress. But also, they had this terrible crazy notion that...
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the people who would be elected to these high level positions, the president, the vice president, the people who were chosen to lead various branches of the government. The executive, as it were. executive, as it were, yes. Would all be reasonable people with the country's best interests at heart. Oh, those beautiful, naive dum-dums. Yeah. They set up norms. They didn't set up rules. And so,
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The problem with norms is that they only work when everyone plays by those unwritten rules, right? When they have agreements between reasonable people saying, oh yes, the intent is clear. So we will follow the intent of this rule. However, this is not the world we live in and it's certainly not the world of 2025. So the unitary executive theory
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first kind of reared its tentacles out from the deeps around the Nixon administration, surprise, surprise. And it was kind of used as a way of excusing some of the authoritarian overreaches of Nixon because he was a very authoritarian president, even ignoring the crimes of Watergate and everything that happened there. He didn't like
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the norms of being president. He wanted to be way more authoritarian than presidents before him had been. It kind of emerged though as this weird pseudo legal framework during the Reagan administration. So this is the great neoliberal era that kind of messed up everything afterwards.
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That first little domino that knocks over all the other dominoes and now we're here. Yeah, yeah, it was the foundation of Mount Doom, right? But the tip of the thing that is currently fucking us. Yeah, that's it. You got it in one. So it gains strength in kind of the circles where these kind of weird theories gain strength, which is kind of.
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It was very still fringe, but lawmakers, right-wing lawmakers were talking about it. And it was kind of the idea of how do we transform this system of norms that we have now into something that we can more...
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we can more concretely break in change into what is basically an authoritarian style setup for the executive branch where the president rules over all. Kind of like a king one might say. One might say that, yeah. So during W's presidency, this is Bush two.
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for those of you keeping count, we saw a lot of consolidation of powers start to move from Congress and from the courts to the executive. There's been kind of a slow bleed since Nixon and Reagan of powers that Congress has lost and that the executive has gained. Now, there's...
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To be fair, there are some ways in which having executive power can be a boon to a nation. A lot of those are that a single executive decision maker can move faster than Congress, which when it works at all is very slow. And any given bill has about a 5 % chance of getting all the way through Congress and becoming a law.
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you can be in a way more effective. However, Congress is slow and deliberate for a purpose, right? The idea behind it was it was going to make good laws if you took your time and you debated and you had a healthy discussion around what the... Gives some consideration to what you're doing and like really meridated it as opposed to move fast break stuff. Exactly. Yeah, we don't all have to be tech bros.
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But apparently we all have to be tech bros. mean, it is 2025. Yeah. I mean, if you're not a tech bro, what are we even doing? You're poor. Yeah. can confirm. so a lot of, yeah, so around Bush too, the presidential powers that he kind of took in for himself were around, a lot around the military, right? Because
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This was the age of Afghanistan and Iraq and the war on terror, CIA, black sites, you know, of the things that they they want to do to migrants. Now they were doing to, you know, terrorists, air quotes, terrorists. Yeah. Thank you. And so, yeah. So you saw that it kind of gathers steam over the years. Now.
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Despite its popularity in right-wing circles, there's not one set interpretation of this theme. Different thinkers have a different kind of way of looking at it, but they generally believe that Article II, so that vestment of power, and it should be noted too that other articles in, or other clauses in Article II,
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also vest the powers of Congress and the Supreme Court as well, right? Those lovely checks and balances that we've all heard so much about. But basically, Article 2 should allow the president to remove all executive branch officers. There are some that even go farther than that, including a lot of the Trump inner circle and the man himself, of course, who believe that the president retains
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all the executive power and controls all officers and agencies. So basically you are the king of the executive branch. Now I run the FBI. Exactly. Do you? So there is the reason why this is important is that the executive it sounds small, right? The executive. It's just it's the president, its cabinet. How many
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agencies could it possibly be? The answer is so many. So many. So I'm sure you've heard about the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yeah. So Trump recently fired their head because they released bad numbers that made him look bad. the numbers true numbers or fake numbers?
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Depends on who you ask. It's not the truth. Yeah, and true or fake they were bad and he did not like that numbers No, no, not when it comes to the economy No numbers is better than bad numbers. Yes. That is what we're hearing. Yeah So for example, so the Bureau of Labor Statistics falls under the Department of Commerce Which in it has
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dozens of offices and dozens of bureaus, economic development administration, national technical information services, bureau of industry and security, office of export enforcement. It just keeps going, dozens and dozens and dozens. And this is just commerce, right? You have the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security.
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Housing and Urban Development, Department of the Interior, Department of Justice. I feel like when the Constitution was written, the executive was naturally just a lot smaller. Oh, thank you for reading ahead. Yes. I've listened to Hamilton. You have, yeah. We're going to be getting back to Hamilton soon, So, yes, that's exactly the case. When this was all kind of framed, right, 1790,
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1789 thereabouts, once they got it in, they got Washington installed as president. The executive was so much smaller. The country was so much smaller. The Constitution at this point is just straining to contain this massive abomination that has grown out of what was at the time a very small country. Now, because of that, the executive,
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wields power, even not, even disregarding the unitary executive theory that the founders just never thought about, right? Oh, absolutely. They couldn't. I mean, look at how the American military complex has expanded. had a bunch of guys with muskets, basically. That was the start, right? You had the blue coats, blue jackets, and the Minutemen.
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Minutemen and now you have just a huge global spanning force, right? The type of military that has never been built before on this planet and it has a trillion dollar budget and four or five trillion dollars in assets and half of those they can't account for but
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Being the commander in chief of that military versus being the commander in chief of a bunch of guys with muskets is a very different job. Right? So, yeah, even disregarding this theory, the office of the president and its powers has expanded so much. Now, what makes this so dangerous is that if the president can basically micromanage and run all of these agencies to his
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own whims. It sets up a part, it sets up a precedent where the entirety of the federal government of the United States are at whim employees of the president, which is an awful way to do things. If you want any sort of continuity in your, in your federal service. It's not a good idea.
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to change out the guys running your treasury, the guys running your intelligence networks every four years because your government changed and now there's a new guy in town and he hates the old guy and he hates the old guy's guys, right? This is setting us up for an era of continuous purges and rehirings and firings and basically a non-functional federal government if there's too much change.
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in the government, sorry, the party, you know, and the executive. Well, and like those kind of leadership changes, I'm sure trickle down like through the organizations as well as like the new guy in charge doesn't like the guys below him and then so on and so forth. So you spend the entire four years just basically rolling everybody over and nothing gets done. That's exactly it. It is an incredibly effective way to paralyze a federal government if you wanted to do so.
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which I'm not convinced isn't part of the way that this is designed to work. We're not saying, but we're thinking. The other thing is that this directly steps on Congress's toes. So Congress has the power of the purse nominally, right? They set the budgets. They decide how much funding goes to which agencies. They're also the ones that set up these agencies.
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even the agencies of the executive. president didn't set up the FBI. The president didn't set up the Department of Commerce. That was Congress. Those would have been Congress being like, hey, we need this thing to look after this stuff. We should make that thing. We should make that thing. And they did. They used their power, their congressional power, to set up these organizations. And so even though the president is technically the executive, the president's actual job, as it were,
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is to oversee how the focus of those departments, not to oversee whether or not those departments exist. So when we did our episode on the, when we talked about the Department of Education, that was the overstep by Trump. And it was not constitutional to wind down the Department of Education. Only Congress should do that if they want to do that.
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But Trump basically has been doing it by just starving them of funding, which again violates the power of the purse that Congress is supposed to have. Every time it comes to Congress in this administration, they roll over like they're dead and they just cede power to the executive. The unitary executive theory mixed with a impotent Congress
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and a Supreme Court that is compliant with the executive creates what is basically a completely authoritarian executive. The dream of some of the people behind this idea. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And even constitutionally, Even the constitution that is written in a very problematically vague way, kind of.
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pokes holes in the unitary executive theory. for example, what I was just talking about is how Congress, only Congress creates federal offices. So that's called the Appointments Clause. And that's in there, that's in the Constitution. But if we change the Constitution, then we can make all sorts of crazy laws. That is true. So yeah, even the Constitution itself,
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when you start reading it as a whole, if you were to read the document in full, you would be like, oh no, clearly, though it tells us the power of the executive rests with the president, there's all sorts of powers around the executive that the president does not have. So clearly, the president is not this unlimited, infallible, godlike being when it comes to the executive branch.
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And where we are now in American politics is a place where I think this theory, this philosophy around the unitary executive is stronger than it has ever been. And with Congress and the Supreme Court weaker than they have ever been, if we see this become the dominant thought around how to read the Constitution and how to read the president's powers,
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we come to a point where sure, mean, elect a Congress. I don't know why. Collect a paycheck? Yeah. Collect a nice paycheck. Oh, I know, right? Yeah. So if you've been hearing a little bit about the unitary executive theory, that's why it's bad. It's bad. And for a long time, it was considered kind of crackpot theory. for a long time,
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time a lot of things were considered crackpot theories. feel like 2025 is the year of the crackpot. The crackpot ascendant 2025. I don't like it.
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So before we move on, just want to say that Trump is a proponent of this theory. Trump's cabinet is. the right-wing thinkers and influencers that promote Trump are fans of this theory. One of the ways that you can kind of see him put this theory or put this into action is through those executive orders he loves so much.
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does a lot of governing by executive orders. so in February 18th, he had an executive order against independent agencies, referring to himself in it as the democratically elected president, which is not a thing, not a detail you usually have to put in that. We know how this works.
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That is an appeal to democratic legitimacy. It's not because it's going against the Constitution, right? It's slamming up against the Constitution. So Trump has to say, oh, no, no, you voted me in. I have the power of the executive because you did that. That is my legitimacy. It's moving the field, right? It's moving the goalposts to I am in charge, or I with.
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It's moving the goalpost to from I uphold the Constitution as every president is sworn to do to I was elected by the people to lead. Right. And so if you change the framing around what a president is and what their job is, it makes it much easier for you to consolidate power in the executive branch. So, yeah, yeah.
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And in case you're wondering, will the Supreme Court swoop in and save us from the unitary executive? I love the optimism of someone who thinks that. It doesn't seem like it. Well, even if they tried, would Trump listen? Yeah. And the Supreme Court has expanded the president's authority to remove different types of federal officials.
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from executive branch roles, right? And every time they do that, it builds that precedent, right? So I wouldn't rely on Roberts and Co to swoop in and uphold the Constitution should it come to that. All right. We got one last thing. got a bit of a, it's a bit of a medley episode, but I'm really enjoying this tonight. So we're going to talk a little bit about Washington, D.C.
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So for a lot of folks, Washington DC, it kind of came out of nowhere, right? So a lot of the arguments are, he's trying to distract from Epstein, which probably... feel like there's been a lot of trying to distract from Epstein, we just, can't let that happen. The interesting thing about DC is that it functions like no other...
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place in the United States and no other city, right? Because it's it's false. Like it is the District of Columbia. It is not part of a state or state in itself. But they so they don't they don't have the same representation that people in states do. They do not.
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They do not. They're very sour about it. taxes. Isn't their license plate motto taxation without representation? It sure is. That's a beautiful level of petty. Yeah, it's good on you, DC. So how did this happen? We'll get into kind of theories about what Trump is doing with DC. But how can this happen, right? Especially in
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in just such a short time, right? It was just kind of Trump being like, yeah, I'm taking this over. So the important thing, and we're gonna get back to the Hamilton musical now. Hey. That Washington, DC wasn't always the capital. So George Washington, the guy they named after, his first office as president was in New York.
35:26
Then the capital was moved to Philadelphia. Yeah. And it remained there for a decade. Oh, wow. And so Washington, D.C. was founded as the capital in 1790, and it was a result of a compromise between one Alexander Hamilton, who represented the interests of the northern states.
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and Thomas Jefferson, who represented the interests of the southern states. Now, Hamilton's, who was the Secretary of Treasury at the time, his economic policies really consolidated the power of the banks and moneylenders who primarily lived in the North, in and around New York.
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the cities there. So Jefferson was worried about basically the North fully controlling the nation. He thought that the South would just be this appendage. They would not have the influence that he thought that they should have. the compromise was to physically move the capital South, which is
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It's just a really funny thing to do. Put it on a bunch of boats and sail it down the coast. So from that, the idea of Washington, DC, right next to Virginia, of nestled between North and South, kind of appeased the Jeffersonian Republicans. And they built this city.
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Not on rock and roll. Darn. But actually, its separation from the rest of the United States is enshrined in the Constitution. So that's Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution.
37:44
And they basically gave this city to Congress. Huh. Yeah. So it says the Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such district, not exceeding 10 square miles, as may by cession of particular states.
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and the acceptance of Congress become the seat of the government of the United States. All that is saying basically is that we're going to make Congress responsible for this 10 square mile area. So it's overseen by the representatives elected by all of the other states. Yes. I feel like once again, they didn't expect what did happen to that 10 square miles to happen.
38:41
Yeah, again, this is such a smaller playing field, right? The United States of 1790. Much, much smaller country, tiny population and
38:54
Not all of this weirdness, right? All of all of you know this 250 years of history. Yeah So James Madison he Outlined the reasoning behind this provision and he said the indispensable necessity of Complete authority at the seat of government carries its own evidence with it without it
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Not only the public authority might be insulted and its proceedings interrupted with impunity, but a dependence of the members of the general government on the state comprehending the seat of government for protection in the exercise of their duty might bring on the national councils of imputation and awe or influence equally dishonorable to the government and dissatisfactory to the other members of the Confederacy. So that's a lot of words, James. feel like what he's trying to say is
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putting the capital in any one state gives too much power over the capital to the state that it would be in. So if none of you can have it, then we all have it. Yeah, you got it in one. Reading comprehension. It's very important, folks. That is exactly it. They didn't want any state or local government exerting undue influence on the federal government.
40:22
and the congresspeople that would be living and working out of Washington, D.C. So. And probably also built on an assumption that the only things that would be in the Capitol would be things directly related to the Capitol, like the president, the handful of congressmen at the time, and like, I don't know, maybe a few other people. Ten Square Miles doesn't sound that big. Again.
40:50
You give it 250 years, you can get a lot in there. You can squish a lot in there. Even with terrible street layouts. God, I'm willing to call that out. It's terrible. It's bad. It was almost a grid and then someone drew a squiggly line through it. Somebody drew diagonal lines through it. It's even worse than that. That's true. Oh, yeah. Not a great walkable city, DC. No.
41:18
When the Capitol was moved to DC, residents that were, it was already a place, obviously, they lost their voting representation in Congress and the Electoral College. I bet they were pissed. Yeah. As well as a say in the constitutional amendments and the right to home rule. Now, all the way up in 1961, so jumping ahead quite a bit here, but they did actually get
41:47
get granted votes in the electoral college in 1961. So still not any real representation, but like a bone. They got a bone. And then since 73, DC has been governed by a system known as Home Rule. Now all that did was allow the residents to elect a mayor and a city council. Which, hey, it's something. It's some level of responsible government.
42:17
and like self representation. Yeah. Now, that being said, because we can't trust these, these district of Colombians. I don't know if that's what you call someone from DC, but Congress retains the right to veto any actions by the district government that threaten federal interest, in quotes, and the budgets that are passed by the council.
42:47
and approved by the mayor have to be renewed and enacted by Congress. So that same Home Rule Act that gave them the ability to have a mayor and a city council also allows the president to federalize the DC Police Department. no. Yeah. I bet they thought, ah, no one's ever going to use this clause.
43:17
So, Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, whenever the President of the United States determined that special conditions of an emergency nature exist that require the use of the Metropolitan Police Force for federal purposes, he may direct the Mayor to provide him, and the Mayor shall provide such services. So, that's how we got into this current snafu in DC.
43:44
Now, the president must notify Congress of the action within 48 hours. And the action can stay in place for up to 30 days. That is the limit by law. So no one has ever invoked this before. Trump did it. Of course. course. And the emergency he cited was, and I quote,
44:12
total lawlessness within the District of Columbia. Now, that would be ignoring the fact that crime rates have declined over the last 30 years and continue to decline. They spiked briefly during the COVID-19 pandemic. That was about it. What else happened during the COVID-19 pandemic in Washington, DC? Yeah. Interesting. wonder. Yeah. So...
44:41
That is kind of how it all came about. And this is actually classic Trump because he loves emergencies. loves national emergencies. Well, mean, I feel like we've established on the show already that nothing gets more presidential power than stacking national emergency. It's so good. Yeah, can just you just stack them up for fun. This is a totally different type of emergency. Of course, not a national emergency.
45:10
which would require him to actually proclaim a national emergency, but
45:17
Some of the thinking around this that I've been reading is that this is a blueprint. This is kind of a dry run of going into cities and basically declaring martial law, bringing in the National Guard. Because what you have here is a totally fictitious crime wave that they're fighting.
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allows them to do is kind of figure out the logistics of federalizing police, as well as how National Guard should be deployed in major urban areas. And it's not a super far fetched theory, considering we've already seen them try this in California, as well as that went. But that
46:17
kind of theory does ring a lot of bells for me. think this is a unique chance that the president and his cabinet have of seeing what it's like to basically militarize a city and see what the pushback is like and see what they can get away with here. Because again,
46:47
tying this back into another issue that is not going so well for Trump and the Republicans is the immigration issue, right? They're way, way, way behind where they want to be as far as deportations, right? They're their bottleneck. talked exactly they're building the infrastructure, but it's not there yet. And just they're having a lot of people because
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people hate ICE, they're actually having a lot of trouble getting people to deport, right? So that becomes a lot easier if you can lock down a city using the National Guard, federalize the police force, have them all work as one big happy family, scooping up people. So again, these are theories, but they're not...
47:45
so far-fetched looking at the actions that we've already seen from this administration. I mean, even if this was a crackpot theory, we've established this is the year of the crackpot. This is a bit of a crackpot country right now. So yeah, so that's kind of where I wanted to go with this. I just think the history of DC and Home Rule are really interesting. And it kind of sets up how this was so easy for Trump.
48:13
It makes for a good simulation if that's what you're looking for. Exactly. So I think that's where we'll about wrap this one up tonight. Thank you so, much for joining me, my dear. I'm always happy to step in when you need me. I hope you feel better soon, Josh. Yes. Don't let the brain worms get you. It's good advice for all of us. Don't let the brain worms get you. That's going to do it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next time. Bye.
48:46
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.
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This has been a Honda Mouse Production. Cut that out.