Do you think there are Texans that are at this point getting so turned off by Elon Musk trying to buy the state?

Look, it's not just left versus right at this point.

It's bottom versus top.

It's elites versus average people.

And this is wave versus money.

I mean, you to us at a certain point.

I mean, when one individual is spending over one hundred million dollars in one state election, that same individual, by the way, is spending seven figures in a variety of house races around the country.

So why give Todd Blanch this opening to hold up an election over this?

their names on this stuff, you're saying? The

career attorneys don't want their names on these documents.

The law that they cite is the so-called Motor Vehicle Registration Act, the Motor Voter Act, the National Voter Registration Act.

That law does not create any specific cause of action whatsoever.

And they cite a cherry-picked portion of the purpose of it, the innocuous and frankly wonderful purpose to ensure that America's elections are free and fair and all of that.

And then they... tack onto it and attempt to claim that what Alaska has done.

And let me be crystal clear.

You know, to that point, James, do you think part of the intention with a case like what they're pursuing against Ilhan Omar is less about their, you know, the merits, once again, the possibility, although we know they have the perhaps intention there to denaturalize or like whether or not that is successful? Is it about sending a message to other immigrants of color who have been denaturalized in the country or have been naturalized in the country about speaking out about their political opinions, taking part in high stakes elections, rebuking this administration in any way? Do you think it's less actually about Omar herself and about something bigger?

What did this guy do in the first place?

Well, the irony here is that the underlying crime involved bribery.

So you have a scenario where you want to you have an individual who's trying to get out from under significant corruption charges and is in theory, you know, we don't know and we have to stipulate that.

But it certainly looks like we are using bribery to get out from underneath corruption charges.

And to me, I mean— Bribery to get out from bribery?

Exactly.

I mean, look, her defense is—she's entitled to the defense.

She says it was disclosed.

Do you have anything new for us? Anything in particular that has come up in the last couple of weeks?

Well, the thing that I would say to piggyback on what David just said, this is not just coming from Democrats.

It's certainly not just coming from us.

Let's remember that in 2020, Donald Trump said that he regretted not having the National Guard seize voting machines.

So the notion that this is just, you know, sky is falling, chicken little, you know, fear mongering.

He's actually said that he regrets not doing the thing that that democracy advocates are afraid he might do.

So I think that that is a serious, serious point.

What?

So James, what do 28 criminal cases represent in a sea of 20,000 names?

In a sea of 20,000 names, they represent a tiny, tiny fraction.

And the reality is, and John just alluded to this, so L.A. County staff reviewed a sample.

They took 200 of the individual records that DHS identified for them in the so-called 20,000.

Out of those 200 ballots, and this is in the affidavit of Maria Flores, who's one of the assistant county registers there in L.A. County, out of those 200 that they chose as a sample, a random sample, 112 of those were individuals whose registrations were canceled or inactive.

They were never mailed a ballot.

39% of them show a U.S. birthplace, and 71% of them have no voting history whatsoever.

So what due process will be available to people who are at the center of all this and may have no remedy before Election Day?

Yeah.

I mean, you said in the end of the last segment, bulldoze first and ask for permission later.

And that's essentially what this is.

This is not about a golf course.

It's about a golf course, but it's about something much bigger than that, Nicole.

It's about process.

It's about separation of powers.

I mean, people have now enough evidence that those words lead to threats.

Right, because you have the lawyer saying, this is conceptual, there's no plan that's being implemented, and then the president is going out there and saying the opposite.

For months and months, the government told the court that there is no plan, that there are just concepts of an idea, right? And then on Sunday, it's a detailed plan, there's a map involved, there's a rerouting of the golf course involved, there's an elimination of another golf course, elimination of things like bike paths, etc., all of which is relatively small stakes for On the scale of national civilization and catastrophe, right? We're talking about trees on a golf course.

We can keep that in perspective.

But at the same time, when the government is affirmatively ignoring orders from a court, merely even in order to keep the court appropriate.

prized before it does something.

Judge Reyes had not ruled that the government couldn't build a golf course.

Judge Reyes has not stood in the way of this project except to say that the government needs to provide notice and opportunity for the plaintiffs to be heard.

Because we are all the trees just getting trampled by incredible executive overreach.

What did you think of what he said last night?

Let's be clear.

Kari Lake lost at trial.

She had the opportu- She had as much process as anyone could ever get.

She presented witnesses.

She presented evidence.

She lost at trial.

If they want to denaturalize her, what do they have to find?

Can you say, "I practice corporate law" if you did not pass the bar exam?

No.

Flat out no.

Uh, you can say, "I graduated from law school." You can say, "I'm trained in the law." You cannot hold yourself out as an attorney, as a lawyer.

And to be clear, she went further even than just those clips.

She, she held herself out as the general counsel of Rick Grenell's, uh, organization, Fix California.

Work as attorney there?

You, you could take the...

How can the administration keep defying court orders?

It's a really good, it's a really important question, and it's a question that goes, not to be pedantic, but all the way back to Marbury v. Madison.

I mean, Marbury versus Madison, John Marshall was faced with essentially a choice as to whether or not he could order Thomas Jefferson, who was from essentially the opposite political party as John Marshall, and James Madison, who was in, who was Madison, uh, Jefferson's Secretary of State, to do what they didn't wanna do.

Well, we have generally...

That, that goes all the way back to the founding of the Republic.

We've generally found a way to not have that kind of a conflict for the last 240 years, and now we are having it over and over again.

Um, i- when the, if the Democrats win, and if the Democrats retake the White House, does this stuff get addressed?

I hope so.

That's right.

Legally speaking, I think she's probably in the clear.

But politically speaking, these are very, very damaging.

And the reason I think, legally speaking, she's probably in the clear...

Although just asking could complete the act of bribery from her perspective.

The fact is what she was really selling under the Supreme Court's very, very sharply narrowed doctrine of bribery or what we call honest services fraud, which is the formal name for bribery.

A case called McDonald out of Virginia is the latest chapter in this.

What stage of this retribution tour that we have been talking about since the very beginning of this second term, what stage of the tour have we now reached?

W- would that be the crux of a, a perjury charge?

I, I mean, it could be part of an overall recipe for a perjury, perjury charge.

And listen, i- if...

I, I think there is a legal point here.

Even, even January 6th i, h- was as horrible as it was, and the erasure of January 6th, including the pardons, including the commutations, is horrible, as is the targeting of those who investigated the, uh, uh, the horror of January 6th.

That doesn't absolve anyone who was involved in pointing out the horrors of January 6th.

And Cassidy Hutchinson, as you said, was a major, major witness.

Yeah.

Um, what, what's at risk when someone like that is inside the Department of Justice?

A lot is at risk, and, you know, an economist would call this an adverse selection problem, which is to say you've lost a lot of good people, and you've brought in a, a, a lot of people with some suspect resumes.

We'll put it that way.

A movie buff would call this the rogue's gallery at the Star, at the Star Wars bar scene, and that is not what you want [laughs] out of the Department of Justice.

Personnel is policy.

It's this phrase as old as politics.

It's a phrase as old as professionalism, and if you have those kinds of people in these positions...

And the fact that these people, James, have had problems with the law themselves and are supposed to be upholding the law.

Are Democrats doing enough to ensure that they can intervene or stop any shenanigans?

Well, they aren't superheroes, but they are doing everything that is within human capacity and a political party's capacity and even nonpartisan capacities to do.

And to Alex's point, which is a great point, you know, more election observers, including election observers, even from the Department of Justice, can build trust in As long as the people who are watching are watching and reporting back to others on what is actually happening as opposed to what they are primed and expecting and maybe even wanting to see.

Confirmation bias can be a real problem.

Having election observers in and of itself from all walks of the political spectrum is itself not a bad thing.

It can actually be a very good thing.

You have skepticism about it, right? As I understand our conversations.

I don't necessarily have skepticism that they won't seat.

Yeah

... and the allocation of resources point that Michael is making, that when you combine those two things, there's an adverse selection problem, right? Economists talk about adverse selection.

When you lose your good people and you are simultaneously hiring people who are basically being hired strictly for partisan purposes...

I mean, slide into the DMs and you can be-

in bestiality

Right.

DM me if you want to be in AUSA.

Uh, you know, that's literally happening in America today.

James?

Yeah, no, what she just said is absolutely correct.

So the Insurrection Act is an exception to what's known as the Posse Comitatus Act, which means that if you invoke the Insurrection Act, which the president can do, does not need Congress to help him in that.

He can do it on his own.

And the reason is that Congress has already empowered him through the Insurrection Act to have that power if, in fact, he chooses to use it.

Now, we don't choose to use it very often for a lot of good reasons.

If he invokes it, though, there are still other laws on the books.

Fast forward a couple of decades and you have Fox News.

a closer call.

As much as I think the press ban, and I absolutely agree with Jim and with Akayla, that every time the president speaks, every time he posts, he is actually becoming the lead witness for Ted Boutros, for MSNOW, CNN, and Politico, because the more he says, the more evidence there is that this is straight viewpoint discrimination, and that the national security arguments were just a post-talk pretextual, if you will, which is really quite an achievement in many respects.

But To be clear, and to give the president a fair shake here, the D.C.

Circuit has a case pending before it that they have had pending for over a year involving the Associated Press growing out of the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America debate.

And in that case, which has not yet reached a full ruling on the merits, the concurring opinion by Judge Naomi Rao in that particular case in which there was a stay— indicated that places like the Oval Office, places like Air Force One are subject to a bit more presidential discretion than places that are open on a broader scale like the Brady briefing room.

So it is possible that this might be a needle that he can thread.

That being said, on the overall point, it doesn't change the fact that what we're seeing here is actually not only retaliatory, not only viewpoint discrimination, but frankly, a little bit childish.

But I wonder if you can give us a sort of larger picture here of what's happening with this administration in terms of people's right to vote and what could be coming down the line here because of their step to try to essentially weaponize systems like this to restrict to as an access.

Another possible explain.

Well, Jacob, first on the national security point, I'll quote from Justice Hugo Black in 1971, the so-called Pentagon Papers case.

Now, that's a case involving classified documents, involving a prior restraint on publication.

And Justice Hugo Black wrote, and I'll just quote here.

The word security is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to arrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.

You mentioned in your opening how this is being stretched so far that it's losing its meaning.

You can only invoke now national security.

Are there any that stick out to you that preceded this and how they might be different?

security is certainly how we, as we define

it.

Well, and to David's point about national security and your question about national security being wheeled as this kind of talisman for all of these different things, ranging from the ballroom to... you know, threatening the press and revoking their credentials.

It's not as though it's a new thing that national security is an executive prerogative.

It has always been an executive prerogative to protect national security.

But you know what's also always been a thing, Katie? Limits on government power.

That's what the Constitution is.

I mean, does that help him in his lawsuit?

What do you think the court is going to think of the argument from the government that access to the White House is a privilege?

I think that the government's argument is going to go nowhere, Alicia.

And the reason it's going to go nowhere is we have precedent as recently, literally as yesterday from the D.C.

Circuit, the circuit that governs the district that today's hearing will be before that says that even if.

You take the government's argument seriously that it is a privilege and not a right.

It doesn't change the fact that you cannot engage in viewpoint discrimination.

The government, the First Amendment applies.

He's discussed putting his name on Penn Station in New York, Dulles Airport in Virginia, the Commander Stadium in D.C. Is there anything legally that can stop him, Jim Sample?

Is that accurate?

It is absolutely accurate that the freedom of the press is in the First Amendment.

The freedom of the press depends on a structure in which constitutional rights, at least in the United States, are rights that apply as against the government.

You can't get much more squarely in line with being the government than the president of the United States and then the underlings who execute that policy.

In this instance, it was literally Secret Service members who deprived the individual reporters, producers, and photographers for the networks and journalists for Politico.

of their credentials early on Saturday morning when they were trying to access the White House.

And there is precedent on point, legal precedent that applies to an almost identical scenario from nearly 50 years ago, 1977.

If they're not coming or they're not allowed, we're not showing up either.

And my understanding is that there are actually several things wrong here.

Oh, absolutely.

There are several things wrong.

And if you track the complaint, the complaint actually doesn't start with the First Amendment.

The complaint starts with the due process claim, which is to say that when the reporters and photographers for the three networks, the journalists who were denied their credentials on Saturday morning were denied their credentials.

The Truth Social post from Friday became government action on Saturday.

And when it became government action, the challenge to what the government had done was right.

Like that's what he called it himself.

Is he within his legal rights to ban news outlets from the White House?

This is not North Korea.

It's not Russia.

And the answer to your question is absolutely not, and there is precedent on point, Nicolle.

And the precedent could not be clearer.

It goes to the DC Circuit.

It goes back to the LBJ era, and there was a reporter by the name of Robert Sherrill at The Nation.

Uh, let me show you what he said about this question.

Can Donald Trump do this?

No, absolutely unequivocally no.

And there's substance behind that analysis, and you can go through this step by step.

The government is allowed to regulate speech on some level, and what we do is we sort speech into categories.

Content-based restrictions... fall under what's known as strict scrutiny, which is the strictest test in constitutional law.

But within strict scrutiny and within content-based regulations is an even narrower category called viewpoint discrimination.

And this is viewpoint discrimination.

Makes sense.

how do you see this playing out in court?

I think that the way Susan just phrased that is absolutely perfect, which is to say Donald Trump, you never would have thought you'd utter this sentence.

Donald Trump is the best witness for MSNOW, CNN and Politico because every single time he speaks, every single time he posts, it becomes more and more clear.

clear that this is what is known in First Amendment law as viewpoint-based discrimination.

That is the absolute worst thing that you can do as the government when it comes to regulating speech.

It's not the case that the government can never regulate speech.

It's not the case that the government can never regulate access for the media.

Keep going.