Supreme Court Checks Trump — 2025 Year in Review

Welcome to the final episode of the Oath in the Office for 20. Did I say final? I mean welcome to the first episode of the Oath in the Office for 20. 26. I'm John Fugel saying, along with Professor Cory Brechneider, we have a lot of ground to cover for a year that doesn't want to stay buried. Today we'll talk about some of the good news at the end of the year, as well as the most egregious violations of law and constitutional norms and basic human decency by this administration. We're going to cover due process abuses, illegal military deployments. We're going to talk about questionable executive actions and unqualified corrupt crony cabinet members and endless dreary lies and racism, public corruption, bribery in the open, and serious humanitarian and legal red flags. And there's no one better for that than the star of this humble podcast, the man who built this thing from nothing into one of the top government podcasts recognized in the nation in less than a year. Professor and author Cory Brechneider. It's good to see you, sir. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, John. What a pleasure to do this podcast. The beginning of the year is a great symbol of what we're trying to do on this podcast. It's both a moment of optimism to talk about the future and hopes, New Year's resolutions, but also to be honest about what we just faced in project 2025's year, 2025, the attempt to destroy democracy. And so I'm looking forward to looking back and looking forward to. Well, we have a lot to look back on. And I'm really glad you're here. But I want to begin the show by ending 2025 on some good news. And that is President Kome over Caligula's ability to use the National Guard as playthings has been put in check. I know this could push him later to use the Insurrection Act, but for now, this is good news, right, Professor? Can you can you walk us through what has happened in blocking or at least limiting Trump's ability to unilaterally deploy the National Guard to majority black cities when he feels like it? Yeah, I should say too in terms of the stories of 2025 that we've been covering. We talked a lot about the idea of a soft coup that the president's usurpation of the other branches in various things like using Doge. But then we also talked about this moment where he started to use the military as the transition to a hard coup because when you use the military to usurp the power of the states, that's nothing less than what's associated with the destruction of democracy through the use of force, a hard coup. And so finally, we have the Supreme Court standing up to him and saying, no, you can't do this. Now, they're not cutting off any possibility, as you just said. They might be the insurrection act in the future that's invoked, which he hasn't yet. But the statute that he's tried to use to say that there is a federal ability to use the military even against the wishes of governors, like the governor of Illinois, the Supreme Court said, no, not permanently, but they have put a stop to it for now. That might change. And the reasoning is really interesting for the purposes of this podcast. They went and they looked at this statute that President Trump is using to justify the use of the military and they said, no, it doesn't say one, two, four, six. It's interesting. Like usually they give the name. This thing isn't being given name. It's usually just being called the statute and then by number. But it's a source of authority that the president's relying on and they're saying, no, it's not there. And let me just give a slight setup. The usual default is you cannot use the military domestically, as we've talked about on the podcast that the Posse Comatotes Act from the 19th century was passed with the idea of limiting the use of the military for police purposes domestically. So you need an exception. And the government in this statute is claiming they had an exception in the Supreme Court of the United States is saying, no, that it doesn't actually work. And it's an interesting sort of argument that we'll get into of what specifically the word say that the court interpreted not to give them this authority. Yeah, the what the word say was my favorite part of this ruling because Trump argued that he had inherent authority to federalize and deploy the guard in Illinois because he hosted a celebrity apprentice. I don't even know that. He was a star of celebrity apprentice and the Emmys were rigged year after year. So the court said that his claims were essentially, and I'm going to quote them directly here, untethered to facts. Now, I know that we don't really know what John Roberts means from hour to hour and things that seem like a narrow procedural win could be better than it appears. But I mean, what does that phrase mean to you in constitutional terms? They essentially said that his claims were untethered to the fact that they called him a liar. Yeah, I mean, they also, I mean, there's an interesting two things that are going on. They're claiming that if you look in this statute, there are these two words that are used, regular forces that don't mean what the president said that they mean. So what is regular forces? There's a lot of this is kind of one of these wonky instances where law professor Amicus briefs and you and I have talked about Amicus briefs that I've done in the past. And sometimes they matter. Sometimes they don't hear a law professor, Marty leaderman from Georgetown Law School, entered one of these they're called Amicus or friend of the court briefs. And the court really said, no, this guy actually figured something out that nobody else had seen, which is that the term regular forces, which allows the president to use the specific statute as an exception to Posse Comatatus when regular forces are ineffective. So what is regular forces? That's what the court said. The administration was saying, well, it means that we're unable to use, you know, the FBI or police forces or the immigration services. And of course, what they're claiming is that ICE is under attack in places like Illinois and the federal government can't do its job. And that's why they have to deploy the National Guard. But the court said, no, that's not what it means. Regular forces doesn't mean a force is regular force is the military. So what it means essentially is before you invoke the National Guard and you take the governor's power to control the National Guard and assign it to the president, you've got to show that actually the military is unable to do its job. So this is a kind of wonky, but the thing that mattered from a Georgetown law professor so I shout out to a Marty leaderman for doing this. In other words, they called him out for lying. I mean, because yeah, regular forces means the standing military. Now, Corey, this ruling block Chicago, but it also of course, cast out on the similar creepy BS deployments in LA and Portland is this particular court, at least three of the dirty six, quietly warning Trump that the military is not his personal police force. Is that what we're seeing? I'm not sure. I mean, you know, you always want to temper the good news with the bad news. So on the one hand, yes, it was six justices that said that the president was beyond his authority. He can't use the military in that way. And as you said, and I want to emphasize this point, we're not just talking about Illinois because this is the kind of argument that they're using in all of these other places. By the way, I should say too, like I'm not giving the administration too much credit, but this argument that leaderman came up with, I don't know that a lot of people had even thought about whether or not this was this regular forces idea was a reference to the normal federal government or to the military. So I think it is an instance where like this law professors research and history gave us an insight into this legal controversy that we might not have known about. And the impact is so big because it's not just in Illinois, it's in these other places too. When it comes to the justices themselves, yes, there's good news. There's six people, six justices who stood up for the right thing. And I should say, you know, the whole structure of the federal government, the Posse Comatata Act, is all about not allowing the military to be used as a police force. Our whole system of government is designed on that idea. So we've got six decent justices in this moment. I'm not, Kevin Ard right to concurrence just on this. Decent generous professor, right? He's back on you, but maybe three of them back is more optimum. Three of them backed by circumstance and history into a rare moral corner. I'll go with that, but continue. I like that. I like that way of putting it. But it might, for Kavanaugh, who I'm always the most skeptical of because he's in this group of six, like what is he doing there? And my thought when I read his concurrence was he's kind of sending a message to the president to just use the insurrection act and that that will be a cleaner way of doing it. So that's it. And of course, we could wind up so much worse than we started off with. Yeah, let's not be too optimistic about this moment. Well, so let's end a dreary year with this dreary aspect of it because I mean, essentially, what we're looking at here is man, baby, saying, if I say there's chaos, I get total control. That seems to be the presidential argument here. If I say there's chaos, I get complete control. The elephant in the room is the insurrection act. And you just mentioned it. This might be what they do now because this was too illegal before. So maybe this ruling could push him towards invoking the insurrection act instead. Let's refresh people's memories on what is the insurrection act and why does it scare the complete living hell out of constitutional scholars so deeply? Well, it's an enormously powerful statute and exactly the fact that the president hasn't used it yet doesn't mean that he won't. And it's not like he has some moral quandary about using. I don't think he could care less about what the statute is. So probably the lawyers have convinced him not to do it. This is supposed to be an extraordinary statute that allows the president to take control of the National Guard even over the objection of governors in instances in which there really is fundamental instability in the society and in a danger to public safety more generally. And so the examples in which it's been used successfully are primarily the little rock, the Eisenhower example of using it over the objection to ensure the compliance with court mandated integration. And that's sort of the ultimate instance, a heroic instance in which people think of it, nationalizing the guard to protect civil rights. It was also used during Bush and the Rodney King example. But to come back to your phrase on tethered to reality, I mean, the idea that in any of these instances there is some instability in the society that requires this is just wrong. And yet, Kavanaugh seems to be hinting that that might work that the court would just defer to the president. Well, that's it. Yeah. But my hope is that the court would say that. That even though it looks like in some instances there is this legal authority, we're not at that moment. We don't have that instability. And there's some hope that we've got the six of these justices doing the right thing in this case. Yeah. See, I just, I view Roberts and I view Coney Barrett and Gorsuch and I view Kavanaugh as aristocrats, Cory, aristocrats who protect their own class first. And I only do that based on everything they've ever done in their legal careers. So I just see this as much more of a broad authoritarian pattern that they're going to test one lever of power. And if they lose on that, then they're going to reach for a more extreme one. I mean, is this going to bring us closer to the same kind of emergency hitler, horrific powers we associate with illiberal democracies or outright authoritarian states? I mean, I was so happy about this for a couple of days until I was reading up on what the whole scheme could be of using and abusing the Insurrection Act. And obviously, irony is the one religion that will never let you down this clown using the Insurrection Act against law abiding Americans. I mean, the bitter comedy, right itself. I think, you know, that's the million dollar question that we've been struggling with all year since we began the podcast since Trump took office, which is that we have these moments where the district courts are willing to trep the administration, where the Supreme Court, in this example, at least, has checked the administration. But that's not the end of the story. You get this back and forth. And when you have a wannabe authoritarian in power, he's going to demand among his loyalists. I think in the past, there would have been people there who said, no, you can't do that. The Insurrection Act is totally inappropriate. The court has spoken that's the end of it. But those people are gone. The adults in the room aren't there. And the Stephen Millers aren't going to be urging restraint. They're going to be urging more and more action. And what's the court going to do? I'm not sure. You know, we're reading tea leaves. They did stop him here. They didn't go along with it. They didn't defer. They found a way, you know, to focus on, I should say, too, a lot of members of this court, including Kavanaugh, love to focus on the text of legislation. And part of what they're always trying to do is justify their own actions, their own power, and their own methodology for interpreting the Constitution, a very narrow one. By saying, look, we care about the words and the law. And so this definition of forces is, you know, we're being honest. Now are they going to do that when it comes to the Insurrection Act? It might go the other way. They're going to say, look, you know, Eisenhower could do it, Bush could do it, we're going to allow it. That's my worry. That they're not thinking about the principles of liberal democracy, the principles of the Constitution. So this brings us to the year we just survived, Professor. I mean, I want to thank you for this podcast for helping me get through the year. It's been a pleasure to cheat off your paper, as it were. But I mean, in thinking back on 2025, you know, what do you consider to be the most egregious violations of the Constitution by this White House? I know that this could add another hour on to our episodes. I mean, on the top of my head, between the extradudicial deportations to El Salvador, torture prisons, and these due process obligations that have been just ignored all the way to these escalating military strikes. About any clear legal basis, first on these poor bastards in the water with no evidence at all that their boats were carrying drugs. And now we just bombed Nigeria on Christmas Day, because Trump cares about the Christians. Never mind the fact that he bombed the village and had nothing to do with any of these killings. And never mind the fact that Donald Trump has killed more Nigerians than anybody else this year with the cuts to USAID. I mean, Professor, where do we begin in cataloging the malfeasances of just the last 11 months? I, you know, this podcast would go on for hours today if we were to really go through it all. I will say one of the real, yeah, I guess I would call it a pleasure. It has been a pleasure doing this with you because we're surviving this assault on democracy together. There's solidarity in it. And the fact that we have so many listeners increasingly coming and listening with us every week, you know, and I had a friend who a long time listener and friend from the beginning of the podcast say, you know, that is part of what this is about. It's a kind of solidarity and the humor makes it bearable. But what we're doing is documenting history that we are living through. This has been a year of not a normal presidency, but one that really is devoted to the destruction of constitutional democracy and even the rule of law. And what we have, I think in our archive is documentation of the attempt to have, and I'll use this phrase again, a self-cute to destroy from the inside the use of the executive branch, the other branches. So as we go through them, it's too many cases to mention, but as you started to do, I'll catalog the general assaults. This is what I've come up with, you know, my home. I have a long list. I want to trade with you. Good. I mean, the first thing to say is this story that we just started with, which has been an ongoing part of what we're talking about, the deployment of the military to America's cities in contradiction to laws limiting that and finding these loopholes and ways around it and various legislation to ignore the Posse Comatotes law, that's the stuff of the hard use of the military to destroy democracy. So I put that near the top. It was in Los Angeles when he ordered thousands of Marines and National Guard troops into these specific protests. A federal judge explicitly found that that violated the Posse Comatotes Act. And that, you know, this has been going on since the first administration where he's threatening even then to use the Insurrection Act to shut down protests. And let's not lose sight of that. This really is about not just control, but the attempted destruction of free speech. And so that's one of the themes that we've been covering. And I'd add to that, you know, the destruction of free speech on campus. So when it came to the case of a graduate student organizer in the protests at Columbia, Cleal, they claim that didn't even have the right to free speech because he was a non-citizen. And so just in the same way that we've also got a hate to interrupt. We've also got to point out the Secretary of State lied about this young man and said that he was anti-Semitic and it said anti-Semitic statements, which was no evidence. And there was never any evidence he had broken a single law. And yet because he was Muslim, they had complete confidence that they could rendition this man and take him away with no due process. And they got away with it for a long time. It is very hard to rank these stories. He's also a great, you know, in the same way that the military is such a threat to democracy. Obviously free speech is the linchpin of democracy. If you can't speak out against your government and what way are you living in a democracy? It's almost as the brown professor Alexander Mikkeljohn, my favorite free speech scholar, says, you know, his book is called Free Speech and its Relation to Self-Government. It's as important as voting. And so when you restrict people's ability, it also, by the way, Mikkeljohn's famous for saying, it's about the rights, not just of the speaker, but the listener, for us to be able to hear Kaleel's critique of Columbia, of whatever he's saying about American foreign policy, whether you agree with it or not, the right to hear it. That's part of the right of American citizens here. So I could keep going. There's the Gulag case as we keep calling it, the deportation. This one is like, you know, you could, Trump 1.0, I think people said, well, at least we don't have, you know, rounding up and putting people in torture camps. Well, that's no longer true. They are doing that in the case of Venezuelan nationals who have been rounded up and sent to a third country else Salvador, where the president's ally has put him and other Venezuelans. This is a Gregor Garcia, of course, was the first case that we covered in this torture prison. And of course, we had Mike Zaymore giving us the details as it was happening, as they were arguing this. And the ACLU has a new case now too that the same judge, Judge Bozberg, is saying it's not over. We're still pushing back. The boat strikes, you mentioned the use of the war power without consent of Congress, the deprivation of due process. And that's true in the, I should say too, in the Gulag cases as we've been calling them. The administration is using a 1798 law, the Enemy Aliens Act, to say there is no due process, no writ of habeas corpus, no requirement. The government even tell us why they're holding people. And one of the things that Bozberg said in this new case, thankfully, and this guy really deserves, you know, when it comes to the heroes of the years. We're going to, we're going to praise Bozberg in the second second. Oh, yes, I know we're coming up. So anyway, I don't know, I could keep going. What else am I missing, John? Okay, well, let me talk about, you know, again, we've, we've murdered over 107 people in these extrajudicial drone strikes on boats and foreign waters. I mean, we, the taxpayers' core, you're going to be shelling out billions in class action lawsuits to the victims of these crimes long after Donald Trump's arteries have done what the Lord wants his arteries to do. I mean, we're going to be paying for all this for a very long time. But I'm thinking about the executive overreach starting with the protecting the American people against invasion executive order 14159. If one of his first acts he did, that pretty much he built this entire house of crap on, significantly expanding his immigration enforcement powers and torturing people and just not having to follow the law. That order was enjoined because parts of it were violating federal law, but it's this whole pattern that you've discussed so ably about this broader pattern of presidential overreach from the birthright citizenship controversy to these judicial lawsuits against judges. Like the White House filed a lawsuit against 15 federal judges in Maryland because they called the White House out for breaking the law. I mean, that lawsuit was dismissed, but this is the amount of contempt they have for the judicial branch. It is just dizzying and trying to, of course, order all of this and to see how it all connects because I do think that just providing the list feels exhausting and how we're going to fight back. But when we start to see it for what it is that these are all organized assaults on democracy, we can start thinking about both the danger that we're in but also the way to resist. So on that theme of immigration, which has been so much of the usurpation of democracy, one of the things that I'll just note from the beginning in a common theme is that we had all of these dangers sitting there waiting in ice if I were to pick one example of it as is it is that danger? And he's activated in this just frightening way and built it up. And so he's created this deportation force, this federal rights violating, you know, frightening agency that has seems to have no constraints on it. And this is one of the areas where I would have thought that as ice is kidnapping people and really violating civil liberties committing crimes that we would have seen arrests of some ice officers, but it's been one of those areas where we just have not seen a lot of pushback. And then I don't want to miss birthright citizenship, man. I just find it impossible to rank these things because this is a place where the Constitution says so clearly in the 14th Amendment. And this was part of the after the Civil War to remind listeners we've done whole shows on this, but after the Civil War and attempt to demand equal protection and the 13th Amendment ending slavery, the 14th Amendment guarantee equal protection, the 15th Amendment are right to vote regardless of race at least for men, not fully there yet when it comes to democracy. Part of that whole post-Bellum Amendment system included a just clear rule to make it symbolize all of this, which is if you are born in the United States, you are a citizen that we're not going to rank people based on who their parents were and parentage isn't going to be the basis of how we think about democracy. And here in the court, it's faced with this question of whether or not the administration can revoke it. They haven't answered that. Well, here that answers at some point. But what they did in the meantime, just to remind listeners, is they got rid of the ability to record judge, said this is obviously unconstitutional, imposed a national injunction. And what did the court said? They got rid of national injunctions. They got rid of the ability of judges to enforce the law. I mean, it's white supremacy, professor. It's white supremacy. I'm sorry, but these chalky race people look like me are going to become a minority in this country in 2045. And it's getting harder for me to deny that that's driving a lot of policy choices. They're trying to just push the date off till 2050, 2050, 55. But the reality is, 40 years of trickle down is made it a lot harder for white people to keep pumping out those babies. And they don't want to get rid of their trickle down. They don't want to stop squeezing and destroying the middle class. But now they're panicking because the birth rates have changed. And they know what the numbers are. And they know that Caucasians will dip below 50% in 20 years. And I think we should be very ready to see that drive. A lot of policy will never be admitted. But one last thing I want to throw in your face before we get to a much needed break, what a year for bribery in the open. What a year for just beating the crap. It's like he got away with everything with the Amalya Mins clause. I said this many times to you, they could have been peach Donald Trump in the first minute of his inaugural address for violating the Constitution's Amalya Mins clause for not just making money off the office. But now in this term, the bribes, the bribes from his crypto hole and how he's made literally billions with a B. This president has personally enriched himself by billions of dollars off the office in 11 months to this $400 million Boeing 747 from those champions of democracy, the Katari royal family for his personal use. Corey, I know there's so much malfeasance out there, but I've given up hope on the Democratic Party ever doing a thing about the bribery. It's just normal now. Well, you know, when we began this podcast, I did a series of kind of on location videos to try to promote it and just to let people know that we were doing this. And one was at federal hall. And I went down there because Washington and his first inaugural address, what does he talk about? He talks about this issue that you're raising. Amalya Mins, what is an Amalya Mins? It means basically that Washington pledges that he'll take no Amalya Mins. The Constitution has two clauses about this topic of Amalya Mins, one banning domestic Amalya Mins and the other banning international. And what it means, essentially, in Amalya Mins is using the office for profit. And the Amalya Mins clauses say, you can't do that. And what is Trump done? Washington thought this was so important because kings and queens and monarchs had always, you know, as a matter of course, done this, they settled far in wars to profit. They used the country in order to benefit themselves. The history of colonialism is largely about the profit of monarchs. And this country said so clearly, you know, putting it in twice. No, you can't do it. In case you were confused that you can't do it by profiting from foreign relations, you also can't do it domestically. They had to say it two times. It's a great quote of my one of my favorite philosophers Isaiah Berlin who was asked to speak more slowly once in a seminar. He spoke very rapidly and he said, well, I won't speak more slowly, but I'll say it twice. Well, that's what the founders did. They didn't have a way of speaking more slowly or putting in print, but they had to say it twice to get the idea out. And here Trump is in all those examples that you just listed thing after thing. And yet, you know, as bad as it is, I don't know where it is on our list, but we were getting to it towards, we've gone through a lot already. I mean, again, George Washington defined the office by not doing this thing in Trump again and again from the Trump hotel in the first term where he was having dignitaries staying there to, you know, trying to serve us all sorts of money for his. Oh, he's still doing that. Still doing that. Now he's at a next level of doing it. The Rickety guardrails that are remaining in place. I'll be forever grateful for. And I think it's just another reminder set up before, but there are no adults in the room, although there may be a few adult film stars in the room. We'll find out when Michael Wolf publishes several dozen books about this year. Okay, we got to take a break where Wendy's going to collapse back in just a moment with the oath in the office. Hey, all. Glenn Kershner here. Friends, I hope you'll join me on my audio podcast Justice Matters. We talk about not only the legal issues of the day, but we also talk about the need to reform ethics in our government. Here's one example. The oath of office. You know the one. I do solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies far and end domestic. Let's add 22 words to that oath. Quote. And I will promptly report any instances of crime and or corruption by government officials and employees of which I become aware. Friends, our democracy is worth fighting for. Join us in this fight. Justice Matters. Look for justice matters wherever you ordinarily find your podcasts. Welcome back to the oath in the office. January 1st, 2026 edition. I'm John Feudal saying along with Professor Corey, Brecht Snyder. Corey, I got to say, Judge Bozberg has become a real unlikely resistance hero. I know he was a Republican nominee. But he's sort of becoming a folk icon for people who are worried about democracy. He's refused the arguments that would say those deported to Venezuela have no due process because of the Enemy Aliens Act. And he's not going to say it's too late because they've left the country. I mean, he's not just standing up for the rule of law. He's actually standing up for basic humanitarian ideals, which I'm old enough to remember Republicans not considering woke. What's most striking to you about Judge Bozberg's approach? Well, shout out to Judge Bozberg. I love this guy. You know, it's like a one, I had to pick one judge who was just again and again refusing to give up, even though in many instances he could have just let this go from the contempt investigation that he's continuing against those just to remind people from an earlier broadcast. And I, we first reported on this and talked about this with Mike Zaymore of the ACLU. If you remember months ago when Bozberg got this case, the deportation of a bregal Garcia to the Gulag and El Salvador, claiming that he was a member of this gang without any evidence and they still haven't proven it. And you know, they tried all sorts of things to get away with it. And the main one was just refusing the order and sending people abroad. And now there's a new case that the ACLU has brought different group of people, a group of Venezuelans who were deported to this Gulag and El Salvador. And the administration is saying that while they were already there, so it's too late it's moot. And by the way, they don't have due process anyway under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. And to remind people about this law and kind of, you know, always mixing history and what's happening. But in 1798, it was an awful year for American democracy. It was the year that John Adams and his party passed the Sedition Act, making it a crime to criticize the president of the United States, but not the vice president. It was Thomas Jefferson, his own one of my favorite details of American history. And passed this crazy statute, the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, that essentially said, if you are, and this is how the administration is claiming to read it, that if you are a member of an enemy nation, and they're claiming Venezuela is, you have no right to do process. What does that mean? That we don't have to say what the charges are against you. We don't have to prove that any of the things we're saying about you are true in court. That's their argument that it really is a revocation entirely of the rule of law and a kind of monarchical power over those of supposedly enemy nations. And this judge is saying, first of all, I mean, I'll put it clearly. He's saying in a way, I don't care what this law from 1798 says. I'll tell you what the Constitution says. You have a right to habeas corpus to know what the charges are against you or right to do process. And the Constitution is above this law. And no, I'm not going to accept it as a fact that because you've already sent these people to the Gulag, that they have no right. You're not going to get away with that. That's why he's been in a horrible year of 2025, a real hero throughout. Well, I want to ask about the Alien Enemy's Act. But first, I just want to talk about this other point that we just touched on briefly, because I don't think it's been mentioned really enough, but this whole too late argument, right? But Donald Trump's lawyers argued after these people were illegally kidnapped in rendition to wait a torture presence. Oh, it's too late. They're already gone. So the court can't help. Listen, I'm just a Mukwaite, the public school, but even I know that's corrosive to the rule of law. Corey, if our courts accepted the idea that government can evade any kind of review just by acting fast enough, if you're fast enough, government, you can get around the law. What would that do to the constitutional protections across the board if this Supreme Court were that insanely corrupt? Yeah, I think that what Bozburg sees, and he's saying so clearly, is that I'm not going to create a situation that incentivizes government to disobey me fast. Because if what he was righteously up in arms about was the fact that he said, do not send these planes to this Gulag prison in El Salvador. He gave a very clear order in court and using these ridiculous arguments that the order was spoken rather than written, the administration defied them and sent people there anyway. So the idea, you know, you could see him just steaming, thinking about it. It's on the page that he's going to reward this by saying, well, it's too late because you disobeyed my order. I don't think so. That's what his message is. You're not going to get away with disobeying the law by saying it's too late. No way. Yeah. And as far as the Alien Enemy's Act, I mean, this is another example of what you've warned us about before, Corey. Using old laws ripped away from their historical context just to justify modern authoritarian power grabs. I mean, at the end of the day, this whole fight, to me, as a layperson, just seems like whether due process applies to people, powerful white folks don't like. Well, I will say, you know, as much as that's often true that they're taking laws out of context and abusing them. When it comes to this specific law, the 1798 Enemy Aliens Act, I think in some ways the historical context is as frightening as what we're facing now. As you know, John, but I'll remind some of our new listeners that in my book, the Presidents and the people of five leaders who threaten democracy and the citizens who fought to defend it, which was written before the second Trump term, but is unfortunately extremely relevant. I talk about what happened in 1798. And it is a tragic year, a lot like 2025. In fact, if I had to pick one year that had a parallel, I would say that's it. And that was a year that John Adams definitely want to be authoritarian president who saw the president as a kind of monarch. In fact, he thought the British king was too weak and needed to be stronger. And the US president had to be stronger than the British king if you could believe that. Saw to it that a series of laws that shut down democracy were passed and they succeeded. They prosecuted 125 or so political opponents. And then they also revoked the rights of due process for non-citizens. So what Bozberg's got to struggle with here is it's not as easy as saying, well, 1798, you know, it was a different circumstance. No, it wasn't in some ways the same circumstance. So his argument is, well, it doesn't matter which on Adams thought, the Constitution stands above any law. And the Constitution and its right to do process is what's in play here. And that's why what he's doing is so important because he's really acknowledging, I think, that maybe this law would allow it, but that the law isn't the final say. The final say is the Constitution. Well, then let me zoom out a little bit to the great state of Florida featuring the world's worst Donald Trump impersonator. And that would be Governor Ron DeSantis. I've seen some bad Trump impressions in comedy clubs in my life, Corey. No one does a worse Trump impression than DeSantis except maybe next year when we start watching JD Vance doing his impression of DeSantis doing his impression of Trump. But this attack on new college by DeSantis and Florida seems to be a blueprint for this entire right wing movements war on education. Anything that they don't like that is not geared towards Caucasians and power. They call it woke and they replace it with some kind of crypto fascist nonsense. Or they'll pretend that Charlie Kirk was not a lying racist bamboozler, may he rest in peace, and trying to shoehorn worship of a podcaster worship of a racist podcaster who lied about the Bible into our public schools. Corey, I mean, is this just a one off culture war fight? Or do you see this as the blueprint? Well, you know, the new college situation was by all accounts. This is very serious academic institution with serious scholars. And it became under attack because in the words of the new president and the view of the administration, including the world wrestling, WWE is it? It used to be WWF when I followed it, the world wrestling federation, Department of Education, Person, Linda McMahon. This was also who also cover up she cover up sex abuse. So she is qualified to be in the cabinet. I want to point that out. She has qualified. Yeah, I grew up thinking the pro wrestling was going to destroy American education. I didn't know it was going to be this literal. But yeah, go on, please. I was just going to say that the story of new college, you know, is you see what they're trying to achieve and you're referring, of course, to their decision to put a statue of Charlie Kirk there as some sort of champion of free speech despite his many odious views. And again, may he rest in peace? May he rest in peace? May he rest in peace. And still acknowledge that this was not a hero of free speech in any way. And you know, I think that what we've got to see too is that the administration, it's not just about new college, has this idea of the compact that they've offered to several universities originally. It was just a few and then they've expanded it. And I just want to say what's in there. It says that you'll get a priority for grants from the federal government. If you prohibit the disparagement of conservative ideas on campus, now that word disparagement, you know, what is that really mean? What does that mean? What is that mean? Mocking and criticizing and doing the stuff that critical thought is, yeah. Critical thought. And so if you want to claim to be a champion of free speech, you can't create a compact that essentially gets rid of it. And you know, new college has embraced that and you're seeing that in real time. What that really means, it means an ideological task of whether or not you'll show loyalty to this administration, the theme throughout. That has nothing to do with free speech or academia or free inquiry or whatever. You're right. You know, whenever I do any of these shows or on TV and any one of these folks leaves the right-wing bubble and uses the word woke or wokeness outside of the bubble, I always drop what I'm doing and I ask that person, will you tell me what that word means? Because woke used to mean a word that anti-racist used as referring to awareness of institutionalized racism, you know, like just you're aware. And now it's a word that racist use to slur and mock anyone who is anti-discrimination, any anti-discrimination policies again. This is what you have to notice with the right. They never get angry at racism or police brutality. They get furious at protests against racism and against police brutality. They don't get mad at discrimination. They get furious at anti-discrimination laws or policies in a workplace. They say that they're eliminating wokeness, which again means empathy, an awareness of injustice and wanting to correct it. What they're really doing, it seems, is replacing basic academic freedom and critical thinking with blind ideological loyalty. I mean, is that a fair description? They're honoring Charlie Kirk, a partisan dishonest activist who was not a Christ follower if you want to get really technical about it. I didn't fight for anything Jesus talked about, but used Jesus' name to grift for power an extensive history of negatively racist, bigoted statements while they're purging faculty while they're purging programs. I mean, I don't know where to begin with this. What role does the control of education play in authoritarian movements throughout history? Well, I think the first thing is, you believe in free inquiry, you believe in critical thinking and serious thinking. Don't use a word like woke to cover some general vaping that you're against. You have to define your terms, talk in specifics, be honest and engage in real intellectual back and forth. What does that mean that they're against, it's just unclear that they don't like certain beliefs, I think, is what it comes to. It's all code words for them. We don't want people around who are too much in favor of anti-discrimination logic. All dog whistle. All dog whistle. It's really a defense of ideology and what's so upsetting to me as somebody who studies as part of my academic work, free speech, is to claim that somehow, in opposing woke, quote unquote, that you are defending free speech and at the same time having this compact which is incentivizing the shutdown of free speech, getting rid of professors, essentially who are critical of this administration. I should say, let's just start with the basics. When it comes to free speech, Congress shall make no law abridging a freedom of speech. Congress there is a stand in for the government, including the federal government, including the president. Part of the framing of the First Amendment was worrying about the presidency and the monarch having what, a shutdown of free speech and monarchs, of course, if you criticize them, you could be murdered, tried for sedition and execute it. What are they doing here? They're trying to set up a system where again, you cannot criticize the monarch. They can't do it. They're not doing it through the criminal law. They're using incentives. At the same time, they're pretending to be free speech defenders. That's it. There are evidently people who have some academic credentials or at least working in academia that are enabling them and doing that. I'm so proud of Brown. I have to say, and we've been through so much pain this year with this horrible attack on the university, the shooting, the murder of two of our students who love it by all accounts. And yet there was a moment, too, that we can look to forepride. Despite this awful tragic event, we can look to pride certainly in the way that we've recovered, that we've fought back, that we've come together, that we've honored, what's happened. But there also was a moment where the administration was faced. We were one of the original schools that was offered this compact. And one thing that I'm proud of, this is before the tragedy of the shooting, was that the administration said, so clearly, in a letter to the federal government, absolutely not. In fact, we had agreed in a previous settlement that the administration would respect the academic freedom and independence of the university as part of the fundamental idea. And in offering this compact, they were essentially saying that they don't believe in the academic freedom at all and in free inquiry. And the idea that's all couched in terms of free speech is part of just what's so absurd about this year, part of an authoritarian shutdown. That's it. Same way that in the other cases that we talked about of free speech. But again, it's no different than their claims of Christianity. They don't follow any of the teachings Christ fought for, and they don't follow the Constitution. These are words they use to cloak their selfish dealings in some sort of respectability or institutionalized integrity when in reality, I mean, if this model that the Sandes is trying in Florida, because again, this guy is always running for president, right? If this model spreads nationally, professor, what happens to higher education and civic literacy and just democracy in general? Because you know they're not going to stop in Florida. They're going to try and have statues of Charlie Kirk and teach people that woke this blows your legs off in all 50 states. I love that way of putting it. It really gets to the heart of the matter. They are trying it. They are doing it. And they have this method, which is the compact. The federal government has an enormous amount of money. Universities, some are cash strapped, even those that are not want this money. And so using this incentive to agree to not disparage conservative ideas, core part of the compact, in exchange for preference and grants. That's how they're going to do it. And new college has done it. New college is exhibiting it. What does it mean? It means that your faculty become subjects, not citizens, that they're not capable of independent thought, because they're worried about their jobs. And by all accounts, the curriculum, the critical inquiry that might have characterized new college in the past is being destroyed. And you have a president, and his quotes were outrageous. The opposite of what a president with integrity would do, who's cheering this all on. And so no, the new college is just the first example of what they're trying to do nationally. And it's important to, they're very aware of what happened with Viktor Orban, for instance, in Hungary. That university professors are one of the places, not the only, but one of the places where you get a lot of pushback against authoritarian power. You have people in those universities who have studied the 1930s, the fascist takeover of so much of Europe, the attempt to take over the world and see the comparison. And in modern authoritarians, they've got rid of Hannah Renn, whose book, Onto the toilet, is defined the threat to democracy of much of the 20th century, because they think it's safer to read Homer. That's what this article talks about. And you just don't want the administration, the Trump, McMahon, Department of Education to be dictating what's taught to students to be doing free inquiry, because they don't care about that. They want, and to go back to the theme of monarchy, they want subjects, not citizens. I do want to point out though, in fairness, that every time JD Vance speaks in public, the estate of Hannah Renn gets a royalty check for the expression, the banality of evil. So at least there's that. We got to hear another break, but let's come back and talk about the year to come, Corey. What is the problem? That was a great political theory joke. Oh, thank you. Let me tell you. Normally, I open with my Hannah Renn material at the college shows, but for you, I'll save it here. Thank you. Among my colleagues, so we can. You should hear my jokes about Larry Summers, my God. They're a little derivative. All right, so we'll come back. Let's talk about this power without accountability, hellscape, we're facing for the next year, and what to watch for next to this is the Oath in the Office. Are you tired of the same old boring political chatter? Are you craving some smart, insightful, and hilarious takes on the day's news? Then get ready for America's original sexy liberal, Stephanie Miller. She's now delivering her signature blend of politics and pop culture five days a week in podcast form. Dive into the day's headlines with Stephanie Miller out of the gate and unwind with hilarious conversations on Stephanie Miller's happy hour podcast. Don't miss a single laugh or incredible moment. Subscribe to Stephanie Miller out of the gate and Stephanie Miller's happy hour podcast on Applepodcasts, StephanieMiller.com, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Welcome back to the first 2026 episode of the Oath in the Office. I am John Fugel saying, so grateful as always to be here with Professor Cory Brecht-Dyder and Cory, I just want to thank you for a great year. I'm going to ask you what your favorite albums or films of the year were, but I want to just begin the end here by talking about the common thread that we witness in the year that just wrapped, and it seems to me, if you can reduce it to anything, it's evil power without accountability. You know, whether it's the National Guard, the deportations, universities, I mean, what do you see as the common constitutional thread that's tying all of this mishagas together? Well, you know, I think in Trump 1.0 there was a big debate among, not you and I, we were agreeing about this, but among pundits, among academics who studied fascism, is Trump really an authoritarian or is he just a normal Republican with conservative ideals? And part of why that debate was allowed to happen, I think, is because so many things were being stopped. You had the lower courts and even the Supreme Court, at least temporarily stopping things and, you know, forcing Trump to change his mind. You had civil servants that were in place, that were limiting, even people we wouldn't have expected within the Department of Justice. And, you know, nowhere was that more apparent than the refusal of the Department of Justice as a whole to go along with the attempt to take over the government in January 6th. So it's not that that was smooth sailing, but you know, things were, I would think it's fair to say less dangerous than right now. But what's happening now is a simultaneous attempt to destroy democracy and to declare a kind of dictatorship with a weakening of the checks by the Supreme Court of the United States and the birthright citizenship case despite what happened now and allowing the military deployments up till now in the evisceration of universal junctions, the power of courts to stop the federal government, the use of the shadow docket or emergency orders without reason to allow all of this. So you have, you know, those two branches working together, the court enabling the president and then you have Congress really just giving up its own power, of course, controlled by the Republican Party. So it thinks are much more frightening now. It is an attempted self-cue. I'll stand by that idea still. And you know, although we have moments of hope and push back, it's working in a much stronger way than it did in Trump 1.0. Is this, I worked on this question, are we witnessing a shift from the rule of law to rule by loyalty? I think so, you know, I've been watching, you're asking about what television I'm watching, I watch too much television as people who know me would tell you, but I'm also learning from it and one of the things I'm... Anything fun? Anything fun? I think so, I'll tell you, the Victoria, which is about Queen Victoria on Netflix. It's so good. I mean, I don't know, you have seen it? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and part of what I'm amazed by is the constraints on her power. Like even in the 19th century, you know, this kind of story of the 1800s in England is of a pretty weak monarch who, you know, defers to Parliament largely, who has moments of intervention, but compared to what Trump is trying to do here is, again, to make himself stronger than a monarch. That's what John Adams thought of the presidency, although he still had, you know, he was a serious scholar. This is just somebody who combines narcissism with his desire to destroy democracy and he's succeeding in large part. That's what's so frightening about this moment. So I don't know if that answers the question fully, but I guess what I was going to say about Victoria, sorry, I did have a bigger point. Which is, you know, the British really have this idea even within monarchy, even without a full democracy and in the early 19th century England, there isn't universal voting by any measure. There's limits, you know, property owners and all that Parliament is powerful, but they have a rule of law. And one of the scenes that's most powerful in Victoria is that there's an assassination or multiple assassination attempts on her. But the first one, and I went and fact checked all this so it isn't just in the show that the assassin who tries to attack her, tries to murder her is tried in court. And of course she wants to see her life was threatened, she wants to see this person convicted, but they find him to be not guilty by reason of insanity. And he's not given the punishment of death, which she would get for an attempt to kill a monarch. And you know, she honors it. She says those courts are spoken. That's how it works. You know, getting to decide the fate of people, even the people who attack me, the law does that, the rule of law. So even in monarchy, you have this idea of the rule of law. And what do we have here? We have a really an attempt to destroy it. What is that whole story that we just talked about in depth about the Gulag and Al Salvador, the enemy aliens act, but an attempt to destroy even the constraints on the monarch. And that is what John Adams was trying to do. Did you make it through Andorra season two, Corey? Did you get through Andorra season two? That we did. Yeah. Which the whole thing also has a great name. Let me know that at some point. Absolutely. Any films, Professor, that caught your eye? Doesn't have to be constitutional. Although I've said on the show before, to me, one of the greatest lines of dialogue of the year is in James Gunn's Superman, where Superman is told the Constitution doesn't apply to you because you're an alien. And I'm like, how did this guy know writing this script in 2002? How prescient that line would be? Are there any films that really turned you on this year? There were a lot. I mean, I have to single out one battle after another, Leonardo de Caprios, amazing film. I mean, just the way that so much of it, you know, with this is the de Caprios film that was directed by Walter Manterson. The way it depicts this frightening world that is in some ways, you know, I think before this 2025, we would have said that this is a dystopian world in which there don't seem to be many rights and where you have this, you know, kind of authoritarian power, Sean Penn in it as a frightening sort of ice leader, the equivalent of ice. And yet when you watch it as dystopian, it is dystopian. There's no question about it. You have heroes pushing back along the way. It resembles our own society in such a frightening way. So is it a pleasure to watch? I mean, it's a great film, great acting, but it's eerie in the way, rather than the way you were suggesting with Superman, the parallels with the current moment. I mean, I just have to believe I know that was in production long before Trump took power, but there was a sense that this could happen and it is happening. And you know, this film I highly recommend it. How about you, Sean? I mean, you know, I love many films this year, but I loved Superman. I loved sinners. One battle after another has a lot of lovely moments. I mean, I think Del Toro's Frankenstein is great. And I love train dreams if you want to sod for hours. I mean, it's actually in the last year we've had, I would argue, the best Superman movie ever, the best Frankenstein movie ever. And last December with Noose Fratu, the best Dracula movie ever. And I've never needed non-political entertainment more than I needed at this year, Corey. But I want to thank you as well because my book and this podcast were my Project 2025. And it's been such a pleasure to build this thing up and watch the audience find it and watch it take off. And so I have to ask you about the year to come now. I mean, what should we be watching for next, legally, politically? What do you think we should keep our eyes open that would signal a real escalation? I do want to say shout out to your book, John, and all the sass of separation of church and hate. And you know, one of the pleasures of doing this podcast was talking to you about that as it was being written and then seeing it come out and then seeing the way it took off. And I, you know, it is one of the things about 2025 that gives me hope because I know from our own listeners and hearing from many of them that so much of your audience is curious about how to fight back against hate being co-opted by the Theocrats and to show that even within the tradition of Christianity that there's so many resources for pushing back. So that really did give me so much hope, not just that I liked the book and that I loved our interview. Thank you. And I think that it came out, but that people are responding to it in the way that they are. I think that just shows you that the culture as much as we're facing this authoritarian crackdown, there is this deep culture of democracy. And culture of pluralism that doesn't want to see religion co-opted and used as a vehicle of hate. And that's what your book does so well. And that's why you're getting this wide response. So that really just was such a pleasure to be part of it, to hear from listeners. In terms of hope, I think that that leads us to the deeper idea, which is that the culture has so many resources in it. It has history in it. It has the law. Let's not forget that. It's still there, even if it's being usurped. And yes, it is under attack, but it's also there as Judge Bozberg shows us. And you have decency. I think that in this society, we have people who throughout American history have fought back in these authoritarian moments. And that's what this has been about for me, this podcast. It's been a pleasure. It's has this element of solidarity. Hearing from listeners, watching it grow from, you know, a modest beginning to one of the top podcasts, as you said, in the government category, usually top three, when the episodes come out, you know, there's lots of hope in that for me in our small corner anyway of resisting this authoritarian shutdown of democracy. A lot of that is because I threatened to sue the Apple charts and they backed down and gave us a better place. Well, it's great. It's a little trick I learned this year, threatening people with lawsuits to make them bend the lawn obey you, obey you. It's a whole thing. But I mean, like seriously, let me ask, like what would you signal a real escalation that we should be worried? What should we have our eyes open for that legally or politically that this guy is going beyond what he tried this year? Because the decades of untreated syphilis nestle in his brain even more. I mean, what are you the most scared of opening up the paper in saying, Corey? Well, really, you know, every week we get an example of it. I mean, the idea that we would begin this podcast and then it would turn out that Trump was just another president and there wasn't an authoritarian shutdown of democracy. You know, if you want to see proof that that didn't happen, look every week that these stories are ongoing. And I think all of the dangers that we outlined when we were going back over the past year are going to continue. None of them are over. So that Gulag deportation, use of the Enemy Aliens Act, you have one judge fighting back, but the Supreme Court of the United States hasn't opined on it and certainly hasn't given that judge's view, Bozberg's view. Victory. So that continues. The deprivation of all rights to this Gulag in Al Salvador. And we could keep going with all the other examples. The use of the military domestically, yes, the courts push back, but that possibility of the insurrection act being used is extremely dangerous. And the Amalian filations, the Griffith is going to continue. He's not satisfied with any amount of money. He wants to be, I think, the wealthiest person in the world. And he has the entire United States government that he can deploy. So any of these stories that we've talked about, the shutdown of free speech and universities, all of those are ongoing threats. And one of them, I'm getting a firsthand view at because I'm teaching him one of the places that he's targeting. Yeah. I mean, 1800 souls are missing from this alligator alcatraz prison, right? And I said, and BCP of, I mean, like, I say, I have lost 3,000 immigrant arrestees in Chicago was reported by NBC. I mean, thousands of people kidnapped by our government, I mean, and they're missing 1900 people have not just been disappeared to a prison. They've disappeared from the prison. Like I fear that we're going to spend the rest of our lives watching all this investigated for human trafficking and God knows what else. I mean, do you have any confidence still that the judiciary as an institution can hold the line for one more year? Or is this just a race against time, a race against Donald Trump's arteries? Well, we're seeing, you know, you asked the question about, do we still have a rule of law? And there are semblance of it. You have these lower court judges. And let's remember, it's not just the nine justices of the Supreme Court, but the large number of judges on the district courts, the first level in the federal system and the appellate courts, courts of appeals. We also have the role of the states and fighting back. So there are a lot of resources to try to check this power. It isn't a completed coup. It's an attempted one. Right. And, you know, the story of next year is going to be whether we can push back. I'll reference to, you know, one of the things that I'm very hopeful about is that at the end of this year, in November, I'm hoping that we're going to see a Democratic Congress elected and people like Sheldon White House, Senator White House who we had on the show recently will become the Judiciary Committee Chair and or Ted Lu on the House side who we had. And there are people deeply concerned as we are. And that's why we've had them on the show and we'll have them again about the authoritarian attempted takeover by Donald Trump. And they'll have the tools of Congress to push back. So it won't just be these district court and court of appeals judges on the federal system. You'll have Congress as well. And that's why I'm hopeful that no, as far from being over, this is a fight that we're in the midst of. One battle after another to quote. Yeah. I'm with you on that. I'm not an optimist. I'm a recovering cynic. But I just, there's so much to be proud of. And I think as more and more people wake up, look, Donald Trump is not going to become more popular. He's not going to have more people who are on the fence before suddenly start liking this agenda. So I keep telling everyone, it's going to be hard. A lot of folks are going to be hurt, but don't forget to stop and smell the train wreck. Corey, looking back over all of this, I mean, it's easy to see why some of our listeners would feel overwhelmed. And powerless from the deployment of the military forces without any legal grounding to the murdering people overseas and bombing people without any legal grounding, the deportations without due process, these executive orders that just nuke the idea of restraints on presidential power, the judicial clashes over separation of powers and civil liberties. I mean, it's overwhelming to me. And I know a constitutional law professor who talks me off the ledge for your thinking professor. Let me end it with this. So, the constitutional resistance actually look like right now for people outside the courts. For those listening who don't have law degrees, I mean, what does constitutional resistance look like? And how should the rest of us approach the coming year? Well, I love that phrase, constitutional resistance. It's one that we've used before. Well, you have to keep using them. It's what this discussion, this podcast is all about, is inspiring people to see that and this is truth throughout American history, that you can't rely on the president, certainly, in this current moment to defend the Constitution, even though the oath of office requires them to say that, that he's going to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. This president is doing the extreme opposite of that. The Supreme Court, despite its good moments, is going to have a lot of bad moments. And certainly this year is full with them, probably chief among them, which I don't even think we mentioned in our rundown at some ingrained in us is the immunity case that just essentially declared the president and king when it came to the ability to him to get away with crime, literally. And so the idea that I'm trying to get at is we never have been able to just simply trust our public officials. They're going to fail us at different moments. But what we can trust in is that in a democracy, citizens can claim the Constitution and can claim the law for themselves. And when the government is being used to shut down the Constitution, we can resist in the name of the Constitution. So that's what I mean by this phrase of constitutional resistance. And that's what this whole podcast is about using the Constitution to resist authoritarian attempts to take over. And if you need inspiration, as I say in the Presidents and the People, that's so often what happened when John Adams was challenged not by the courts, which enabled him. But by the newspaper editors, he tried to prosecute. They used their own editorials to put the president on trial. Their own trials. They advertise them to show the authoritarian takeover. The Frederick Douglass wing of abolition that used the Constitution against the denial of all rights to all black people during that period in the Dred Scott case. And so again and again, we have these moments of inspiration throughout history. And we're living through it now. And that's what I wanted to start the podcast to do. And I think we're succeeding in that into showing people and to inspiring them that just because the Constitution is being shut down by the people in power doesn't mean that we have to let them. We have to resist. What a great phrase, John. Thank you for raising them. Well I'm here to help out. Professor, what is the best way for our listeners to follow you and to keep up with your brilliance the other six days of the week as we might need it this year? There now is the oath in the office sub-stack. I urge you to subscribe to that and to find it on sub-stack. We also have a YouTube channel if you want to watch this show, not just listen to it. And of course, continue to review us on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You'll find us and be sure in your favorite app that you're using to listen to it or watch it to give us a review where at 475 reviews it keeps growing and there are all five stars somehow. So I don't know, John, if all of them are friends of ours or my mom, but we've got really great listeners out there that seem enthusiastic. They're writing great things. They love this dynamic. And I'm so grateful to hear from so many of you. I'm continuing to collect comments and questions. But this idea of constitutional resistance, this isn't just a podcast. It's meant to create a kind of community in this moment and a record of what's happening. And I think in the long run, despite the honesty that we're bringing to what we're facing, that in the long run, we're going to recover and we'll have these shows as a record of our fighting back. Well, I just want to thank you again. I want to thank Wendy and Bayer Wolf and everyone who puts this thing together. And most of all, I want to thank our deeply attractive listeners. And you can hear me every night on Sirius XM Progress or the John Fugel saying podcast. If you don't have Sirius XM, I have a sub-stack. My book is called Separation of Church and Hate. And I'm on all the socials at John Fugel saying, and I just want to thank you again, Professor. It's going to be quite a year. I hope everyone got some rest over the holidays. It's going to be a lot of resisting, a lot of mouth reasons and a lot of double talking jive. We have to deconstruct. And I just want to thank you again for helping us make sense of a moment where our constitution is very much on trial. I'm John Fugel saying we look forward to having you join us for the rest of the year. Let's talk each other off some ledges and keep each other sane and keep fighting for the oath and the office.