Quinta Jurecic
Appearances
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And if what you want to say is we need to have greater executive control of, you know, unitary executive control of the government, we want to limit the power of unelected bureaucrats, so on and so forth. If you were saying that in good faith, I don't think that this is the way that you would carry out that project. Right.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Because what you have seen now is just wholesale destruction in a way that is going to be very, very hard to build back. And you could have made an argument for, you know, slimming down these agencies, having more political employees, increasing the president's ability to fire individuals leading these agencies at will in a way that did not need to involve this kind of smash and grab effort.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
So then you say, is this an example of an administration that, you know, comes in, wants to push a, let's say, kindly, extremely aggressive, I think unkindly and perhaps more accurately, extra-constitutional vision of executive authority, and sort of comes out swinging and says, we're going to cut off all this money, you know, Come see us in court.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
The court's going to give us an order and we're going to disobey it and we're going to kind of push forward in that way. Or is it an example of total carelessness and total incompetence? And I think the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
There are reasons to think certainly that this administration has been motivated in a lot of its actions, particularly in the OMB actions, by this kind of extra constitutional vision of executive authority.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
But it is also true that if you were, you know, an evil genius and you wanted to pursue that vision in such a way that would kind of get the courts on your side, this is not how you would have done that.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Well, I don't want to sound too confident because I was also confident that they would not give Trump the time of day on the immunity issue. And wow, was I wrong about that. So I do think that I want to speak with a certain level of humility here that the way that I at least understand the court has really changed since the immunity decision, frankly. Yeah.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
My metric at this point for whether Trump can get something through the court is, and I'm going to say this and it's going to sound flippant, but I really do mean it sincerely, whether or not John Roberts thinks that somebody has been rude.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And what I mean by that is that in the first Trump administration, there were a number of things that the administration tried to get through that the Roberts Court barred, including the DACA rescission, for example, the effort to add a citizenship question to the census. These are examples where the court kind of looked at them and said, like, come on, you've got to do better than that.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
At least, for the love of God, give us some kind of an administrative record here. Don't just show up and say, I did this because I wanted to. I think that what happened in the immunity decision was in part that Trump's offenses were farther in the rearview mirror.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And Roberts, at least in his majority opinion, seemed kind of like offended by the fact that prosecutors were going after these actions to begin with. That that wasn't gentlemanly in some way, let's say. And I do think that if... This is essentially like saying, you know, if the moon were made of cheese.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
But if Trump had come in with a number of very well-designed sort of surgical test cases to really push the limits of presidential power in a way that I think a court that is disposed to a very particular vision of executive authority would have been really sympathetic to, that you could absolutely see the court ruling in his favor on those issues.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And it may still on some of these, you know, like the ability to remove the FEC commissioner, for example. But coming in and just kind of wrecking everything and then saying to John Roberts, like, hey, you're going to back me, right? I think is not very appealing to Roberts who wants to see himself as the custodian of this kind of wise apolitical institution.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And I know that people are going to listen to me and think, But of course, the court is just a political institution these days, you know. I think that certain justices on the court, certainly Roberts, I think Amy Coney Barrett, want to be seen as more than politicians in robes and that that is going to guide their behavior more.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And so for that reason, I am very skeptical that things like, you know, trying to assert a really aggressive presidential impoundment authority or assert this sensible reinterpretation of birthright citizenship are going to make it through designed as they have been designed.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
You know, there are a lot of ways, like I said, where there are particular authorities the executive could have used to say, we're going to tweak this funding, you know, we have this authority, etc. Or they could have said, actually, Congress puts this condition on this funding stream, and we think that condition is unconstitutional because, you know...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
There are national security concerns, and we're going to make an extremely targeted court case to argue that the legislative constraints that Congress has placed on the executive's ability to impound funds are unconstitutional and convince the courts and the Supreme Court on that basis. That would be sort of the clever way to do it, and I think a way that would have given you a lot more luck.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I feel like we're getting there, you know?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
in the Supreme Court, the way that they have actually done it, just kind of coming in with a sledgehammer and just smashing everything, is not likely to get the courts on their side. And so if this is a kind of evil master plan to destroy constitutional government, They're not doing it very well. That doesn't mean that it's not extremely dangerous. It is.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
But I think it's important to be careful about the extent to which we portray this as part of a very well thought through plan.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
That seems right to me, and I'll point to another example as well. So one of, I think, the most terrifying things that's happened in the last week, and it's difficult to rank them, is the news of Elon Musk's kind of wrecking crew of young men
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
who have kind of reportedly been dispatched to a variety of federal agencies to supposedly look for efficiencies, but it seems from the reporting like what they're actually doing is kind of barging their way in demanding access to data and then wrecking as much as they possibly can. And... There are a lot of ways in which that's concerning.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
The most concerning has been the reporting about what's going on inside the Treasury, where I believe two Musk kind of acolytes had access to very, very sensitive Treasury data, and particularly the corner of the Treasury Department that is kind of the nerve system that actually sends out the payments that the United States government is sending around the world.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And that is concerning because it could cause a global financial crisis. I think that, you know, imagine the worst possible case scenario, right? The U.S. government says, actually, we're not going to pay, you know, any of this money that we owe anyone.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Even if they, you know, target that at a very particular sector, you can see how the ripple effects would extend because— Or even imagine they just accidentally break it. Exactly.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Exactly. And so, reportedly, there are two people who had been mucking around in these systems. There was a lawsuit filed trying to block this. The court stated that those two Musk aides should be barred from being able to change anything, that they should only have read access
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Now, to be clear, their having read access is very concerning, but the fact that it was downgraded, or at least that it was downgraded after this court order, is a very, very good thing. And then the other thing that happened is not too long after that court order was issued, the Wall Street Journal reported that one of those aides,
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
whose name is Marco Alez, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly, resigned because the journal had confronted him with a number of extremely racist tweets that he had posted. And by racist, I mean that he posted things like, I was racist before it was cool. So I'm using his own self-descriptor there. Now, that sequence is... is reassuring in the sense that they backed down. They blinked.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
But I was very concerned that we were going to end up in a situation where a court said, you know, Doge folks, you need to get out of there. Elon Musk said no, and then you have a standoff. because the agency that actually carries out court orders in these kinds of situations, the US Marshals, is actually under control of the Justice Department.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
So what happens if Trump then tells the Justice Department not to comply, right? That didn't happen.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Like many people in D.C., and by that I don't only mean, you know, official D.C. I mean D.C., the city where people live. I have spent the last couple weeks having a lot of conversations and hearing about a lot of conversations with people who work in the federal government, who wanted to work in the federal government, who are connected in some way to the federal government, and who are...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Really frightened and angry. And that includes, overwhelmingly, people who are civil servants, who have, you know, their own political views, but who were... extremely prepared to serve this administration as they have served every other administration.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
The Justice Department, for example, has a program that's called DOJ Honors that is aimed at kind of pulling in bright young law students and young lawyers to work in the department and kind of bring in talent. It's persisted for many, many years.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
People will go into DOJ and that program, you know, whatever their political beliefs under any administration because they want to work at the Justice Department. They want to be civil servants. That was untouched during the first Trump administration.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
During the second Trump administration, I think it was within the first two weeks, they announced that they had rescinded all DOJ honors acceptances. It's not clear whether or not they will reopen the program. And the people who are affected by that, they're Democrats, they're Republicans, they're independents. They are not people who were coming in with a particular political agenda specifically.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
People who go in through DOJ honors often work for the government for their entire careers across administrations. And so I think there is a real level of hurt that the administration is coming in and treating people in government and people who want to work for the government, people who were...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
excited to go into government, even if their political beliefs were completely squarely opposed to this administration, because they really believe in the project of civil service, apolitical civil service, and serving their country. And I think to be treated as enemies in this way is... Kind of radicalizing.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And I think you can see this in public if you look at the Reddit, rfednews, which I think was previously just a subreddit where people posted, you know, hey, has anyone heard about, you know, this program, that program, whatever.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Not one that I had previously frequented. Yeah. And it started being a place where people post, what am I going to do? I have to lay off all these people. I have to rescind all of these offers because of the hiring freeze. I was going to start in this role and I moved across the country and I was so excited. And suddenly it's been taken away from me. And I think that was kind of the first stage.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And now what you see is a real... Anger, but also a... Resistance is kind of a loaded word at this point, but a desire to hold on and kind of not give up the ship through this. And I think that, you know, I am sure that if you are sympathetic to the president, that that may look to you as, you know, these people are hashtag resisting Donald Trump and want to take him down.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I really don't think that that's what it is. I think that these were people who... wanted to engage in the work of apolitical civil service and now feel like they have been stomped on because of nothing that they did and who now have been kind of turned against the administration because of that.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And I don't mean that, you know, they're going to try to undermine it from within or anything like that. I just mean that I think there was a willingness to play ball and that is gone because of the way that they have been treated. And I think you see that in the bizarre sort of fork in the road emails that the Office of Personnel Management has sent out.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
So this is kind of clearly an Elon Musk effort. Fork in the road was the title of a subject line of an email that he sent out to Twitter employees when he took over, essentially offering them a buyout program. And he sent the same email to federal employees today.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
saying, you know, we will give you this buyout option if you take what they call a deferred resignation, agree to resign, and then leave your position on September 30th. And that part of the problem is that the terms of that agreement keep changing. It's very unclear what people have actually agreed to. As you said earlier, Ezra,
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
It has now been blocked by a court until there can be another court hearing, so the status is extremely unclear. But there was a really striking post in the Fed News subreddit where someone essentially said, you know, look, I don't think these people understand why we are engaged in the work that we're doing. OPM put an FAQ on their website that said, you know,
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
We encourage you to find work in the private sector. And, you know, this is the way to greater American prosperity is to for people in the public sector to find more productive work in the private sector. And this person was saying, you know, look, if I wanted to be in the private sector, I could go to the private sector.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I am working a very difficult job for not very much pay compared to what I could make if I left government. And I'm doing it because I believe in this project of public service. I believe in the work that the U.S. government does and what it provides to the world and what it provides to the American people.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And the approach that Musk and the Trump folks who are aligned with Musk are taking of this kind of, you know, we can just come in, these people are enemies, they'll find other work elsewhere, who cares, is just completely orthogonal to the worldview that civil servants take.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Exactly. And I think that at a certain point, once you've been punched repeatedly, why would you approach the administration with goodwill after that, after the bully has socked you in the stomach and taken your lunch?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
No. The statistics I've seen are normally about 6% of federal employees leave the federal government in a year just because they're retiring or they decided to move on to a different job. And the number who reportedly took the quote-unquote buyout was only about 3% of federal employees. I would point to, I'll do a little log rolling for my own organization.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Lawfare has been publishing and running podcasts with an amazing professor at the University of Minnesota, Nick Bednar, who studies the civil service and administrative law. I recorded a podcast with him where he said that he'd been speaking with a lot of civil servants, and his impression was that the people who were taking that offer were largely people who were planning on retiring anyway.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
So that may be, you know, within that 6%. And people who were disabled and were not able to comply with the executive order that federal workers return to in-person work full-time because they physically couldn't. And so these are people who didn't want to leave but felt forced out.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And the other thing that Nick said is that, you know, people are very aware that this is not an offer that they can rely on. I think that, you know...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
If the government had done this in a more organized way, if it had come from the specific agencies rather than from OPM under the, you know, particular, the vast array of federal agencies here, if it had come through the normal channels, if the terms of the offer had been clear rather than continually changing, if it didn't have material in the contract that said, by signing this, you're giving up any rights to sue us if anything goes wrong,
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
If it wasn't obviously clear to anyone who has spent any time in government that the government was making a promise that it actually couldn't carry out, because part of what this says is that you agree to resign, you'll leave on September 30th, and we're going to pay out your salary until then. The problem with that is that the government's going to run out of funding in mid-March.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
The federal government actually can't promise these civil servants that it will continue to pay them that amount because they don't know where the funding is coming from. And so that runs into legal problems for exactly that same kind of power of the purse issue. And so the sense...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
that has, I think, been brewing among people who have received these emails is not only that there's kind of a bullying and hectoring and dismissive and rude quality to the emails, but that they are being sent by someone who doesn't understand how the government actually works, and that therefore there is absolutely no reason to think that the federal government will hold up their end of the bargain.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And under those circumstances, why would you take that offer?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
So before I start, I want to say we're recording this on the morning of February 7th. And if things change between now and when listeners hear this show, what I say may be out of date because the story is moving very quickly.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
As you say, the Trump administration came in clearly with a posture of revenge toward the FBI and the Justice Department as a whole, really, right out of the gate when he pardoned over 1,500 rioters who had been prosecuted for their role in January 6th. Since then, what we've seen is a spree of firings at the Justice Department that
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
including of line prosecutors, so by which I mean, you know, not supervisors, not people with any power, just people who were tasked to, you know, carry out these prosecutions. This had been carried out largely by Acting Deputy Attorney General Emile Bovey, who was actually one of Trump's lawyers in the many prosecutions against him.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Now that Pam Bondi has been confirmed as Attorney General, we'll see what happens next. An effort to target the many, many FBI employees who were involved in carrying out this massive investigation into the insurrection. There was reporting that the Justice Department wanted to essentially carry out a purge of everyone who was involved in some way in these investigations.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And like I said, that is an extraordinary number of people.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Exactly. And so I believe off the top of my head, I think the FBI has 38,000 employees. That's agents, analysts, everyone. It has about, I think, 13,000 agents. So 6,000 people is a lot of people in a way that would potentially really damage the FBI's ability to move forward as an organization just because, you know, if you fire everyone individually, This was really an all-hand situation.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
People were pulled in who had all kinds of expertise. And so if you let all these people go, what happens if you lose a bunch of your China counterintelligence experts? What happens if you lose a lot of your counterterror people?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
That's fair. I think the point that I'm trying to make is more that I think we should be very worried about what the long-term effects are on the security of the country and on the FBI's ability to work as a national security and law enforcement organization. if this happens. But the thing is, it hasn't happened so far.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
This seems to be kind of a effort from the acting FBI director, Brian Driscoll, who as a sidebar is in that role by accident. I'm sorry, can you explain?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
It's somewhat deranged and I'm not totally sure I completely understand. My, my best understanding is that, uh, so actually we have to back up and note the most noteworthy thing here, which is that the FBI director resigned before Trump took office. Uh, Christopher Wray, who Trump had appointed after he fired Jim Comey, the FBI director has a 10 year term. Wray had not served out those 10 years.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Wray resigned voluntarily ahead of time. Uh, Uh, because essentially I think he, he realized that Trump was going to fire him and wanted to get out ahead of that. So it is not normal for the president to come in and not have a Senate confirmed FBI director. Uh, Patel obviously has not yet been confirmed. So then we have this question of, okay, what are we going to do?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Who are we going to put in charge? The Bureau had selected two agents to serve as the acting director and the acting deputy director. It seems like what happened is that somebody put in the names reversed on the FBI website, and they decided that it would be more trouble than it was worth to switch the names. So the agents...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
were just going to take on the opposite role than the one that they had actually signed up for. So the person in charge currently is an agent named Brian Driscoll, who has a great mustache and facial hair. He does not look like what you imagine when you think FBI agent. I encourage everyone to Google him.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Yeah, I was going to say, it looks like he plays in a ska band, maybe. People call him the Driz, apparently. That is actually what people call him. And the Driz has risen up as a hero. Yeah. Within the Bureau, because he reportedly has really resisted these efforts to push out these agents and has been standing up for them.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And as of the time that we're recording, I think the Bureau is kind of locked in this struggle with the Justice Department where... The department has not made any of these mass dismissals, and we're kind of waiting to see what happens next because of the way that FBI leadership has really put its foot down and said no. I think there is a real question about how long they can hold out.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
But it is really striking to me to see what is happening there, given the extent of the carnage of other organizations like USAID, that the Bureau has been able to hold its own. I think there are a lot of complicated reasons for that. One of them might just be that, you know, you kind of need the security forces if you're going to run a functioning government.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I had thought that the Trump people didn't care. Maybe they care more than I realized about having a actually skilled, functioning federal law enforcement agency in a way that they did not care about having a functional USAID.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
The problem is that you actually have to bring the lawsuit after you've been fired. And that takes time. And then the lawsuit has to be litigated. And it takes time to put that together. It takes time to move it through the court. And so what has held back other presidents is really the fact that, you know, you try to fire this person, you're going to be...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
grinding it out in court for a really long time, this is going to take up a lot of resources for the administration in litigating out these cases. They may be doing it because they don't care. They may be doing it because they want to argue. that these legal restrictions are actually unconstitutional in some way. That would not surprise me at all if they made that argument.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I think they are absolutely trying to set up some of those cases. And so it's really a question of previous administrations having been agreeing to be bound by the existing framework, if that makes sense. Whereas the Trump people have decided that they simply don't care and are going to smash through it. And the problem, as we've been discussing, is that that has a lot of follow-on effects.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I believe that they can receive their job back. So it is a question of, on the part of those people, do you actually really want to fight it out? All of these people are people who have... They have kids in school, kids in college. They have, you know, they have to worry about having insurance, right? Maybe they're having a baby. They have obligations. They have lives.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And so the question of how you should respond, I think, is necessarily for everyone going to be this balance of how do I weigh this? I mean, there were reports with USAID of the agency calling back people who have been stationed overseas within days. They have kids in school. They have families. They have lives.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I think that's actually really difficult to disaggregate because there are a lot of things that might have been lawful but awful. You know, something that is within the president's legal authority, but not something that you would necessarily want an executive governing in good faith to do. And then the problem is that...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And now everyone is just, their lives have been completely upended and they're struggling to figure out what is next. And it may well be that a significant number of these people say, you know, I'm just going to move on with my life. I don't want to spend, you know, the next five years of my life litigating my firing. Is it worth it as a matter of principle to fight this out?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I suspect for some people it will be. But again, you're going to have a lot of time that is elapsed in the interim.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
This is actually, when you talk about the separation of powers, one of the big, if not the big advantage that the executive branch has. It's the branch that executes. It's the branch that does stuff. And so it has the ability to kind of create facts on the ground in a way that makes it very difficult to push back or if the judiciary pushes back, it takes time.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Now, I mentioned the sort of separation of powers issue because I think it's important that we've been talking about the courts here. And there's a good reason for that. There have been a lot of lawsuits. The courts are sort of the obvious venue where people are going to fight this out, and the courts are the branch that has pushed back. There's another branch here. And that's Congress. Is there?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
If you read the Constitution, Article 1 is the legislative branch. But did we ever form it? Right. So look, this is the big problem. I would argue that currently we are in a constitutional crisis in the sense that there is one branch of government, the executive, that is not obeying the Constitution. And the question is, how do the other branches push back? The judiciary, it takes a lot of time.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
That is the advantage of courts and it is the disadvantage of courts. Congress has the ability, theoretically, let's say, let's sort of set aside the actual people in this actual Congress and talk about Congress as an abstract entity. The theory of the separation of powers is that Congress should be able to step in here as one of the political branches and say, you are usurping our power.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
You have violated your oath, I would argue, certainly, to take care, to enforce the laws, and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. We actually saw this work in the first Ukraine impeachment. Obviously, the removal did not succeed, and I'll get to that in a minute.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Some of those things, if they had been done in a sort of reasoned way, according to the procedures that are set out in law, would have been completely fine. But because of the way that the administration has done them, inarguably, in my view, crossed the line.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
But I think what a lot of people forget is that the House of Representatives was extraordinarily successful in uncovering what it was that Donald Trump was doing in attempting to illegally withhold aid to Ukraine. By the way, which in the same way as the government is now attempting to illegally withhold money to any range of states, organizations, individuals.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And that kind of fact-finding and putting that out in the public record can be very successful. Congress could make this stop. if it wanted to. The problem is that it doesn't want to. And this gets to the phrase that has been tossed around a lot, at least in my neck of the woods, is this idea of the separation of parties rather than the separation of powers.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Democrats are less likely to push back against executive overreach when a Democrat is in the White House. The same is true for Republicans. I will say not to let anyone off the hook, We saw this dynamic in the beginning of the Biden administration.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
There were a number of proposals on the table that would have significantly restrained presidential power that had been put forward in response to some of the abuses of the first Trump administration. Not very many of them move forward. And a lot of the reason for that, I would argue, is that Democrats in Congress didn't want to go against a Democratic administration in restraining the executive.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Now, to be clear, I think the dereliction of constitutional duty on the part of Republicans in this Congress and in the previous Trump administration is above and beyond that. And you see that in all kinds of ways, the sort of
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
level of silence or, you know, token protests only as the Trump administration just tramples all over Congress's constitutional authority to decide how the executive should spend funds. Last night, Republicans voted to confirm Russ' vote as the head of the Office of Management and Budget.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Vote is really the kind of intellectual architect of a lot of the ideas we've been discussing in terms of this really aggressive vision of executive power. The fact that Republicans voted to confirm someone who has explicitly said that the executive has the power to impound funds is an astonishing abdication of duty.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And there was an incredible quote, actually, from Susan Collins that I saw just before I came in here, where she essentially said, you know, I'm voting to confirm Russ' vote, and I hope that, you know, the litigation succeeds in showing that the executive does not have the ability to impound funds.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
She's very concerned. But the thing about that that's astonishing is that she's concerned. She has the power to stop it. And she's saying, oh, actually, I hope that the courts can deal with that. And I think this is consistent with a broader kind of trend in how we think about the separation of powers, where people have really come to think of Congress as...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
weak and as the courts, as the kind of strong institution that can provide a check here, to the extent that even the chair of the Appropriations Committee is saying that.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And so I think that there are a lot of different components to the sort of crisis that we're currently in, but the unwillingness of Congress as an institution to really step up and play its role in the constitutional order is one of the major issues that we are facing right now.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Absolutely. So let's take the dismantling of USAID. So this is an agency that is created by Congress. If the president felt, you know, I actually don't think that having USAID as a separate agency is a good idea, I want to merge it with the State Department, or let's say I...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Americans often think of ourselves as exceptional. There's a whole term for it, American exceptionalism, as sort of, you know, outside of history, right? But we're not. And because of that, I think it's useful to compare what's happening now in the United States to other instances of democratic backsliding around the world.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
One comparison you often see is with Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been very, very effective in dismantling Czechs and turning Hungary from a democracy into functionally an autocracy. An important area where that comparison, I think, actually breaks down and obscures more than it reveals is how Orban was able to do that.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
The particulars of Hungary's governmental structure were such that he was able to sort of sweep into power the second time around with overwhelming majority support. And immediately amend the Hungarian constitution, which was very easy to do because of the way that the system had been set up. To, you know, give himself all kinds of powers and really cement his party fetuses hold on power.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
want to get rid of it completely, that could be done by going through Congress and saying, I'd like you to pass a law to reorganize USAID or to get rid of it completely. The problem with the dismantling the way that the administration has done it is on a legal grounds that it's essentially done it by ignoring Congress altogether, essentially kind of
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
In the U.S., as you say, it's the opposite problem. The problem is that it's too hard to amend the Constitution. And I think that there's an argument made by, among other people, Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, that part of the issue here is just the U.S. was kind of first out of the gate when it comes to written constitutions. We were, early on...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
We didn't have the opportunity to learn from everybody else. And because of the way in which our Constitution was drafted, it is really, really hard to amend. And that means that there is a fundamental inflexibility to our political system in a way that is not true today. in many other places of the world, there are all kinds of examples of what you could do.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
You could have multi-member districts in the House. You could have proportional representation. You could turn the Senate into kind of an advisory body. You could abolish the Senate altogether. My favorite ridiculous proposal is an incredible student note in the Harvard Law Review, I believe, that proposes not admitting D.C. as a state, but admitting every neighborhood in D.C. as a state.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And then using that to amend the Constitution and change the composition of the Senate. So, you know, dream big. But there are all kinds of fixes that you can imagine. The problem is that because we don't actually have the political ability to amend the Constitution in that way... We can't make them. And so the question is, how long can we stay in this brittle system before something breaks?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Or even if something breaks and whatever that looks like, what happens then?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
We're in the very early stages right now, and so I think it is a little difficult to tell. There was a lot of writing... After Trump's election, in the first days of the new administration, saying, you know, the resistance is over. No one's in the streets. No one's doing the women's march. No one's, you know, wearing their pussy hats or whatever. engaging in sort of ostentatious acts of defiance.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I thought that that was premature. I think it looks particularly premature now that we are seeing real public pushback. Like I said, it's a little hard to say. A lot of this is a kind of a, let's call it a vibes-based check, and I would really love to see some numbers. But there were huge protests in front of the Treasury Department in D.C., This week, there were protests in front of the Capitol.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
There were protests in front of the Labor Department. The Doge folks were supposed to have a meeting at the Labor Department in person one afternoon this week. It was moved to a Zoom meeting reportedly, possibly because there was a huge protest organized by a bunch of unions standing out front. That really matters.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I believe I saw a statement from Lisa Murkowski saying that she's been getting 40 times the amount of calls to her office that she usually receives on any given day. We now have Brian Schatz saying that he is going to put a hold on all State Department nominees immediately. until USAID is put back.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Arguing for the complete irrelevance of a coordinate branch of government and on a policy level that it's also dismantled it in such a chaotic and frankly cruel way. that the immediate ramifications are going to spread well, well beyond whatever is stated policy goal.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
The Democrats held the Senate floor for, I think, 30 hours to try to prevent, or at least delay, rather, Russ Vogt's confirmation. These are signs of a party that is responding to to genuine outrage among the ranks of its supporters and is trying to take some role in stepping up. Now, because the party is a minority in both chambers, there are real limitations to what it can do.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
But I do think it certainly shows that the Democratic Party is responsive.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And if cringe means believing in things in a corny way, you know what? Fine. I'll be cringe.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
You know, there was reporting in the Washington Post, for example, about, you know, farmers in the Midwest who had been selling an extraordinary amount of product to USAID to distribute. They're now going to have real economic struggles.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Trump is very good at presenting an image of himself as a figure of overwhelming force. I think that he really honed that on The Apprentice and I think Americans are primed to think of him in that way. I think that...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
In his current iteration, he has really tapped into a desire to kind of see someone as the manifestation of, you know, the people, the voice of the people, the figure, like Hegel says, right, you know, the figure of history astride on the horse. This kind of, like, yes, I would argue fascist image of the unstoppable leader carried forward by this popular energy. And that image is very appealing.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I think we've seen that it has real cultural appeal, not only to Trump supporters, but also to a lot of people in politics, in the media and sort of various elite institutions of American life who seemingly are really swayed by that. And you see that in the kind of desire to go and interview people at diners, right?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Like this really persistent idea that Trump speaks to something deep in the American psyche that must be revered. And the fact is, that's not what he is. And I'm telling you things that you've written yourself, but he is a weak president. He won his first election. He did not win the popular vote. He lost the popular vote a second time around.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
The third time around, he won the plurality of the vote in a... year that was strongly anti-incumbent across the globe. He squeaked by and his party felt well short of where it could have been in the House of Representatives. That is a mark of weakness.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Exactly. And there's also, you know, we're still waiting for the full sort of voter file data to come out. But the initial information I've seen seems to indicate that he won the popular vote by a plurality in significant part because a lot of people who had voted for Joe Biden stayed home.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And so the carelessness of the implementation, I think, has policy implications and also serious legal implications such that, you know, there are things that they could have done arguably in one way that would have been acceptable, but that may be held up in court because they were done so carelessly.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
There is a real instinctive desire on the part of a lot of powerful people to kind of yield to this image of Trump as the man on the horse who is the manifestation of history. And that isn't what he is. And if people act like he is that, they give up the opportunity to prevent him from becoming it. And I think that this is why that initial...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
silence on the part of opposition figures and the initial desire on the part of, you know, various companies to kind of roll over and show their belly or, you know, run to Trump and kiss the ring and show their acquiescence to his authority was really damaging not only for the people who those actions immediately affected, but to the kind of civic fabric of the country.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
In the sense that if people see that other people and other people in positions of power who are more powerful than them are already giving up, I think it is easier to say, oh, well, it's all over. What is there to do? And the counterpoint is that when you see someone stand up, I think that that can be really galvanizing. Maybe that is cringe. I think, you know what, it is, yes, I'll say it.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
It is cringe insofar as cringe is an expression of idealism and real belief in something as opposed to the kind of nihilism, you know, LOL, nothing matters, that I think Trump is. is really trying to grind into the fabric of American civil society. And I think this is why things like Brian Driscoll at the head of the FBI has had such a galvanizing cultural effect.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
There was a New York Times story about memes being sent around inside the bureau showing him as an Orthodox saint. or, you know, a challenge coin with him on it. We saw also the Episcopal bishop who sort of responded to Trump at the sermon at the National Cathedral saying, you know, please have grace, hold off on your cruelty.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
That seeing people stand up and speak up for their values and do the right thing matters not only for the individual people that those folks might be protecting, but it matters because it gives other people courage. And it matters because it shows that... if you do not agree with what is happening in this country right now, that you're not alone.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I think it is an escalation. Previously, what we've seen is an executive branch that is engaged, I would argue, in a power grab, functionally, against the legislative branch, which is so far succeeding insofar as congressional Republicans are completely unwilling to lift a finger to do anything to stop it.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And given that they're in the majority in both chambers, there's really a limit to what congressional Democrats can do. And we've seen that power grab run into a brick wall, really, in the courts. There have been—I can't even keep track of how many court cases, how many injunctions, how many temporary restraining orders have been issued at this point, but there are a lot.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And so the Vance tweet is sort of hinting at this other aspect of this power grab, that the executive might try to, I would argue, usurp power not only from the legislative branch, but from the judiciary as well, by kind of saying... You can't make me, essentially. I'm the executive, and I get to do what I want. Now, I will say J.D. Vance is a smart man.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
There are some—there's some sneakiness in how he's worded that particular tweet.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Yeah, absolutely. So when he says— Let me read you the full tweet because I think the examples he uses are actually important. So he says, he ends by saying that judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. The two examples that he leads in with are, if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. So what Vance says is, judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. And... Framing it that way, I think... leaves open the question of what is legitimate power and who determines what is legitimate power, right?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
He's not quite saying this, but I think the implication is, well, is it the court that determines whether something is a legitimate use of executive power? Or is it the executive who determines whether something is a legitimate use of executive power? Typically, we would say that is actually the job of the court. That is the whole point of having judicial review.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Now, it's a little bit more complicated that, but at the high level, that's the whole check that the judicial branch provides. Vance, I think, is not quite saying but hinting Well, maybe if I, the executive branch, decide that a court has intruded on my legitimate power, the constitutionally appropriate thing for me to do would just be to ignore the court.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And that, I think, is what pretty much everybody would recognize as a constitutional crisis.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Right. This is where it gets tricky. I think the question of, you know, what happens if a court says you can't continue to dismantle this agency and then the administration says essentially try me is kind of the big question. This is moving more into the realm of things that are outright illegal under any circumstance. For example, the Birthright Citizenship Executive Order.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
That seems to me to be right. I mean, I think there is a big question of whether or not it will backfire in the sense that the justices will not take particularly kindly to being threatened, and threatened not only by the vice president, but by someone who is very much within the same kind of elite legal circles that the justices themselves frequent, right?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Vance very famously went to Yale Law School. He's kind of within that milieu. And so I think there's also a kind of like intra-legal elite struggle going on here. It certainly seems to me as if he is trying to fire a warning shot. What is less clear is how urgent this threat is.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And what I mean by that is that I think this is sort of something that you put on the table and it's quite hard to take back. It will be hanging over the court. The question in my mind is how they decide to play it. You know, because you could say, on the one hand, they could respond by essentially saying, how dare you? We're going to do what we're going to do, and you can't stop us.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
You know, kind of pushing back. On the other hand, you know, as everyone learns, the court does not have its own enforcement apparatus. It's dependent on the executive kind of agreeing to follow what it says. And that is really the basis of the sort of agreement that binds together the constitutional structure. And so...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
You could imagine a John Roberts who feels that his hand has really been forced trying to, as you say, kind of thread the needle here and create a situation where he seems to be pushing back, but not quite so much that he feels that it will engender disobedience that could harm the long-term legitimacy of the court.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Courts do have a really, really expansive contempt power. And I think that is worth keeping in mind. They can institute fines. Sometimes they can institute really extreme fines. They can require people to be held in jail. There are a lot of different mechanisms. I think that courts are probably going to be reluctant to turn to those mechanisms precisely because they are so extreme.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
The normal way that something like this would be hashed out is, you know, you have a court order. The plaintiff comes back and says, hey, the defendant is not abiding by the terms of the court order. And what we've seen now is I haven't had a chance to take a close look, but it looks like this court has said, OK, guys, you know, you really got to comply now.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And then it will be hashed out in the course of litigation. Over the course of going back and forth, perhaps appealing up and so on and so forth. And so it will take a while before we reach the stage of a real genuine crisis. You know, it goes up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court tells the administration what to do and the administration says no. no, I don't want to.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I mean, even in the example of the instance that J.D. Vance seemed to be responding to has to do with a question of an order blocking the Treasury Department from sharing access to its sensitive systems.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And despite Vance's tweet, the Justice Department actually filed a motion saying, hey, can you loosen up this order a little to the court, asking for Treasury Secretary Scott Besant to have access to the systems as well, or at least to clarify that he does have access. That's kind of, I mean, this is a low bar.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
That was an order that directed the government to stop issuing or recognizing paperwork to babies born to parents who, the wording's a little confusing, but neither parent is either a U.S. citizen or a legal permanent resident, a green card holder, after late February, I think February 19th. It has now been enjoined in two separate courts, with the court essentially saying,
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
That is what you would want to see, that sort of hashing this out in the course of litigation rather than the executive just saying, go ahead, make me.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
My one quibble with that is that I'm not sure I would say it is the sort of conservative legal movement that is spinning itself into that. I would say, you know, far right radical, because there is a more traditionally conservative legal movement that is very much not on board with this, in part because the conservative legal movement has been focused on, well, law, right?
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
You know, putting judges in these positions, and judges tend to like it when courts are powerful. I do agree with you that it seems like there's this sort of frenzy being spun up on Twitter among the sort of intellectuals in this corner, egging themselves into this position of real defiance.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And yet, as you say, when you actually look at the stuff that the administration has filed in court, it is way less gung-ho on that motion that I mentioned to allow Secretary Besson access to the Treasury systems, rather to clarify whether he does have access. The Justice Department actually notably included multiple paragraphs saying, we are complying with your order.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
We would just like you to change it. And that is a real distinction from how Vance is talking. And I think what that points to is, you know, these are big, complicated organizations. There are a lot of points of friction along the way. This isn't a situation where Vance or Trump or Musk can kind of wave their hand and say, go ahead, defy a court order.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
You need a Justice Department attorney in the courtroom or filing those briefs to, you know, be willing to stand there and get chewed out by the judge and potentially lose their bar card over these things.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And so while I don't think that that will, you know, save America in the grand scheme of things, I do think that it is a point of friction or of resistance, not in the hashtag resistance sense, but just in the sense of making it more difficult to push through that is really worth keeping an eye on here.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I think, unfortunately, the answer, we already know the answer is yes.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Maybe like a slightly redder orange. Like a blood orange color, you know? I do think that... One of the things that I was worried about after the first few weeks of this administration was Elon Musk and his sense of invulnerability and his willingness to blow through the law, helping talk the administration into a position where it would defy a core order.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
That was not something that we saw the last time around. And I think Musk is kind of the new factor here. And it does seem like we may be headed in that direction. Now, again, Because of those filings that were much more careful in how they framed things, I think I am less worried that this is going to happen imminently.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
This certainly appears to be completely unconstitutional. The plaintiffs have a good case that it is unconstitutional. And as a result, we're going to block you from putting this into effect. We have no indication that the administration is going to try to put it into effect over that court order. So then the question is, okay, well, what does it look like if they say, you know, we're actually...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
But I am concerned that, as you say, the sort of intellectual framework for such a move is beginning to be built.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I want to start by recommending a book by a friend of mine, actually. Her name is Joy Neumeier, and the book is called A Survivor's Education. I'm biased, but it's a really astonishing book about her experience as a graduate student in history at Berkeley, surviving an abusive relationship and going through the Title IX process.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
And the reason that I mention it here is that I think what Joy does is,
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
in a really astonishing way is weave together the details of her experience as somebody who suffered from this abuse, as somebody who was testifying to her own experience with what it means to do the work of history when the archive is uncertain as to what it's telling you, and also what it means to live right now in this moment
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
under administration that is not only aggressively contemptuous of women, but is insistent at rewriting the historical record and overriding the existence of facts.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
But I think it is a really useful text that brings together a lot of things that are worth thinking about seriously, as well as the kind of failures of the liberal establishments of universities as well, and how do you kind of hold on to the existence of fact, the existence of the record, the existence of truth, even when institutions that are ostensibly meant to back you against these sort of figures of...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
aggressive unreality are no longer supporting you and are flawed in their design. So that's one. The second book I would recommend is by the French philosopher Albert Camus, The Rebel. I think a lot of people are probably familiar with Camus' book The Stranger, so he's a sort of figure of absurdist philosophy.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
The Rebel is a book where he really tries to put into practice what his philosophy means. The argument that he's making is essentially that the nature of human existence is to be searching for meaning in a universe that refuses to give you any and that we have to kind of walk on that tightrope.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
of wanting things to have meaning and knowing that we won't receive that from any kind of external force. And it's something that I have come back to again and again. The last book that I would recommend is by the historian David Blight, and it's called Race and Reunion. And it's a history of how...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Immediately after the Civil War and in the sort of subsequent years, Americans worked through their memories of the war individually and kind of collectively as a polity. The reason that I'm thinking about it right now and I've returned to it in recent days is because it's really about how
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Americans struggled to build a multiracial democracy in the years after the Civil War and Reconstruction, and then how that fell apart during the redemption years, and how the memory of the war was rewritten and overridden by white Americans who essentially tried to write Black Americans out of that story. And again, I think in this moment where we are...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
thinking and talking a lot about what it means to be American, what the American story means. I've been thinking about this more immediately in context of January 6th, that keeping in mind how these sort of dynamics of memory and politics have worked out in the past is a useful...
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
not going to provide social security numbers, for example, to these infants that were born on U.S. soil and that are under the interpretation of the 14th Amendment that everyone has accepted, essentially, since it was brought into law. I mean, I think the sort of short answer is that's what we call a constitutional crisis. And we don't really know how it would play out.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
reminder that this is not the first time that we've gone through this it doesn't mean that it'll turn out particularly well but I do think that Blight does a really astonishing job in kind of setting out how that worked in the past in a way that at least for me has been comforting is not the right word perhaps but there's something that we can draw on there and knowing that this is not the first time that this has happened Quinta Jurassic thank you very much thanks for having me
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
I think it is worth emphasizing that in the first Trump administration, I don't know of any instance in which the administration flat out ignored an order of a court. He never said, you know, I'm simply not going to obey a court order. He would kind of post on Twitter about it and complain, but then his administration would comply.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
We joked last time around that our motto was, we'll tell you when to panic.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
When we came into the second Trump administration, I was not actually that worried about him disobeying a court order precisely because of that. I think there are aspects of the way this administration has governed in these first few weeks that make me more worried. But at the end of the day, the answer to your question is, you know, we simply don't know.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Another example is the spending freezes coming out of OMB. One thing that I think has not been communicated clearly, and as a member of the press, that's maybe partly on my shoulders as well, is just how big a deal it is that the administration came in and immediately tried to cut off possibly trillions of dollars of spending authorized by Congress just all at once.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
That's not just a, you know, bull in a china shop. That is, again, an effort to usurp the congressional power of the purse, which is the main power that the Constitution gives Congress as a coordinate branch of government, as a check on the other branches.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Because you can see, you know, if Congress says, okay, you're going to spend this much money on these things, and then the president says, actually, I don't want to, you've really limited the power of Congress to... Act in a constitutional fashion to exert any power over the executive.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Now, it is true that many of these spending authorizations have particular provisions saying, you know, the executive has this level of discretion in how to distribute these funds in such and such a way. And so...
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Part of the problem with looking at this OMB spending freeze is that so much spending was frozen that it's actually really difficult to figure out if they had gone, you know, item by item, whether they might have been able to kind of turn off the switches or redirect funding in a way that could arguably have been legal. But because they just did it all at once,
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
It's, I would say, not only illegal, but an active threat to the constitutional order. And this also, again, goes back to this question of compliance with court orders, because as you say, there have now been multiple court orders saying you need to stop this spending freeze, you need to turn the money back on. And yet there have also been a lot of reports saying, you know...
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
various organizations that were getting this money have not actually received it despite assurances that they would. I think I saw a report that Head Start programs in a lot of states have not been receiving their funding, for example.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Two points. First off, I think that the fact that Elon Musk is playing an increasingly large role going around and trying to cut costs in a maximally chaotic and destructive way at all of these agencies really undermines that argument.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Because if you take the view that, you know, unelected bureaucrats are not under the control of the president, should not have this authority, how do you deal with Elon Musk? Nobody elected him. It's not even clear what role he has.
The Ezra Klein Show
What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
So I don't want to get us on too far of a detour here. Taking this argument seriously, a lot of the arguments that the conservative legal movement, for example, has made about the importance of centralizing control focus on the role of the appointments clause and the importance of having a Senate-confirmed official.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Under the Appointments Clause, you can then serve at the pleasure of the president. Elon Musk has not been nominated or confirmed to any position. And so I do think that even if you take this sort of view that it's very important to have a unitary executive who can, you know, act with energy and carry out his will, because of course it's going to be he, that...
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
Musk does not fit within that constitutional vision because he is functionally an unaccountable private citizen who has kind of been bolted on. And the people who he has working for him are in the same category. And so I actually do think, I mean, if you look at some of the polling, for example, on Republican approval of Musk playing a significant role in U.S.
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What if Trump Just Ignores the Courts?
government, it has gone down dramatically since the beginning of this administration. Yeah. If your argument is we have a serious problem with unelected bureaucrats, that Musk actually is a serious fly in that ointment. So that's one thing. But the other thing I would say is that, you know, walking out the front door and jumping out a fourth floor window are both ways to leave a building, right?