We Can Do Hard Things
Finally Democracy Fighting Back! | Jessica Yellin on Hope from SCOTUS & Harvard
Thu, 24 Apr 2025
405. Finally Democracy Fighting Back! | Jessica Yellin on Hope from SCOTUS & Harvard This week, Amanda is back with friend of the show, Webby Award Winning Journalist, Jessica Yellin, to break down what’s happening in America and why this week there are a few stories to feel good about. -The alarming deportation case making headlines and how the courts are pushing back -Why Harvard’s refusal to comply could set a powerful precedent for free speech -The surprising way Wall Street is turning on Trump and what it signals -What’s really going on with Hegseth and why his unraveling matters Jessica Yellin is the founder of News Not Noise, a pioneering Webby award-winning independent news brand -- dedicated to helping you manage your “information overload.” She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy, Peabody and Gracie Award-winning political correspondent. You can follow her on Instagram at Jessica Yellin. And also, to get real time, clear and brilliant reporting, go to substack.com and search for her page newsnotnoise and subscribe there. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What new book is being released and how can we participate?
It is getting very close to book release time. Our new book, We Can Do Hard Things, Answers to Life's 20 Questions, comes out on May 6th. You can pre-order We Can Do Hard Things anywhere you get your books or you can go to treatmedia.com. You can also join us for a virtual event that we're doing on publication day.
You guys, we're doing a live virtual event because since the tour sold out so quickly, Lots of you were sad to not be a part of it, and we can't stand your sadness. So we're hosting a virtual event to support those who could not get tickets and to support our beloved local independent bookstores. All the proceeds from this virtual event are going to these local bookstores. They show up for us.
We're showing up for them. May 6th. If you pre-ordered the book from an independent bookstore, you don't have to buy it again to come to the event. Please register for the event by uploading your indie order at treatmedia.com. and just click the option that says, I've already pre-ordered from another indie. Okay, we'll see you there.
Hello everyone. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Today we are regrouping once again with the phenomenal Jessica Yellen to talk about what we need to know in the world.
Chapter 2: What recent events lead to a positive outlook on democracy?
And we do it in this hour so that we can spend the rest of our one wild and precious life doing life affirming things, figuring out what we can do to impact the world and not riding the roller coaster of intentional chaos that is whirling. all around us. So today I have just come back into the country after around 10 days out of it with my family. And I've got to tell you, Jessica,
It was a little bit nice to not be monitoring the news every five minutes. So I feel really good about what we're doing here once a week to keep people informed while not having to follow every single story every single minute, because I think it might be the way to do it. I love that. I think so. Right. Don't you feel more normal?
For lack of a better word.
Yes, I feel like, well, not my normal, which is my own internal chaos. At least I am responding to the tolment of being me as opposed to the tolment of being me and the intentional chaotic tolment of the environment. And I think there is a connection between those two. So it felt nice for a week and it made me think, let's keep doing this because...
People need to know, we need to know what's going on and what's important and what's distraction and what's real. And we also need to not be consumed by it. It's like consume the news, but not be consumed by the news is what is ideal. I love that.
I think you seem just sort of vibrant in a way that's, you know, a shift, right? This weekend, I tried to turn off the news mostly and put down my phone. And I reached out to friends I don't see that often. And I hung out with two friends I don't actually go visit that much. They're in my city. I just, you know, you get in your little rut. Right. And it just felt like a plant being watered.
I just, I kind of feel like I got springier and more present and able to deal. So I definitely recommend, I can't imagine 10 days must've felt like a lifetime of therapy.
It was. And I think that it's cool too, because it's not only good for us. It's like, if we don't have a sense of springiness and if we don't have a sense of connectedness with people and community with people, then we can't actually do the things that we're going to need to do to resist all of this. It's actually, it's not selfish. It is helpful to the process to
connect with people and have a little joy and have something to defend when that is under threat. So I got back, let's talk about what the heck went on. I want to talk to you about from my reinsertion in America, what my initial reaction of looking at the news was. I can't imagine. I was like, wow. Okay. I leave, I leave you people for 10 days and I come back and
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Chapter 3: What is happening with the deportation case of Abrego Garcia?
But as you rightly say, he had protected status in the U.S., is a human being who was entitled to due process. And so lawyers went to court and we've seen reports Two actions. One is that the Supreme Court first said that the government has to facilitate his returns. meaning take active steps to try to get him back because he's entitled to due process.
Like if there is a version of events where he could be deported, but that would have to go through the courts and he wasn't given that. So they said, you have to facilitate his return. They use this funky language where they said, oh, a lower court said you have to facilitate and effectuate, but we don't know what effectuate really means. So facilitate his return.
We're going to make effectuate problematic. The government clung to that part of making effectuate an issue and use that to pretend they don't have to do anything. So they have been like a child pretending it doesn't have to eat dinner, whatever, dragging its heels. Right.
And eventually what's happened to fast forward is this has gone through the courts, another court with one of the most conservative judges in America. A guy who objected to giving rights to detainees at Gitmo said, yeah, you know what? It's cool to keep people at Gitmo, no problem. They don't have special rights.
Took the exact opposite stand here and wrote what is an absolutely beautiful decision saying effectively, this man is entitled to due process under our constitution. He kind of said, I beg you, Trump administration, to understand that if you don't give him due process, we are in a state of anarchy.
where everything about American law falls apart and any one of us could be taken to a gulag overseas and locked up for life. Please don't destroy American democracy is effectively how his decision is written.
I'm paraphrasing. Judge Wilkinson is the one who did. Yeah. He is not one who would be at the top of your list of what the right would call activist judges. He has been, you know, staunchly. Well, activists for them. Activists for them. Right, right, right. That's what I mean.
Like where it's like, oh, these guys are, I mean, he was full on in support of the Bush administration theory of what they could do when Guantanamo Bay was happening. So that's really remarkable that he came out and did that. So that was the first thing.
Wilkinson issues that decision, which was like a shot in the arm to everybody who's been troubled about this. And then Chris Van Hollen, the senator from Maryland, who is the representative, he's the senator for Kilmar Obrego-Garcia, decides to fly down to El Salvador and try to see his constituent, which... I have to say, like, it was a beautiful thing.
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Chapter 4: How have courts responded to the Trump administration's actions?
But there were others who were catcalling at him and screaming things at him. And he did have fear.
And the very reason he was given protective status in America is because he was under direct threat from a gang there that was threatening to kill him. So he is now back in a prison with presumably also the gang members from whom our judicial system was saying he had
Needed protection. Required protection. Totally. So yes. Wild. I mean, this guy's living a nightmare. So since Van Hollen, he says that after Van Hollen arrived, they removed him to a different prison, a separate facility, something that's less high max security. So presumably now he's got all these global eyeballs on him. They want to make sure he stays alive, is my guess, right?
Van Hollen leaves, comes home, holds a press conference, says we're going to continue to press for his return, shares all this information. And a judge, a lower court judge, says to the government, You need to take active steps to facilitate his return. Judge Harvey Wilkinson said in his decision, facilitate is not a passive word. It means do something.
So for the next two weeks, I'm going to order you, the Trump administration, to tell me what you are doing. And I want the names and details of who is responsible. So that's what's unfolding over on one side, right, for the Kilmar Abrego Garcia. And his wife has now been moved to a safe house. I think the New York Times is reporting for her own security.
And so we're seeing all that still unfold, right? Over on the other side, we're taught the Alien Enemies Act. There's a question about whether that can be used to deport, remove all these Venezuelans. again, the purported gang members. And the judge in that hearing said, you members of the Trump administration have defied me and you are in contempt of court.
And I'm going to use the power of the judiciary to hold somebody in contempt, but I don't know who because you won't tell me anything. So you better tell me who was responsible for flying that plane of men over against my orders. And if you don't, I can name a special prosecutor to find that out. So that's where that state of play is.
Meantime, as all this is happening, on Friday night, very late, the ACLU files an emergency request to the Supreme Court and to the appeals court. They just went to every single court they could find and said, there is a bus with almost 30 men on a North Texas detention center's grounds that is about to drive to the airport immediately.
and take more people to that prison in El Salvador against your orders. Please bar them from doing this. And at almost 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, the Supreme Court did the most rare and remarkable thing. They were up late at night, I mean, I said, you know, when the Supreme Court pulls an all-nighter, you know something extraordinary is happening.
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Chapter 5: What does the Supreme Court ruling mean for due process rights?
And if they all have to have a hearing, this will take forever. So I posted on Instagram, just to make it clear to everybody, that the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution says due process shall be granted to every person. Not every citizen, every person. It is quite literally what is mandated. Right. in our system. So what the president's railing over is just how America works.
Right. What he's saying is the constitutional protections provided in the formation of our government make it very inconvenient and inefficient for me to deny everyone their rights. And therefore I strenuously object. Yeah. It's supposed to be wildly inconvenient and, and time-consuming and inefficient to take away someone's life and liberty. That is intentional.
So the ACLU has filed a subsequent request to the Supreme Court saying, would you please expand your order so that the administration understands they may not remove anyone under the Alien Enemies Act? And the language they used, I'm going to get it, you know, this is imprecise, but they said is...
Please stop them before they remove people into a faraway prison where they will face torture, isolation, and no hope of ever seeing freedom again. Possible death and no hope of freedom again. I mean, it's horrific. So the Trump administration has said to this both, you're slowing us down and this is ridiculous. You should let it go to the lower courts.
And as of now, now that's where I think it stands. However, the minute we finish our podcast, something completely different could happen. As of now, the ACLU is the voice I trust on what is happening with the men. So far, they have not reported any other men being removed since the court's order.
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Und die Zeit und das Geld, das ich dadurch spare, kann ich anderweitig investieren. Vor allem in Wachstum.
I would like to take a moment of appreciation for the ACLU doing incredible institution protecting, liberty protecting, vital work right now. I mean, the organizations like... ACLU, like Democracy Forward, who I know you are interviewing this week, Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward. She's a giant of an American hero.
And the work that those organizations and those like them are doing right now, we will be looking back on history at this moment and saying, those are the ones who allowed us to save ourselves.
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Chapter 6: What organizations are fighting for democracy and civil rights?
Wow. Yeah, it also just makes me think if the global markets are backing away from the U.S. dollar, like where are they going? Because it isn't just our loss. It's the what kind of alliances and what kind of strengths are we making happen today? other places in the globe that are bad for us. If you're going over and saying, well, China's looking pretty stable right now, that's double bad for us.
Totally. At the end of the day. Okay, real quick, tell me, so the bond market going not well, Trump wants the Fed chair to lower rates to basically cover his ass so that people don't feel it as much. The Fed chair does not want to lower rates because he's an independent actual economist who knows things. And so he says, if I lower rates, inflation will go way up.
And Trump says, I don't give a shit about that. I just don't want people being mad at me. And so now Trump is calling the Fed chair a loser. Tell us just in a couple sentences, what's the purpose of a Fed chair? My understanding is that they've always been independent precisely for this reason, that we need an independent voice of reason who understands the economy and will act accordingly.
What is happening there? Can Trump fire him?
So technically, the Fed chair... sets monetary policy, which means basically what are our interest rates and at what rate can banks and major, major institutions also get and move money. They set some regulations and stuff like that. So it allows not just things like your mortgage rate,
and little like your credit card interest rates, but also behind that is like Bank of America can borrow a billion dollars, low cost or high cost, right? It's that they decide those things. And the reason he's supposed to be independent is so that they're not responsive to political pressure. So they don't lower rates because the president wants ass cover, right? Precisely this case.
They don't lower rates because the president called them a big loser. Correctamundo. But the truth is, if the president wants him to go and says, I want you to step down, one would expect he'd go.
But it's also possible that the entire Fed would resign with him, that the chairs of the other banks, the Federal Reserve boards, that they would all vacate in protest of this violation of their sacrosanct independence.
Right. And that's another reason why bonds fell when Trump called him a big loser is because the world also wants an independent person in there that's making the best decisions for the economy. If he were to put somebody in who was just gonna do exactly what he wanted, That would ironically be bad for the markets because the outside world and U.S.
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