Stephen K. Baff and Nat Chait discuss a federal judge's ruling in favor of a lawsuit against the Trump administration, and what it means for the future of the Supreme Court case. They also discuss the growing number of challenges to the administration's immigration policies, and how the courts are likely to respond.
00:01:12.200Federal judge lifts the pause on the downsizing of the federal workers.
00:01:17.160Federal judge lifts pause on Trump's resignation plan for federal workers.
00:01:20.580Federal judge in Massachusetts declined to further pause the Trump's administration's buyout program's deadline,
00:01:26.000rejecting a call from several labor groups that are suing to block the program.
00:01:30.680So, Nat, I think you're going to see this in more and more federal courts, even at the first line,
00:01:34.920before going to appellate and then going to the emergency docket of the Supreme Court.
00:01:38.980Natalie, the left up to their typical tricks, and depending on the courts, depending on lawfare,
00:01:44.760I think they could get some rude awakenings because I believe that these executive orders since the Project 2025 America First Law under Stephen Miller,
00:01:55.480America First Parties under Brooks Rollins, took years to think this through, so they're not messing around.
00:02:03.660Well, look, they certainly have admitted out loud.
00:02:06.560I think, you know, Ali Velshi spent, what, months dedicating an entire show to sort of counter-programming,
00:02:12.520reverse engineering, a lot of what Project 2025 stood for, right?
00:02:16.360So they, to some extent, understand our legal playbook.
00:02:19.680But unfortunately, I think constitutionality and the truth is on our side, right?
00:02:24.600And I think, frankly, too, the media's narrative, which, like, we've really been hammering on this show,
00:02:29.640is really their only method of pushing back.
00:02:32.340And I, of course, have a front row seat to all that being in and around the White House briefing room.
00:02:36.940This idea that we're barreling towards a constitutional crisis is sort of the narrative of the day.
00:02:42.160But I just don't think that that's particularly salient or powerful.
00:02:46.880I think it sort of goes into the kind of doge matrix of, you know,
00:02:50.040the same people who've been OK with unelected bureaucrats running this country for years are now, what, upset about so-called unelected bureaucrats,
00:02:57.380although I would argue much more competent in terms of actually deconstructing the administrative state.
00:03:05.360But the lawfare will not obviously go away.
00:03:08.580They'll courtshop it or insert verb there.
00:03:11.700In other words, they will adjust, right, the variable, the sort of conduit through which they choose to try to oppose President Trump's executive orders,
00:03:29.980But Democracy Forward, I believe, in concert with a lot of like union groups, had brought this suit in particular.
00:03:36.120This judge out of Massachusetts, I also believe was an Obama judge, was sort of a similarly radical track record to a lot of the judges that have been exposed,
00:03:45.140like the one we went after this morning.
00:03:46.700But also, too, I mean, I think the threat of impeachment against a lot of these judges,
00:03:52.260they know deep down that they're acting outside of legal norms.
00:04:29.480But I think the White House is certainly not.
00:04:31.900But just to sort of link this back to the immigration stuff and to Pam Bondi's press conference, it is quite, I would say, interesting watching the media sort of adapt in real time
00:04:43.920and trying to come up with their various narratives to sort of push back against whatever the crisis may be.
00:04:51.540For example, right yesterday you have that reporter saying, well, actually, Elon and President Trump, it wasn't bad that we sent the condoms, sorry, $50 million worth of them,
00:05:01.260because we sent them to Mozambique and not Gaza.
00:05:05.160And that shows you, right, the mindset that sort of plagues these people.
00:05:10.560But today there's been an interesting narrative on sort of the mass deportation front.
00:05:14.140The Guardian had a big piece up, and I think the studio has it, saying that, quote, misleading ICE data is laying the groundwork for mass deportation, advocates say.
00:05:24.160And they're essentially in meltdown because they're saying that, and I quote,
00:05:27.540only 21% of the people who they've been deporting have a felony criminal conviction.
00:05:32.280The vast majority are misdemeanor offenders.
00:05:37.280It's like a real-time exercise trial by fire, just throwing every narrative that they can against President Trump.
00:05:44.580I think they got the most victories with the lawfare stuff, so that's where they're sticking with it.
00:05:49.680But I think that that was maybe just temporary hope, right?
00:05:53.020Because eventually, I think reality, which is, I don't know, the Constitution and the courts, maybe a little bit of retribution in the form of Pambani is going to hit him square in the face, metaphorically.
00:06:03.680So Rachel Maddow, who's now doing it five nights a week, you tell she's not happy with that.
00:06:08.200You know, she took a $5 million cut working one night a week.
00:06:12.120Now she's working five nights a week, at least for the first 100 days, 25.
00:06:14.900Her new thing, and you outlined this, I think, six, seven, eight months ago, autocratic breakthrough, and I want to tie it to Norm Eisen and the work he's doing, but isn't this like this quick decision by the judge at the frontline level to say, nah, I've looked at it, this is okay, where now they have to lose and they've got to go to the appellate.
00:06:37.500And isn't that going to start, a couple of these are going to break their back on this autocratic breakthrough, because it's going to show that actually the courts have checked the Constitution.
00:06:48.500What President Trump is doing is fully inside of his mandate under the unified theory of the executive as chief executive of the United States government, ma'am.
00:06:59.360Well, it's because these aren't courts in the, like, traditional legal sense, right?
00:07:04.720They're activists, and that's why they're court shopping.
00:07:08.320And you are right to link this back to the whole kind of autocratic breakthrough matrix, right?
00:07:13.000They're very intentional with the words that they choose to describe President Trump as, and right now the word of the day is autocrat, right?
00:07:19.980Because, like we said, it gives them the pretext to then justify outside of the system change, that's sort of the, you know, political theorist term of it.
00:07:29.240They love citing Ziblatt and Levitsky, the famous political scientists who sort of talk about the breakdown in democracies, how you turn into or transform into an autocracy.
00:07:40.000See, anytime you hear them invoke Viktor Orban or any of these other Eastern European countries, they're trying to draw a parallel there to say, well, hey, just like USAID went in and tried to carry out color revolutions there and everywhere else, well, that's what we're going to do here in the United States.
00:07:55.080And that democracy playbook, right, the book that we keep talking about, that just last weekend, Norm Eisen quite literally admitted, basically held up on air on MSNBC and said, yeah, this is what we're doing to try to depose the democratically elected President Donald J. Trump.
00:08:10.420One of the key pillars in that is using the courts to do that.
00:08:14.960I think the word court is mentioned like 50 times throughout the entire document.
00:08:19.680So they're certainly going to double down on this.
00:08:21.760But, Steve, I also think, too, just from a meta-like narrative perspective, the way that they have framed what is going on at Doge, right, the hypocrisy of caring about unelected bureaucrats aside, they make it seem like it's this roving, marauding band of, like, you know, unelected people who are just out to enrich Elon Musk and to enrich President Trump.
00:08:43.840The key point that you always hear, right, that there's no oversight, there's no oversight, because I know Washington, D.C. and the media, they care so much about oversight empirically.
00:08:53.240I think the four years of Joe Biden, I beg to differ.
00:08:56.120But the reason why they're framing it through this lens is because it goes back to this concept of autocratic breakthrough, right?
00:09:03.820They love the idea of unelected bureaucrat, unelected president Elon Musk, because it totally fits with that narrative, with that trope.
00:09:13.460And they've tried to paint it not as this cutting waste, fraud, and abuse exercise, but as autocratic and oligarchic.
00:09:20.160And, sure, maybe there's some legitimacy if you want to have this sort of tech bro discussion about what transhumanism means and how they carry it out.
00:09:26.700But that's a different, more nuanced conversation, right?
00:09:29.660They are invoking that in this whole Doge thing.
00:09:32.720They love the idea of really projecting, because at the end of the day they're the ones defending authoritarian regimes abroad, but sort of conceiving of the idea of Doge as this authoritarian, what do they always say, takeover, because it gives them more legitimacy to then push back with these bogus court rulings, because then these judges, as you can see on the left, you know, all I do is consume left-wing media, right?
00:09:58.280These judges are being hailed as the saviors of democracy and standing on the front line.
00:10:03.660So in their twisted, warped worldview, they're not attacking President Trump like they did in 2016, right?
00:10:11.540It's not hair on fire, screaming, melting down about everything.
00:10:15.260It's much more measured, because they actually have a playbook that we've read and we've discussed on this show, but they don't gain anything from depicting him as erratic and crazy and all over the place.
00:10:27.780They gain more from their color revolution vantage point in depicting him as this very calculated, very smart, very autocratic, democratic, backsliding individual, because then they can dip into their revolutionary toolkit that not just the media hacks, but academics and that whole sort of democracy lawfare journal crew of people who really probably need to be investigated and have more than just their security clearances revoked.
00:10:56.040But they then have the moral, they would view it that way, and just political cover to really engage in what I always say is that outside of the system change.
00:11:04.140And right now you're seeing that with these, you know, extrajudicial decisions.
00:11:16.520Well, hey, and speaking of autocrats, I would love to congratulate President Trump on his unanimous election to the board of the Kennedy Center.
00:12:51.740Get over there, because this thing's not going to get sorted until you get to the railhead of the spending, and that's the Defense Department.
00:13:18.560For the end of the dollar empire, also access to Philip Patrick or Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N, 989898.
00:13:25.360The key thing is to get one of the specialists and have them walk you through the different, what I call the instrumentality of actually how you get into precious metals.
00:13:34.360But I think now more than ever, and gold was at near an all-time high, 29.29, I think, at the close.
00:13:43.860It's not important exactly what the number is.
00:13:46.720It's important that you understand how the number got there.
00:13:50.360And that's what Philip Patrick and the team, and that's what all the free information we give you, Birchgold.com slash Bannon.
00:13:57.300Make sure you do it today because, folks, I will guarantee you one thing.
00:14:03.220This budget that was given, first of all, will never be approved, but number two, it's just a foreshadowing of turbulence, the inflation number this morning, and this, turbulence.
00:14:18.120So, Benzman, you've got, there's two things going on.
00:14:22.820I want to make sure I had to get you here.
00:14:24.000Okay, first off, Pam Bondi gives a press conference.
00:14:27.640He brings the angel moms up, which you've been, in your professional work, one of the best people in the country of providing a platform and research and reporting to give those that are voiceless a platform to even get here and have Trump win.
00:14:43.200But now, it was so great, one of the angel moms was down in the press briefing room.
00:14:50.820In seeing that, you've got to think about, well, hey, about these mass deportations, particularly the criminals.
00:14:55.760Pam Bondi's sitting there telling Letitia, James, and Bragg, I don't want to hear it anymore.
00:14:59.220You know, Alvin Adams, or Adams has got, Eric Adams has got religion.
00:15:06.360You're not going to get in the way of our, you know, picking up these bad guys and getting them out of the country.
00:15:13.940And we're not going to, they put the FBI people on notice, hey, we're not going to have these leaks happen anymore.
00:15:18.200So I want to deal with that before I go, because you're going to a quite dark place, which I think we have to in this.
00:15:25.200And that is the whole other element of this.
00:15:27.100There's going to be, we're going to get in conflict with the Mexican drug cartels.
00:15:31.020That day is coming as sure as the turning of the earth.
00:15:34.220But let's start with the budget problems, the logistics problems, what I call the embeds in the administrative and deep state that are fighting people.
00:15:42.560Folks have to know, Homan and Emma Bovee and Stephen Miller and many, many other people that are working this 24-7 are working against an apparatus that Pam Bondi had to come out today and say, look, you guys keep it up.
00:15:58.280She was essentially saying we're going to be arresting government officials.
00:16:28.120They're looking at using defense budget money to help them ramp up.
00:16:33.620They need more deportations to kind of meet the mass deportation program, right?
00:16:41.120The definition of mass deportation, you're going to have a lot more, you have to deport a lot more, but you got to have the detention space and the infrastructure.
00:16:49.660There's a Senate bill moving forward, a spending bill that looks at maybe $175 billion for detention and deportation costs.
00:17:01.060But remember, Homan said, he said it many times, what price do you put on national security, keeping Americans safe?
00:17:36.100That's got to end that sort of thing because the rest of the world gets wind of those releases very quickly, live time on their cell phones.
00:17:44.560And they'll start to try to come through the border again.
00:18:51.040Steve, I lost your audio, so I missed a lot of what you were saying there.
00:18:54.600But I wanted to circle back to your original question about Mexico.
00:18:58.480Because there's also reporting, fresh reporting out, CBS, et cetera, that the Mexicans are detecting U.S. spy plane activity over the northern border regions.
00:19:15.560What do you think they're doing up there with AWACS and other kind of high-tech surveillance aircraft?
00:19:21.440Well, I've got sources that have been telling me that there's a lot of tabletopping going on in D.C. with the Mexicans to target fentanyl labs down there.
00:19:34.060That maybe the Mexicans are going to be targeting.
00:19:36.340I'm going to guess that the Americans are going to be providing the intel.
00:19:40.900But it's interesting that the Mexicans are the ones complaining about the spy flights and disclosing it.
00:19:48.580So I don't know if they're in on this or not.
00:19:50.400But the point is, is there's a lot of U.S. activity that we're not used to seeing happening over Mexico right now and probably on the ground as well.
00:20:02.200Remember, Trump just put out executive orders that publicly declare in memos, publicly declare all-out total war on the Mexican cartels and their fentanyl labs to stop the fentanyl flow.
00:20:16.060And I think he means business on this thing.
00:20:20.960And the Mexicans just put 10,000 more troops out, and they're rolling them out right now as we speak.
00:20:27.880And their job, according to the tariff deal that Trump cut, is to dismantle the Mexican cartels.
00:20:37.780So maybe we're going to see the end of the hugs-not-bullets policy down there, sort of required by Donald Trump.
00:20:44.920This is something that's definitely interesting and worth watching, whether we're heading into a hot shooting war down there.
00:20:51.260Well, one of the top intel people knew you were coming on, been looking at your writings, also been doing their own independent assessment.
00:21:00.820So the IRS, the ISR flights, which is the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, right?
00:21:08.960The ISR flights over California and the coast along the Mexican border, very much an indicator that we are about to start to put the smack down on the cartels.
00:21:18.040But we had better be prepared for the cartels to return live fire in the continental United States.
00:21:24.780They may really go after a large-scale attack inside our lifelines, poisoning the water or pouring fentanyl across produce or in our grocery stores.
00:21:33.420It's an ongoing war, and the cartels are just not going to roll over and give up.
00:21:38.700But that's an intelligence expert of the highest authority.
00:22:39.920I don't know for sure that the U.S. Navy is going to be moving assets up the Pacific coast, that elements of the Sixth Fleet might be moving up there.
00:22:54.500And it shouldn't be a surprise because Trump is messaging and projecting we're going after this.
00:23:01.540We are not going to just sit back like the last administration.
00:23:06.300We're not going to let the Mexicans sit back either.
00:23:08.900We've declared them a foreign terrorist – or we're about to declare them a foreign terrorist organization, or all of them, or some of them.
00:23:16.600I'm not sure how they're going to scope that, which means that they can seize assets globally.
00:23:40.200And one other thing I want to say about that is the Scheinbaum administration down there and liberal media all over Mexico and in the United States keep harping over and over again that U.S. gun stores are supplying those cartels with all of their arsenals.
00:24:23.060They've even reputed to have these javelin, shoulder-fired javelin missiles down there, two or three of them or more.
00:24:31.280And they've got mortars, and they have military-grade equipment, and they're getting most of that from Mexico's own armories and from Central American armories, older stockpiles and that sort of thing.
00:29:47.980He's our wise man, a former CIA, Pentagon, and White House advisor with an unmatched grasp of geopolitics and capital markets.
00:29:56.220Jim predicted Trump's Electoral College victory exactly 312 to 226, down to the actual number itself.
00:30:05.600Now he's issuing a dire warning about April 11th, a moment that could define Trump's presidency in your financial future.
00:30:12.640His latest book, Money GPT, exposes how AI is setting the stage for financial chaos, bank runs at lightning speeds, algorithm-driven crashes, and even threats to national security.
00:30:24.840Right now, war room members get a free copy of Money GPT when they sign up for Strategic Intelligence.
00:30:31.440This is Jim's flagship financial newsletter, Strategic Intelligence.
00:37:47.520So I have to imagine that, you know, they're going to put them there.
00:37:52.000But also, you know, remember, it's legitimate strategy to place military assets that you hope you don't need.
00:38:00.260Like for the Gaza war during the Israel war with Hezbollah on the north.
00:38:06.040You know, we moved up a bunch of aircraft carriers and all sorts of battleships and just let them sit there and said, hey, Hezbollah in Iran, you better not get too out of hand because we've got power here.
00:38:17.080Well, same with the 10th Mountain Division.
00:38:20.320You know, you put those guys down there, you're sending a big message to the other side of the border.
00:38:26.000One thing that those cartels absolutely respect are military personnel on the American side.
00:38:34.640You don't ever really hear much about those guys getting fired on.
00:38:38.500And actually, to an extent, they also respect the Mexican military because they've got arms that are equivalent to what they have.
00:38:57.240And our arms are going to be more powerful on this side.
00:39:00.060I have to imagine, I don't know who's going to move in on the Pacific side.
00:39:04.300There's a lot of Ponga boat traffic coming in with people and drugs into California up the coast, pretty far north, as far north as, you know, Monterey and even further north than that, coming in from Mexico.
00:39:21.520And I think they're going to try to put a stop to all of that, too.
00:39:24.160I mean, really, they're just going to try to put the pressure back on the cartels on their drug smuggling operations.
00:39:31.560And this really is important in a lot of ways.
00:39:35.260I mean, it's a policy priority of the Trump administration.
00:39:38.860We're going to shut down fentanyl trafficking.
00:39:41.940But remember, the cartels have been making billions and billions of dollars, just absolutely flooded with cash on the Biden mass migration engineered crisis.
00:40:18.020Todd, before I let you go, I just want the people to be unnoticed that these guys are they are very much like samurai or very much like kamikaze.
00:40:29.420They don't take death means nothing to them.
00:40:32.360Death of other people and death for themselves.
00:40:35.060Don't think these brothers are going down without a fight.
00:40:38.100The military is a very different is different degree than law enforcement, even the heaviest law enforcement.
00:40:43.640And when you bring in the 10th mountain and the Navy to go to the Ponga boats, you got all this.
00:40:47.900You've got some of the best equipment and people trained to get it on.
00:40:53.780But I'm just telling people there will be blowback.
00:40:57.580There's definitely going to be blowback.
00:40:58.880And people have to be prepared for this.
00:41:01.080When you designate them a terrorist group that you can go get all their financial assets, start choking them down, and then you start going in to eviscerate it, just be prepared.
00:41:12.680Not saying it's going to happen, but you've got to be prepared for it to happen.
00:41:16.640Todd Bensman, your thoughts, your closing thoughts on this.
00:41:18.860Right, and I just want to point out that – I was talking a little bit before the break.
00:41:26.240This thing just really pisses me off because the media is constantly saying, well, this is an American gun – Americans' love of guns is what is fueling and feeding the cartels in our own fentanyl catastrophe.
00:41:41.740U.S. gun stores are arming and equipping.
00:41:45.600If they shoot at us, it's with U.S. guns that they bought in retail stores, and that's just not true anymore.
00:41:53.180Once upon a time, 15 years ago maybe, but they are getting their weapons.
00:41:58.100These are military-grade machine guns, rocket-fired – shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades, grenade launchers, rifle grenade launchers with the 40-millimeter rounds.
00:42:12.740They have all of that stuff, and they didn't get it from U.S. gun stores.
00:42:16.600So just keep in mind that that's from Central America and from Mexico's own armories.
00:42:24.640So Mexico is the chief purveyor of this fraudulent narrative, political narrative.
00:42:31.300So I guess if I was going to end with anything, it would be that.
00:42:46.600But they're not cowards, and they're not quitters.
00:42:49.300These are dangerous people, and they will fight this.
00:42:51.400They understand that when the army's coming down – this is like Fort Apache to them.
00:42:55.740They realize they lose this, they're out of business, and they don't intend – they have control.
00:43:00.600I would argue – Todd, you know it better than I do, but I would argue almost that Mexico has devolved to be a narco – anarchy, narco state.
00:43:10.940They control it, and they're not prepared to give it up.
00:43:15.740Well, remember that Donald Trump has his finger on the tariff button, and the Mexicans have maybe three weeks left to show some results.
00:43:26.580So they are under the pressure to do something, some kind of show and tell, something that tells Donald Trump, you know, we're doing something that you like so that you won't push that tariff button.
00:44:26.280We've got to make sure we get all the Todd Benzmans we've got on War Room while we can use them because eventually I think a lot of these are also going to roll into the administration.
00:44:39.600Now they're getting through some of the Senate confirms.
00:44:41.140You're going to see some other quality people that you know and love, I think, go in there.
00:47:58.060I think Bobby will be tonight or in the early morning hours.
00:48:01.200Then tomorrow when we come on, it'll be cash.
00:48:04.320It'll be Thursday, and cash will be at the Committee of Jurisdiction, which will be the Judiciary Committee.
00:48:10.820And then, you know, they keep saying his 30-day clock start ticking from the time he was on the – that he gave this testimony and for the confirmation process.
00:48:30.260There's a lot going on, particularly as Pam looks to clean out more of the FBI immediately and also take care of this situation at Maine Justice.
00:48:39.560This is also the U.S. Attorneys and Southern Districts, the rat's nest.
00:48:42.900They're going to clean that thing out.
00:48:45.840Clayton and the team is going to go in there, got to clear that out.