The David Pakman Show
BONUS: Judge halts Trump's shutdown firings, swastika found in rep's office, US revokes six visas over Charlie Kirk comments
18 Oct 2025
-- On the Bonus Show: A judge halts Trump's shutdown layoffs, Capitol Police investigate a swastika found in a representative's office, the US revokes the visas of six foreigners over Charlie Kirk comments, and much more... Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com/ Buy David's book: https://davidpakman.com/book
Full Episode
Hey, everybody, David here. What you're about to hear is an episode of the bonus show. We do a bonus show every day for our members and for a limited time. We will release one of the week's bonus shows on Saturdays exclusively for our audio podcast listeners. If you'd like to get access to all of the bonus shows, simply sign up at join Pacman dot com. Here is that bonus show episode.
Welcome to the bonus show. As we know, Republicans and Trump have had this plan of firing, laying off and firing on a permanent basis federal government workers during the shutdown. We knew when we set up front. There really isn't any additional power that Donald Trump has to do that during a shutdown. But that doesn't mean that he won't try.
And we now have a federal judge who has said I can't do it against the law and has effectively halted the layoffs of forty one hundred federal workers. Now, of course, MAGA is doing the expected, saying this is a liberal San Francisco judge And she's a woman, if you can believe it, Pat. But what we really care about is the substance and the law.
Now, the judge is an appointee of former President Bill Clinton. She says that she sees evidence suggesting the administration has taken advantage of a lapse in government spending and functioning. to assume that all bets are off and the laws don't apply to them, but that politically motivated layoffs are illegal no matter whether the government is functioning or not.
And I think that that's sort of like one of the most interesting practical things here, which is it's really common that these conversations, it's sort of like the horse is out of the barn. They're going to lay off workers. And then we kind of slow down and we say, wait a second, why would you be allowed to do things when government is closed that you're not allowed to do when government is open?
It's not like the rule of law goes away. It's not martial law or a police state. just because government is nominally closed. And then you realize, wait a second, if anything, you probably can do fewer things when government is closed by virtue of the fact that government is closed. This judge happens to agree it's going to be appealed. We'll see where it goes.
But at least this decision seems to be, based on everything we were told by legal experts, the right decision.
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.
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