Pat (guest/co-host)

Absolutely.

It doesn't make sense that the president would have more authority now, but he throws everything at the wall to see what sticks.

And sometimes these courts move rather slowly.

And so he figures, OK, if I do 10 authoritarian actions, maybe eight of them will get overturned.

But two of the things I'll get my way on.

And he knows that he has a whole bunch of allies in the courts with this judge saying, no, you can't do this.

It doesn't mean that the next judge or judges that they appeal to in an appeals court won't reverse the decision.

So they know that it's politically advantageous for them to at least try.

There's not going to be a whole bunch of blowback if it fails.

And what I love about this story, too, is that there's a layer of incompetence added on to it.

The Trump administration wanted to fire just 982 staffers at the Department of Health and Human Services, but they actually sent out notices to 1760 employees.

So nearly twice as many employees as were supposed to get fired.

And of course, they had to issue corrections later on.

How stressful would that be if you think that you're one of these workers who's going to get laid off and then fired?

An email sent your way saying, oh, just kidding.

Your your friend, your coworker, they're getting fired, but not you, actually.

And then the courts reversed the decision late days later.

It's just crazy.

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

I mean, I could see how there would be a whole bunch of people at the beginning of Trump's term that would be excited about it because he was able to rally the base around this immigration issue.

But as time has gone on, we know that this issue has not been so favorable for Trump.

And we see a lot of these ICE officers, agents trying to hide their faces.

So that suggests that not a whole bunch of people want to become ICE officers at this point because they know the type of blowback they're going to get.

I've seen these ICE commercials, these ICE recruitment videos, and they talk about how as an ICE official, you're going to go after the worst of the worst.

You're going to go after murderers and child traffickers.

But we know just from watching the news, no, you're just going to go after everyday people who are trying to live their lives, who are abiding by the law.

And the idea is that they can trick people by saying you're going to go after the worst harding criminals.

But really, you're just going after day laborers and people who don't deserve to be

thrown in these vans and shipped off to whoever knows where.

Right.

And is that really the type of career that you want long term?

Do you think that this is going to be something that works for you, especially because this is a pet issue right now for Trump, the people in power?

But is this going to last a while?

Probably not.

So I could see some people being interested, inspired to join this ICE mafia, if we want to call it that.

But I think plenty of people are going to be opposed to it at this point.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, if you're living paycheck to paycheck or even if you have like a sound financial situation to go without those paychecks, to have to continue working, to not be guaranteed back pay, it's assumed that they'll get back pay, but they don't know that for sure.

It's a very stressful situation.

And it's one reason why we shouldn't have these government shutdowns, because it's not the politicians who are really paying the price for them.

It's the workers who have to show up and not know if they're going to get their next paycheck.

I didn't notice that before, but I think you are right.

Also, I'll point out that the swastika is obvious from looking at the flag.

It's not one of those things where it's subtle and like maybe the person who put it up just thought it was an American flag and didn't realize there was a swastika.

It's certainly obvious.

I think there may be some relevance to this idea that it was like homemade because maybe it was just a prank.

maybe that would let the person who put up the flag off the hook.

And it's actually the person who went in and changed it, who would be responsible here.

Yeah, my sense is that Dave Taylor, the congressman, didn't have a direct influence on what happened here, but it could very well be the responsibility of the employee who works at that cubicle and they've identified the employee, but that person's not responding to comments.

To me, that sounds a bit suspicious, right?

That's weird.

elaborate on what happens maybe he has to go through the chain of command right because like he's working for this congressman and so what he says is going to reflect on that congressperson so I understand how you would want to coordinate things but to just stay silent about it that to me doesn't make a whole lot of sense and then this also kind of ties into that group chat that we learned

about yesterday having to do with the young Republicans who are saying things like, I love Hitler and all these racist things in their group chat.

Well, it sort of reflects on David Taylor to a degree because if he's hiring people who have viewpoints like this, well, he's putting himself in some territory where he shouldn't be, right?

Because these types of things could possibly happen.

It doesn't mean he's directly responsible, but this is just what these viewpoints have led to in this country.

Right.

And like, what if we find out we get to the bottom of all this and it was just a prank?

The person who put up the swastika isn't actually a Nazi.

They don't believe in these ultra far right viewpoints.

They just wanted to get some lulls.

Like, do you think that that would be excusable at all?

Because to me, I think that would still be very much across the line.

And no, you got to fire them in a congressional office.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it would make it a little bit better, but it still wouldn't excuse the activity.

And I also think that there are many young Republicans in particular who do these types of things and they act as if, oh, no, I was just joking.

I was just joking.

But sometimes if you look underneath it all, they actually do believe in these things.

They're trying to hide behind the possibility that maybe it was a joke.

But if you peel through the layers a little bit, you find out actually, no, this is what they believe.

Yeah, I mean, I could imagine a scenario where someone who's here on a visa says something that wouldn't violate the law that would fall under free speech, but that the government took issue with and decided to revoke their visa over.

Like I can imagine such a scenario.

But when you take a look at these comments, the one that you read.

that Charlie Kirk was spreading racist, xenophobic, misogynist rhetoric.

How could you possibly say that that's worthy of a visa over?

There's another comment here.

Someone wrote in German when fascists die, Democrats don't complain.

So they could argue that like that's rationalizing his death or celebrating his death.

But I think even that's a stretch to say that someone should lose their visa status over something like that.

They're not making a direct statement.

threat of violence or anything like that.

So to say that this should be worthy of revoking a visa, to me, it doesn't make sense.

And especially this is coming from the supposed free speech party.

Well, it's selective enforcement yet again from those people.

I wonder what J.D.

Vance would say about this, because when speaking about the young Republicans controversy, he said that those people are just kids and we shouldn't hold them accountable for what they said.

We shouldn't make it so that they can never get jobs again or that there's major punishment coming their way over what they said.

But when it comes to these visa revocations, I think he'd be totally fine with what happened, even though I'm sure in many of these cases, these are also young adults who are saying these things.