This episode delves into the crucial question of who wields the authority to initiate war in the United States—a power that, according to constitutional law scholar Chris Edelson, has been increasingly usurped by the presidency over recent decades. Taylor Darcy and Chris engage in a profound discourse on the historical context of war powers, highlighting how Congress, the body intended to declare war, has ceded significant authority to the executive branch, thereby undermining democratic accountability. The conversation further explores the implications of this erosion of power, particularly in light of contemporary political dynamics and the rise of the unitary executive theory, which posits that the president can act with near-absolute authority. With a blend of historical insights and current events, they illuminate the urgent need for reform to restore the balance of power and safeguard democratic governance. As they navigate the intricacies of constitutional law and the alarming trends in modern governance, listeners are invited to reflect on the foundational principles that underpin American democracy and the importance of civic engagement in these tumultuous times. The discourse between Taylor Darcy and Chris Edelson delves profoundly into the intricate dynamics of war powers as delineated in the United States Constitution. They elucidate the constitutional framework that ostensibly entrusts Congress with the authority to declare war, juxtaposed against the historical precedent of presidential overreach in military engagements. As they dissect the implications of this constitutional delegation, they reflect upon the erosion of democratic accountability that has transpired over the last several decades, particularly since the Korean War. The conversation takes a critical turn as they ponder the foresight of the framers, who seemingly did not anticipate the ease with which Congress would relinquish its war powers to the Executive Branch. This leads to a broader discussion on the dangers of a unitary executive theory, which has gained traction in recent administrations, thereby undermining the foundational checks and balances intended to protect democratic governance. The episode serves as a clarion call for introspection on the current state of American democracy, urging listeners to consider the ramifications of unchecked executive power in the context of ongoing geopolitical conflicts.

Takeaways:

1. The historical context reveals that the framers of the Constitution intended for Congress to have the primary authority to declare war, yet this power has largely been ceded to the presidency, undermining democratic governance.
2. In practice, the past seventy-five years have seen presidents increasingly exercising unilateral war powers, raising significant constitutional questions about the limits of executive authority over military engagements.
3. The framers of the Constitution did not foresee the rise of political parties and their influence, which has led to a situation where party loyalty often supersedes constitutional accountability among lawmakers.
4. The alarming trend of Congress's passive complicity in executive overreach reflects a broader failure of democratic accountability, necessitating urgent reforms to restore checks and balances within the government.

Foreign.

Is a constitutional law scholar specializing in war powers, executive authority and democratic accountability.

His work focuses on how Congress has seceded or ceded constitutional power to the presidency, especially in matters of war, and how that erosion undermines democratic governance. So in, in plain terms, who is supposed to decide when the US goes to war and who actually does?

Congress, supposedly. We, we don't have a dictatorship. We don't have a monarchy.

The framers specifically, of course, not surprisingly, they were a engagement revolution against a monarch. They wanted to make clear that Congress would decide whether to bring the United States to war, except with the limited exception of an emergency.

They anticipated there would be a sudden attack, then the President would need to act. But apart from that, it's Congress.

Now as you pointed out though in practice James Madison said the Constitution is only parchment barriers, it's just words on paper unless it's enforced.

Right.

And the last 75 years since Korea, in practice, presidents have taken a lot of authority illegally and unconstitutionally to go to war unilaterally.

Yeah. And I think it's interesting to note that they framers never anticipated this as being a scenario. Right.

Like they never would have anticipated that Congress would cede power so easily to the President. I feel like they would have built some different safeguards in place had they have even thought of it. Right.

They thought that the checks and balances that exist with the courts and with Congress would have been sufficient to avoid a dictatorship, avoid a fascistic regime. They never anticipated that all three branches of government would be formed under.

What.

I've understood to be the unitary executive theory.

I think it's important that we note that had the Constitution been written differently, we wouldn't have had since, as you mentioned, Korea, the expansion of the war powers under each president. You know, I, I, I'm positive you would know who Heather Cox Richardson is and you know, the, she is an absolute delight.

I've been trying to get her on here for, for forever.

She's so busy with all of the stuff that she does that I, you know, I'm, I'm an itty bitty tiny podcast, relatively speaking and she understandably has a lot to to on her plate.

So, but you know, it's, it's very interesting because the American people and where we're headed and that the framers would have, that we can use this as an opportunity to put safeguards in place after we deal with the failures that we're currently facing. So what would you estimate? When do you think Congress. I should say, why do you think Congress is so Willing to go along with Trump.

Well, first, let me flag the point you made about unitary executive. We should come back. That's an important point. I'm glad you brought that up.

It's so you also made an excellent point which connects to your last question. The Framers didn't anticipate political parties. They knew about them.

There were political parties in Britain, the Tories and the Whigs, Tories more conservative, and the Whigs roughly more liberal, more concerned about too much power for the monarch. But they didn't anticipate that in their system. But what they did anticipate was that the system could be changed.

And so when the system no longer worked, I think they would probably be surprised, if not shocked to find that there have not been fundamental changes to the Constitution after more than 200 years, and we are experiencing constitutional failure.

Congress goes along with Trump, Republicans in Congress specifically because they're Republicans and Trump, the Republican Party has become a party of one person. It's really more like a cult than a political party that we're used to in the United States.

Being a Republican today means being personally loyal to Donald Trump. And if you're not, you're someone like Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger or even rather surprisingly, Marjorie Taylor Greene, you're out.

Yeah.

So that's in a nutshell, why things aren't working. And as your questions rightly suggest, that indicates it's time for a change, a fundamental change in the Constitution.

And what I also find interesting is, and it's so frustrating because the Framers put mechanisms in place to change the Constitution, but what they didn't anticipate was that we would be, that there would be so many people, that there's so much infighting, so much their anticipation that there would be statesmanship, right. Where people would make the best choice for the country, not just for their party.

And I've told my class, my business law class, I said, I'm not sure that we'll see another constitutional amendment in my lifetime. Not because there shouldn't be one, right.

I mean, there should absolutely be constitutional amendments, but because I don't know how we can get, you know, two thirds of the of congressional legislature to agree on anything. And I don't see how we can get 3/4 of the of the state legislatures to ratify the amendment given how divided we currently are.

I think the severity of the constitutional crisis that we're currently in might be able to do it eventually, depending on how bad it gets. But I don't know that we're There yet, unfortunately, which is sad, because I think there's a lot.

There's quite a few constitutional amendments that need to take place to. To put a check on President Trump's power.

And, you know, I think that that's important that we address that, but I don't know that we're going to see one, honestly.

Well. Well, I agree, but there's a way around that.

Okay.

The framers of the Constitution actually faced exactly the same problem you're describing. The Articles of Confederation, the first national document we had, could only be amended if every state agreed. Right.

And the framers knew that wasn't possible. Just like you're rightly saying there's no way you can get two thirds of Congress. You couldn't pass the current Constitution.

No, there wouldn't be agreement.

It couldn't happen. Couldn't get two thirds of Congress, couldn't get three quarters of the states. The framers had exactly the same problem. Even worse, actually.

To amend the Articles of Confederation, which had failed. Country is falling apart. Right. Couldn't meet basic obligations like paying its bills, defending borders. They knew they couldn't do it.

Their task, they were sent. The delegates of the Constitutional Convention were sent with the. With the task of amending the Articles of Confederation.

They decided, as you rightly say about our current system, was impossible. Rather than giving up, they did something very creative, also very risky. They started over.

They said, rather than amending, we will create a new document. And rather than requiring all the states to approve it, we will have it just come up with a new rule. Three quarters of states can do it.

And they were right. The Constitution would not have passed under the existing rules. Only 11 of the 13 states approved of it at first.

So if they had used the existing rules, it wouldn't have worked. I would. I would take that as a model today, because we need amendments, we need change to. Our Constitution system has failed.

Their checks and balances have essentially disappeared, as you rightly suggest. And it can't be amended under the existing process. We need a new process now. What will that new process be? I don't. I mean, I'm. I don't suggest have.

I would not. No one person should say, but maybe some kind of popular ratification, some kind of vote from people rather than Congress or state legislatures.

But if we need a new Constitution, which we do, and it can't.

Be amended, as you rightly say, under the existing rules, then think like the framers did, try something else, come up with a new procedure, and it shouldn't be imposed on people. Of course, there have to be some agreement, just like the Constitution was ratified.

Right, Right.

By states under new procedure. But it's essential. If we don't do it, democracy is dead in the United States. And there are really. We see what's happening in Minneapolis.

There's a prospect of a really significant political violence. And it's already happening.

Right.

So you are right. Women need to do something. This is a.

This is a crisis that demands really creative thinking and the kind of risk taking that in ordinary times I would never support.

Right. I mean, we have a Constitution. We have a country for a reason, the way that it is.

And it's withstood quite a few issues over the history and course of time. But we have to. And I think that's a very interesting idea, what that would be.

I'm curious, and that's one of the things I hope to explore on my podcast is what type of ideas can we do in order to perpetuate the Union while, you know, limiting the powers and curbing the powers of the presidency. Right. You know, so that we don't end up with a dictator any more than he already is.

Correct.

Which is a different topic entirely. What you argue that emergencies expand presidential power. Are emergencies being exploited or are they being manufactured?

Oh, so I. I love history. I've loved history since I was a little kid. I grew up outside Boston, really immersed myself in the history of the area. It's hard not to.

It's all around you. You know, the Boston Tea Party's right nearby. There's this little traffic circle. It's funny how they market where the Boston Massacre happened.

That's not funny. There's only funny about that. But the way they. It's marked as a little dot in a traffic circle.

Oh, my.

You see all this stuff walking around, walking around Boston and, you know, that's really. That's something that, that I think about a lot.

So for the 250th year of the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the framers of the Constitution were not, you know, perfect by any stretch of the imagination. They supported slavery, protected by the Constitution. Women had no role in the Constitution. There's some things they really got right, in my view.

They rejected monarchy. They rejected what they called tyranny. We would call it dictatorship today. And they understood.

The Supreme Court said, no. Justice Jackson said, no, there are no kings here. Famous. The Constitution did not create kings.

They knew what emergencies were and they knew, as you you mentioned, about exploiting emergencies. They knew that emergency power would create a pretext for emergencies.

Right.

If I'm president and I know I can do whatever I want in an emergency, that gives me an incentive to say an emergency exists. The framers knew that too. And they. They did not give presidents any emergency power to the Constitution.

The only emergency power, Justice Jackson said, it's given to Congress. He's right. And even that is very limited. The Constitution says nothing about martial law, for instance.

It says nothing about suspending civil liberties. Some countries have rules like that. The United States does not. There are very limited emergency procedures.

For instance, Congress can call out the militia to respond to insurrection or invasion. Congress consists ben habeas corpus in an emergency.

That means that people can be held in jail without access to the courts for a limited period of time. Right. Those are limited powers. They're available only to Congress. And presidents have. The only power presidents have during emergency.

Very, very limited. I said they have none. They technically have. Have one small one. They can call Congress into special session. That's it.

They can't tell Congress what to do. They can't require Congress does anything. They can call in the special session. Lincoln did that at the beginning of the Civil War.

What presidents have done, though, as you your question readily suggests, Donald Trump in particular is really. I have a new book about this that makes this argument. Donald Trump has used emergencies, phony emergencies.

You know, the claim that there's insurrection on the streets of the United States or that there's one of his.

One of the people in the administration, I think it was Scott Bessant said was asked, what's the national emergency that justifies tariffs over Greenland? He said the national emergency is preventing a national emergency. That's Orwellian.

Yeah.

They're saying we need to declare an emergency to prevent an emergency. What does that mean? What it means is that they want power. Right.

Trump and the administration, and they know that if they say there's an emergency, this is a textbook tactic used by aspiring dictators that can be a path to consolidating power. It's what Putin did in Russia. It's what Erdogan did in Turkey. Most notoriously. There's only one Hitler. Trump's not Hitler, but Hitler did this.

And the jury's still out on whether this will work. He's using this to try to consolidate the kind of power that. Not just this I mentioned before.

It's a 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Trump is trying to go back. Before that, King George did not have absolute power.

There had been a civil war in England, and the power of the monarch had been reined in. Donald Trump is going.

Trying to go back to the 17th century, when British monarchs claimed that they were the divine representative of God on earth, and therefore the law did not apply to them. The Supreme Court has encouraged Donald Trump in that view.

Of course, in the Trump vs United States case, shockingly, the court said, actually, that's sort of true. Presidents can commit crimes. They can't be held accountable. That goes against everything we know about the US System.

This is one of the reasons we were talking before about a new constitution, one of the reasons why a new constitution is necessary. The US System cannot survive with a president who is immune from criminal prosecution.

Donald Trump sees that as an opportunity, and he is using phony emergencies, contrived emergencies, as a way to consolidate power both within the United States, on the streets of Minneapolis and abroad in Venezuela and Greenland. Right.

And I think it's interesting the way he's, you know, the way he's been doing it is. I've been thinking about this as. He's so brazen that. And it borders on. No, it is absurd. There is no borderline absurd. It's absurd.

And what I find interesting is if he toned it down, if he, you know, pulled it back a notch or two, there wouldn't be the people in the streets.

There wouldn't be the, you know, if he did it more subtly, if he did it, like, gradually, if he would have ramped up, you know, what he's using ice for, to that level, you know, the old.

You know. Water.

Yeah, boiling water. Exactly, exactly. Had. Had he have turned it up gradually, but instead, you know, today marks, you know, one year of him being in office.

And.

And if he would have turned it up gradually over that year, we would likely have not be seeing the significant pushback that we're seeing, because people would Be accustomed to it. So he's somewhat shooting himself in the foot by doing this as ostentatiously as he is.

And I guess that's both a good thing and a bad thing all at the same time. Right. We're seeing travesties happening with the Minnesota shooting, you know, where the young mother lost her life unnecessarily over turning. Right.

And this idea that she, and, and in fact, I was listening to him earlier today talk about how he, he accused the person screaming of being an opera singer.

Yeah. And that was her wife.

That it was her wife. And you're like, how, how do you not scream incessantly?

I don't know that if that happened to my wife that I wouldn't, I would have stop at this point. And that's been over a week ago. Right. Like screaming is natural, normal.

You just saw your wife murdered and opera singer and just it, he's so ostentatious about it. And if, if he reigned it in, you know, the, the protests would, would calm down.

The, you know, things would, would, it would become a new normal a lot easier. And I'm grateful that he hasn't figured that out yet. Right. Like, because I don't think he's capable of, I don't think he's, he's capable of that.

But I think if, and so it's like it's this double edged sword. Right. Like if he was more calm about it, he wouldn't get the pushback and he could probably get further with it.

But because he's treating it like a sprint rather than a marathon, you know, he's getting more substantial pushback, thankfully. And I think people are waking up from their, their political slumber that they were in.

You wanted to touch bases back with the unitary executive theory. Wanted to touch on that. Regarding the, what that is and what it means.

Yes. First, let me speak a brief point because what you're saying is so important. You're, you're talking about Trump as a reasonable person.

Right.

Trump's.

He's not like you're saying, well, you.

Know, if you reign things in a little more, if he, he can't do that.

No, that's.

It would be no Trump. Yeah. What's brought him this incredible success is he just does whatever he wants and says whatever he thinks.

And some people are really taken by that. But the problem, as you pointed out, I think it was, was it, I think Mario Cuomo said you, you campaign in poetry and you govern in prose.

Donald Trump campaigns in insanity and also governs in Insanity. Right. He just can't change. So you're right, it is sort of double edged sword. There's no Trump without that. But it also could be his undoing. Right.

The reason this is so dangerous though, the unitary executive theory. So the, the office of the presidency cannot, is not compatible with Donald Trump. It's. No, it, it just can't.

He can't, he's not, he's not fit for the task of being president. Even after almost a decade, you can see he's taken no time to learn some of the basics of the job.

He sent this, as you said, there's no word other than absurd. This really absurd and insane. Was it, I don't know if it was a text or a social media post to European.

I think it was the Prime Minister of Denmark, Norway. It sounded like, you know, the rantings of a toddler.

He said, Donald Trump said, you didn't give me the Peace Prize, Nobel Peace Prize, so I'm not going to be good anymore. Right.

I think it was Norway.

I think.

I'm pretty sure it was Norway.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, a man like that can't be president. Here's what's dangerous though. He comes into an office where all these powers have been built up for him.

And one of the most dangerous ideas I mentioned, Donald Trump's goal is to be kind of an American monarch or an American Putin. And the unitary executive theory is something that can be useful for him. The unitary executive theory, it's really at least two theories.

It's the idea that the president, because under the Constitution, the president has the executive power. The idea is, well, that means the president has all the executive power. Unlike the other branches of government. There's just one president. Right now.

We have 535 members of Congress, 435 in the House, 100 in the Senate. There's the Supreme Court with nine justices. That's not mandated by the Constitution, but that's how many there are now.

And there's a lot of lower federal courts. There's just one president. So the narrow unitary executive theory says that means the president is the executive branch.

Everything in the executive branch belongs to the President. They have all the executive power. People working in the executive branch are essentially the President's employees.

And the president can tell them exactly what to do. The president cannot be constrained in telling Them what to do. Laws cannot prevent the President from doing this.

The President can fire them when the President wants. That makes a lot of sense intuitively to people. The President's the boss. They're in charge. Right. I used to practice employment discrimination law.

It's like they're an employer. They can fire their employees. Well, actually, I'm your lawyer, too. I know you know this. This probably your area more than mine these days.

But employers don't have complete ability to do what they want with employees.

Right.

They can't discriminate against employees. They can't fire whistleblowers. And the same is true of presidents. A president can't fire someone in the executive branch for any reason.

What if, well, give you a really clear example. What if somebody gave the President a million dollars and said, I want you to fire the Secretary of Agriculture, It'll leave you a bribe.

Well, at least before, Trump versus the United States would clearly be a bribe. Now, I'm not sure, but the narrow unitary executive theory says that's okay. Presidents can do that.

The narrow unitary executive theory says if a president wants to shut down a criminal investigation, they can do it.

Right.

All this stuff would have been considered absurd in the past. That's what Nixon did. The Saturday Night Massacre.

Yeah.

The narrow unitary executive theory says that's okay. And Trump has been doing this. Trump's been using this as a way to fire people in the executive branch, shut down agencies.

The Humphreys executor case, which goes against the narrow unitary executive theory, says actually Congress can set some limits. The President's ability to. To fire executive branch officials.

The Supreme Court seems like it's preparing to overrule that precedent, which would give Trump, just like the Trump vs United States case, a lot of power to basically do what he wants. The broad unitary executive theory, I know it seems crazy, but it goes even further.

So the narrow unitary executive theory says the President controls the executive branch. The broad unitary executive theory says not only does the President control the executive branch, the President decides how far executive power goes.

If I'm president, and I think that executive power means that I can order torture. Torture by definition is illegal under US Law and international law.

But the broad unitary executive theory says I'm President, I decide what executive power is.

If I think torture is part of executive power, if I think listening to people's phone calls is part of executive power, if I Think going to war is part of executive power. I can do it. I'm giving these examples because. So the. The narrow unitary executive theory becomes. Comes out of the Reagan administration. Right.

Broad unitary executive theory comes out of George W. Bush.

Gotcha.

And they use these examples. I'm giving those examples they use. There was a lawyer named John Yu. He's a law professor. He was working the Justice Department at the time, and he.

He.

He really advanced his theory, although he really was. He was speaking for Dick Cheney. Vice President Cheney really was. Was really the. The main kind of advocate for this.

This theory that if you're president and you decide that something is part of your power, then you can do it and Congress can't stop you. Even if Congress passes a criminal law, you can set it aside. This pretty clearly is a rejection of the idea of checks and balances.

It really makes the president into a kind of king or dictator, and this is what Trump wants to do. So that both the narrow and even more so, the broad unitary executive theory can be useful to Donald Trump in. In presenting a legal argument. Right.

That what he's doing justified. And of course, the court sort of accepted this in Trump versus United States. That goes a long part of the way.

If the president can commit crimes and it's not illegal, well, that's. That's basically what the broad unitary executive theory is saying.

You're part of a system of checks and balances, of separated power, separation of power.

Nobody's above the law. We have the rule of law.

Right.

Right.

Advanced society. I don't. I mean, that. That's. That's their. Their goal. It is a project aimed at placing the President above the law.

And the Supreme Court's decision in Trump versus United States goes a long way toward getting Trump there. I'm not a fatalism. Does that mean he will succeed? No, there's been a lot of, as you suggested before, there's been a lot of reaction against this.

I'm not sure that people will accept this, but that's, that's what he's trying to do.

Right.

And you know, and I think, you know, the fact that he's trying to do it and that the, both Congress and the Supreme Court, I still can't understand why Supreme Court's letting him get away with it. You know, from a getting to we don't have kings in America yet.

They basically made him immune from criminal prosecution with the caveat that it was in the furtherance of his role. So they kind of gave him a king light version, you know what I mean? Like not quite, not quite very light, though.

Well, no, and he's not treating it like that, right? Like, he's taking out that, he's, he's conveniently editing out that in his brain to say he can do whatever he wants.

And, and I mean, you know what he's, he's doing a.

But what's interesting, and this is what I was going to say is that type of legislation or, I mean, sorry, that type of case would be indicative that he's not planning on going anywhere.

Right?

Because he knows once he's out, he's going to be prosecuted.

I, I mean, that's, I mean, that's why he ran for it again and after losing to Biden in the first place was he knew that there was his only way of saving his skin after his 34 count convictions of for, for fals. You know, all of these cases, that was the only way they were going to go away.

And I say that because you don't make a law like that and you don't treat the, you know, he tears down the west wing of the White House. You don't build a ballroom if you're planning on leaving it. Right? Like, you don't. That's just who he is.

Because you don't think that the next party is going to be in power, right? You don't create a unitary executive if you think that the next party is going to have power. You just don't. Right.

Because you would know they would use that power the same way you would or at Least similar or, you know, that was one of the problems with Biden was that he was very restrained. And that happened with Merrick Garland. He was trying to restore the dignity and honor of the White House. And Trump just run roughshod all over that.

You know, he's fighting fire with a garden hose while we've got a five alarm blaze going on with Trump being who he is. And Biden was basically using a garden hose to try to put it out. And that isn't to say Biden did a lot of great things, in my opinion.

Not a perfect president. Not going to say there is such a thing. But the idea being that he was attempting to try to restore this normalcy, this honor to the thing.

And it turned out that there weren't enough people that were able to get on board with that to keep, you know, there was enough snafus. Right. Like whether you like Kamala or not. You know, the, the things that were presented were difficult for the average person to swallow.

And you know, and knowing that Trump was a known quantity at that point, I use that term with quotes known because he's certainly more unhinged in this term than he was in his first term by far, you know, and I guess that leads in a good segue to why do crisis make democracy weaker instead of stronger?

He said he's talking to his voters. He said, you won't have to vote again after this.

Yeah, he did.

He meant that he was running your right to stay out of jail, but he intends to stay in power as long as he can. Again, does that mean he will succeed? Not necessarily. But is that what he wants? Of course he says it. He just said it last week.

Yep.

He was talking about the midterms and he said, you know, presidents lose, their party loses midterm elections. And he said, why do we have, you know, why do we even have elections? Come to think of it, why should we have an election at all?

He is deadly serious about that. He doesn't want there to be more elections again. I don't. No one should give the man more credit than he is due. It is not guaranteed. He.

I don't expect that to happen. I don't think he's going to erase elections. That's what he wants to do. That's his goal. It's important to, to know that.

So why do crises make the system weaker rather than stronger, as you said. Yeah, a lot of it depends on the person. So the framers of the Constitution were very concerned about giving one person too much power. They had.

They rejected monarchy. They all rejected monarchy, even Hamilton, who took the broadest view of executive power. He said, that won't work here.

He respected the British system. He said, it will not work for us.

Right.

And many of the framers did not want the Articles. Confederation did not have an executive branch because they were so worried about creating a new king.

So when the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation and created the office of the Presidency, there were many of the framers who were worried. Patrick Henry, George Mason. Patrick Henry said, the Constitution squints toward monarchy.

Basically, what he meant is, once you have a president, that president will just aggrandize power. They'll become a king.

And the one thing that made some of these skeptics more comfortable with the idea of the presidency is they knew George Washington would be the first president. Everyone knew that he was going to be the first president, and they trusted him. And he used power responsibly. Again, just like you said before.

You're talking about Biden. This is true Washington, too. No, no one's perfect. Washington was a slave owner.

Right.

This was not. Not a man who was, you know, he. He more than a share of flaws, but one thing he did very well is he understood the danger of power.

He said, when he was elected president, he said, I understand. This is a phrase he used all the time. He said, I understand that I walk on untrodden ground.

What he meant by that is he understood what he did with set precedent, and he was very careful. When he came to power, he had a copy of the Constitution. He took notes on it.

He didn't respond to it by laying siege to cities in Pennsylvania or going to people's houses and pulling them out, as is happening in Minneapolis, or shooting people in the face. He followed the law.

He followed.

There was a law that Congress had passed. It's a basis for the Modern Insurrection Act. And he followed the law. The law required that he issue a proclamation calling on the rebels to disperse.

And he followed that, and he acted very judiciously. He pardoned the rebels in Pennsylvania after the rebellion had been quashed. He was not a man who sought vengeance, unlike Donald Trump.

So it really depends on how power is used. If you have somebody who's responsible, as most presidents have been, by the way, most presidents have used emergency power responsibly.

The problem is it just takes one. When you get one president who abuses power, who sees power in personal terms, how can I use this to advance my goals?

Which, as you said, for Donald, Trump is staying in office as long as he can, making as much money as possible for himself and his friends and his family. All it takes is one, and if you don't stop that person, that's it. We've Trump is not the first person to try this.

Nixon did something very similar, right? Nixon had a similar theory of emergency power. Nixon said he talked about this in the famous Frost Nixon interviews the interviewer.

I always forget his first name. I think it was David Frost, the British journalist. He died fairly recently, and Frost was talking to Nixon.

This was three years after Nixon left office. And he said to Nixon, you committed these crimes. How can you justify this?

And Nixon infamously said, well, now it's sort of different after Trump versus the United States. But at the time was infamous. Nixon said, well, when the president does it, that means it's not illegal. At the time, that was shocking.

And Nixon said, well, I haven't read the whole Constitution. That's shocking, too. Nixon was a lawyer and he was president. He said, I haven't actually read the Constitution.

But he said, my understanding is that in an emergency, presidents can do certain things that normally would be illegal. And Nixon said that, I was just doing what Lincoln did. Lincoln faced the Civil War. I was facing a civil war, too.

What Nixon meant by that was the debate over Vietnam. He said that was our own kind of civil war. And Nixon said that justified my setting aside the law. So you. Most presidents are not Nixon.

Most presidents are not Trump. Most presidents understand that they can't just make up an emergency. Nixon said that the student protesters were fighting a civil war.

Trump says that there's insurrection on the streets in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. most presidents don't do that. And so the system usually has actually worked pretty well. But it's depended on the restraint of one person, the president.

And it's also depended on when a president does go too far, like Nixon, it depends on people in their party. Republicans, for Nixon or for Trump, setting Limits, which they did for Nixon, but which they have not for Trump.

And I wonder if there's a line that they will. And so far they've shown that there isn't one.

But I'm wondering if Greenland might be that line, because there have been some senators who've come out against it. And I think that's telling because, I mean, heck, Mitch McConnel McConnell, who has enough responsibility on this one to.

To, like, he owns so much of what we're going through right now that it's insane. But that's a different topic.

He, you know, he even came out against it, even when he had come out and said, oh, you know, we can't convict Trump or we can't remove Trump because that's the job of the criminal courts to decide.

Yes. He said, we have a criminal justice system.

And you're like, but we're not. The impeachment is the only remedy for the president. Right.

Because a felon, as we have, unfortunately, my wife was incredulously asking me, how is someone who's a convicted felon allowed to run for president? How is that not conceptualized in the Constitution? I said, it's not, and it's not. They did. Never thought that this was going to be a thing.

And Mitch McConnel just kind of was like, nah, I'm good. Like, with. With not doing it, even though that would have been the mechanism, that would have been the thing. But, I mean, he had opportunities to.

To do the right thing years before with, with Barack Obama when he, you know, didn't allow him to have Merrick Garland on the court, which, you know, looking back, would have been so much better because he's. He was too. He was too conservative. And, And I mean that in the. The prosecution factor. Yeah. Temperament. Thank you. I just want to be clear.

He's not conservative in politically speaking, but at the same time, he did not act as fast as he could have to have gotten Trump in front of a tribunal to have made that happen. Is it completely Merrick Garland's fault?

No, because there was a lot of things that went right, and I mean right for Trump and wrong for the country and vice versa. Right. Things that went wrong for the country. Kamala's very short run, she didn't have a full Runway to do it.

They missed some policy opportunities that they had exploited at the beginning and then failed to kind of continue. So there's a lot of blame to go around for a lot of different people for why we have Trump. But at the end of the day, rewind six, seven years.

And, you know, if Trump didn't have three justices on the Supreme Court, we wouldn't have. There are things that wouldn't have gone his way or most likely would not have gone his way.

And so Mitch McConnell got kind of what he wanted, but now it's backfiring because now Trump's being Trump. Trump is doing the Trump thing that he is really good at, and that's, you know, chaos and destruction. He doesn't know how to build.

It's all about Trump and what makes him look good. I mean, he just literally got a fake peace prize. He got a real peace prize in a fake way because his ego demanded it. Right?

I mean, like, there's just. The insanity does not seem to be ceasing anytime soon.

It's like each day you wake up and you're going, okay, what crazy thing's going to happen today? Yes, it's insane. You, you are critical of both parties, which, you know, understandably. So they have both parties.

I, I don't think that they ever meant to. To be so entrenched, you know, from, from the beginning. But this is where we are, right?

We have two parties, two strong parties, kind of, if you will.

Their interests seem to be, you know, seemingly parallel to each other at times, you know, and keeping themselves in power rather than doing what's right for the people seems to be more of a common theme, even though the Democrats currently aren't doing the wrongest of things. I don't think. I don't remember if that's a word or not, but you know what I mean.

So why do you think Congress remains so passive regardless of who's president? I mean, they kind of, you know, they'll sock it to one and kind of, you know, they don't. It just doesn't ever seem to move in the positive direction.

I'm not sure that it's. Regardless of who's president.

You mentioned before the important question, the question of the moment for the last decade has been, is there any line Donald Trump can cross that's too much? He infamously said, I could shoot someone at Fifth Avenue, wouldn't matter. So far, that's been true. You mentioned maybe Greenland is outlined. Maybe.

I'm not sure. I mean, some Republican members of Congress are saying that, but why not do something now? They're right.

Donald Trump orders an illegal, unconstitutional invasion of Greenland, an ally of the United States, and destroys a NATO alliance. This is so wildly illegal in a constitutional and such a bad idea. Right, of course.

Of course you should be removed from office, but they should be doing it now.

Yeah.

So is there a line for Republicans? I don't know. Is there a line for Democrats? Yes, yes. So, yeah, we've seen that. I mean, I'll give you an example. Andrew Cuomo.

Yeah.

Andrew Cuomo is governor of New York. He's somebody who has national aspirations. When there was an investigation of him for sexual harassment, it was. He was trying to cover it up.

He was trying to shut it down. The same kinds of things that Donald Trump does.

But he's not Donald Trump.

What's that?

I said, but he's not Donald Trump. That's the.

He's not Donald Trump. And the Democratic Party is not the Republican Party. Right?

Yeah.

When Cuomo said all these women are all just making up and shut down the investigation, Democrats came together.

All the Democrats in New York, all of them, Schumer and Gillibrand and all the members of Congress, members of House, they all said, no, this guy's got to go. He was going to fight. There was a question like, could he be impeached or removed from office in New York at the state level?

And it wasn't clear that was going to happen. And, you know, if he were Donald Trump and the Democrats were the Republican Party, he could just dug in his heels and he would have survived.

Democrats, Democrats forced him out. They said, you must go, and he resigned and his political career is over. So I think Democrats have lines. Are Democrats perfect? Of course not.

I think there should be wholesale reform of the Democratic Party. I think Democratic leaders like Schumer and like Jeffries in the House and King Jeffries are not up to the task. They.

They did what was necessary for Cuomo, but they. They don't know what to do right now with Trump, with Minneapolis and with Greenland. But they are different than Republicans. It's a very low bar.

Right.

I mean, it doesn't take much to differentiate yourself from a party that has put itself in thrall to one person and has told him he can do whatever he wants. But Democrats are not that party. I think they made clear there was a line with Cuomo. And I think.

I can't say, of course it's hypothetical, but if there were ever a Democratic nominee or president similar to Trump, I don't think Democrats would tolerate it.

In fact, I don't even think at this point, given where the Democratic Party stands, I don't think someone like that would be able to get the nomination. The closest example we have is Andrew Cuomo, and they forced him out. And in his career.

So I don't think the Democrats, I don't, I don't think it's, it's not a two side story. There's. There. The Democratic Party has enormous flaws. Lots of things are wrong with it.

But what differentiates them from the Republicans is most Democrats have a basic sense of decency. There are some things that are too much for them. We haven't seen that from Republicans. When we do, they're out.

When Liz Cheney says, wait a second, Donald Trump cannot be let near the White House, she gets primary and she's out. When Marjorie Taylor Greene says, wait a second, I thought we were opposed to pedophilia and covering up for pedophiles.

She breaks with the party on that. She's out. This is somebody who's one of the most devoted Trump supporters.

But the Republican Party just, there's no room in the Republican Party for anyone who wants to set limits on Donald Trump. The Democratic Party does have room for that there.

When Al Franken, when he was there was that scandal that came about, Franken, the picture of him, he was like sort of mocking this woman.

Right.

Sort of a sexually offensive way. He was forced out. Democrats do that, Democrats don't. There are lines that Democrats will draw.

There's, there's no line for Republicans when it comes to Donald Trump that we have seen as yet. You rightly said the important question is will we see one? Is Greenland. That. That's. I wake up every day and I ask that.

Yeah, I, I guess more to the point is I wish I would see more than strongly worded letters, you know.

Right.

That is, I guess the passive passivity that I'm was referring to was. Yes, but you know, look, I get that they can't impeach. Right. But that doesn't mean Democrats. Yeah.

That doesn't mean that they can't bring articles, you know, constantly. Let it be said on the, you know, get it in the record. Right. Get it in the record as much as many times as humanly possible.

Show.

The Democrats need to show us that they're fighting for us.

Not just strongly worded letters because, and I get anybody that's paying attention half of a, you know, half of a second knows that, okay, Republicans control the House, Republicans control the Senate, and Republicans control, you know, the executive branch as well as the, as scotus. So is there likely going to be movement in that category? No, I'm not. Nobody is, you know, naive enough to think that.

But the fact that they're not even willing to try in Any substantial way is, is what?

The passivity that I was, I guess I was referring to was that like, you know, if, if we're, if they, if, if he is as big of a threat as he appears to be, okay, qed. They should be fighting proportionally to the threat that he is. But what's happening is instead they're writing strongly worded letters.

And so the people that aren't quite as politically involved as average is going, oh, well, if they're not that worried about it, why should I be?

Of course, it makes no sense.

It doesn't, it doesn't. And I think that's what's the most frustrating for those of us that are politically involved and that are paying attention to things. Things.

Because, you know, you get other people that you, I talk to that aren't as politically involved and they're like, what's the big deal? What's going on? I don't understand it.

And I start relaying all this stuff and their faces go slack jawed and they, they're looking at me like, wait, what?

And I'm like, Because the Democrats aren't saying it every opportunity they get to bring the, the heat, you know, the, the, the, the messaging as well as the articles. Could you imagine it would be in every news cycle if they were impeaching him almost every day? Right.

If they brought in articles every time he did some inane something, you know, they would get the news cycle and would be like, yes, we're fighting. We see the significance. We have. This, you know, that would be on the news rather than what insane thing did he do today? Right.

We would be seeing the articles being, you know, brought before the House and you know, knowing that it's not going anywhere. You know, people would catch that. We understand that. But I gu.

It's frustrating to be on the sidelines looking in and going, why aren't you doing this? That's your job. Right. It was the weakest Congress in what, I don't know, 200 years. It's got the least done of any Congress.

And yet we couldn't have been doing that.

Right.

Like, okay, so you're not busy passing legislation.

What are you doing?

Why are we not doing this? And I think that's a question that each member of Congress needs to answer to its constituents.

Would, would you argue that, that, you know, Congress's ceding of power and, and seemingly passivity to this. Would you say it's cowardice, convenience or, or just how the system is set.

Up depends on the member.

Okay.

Some of Them are cowards. Some of them. I mean, we know this. After January 6th, there was reporting that some members of Congress, they would not be named. This is.

Republican members were afraid. They said, we. We know Donald Trump went too far on January 6th, but we can't vote to impeach. Our families will be threatened.

Now, I. I empathize with them. I don't want my family to be threatened either. But that. That's cowardice. They're not up to the task.

Yeah.

So some of them are cowards. Some of them really like this. I mean, there are Republican members of Congress who love what's happening. Some of them want to be close to power.

He just loves being close to power. It depends on the person. Some of them just aren't up to the task. You were talking about Democrats.

Yeah.

I think they still don't know what to make of Trump. Really. Like Chuck Schumer. Schumer just wants. He's a normal guy, and he wants to do normal things. Things aren't normal anymore.

Right.

If Donald Trump is as dangerous as people say, and don't take it from me, Liz Cheney says this.

Right.

Joe Walsh, a conservative member from, I think, Illinois.

No.

He has a talk show.

Yeah.

I remember seeing that and thinking, whoa, okay, Joe Walsh is now. He joined the Democratic Party and campaign for Kamala Harris.

Yeah.

Not because he became less conservative, but because he had the courage to stand up to Donald Trump.

Yeah.

He said, yeah, this guy is really dangerous. Sorry, I can't support him anymore. So if Joe Walsh is showing people, this is serious. He says, yeah, this is.

Donald Trump is every bit as dangerous as people are saying. Chuck Schumer is glad to. I just saw a picture of him the other day shaking hands with Marco Rubio and smiling. With him down, Chuck Schumer.

And many of these Democrats in the Senate and the House are glad to interact with Trump and they think they can make deals with him and they vote for his nominees.

Yeah.

So you're right. Democrats are in power. But if There is somebody nominated to federal courts or to a cabinet position. Democrats don't have to vote for them.

Right.

Why would you vote? Marco Rudio, I think his vote was 99 0. They all voted for him. Like, why are you doing that?

If Donald Trump really is trying to become an American Putin or American monarch, why would you give him anything? And if you do give him something, people don't pay a lot of attention, as you said, are going to say, it can't be that bad.

Right.

Because they're treating like he's reasonably normal. I understand that They're. They just. I, I don't think. I think Schumer just doesn't know what to do.

Yeah, he doesn't understand.

Some of the Democrats do. Few. There are a few. Ocasio Cortez, I think, is pretty good on this. Chris Murphy, Connecticut. In the Senate, they're pretty good.

But to be fair, it, you know, who would have thought this would be something we'd be dealing with in American politics? But I think the reality is if you can't take on the task, if you're not up to the moment, you should step aside.

Yep.

They're not, they're not capable of dealing with this. And you're absolutely right. They just aren't up to it.

You know, what I find interesting is that, and this is, I think probably the biggest issue I have with Congress right now is that they could put a stop to Trump any minute. Like, they literally. Trump only has power because Congress lets them have power. Right. Like. Like, straight up.

Right.

Yes. He was elected. Okay, I get that. But if, if 535 members of Congress came together and said, no, we are done. Right. We are done being Trump's puppets.

We are done with the cowardice. We're going to.

We could have an end to that presidency in a minute and we could start over and do kind of what we were talking about earlier, start the program and do it differently. And it is infuriating that there are 535, like, people, not all of them cowards, not all of them issues, but that, that this could.

And Trump wouldn't have any power.

That's the thing, is he can't primary all of them, even the ones in the Republican Party that would, that, you know, okay, there's going to be those sycophants, right? There is. I mean, you've got the Mark Wayne Mullins and the Jim Jordans and the, you know, you get the sycophants and I get those.

Those aren't ever going to oppose Trump, Trump. But everybody short of that, right?

Everybody short of the sycophants could stand up to Trump right now, and there's nothing Trump could do about it because he cannot primary them. All. Right? He doesn't have the budget for it. He doesn't have the pull for it.

There's enough people that have defected away from Trump to make it so that he could not affect that type of change. And plus, by the time if they did it today, by the time the midterms came around, he wouldn't be there anyway.

They don't need to worry about primary him because.

Or him primaring them because he wouldn't be there to do anything once he loses the spotlight, which he's going to do whatever he can to stay in the spotlight. I get that he's a malignant narcissist. That's just who he is.

But once he no longer has the power of the presidency, his power, his ability to affect anything greatly diminishes. MAGA is not that powerful. As powerful as what. What people are, are pretending that they are. Because you see that in the people that are defecting.

Right? You see the people that are like, hey, this is a bridge too far. I didn't vote for people. I didn't vote for a war with NATO.

I didn't vote for women getting shot in the street. I mean, I'm not saying there aren't those that are the extreme that are saying, oh, yeah, I vote for.

Voted for this.

There are those people, but for the most part, they're decent people that are this short of those people. They're like, I didn't vote for this. I'm out. I didn't vote for higher tariff food. I didn't vote for this craziness.

I voted for change and I'm getting nothing.

And so it saddens me that our country is being held hostage by a madman that could have be prevented or could have been completely avoided if we'd have had people that were willing to.

The pros are the, the regular people are not part of the party.

Right, Right.

So they could just shake off the government like a horse shaking off a fly.

Right.

The Congress has the power. They could do it anytime. And actually even more so. So of course they should impeach and remove them from office.

And they could do it, but we know that won't happen. There are other things that happen, another thing that could happen that should happen. Democrats should shut down the government.

Republicans needed Democratic votes to keep the government open. Democrats shouldn't give them any votes. Why is it one penny for ice?

Why are you giving money to thugs who are going through the street of Minneapolis, streets of Minneapolis and other U.S. cities. They're breaking people's windows. They pulled a disabled woman out of her car the other day.

Yep.

They shot another woman in the face. They shot a man on the lake. They pulled an old man who, from his home. You probably saw this picture with a blanket.

He said it was his grandson's blanket over his shoulders. He had Crocs on and shorts. Yep. In the Minnesota weather. He's a U.S. citizen. They took him out of his house. Why is there one penny for that?

Right.

Democrats don't have to, they don't have to give a single vote for anything Donald Trump wants, whether it's a nominee, whether it's funding ice, whether it's keeping the government open. And they should not. And they. Yeah, of course, you're right. Congress should stop this whole thing.

But that takes Republicans, Democrats, even though they're not in power, there are things they can do and there are things they should do.

Right. Nick should do that. There was actually ICE fired a pepper ball or pepper ball or pepper or gas into a car that had a six month old in it and six.

Month old kid, he stopped breathing.

Yeah, yeah.

His mother had to resuscitate him.

I mean, just monstrous.

You know his mother administered cpr. Yeah, that's right. I heard another story. A six year old child was wandering on the streets, I think it was in New Jersey. Her father had been taken.

Six year old child, she's wandering on the streets and she's saying, poppy, Poppy, where's my father?

Right.

This is monstrous, monstrous stuff. Why would you give any support for this?

Did you know that they have only 47 hours of training?

47, that's numbers. The numbers chosen specifically because they're honoring the, the course.

Yeah. They're honoring 40.

Yeah. These are, I mean, you see the videos. There was. I saw one guy. It's too much to keep track of, but there's some of the pieces.

Come back to your talk about this, Right. You probably saw this, too. One of these ICE officers is speaking to a protester and says, didn't you learn anything from what happened?

Right.

He was talking about.

Good.

He basically was saying, shut up or you're gonna get shot, too.

Right.

These are thugs. And, and they know. They know that they can do what they want. There was a. I think the DHS put out the statement. There's some.

There's some government statement that essentially said it was directed to ice, and it said, you can do what you need to do. If you. If people are in your way, do what you want. Is this, this. This officer who shot Renew. Good. Is he going to be prosecuted? Of course not.

Certainly not by the federal government. The state authorities look into it, be able to do something, but they feel like Donald Trump himself, that, that the law does not apply to them.

Yeah. J.D. vance said that they. That ICE officers have absolute immunity.

And.

And I was like, hello.

No, he's a lawyer.

I know. And not even. I mean, like, Yale should call and get their degree back. I'm not even kidding on that one.

Like, I mean, I am, but I'm not all at the same time, because I, I mean, you. To.

To say that is just such a blatant disregard of his education and the honor that, you know, that every attorney that swears an oath to the Constitution takes. And this idea that you can just say that and that people are just going to believe it. I mean, it's such a thing.

Chris, you've given me gracious amounts of your time. Before you go, what brings you hope right now? Because we've talked about a lot of things that aren't very hopeful.

What brings you, hopefully. So thanks for asking that. I talk when I do events and I talk about this. I get that question a lot. I'm not a defeatist. This won't last forever.

It doesn't mean we can sit by and do nothing. But I look at things like, there are people in the streets in Minneapolis who are in a restrained way responding to this. They're not using violence.

Trump wants them to so we can say, look, there's violence. They're out there with their neighbors. They're protecting their neighbors. You maybe saw this video.

There was this guy who's in the street who said, I don't come out and protest. It's not what I do, but I have to be here.

Right.

Like, I'm an older white guy. That's me, too. Who said, like, this is crazy. Yeah. So lots of people. The Republican Party has lost its moral compass.

Donald Trump Never had one to begin with, but lots of Americans still have it. Lots of Americans see what's happened, and they are horrified. And I was.

I have a friend in Minneapolis who I was emailing with, and she was telling me what she's experiencing and how people are responding, how our communities are responding. The other aspiring dictators, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Fujimori in Peru, were much more popular than Donald Trump is.

Even when you reject democracy, Vladimir Putin worries about what people think. He's not holding free elections, but he knows he's unpopular. That's a problem. Donald Trump is deeply unpopular. I don't mean to overstate that.

Does that mean he's going to be removed from office? No, certainly not anytime soon. But that makes it much harder for him to accomplish what he wants to do.

And the answer was yes. I mean, the Republicans and Trump are using federal law enforcement to intimidate their opponents.

But there will be elections this year, too, and I expect them to go ahead.

And I think there's a significant chance that Democrats will be able to win those elections and be able to have an opportunity to set more limits on Donald Trump. So things are really, really bleak. But they're certainly. They could be a lot worse. And I think there are.

I know there are tons and tons of people who are horrified by what's happening. And even more than that, we're taking action. And really, I mean, the people in Minneapolis who are taking action, it's really courageous stuff.

Yeah. And I think that that's so important that we.

We microdose as one of the podcasts that I follow, Hope you know, because while it is bleak, it's important to remember that while it's dark, that doesn't mean that there's not some stars in the skies. And I think absolutely, you know, the. The killing of.

Of Renee can be a point of us to look at and see introspection and look at it and say, is this the country that we want to live in anymore? And standing up and making sure that we're heard? I think that that's one of the most important parts.

That's one of the reasons for this Podcast is to add my voice to the people and to make sure that not only am I heard, but other people are heard. Because I think there's such a.

You know, the more the truth gets out, the less likely that the lies and the hate can be propagated and heard throughout the rest of the world. And to let the people know, especially the immigrants, they're not alone. Right.

That there are people willing to speak out and use their voice for good in that respect.

I just saw there was a guy quoted in the New York Times who's an immigrant. He said exactly that. That he's a guy in Minneapolis who owns a small grocery store, I think.

And he said, I want to say thank you to the people, other. Other Americans who are standing up for me. He appreciates what they're doing.

And an important point you just made is we could not have this conversation in Russia, right? Or North Korea or China. That's really important every time, right? You're doing this podcast, having these discussions.

That is in and of itself an important thing. And I find it. It every time I have conversations like this, it makes me feel better because we should not take that for granted.

You can't do that everywhere.

Yeah. And that's true. And I think that the fear, though, is that we're sliding, we're backsliding into authoritarianism and fascism.

And I think people are scared.

But in fact, Heather Cox Richardson and Tim Snyder, who are both authoritarian and history professors, suggest that, you know, power for the fascist is weakest at the beginning and at the end. Right. And so now is the time to speak up.

And now is the time that while he's consolidating power, that we're doing everything we can to keep him from consolidating too much power. And we will have a better battle on the back end. Right. We'll have an easier battle on the back end. Or no battle at all, perhaps.

I mean, like, you know, Martin, maybe this is as far as it goes, and we end up in a much better situation than we are now. Chris, thank you so much for your time. I sincerely appreciate it. Where can people find you? And tell me about your new book.

Love to learn a little bit about that.

Oh, the new book, it's called above the the Evolution of Emergency of Presidential Power. And basically what it is, it's a history of. What does the Constitution say about emergency power?

Not very much, as it turns out, how a president's used it, usually with restraints. And why is what Donald Trump is doing now so dangerous?

He's Trying to use him, Receive power in the way that British monarchs did in the 17th century as a way of absolute power and. Sorry, I couldn't hear you. It was first thing. Were you saying, where can I be reached? Is that where you're asking? Yeah.

If someone were gonna get in touch with you, how was. How could they get in touch?

Oh, yeah, I'm on Blue Sky.

Okay.

Chris Edelson at Blue Sky. It's also fun if people want to. What else?

Well, actually, I guess that's the best way, because I. Twitter has just become kind of a cesspool, so Blue Sky's the best place to find me. Chris Edelson at Blue Sky. I'm teaching at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. You can find me there too.

But Blue sky is kind of the place where I'm most active.

Okay. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks. Everything you're saying is making me think you are all over this in the best possible way.

Good, good. I'm glad to add my voice to those and pay attention and help spread the truth. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Well, that was Chris Edelson, a constitutional law scholar and civic engagement engineer, if you will. Incredibly grateful for his insight input into the executive power and to the government.

And that just because things are bleak right now doesn't mean that they have to stay that way. And we have a lot of reason to hope. We have people that are working hard to make sure that.

That our immigrant population is taken care of as much as it's possible.

And so I invite you to see how you can involve yourself and help and learn more about the Constitution and learn more about your rights under the Constitution. Thank you, and have a good day.

Sam.