On today's show, we have a special guest on the show, Dan Warren, who is a freshman Congressman from North Carolina. He joins us to talk about the current state of the Republican majority in Congress, what it means for the country, and why he thinks it's time for a smaller government. We also hear from some of our listeners who are frustrated with the lack of progress from the current Republican majority and why they don't think it's a good thing. And we hear from others who have been in Congress for a few weeks and have been frustrated with what they see going on in Washington, D.C. and what they want to see the country do moving forward. We wrap up the show with a special segment where we discuss the latest in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) scandal and why we should be concerned about it. Thanks to our sponsor, Caff Monster Energy Drink, for sponsoring this episode! Don't Tell Mom: Rate/subscribe in Apple Podcasts! Rate, review, and subscribe to our new podcast! Subscribe, comment, and tell a friend about what you think of the show! Timestamps: 3:00 - What would you like to see in the next episode? 4:30 - What's the worst thing you've heard from Congress? 5:15 - What do you think about the new Republican majority? 6:40 - Is Matt Gaetz off the table? 7:10 - How do you feel about it? 8: What's going to happen next week? 9: What are you looking forward to the future of the country? 10:00 11:50 - What are your favorite part of the political landscape? 13:00 | What's next? 16:30 17:10 18:40 19:15 21:10 | What s the biggest takeaway from the new government? 22:30 | What is your favorite piece of news? 27: What s going to be the most important thing? 26:15 | What does it mean to you're going to get the most dangerous? 29: What is the biggest thing you're looking for? 30:40 | What do we're watching? 31:00 / 32:00 + 33:00 // 33:20 35:00 & 36:00 ? 36:30 // 35:40
00:03:34.000What has been your assessment of people's reaction to this Republican majority as you've chatted with folks over the last two weeks as we've been out of town?
00:03:45.000They definitely feel like Republicans have squandered our majority.
00:03:48.000They're like, you know, you guys said you were going to cut spending, and you said you were going to secure the border, and you said a whole lot more, and none of that's going really well.
00:03:57.000And, you know, the one bright spot I could hold up is say, you know, a majority of the party actually said no thanks to the big spending bill right before this break.
00:04:05.000So you gotta look for bright spots, and at least that was something.
00:04:09.000This is the argument that Tom Cole, a Republican member from Oklahoma, said to me.
00:04:14.000He said, Matt, you know, you seem discouraged and you reflect the discouragement of people who think we should be doing more, but without this Republican majority, we would have gotten another American Rescue Plan, another big spending bill, and at least we stood as a ballast against that.
00:04:31.000In North Carolina, Dan, do you sense people are appreciative of what we've stopped or unfulfilled by the lack of our diligence?
00:04:40.000North Carolinians do not consider, you know, it could have been worse without us being here, a great argument for having delivered on our mandate.
00:05:14.000No, they're not consoled in any way by Tom Cole's excuses.
00:05:20.000So $1.2 trillion in spending, 3,000 pages of legislative text.
00:05:25.000They waived the 72-hour rule so that we couldn't give itemized review and due consideration to the things we were considering.
00:05:33.000And then, as Congressman Davidson points out, a majority of Republicans vote no, but we still have over 100 who vote yes alongside the Democrats.
00:05:42.000What feedback do you think they're getting?
00:05:45.000Because I've had people ask me, well, why did this person vote for this big spending bill?
00:05:49.000What was their justification or reason they gave you?
00:05:53.000Frankly, when I talk to folks, their reason for voting yes was often some niche issue that they cared about, but that allowed us to go on a suboptimal path rather than having, I think, the boldness and courage to confront our economic conditions.
00:06:07.000Yeah, I mean, I think, look, obviously, everybody left of center thinks that the solution's more spending, more government, all they want is more.
00:06:14.000And Republicans, I go back, this is kind of a hobby, I did a little bit of it over the break, and look at members' websites.
00:06:23.000And virtually every Republican, you can research it, they all say some version of, I want a smaller, more accountable government.
00:06:30.000And if you had one party that was for a smaller government and one party that was for a bigger government, you would think that sometimes you would get a smaller government and sometimes you would get a bigger government.
00:06:45.000Go look at the voting record and send us the right reinforcements.
00:06:49.000Indeed, and that growing government is becoming increasingly more dangerous.
00:06:53.000And that's where I want to really drive our conversation today around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
00:06:58.000Most people had never heard of FISA before until the 2016 presidential contest when this authority was principally used to go after the Trump campaign and to spy on what would otherwise be politics.
00:07:12.000And so, Dan, if you were just talking to a regular person out there and you were describing, like, what is FISA? Because a regular American might think, I don't do international business.
00:07:22.000The farthest person I talk to away from is my aunt who lives in the Midwest.
00:07:27.000How would you describe what it is and maybe how these authorities could be used against regular folks?
00:07:33.000So what they used against the Trump campaign back in 2016 is a different part of FISA than is before us this week.
00:07:40.000This is what they call section 702. There's a big database.
00:08:09.000So if you're an American citizen who's having a business abroad, it's a big connected global community.
00:08:16.000But that means that Americans' data is also in that database.
00:08:19.000And so these backdoor searches, the FBI has access to, and what the study indicated in 2019, you go back and they were engaged in millions of violations in the way they searched the database.
00:08:31.000Even in 2021, after their supposed reform efforts, 278,000 I think was the number of violations then.
00:08:40.000And so it's just a, you know, it's an enormous backdoor opportunity to look at Americans' data that is collected by our intel state.
00:08:50.000And it's a horrendous abuse of Americans' privacy.
00:08:54.000And it seems to have been used against people on the right, on the left.
00:08:57.000I mean, you had it deployed against some of the BLM rioters.
00:09:01.000You had people who were just in Washington on January 6th.
00:09:04.000We're kind of drawn into this FISA network.
00:09:07.000And so, Warren, you have been a critic of a lot of these really constitutional violations that have been embedded in the Patriot Act and then emerged out of that and really gone well beyond their original intent.
00:09:22.000That system that Dan described, it would seem like in some circumstances you would want to keep an eye on bad guys abroad who are not American citizens, but these 287,000 violations, the fact the FBI was breaking the law 38 times an hour, like you've been the thought leader on what needs to be done to fix FISA. So lay out how you fix FISA. Yeah, so you think about the Patriot Act.
00:09:47.000It was an expansion of some—FISA goes back to the 70s, I think 78. But, you know, we support the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
00:09:54.000We want to stop, you know, bad guys from harming American citizens, right?
00:09:59.000There's a reason there's not a domestic surveillance act.
00:10:02.000It's called the Fourth Amendment, right?
00:10:04.000You're not supposed to be able to get Americans' data unless you get a warrant or subpoena with probable cause, some justification as to where you're going.
00:10:13.000And if you try these vast, sweeping searches in a normal case, even if you're going after potentially really bad people, you have to have a probable cause and you have to present what you're going to search and why.
00:10:49.000So they go pull everything out of the database that's already been collected.
00:10:53.000And then they say, okay, now I've built everything that I want to get, and I know exactly where it is in the database, so let me go get a warrant for that.
00:11:01.000And so that's a complete corruption of our system, of the Constitution.
00:11:06.000And when you say, well, you know, it really is to keep us safe, Well, if men were angels, we wouldn't need most of the government.
00:11:14.000Go back to the basic premise of how we even have a government.
00:11:20.000If don't hurt people and don't take their stuff was so easy to get along with, Cain would have never killed Abel, and we wouldn't even need judges, let alone prosecutors.
00:11:28.000But now we know that human nature is going to be corrupted, and we know that the FBI is telling on themselves.
00:11:35.000As to, yeah, we're doing this wrong, but trust us.
00:11:41.000We're going to do what the Constitution said, is not to trust the federal government.
00:11:44.000The whole point of the Fourth Amendment, and it's the most infringed, in my opinion, of the Bill of Rights, It's to limit the government's ability to go after you in certain ways.
00:11:54.000The First Amendment's got five protections in it.
00:12:11.000They've got the data and they're just gonna keep doing it.
00:12:14.000And frankly, the debate process that we're entering into right now says they're not content with the current level of spying on Americans.
00:12:21.000They want to expand the ways that they can spy on Americans.
00:12:24.000Yeah, so I do want to get to some of the ways that our colleagues, even our colleagues in the Republican Party, are wanting to advance the authorities that we're worried about rub up against our constitutional mores.
00:12:36.000But one fix, just so that we're able to bullet point this, is a warrant requirement for US citizens.
00:12:43.000But you talked about the importance of the Fourth Amendment.
00:12:47.000And one of the things, Dan, that we've worked on is ensuring that the Fourth Amendment is not for sale, that the government not utilize data brokers who are themselves commercially kept collecting all this information to then do an end run around the Fourth Amendment.
00:13:02.000So maybe talk a little bit about why that's an important part of this FISA discussion.
00:13:07.000And Warren may be even better suited to talk about it than me.
00:13:11.000We've passed, on the Judiciary Committee where you and I serve, we've passed that bill through.
00:13:18.000In fact, it always has very broad bipartisan support.
00:13:21.000Some of the farther left Democrats Actually joining this, the idea that your data collected by virtue of your interactions with Google and Facebook and every social media company, all sorts of other stuff, is assembled by data brokers and they can get a handful of pieces of information.
00:13:43.000They can tell exactly who you are, what your preferences are, and data brokers maintain these massive warehouses of this data and it can be purchased.
00:13:53.000Well, the federal government, which couldn't get any of that data without a warrant, can go to data brokers and inquire it commercially and conduct surveillance on the entire population.
00:14:38.000But it's worth pausing over because everybody talks about we should have bipartisan accomplishment.
00:14:44.000Well, that's as bipartisan as you get.
00:14:46.000And yet there's another part of both the Democrat conference and the Republican conference, which are sort of the deep staters, the intel advocates, and the bipartisanship falls apart at that point.
00:14:56.000It's one of the only issues left that doesn't break on normal party lines.
00:15:04.000One person, I think, right now that the American public trusts on politics, that really, across the political spectrum, they would look at it, whether it's in the news or certainly in elected office, that they would say, oh, I trust this one person.
00:15:17.000But maybe when you look at it and you've got the range spanned, you know, from me to Pramila Jayapal, from Jordan to Nadler, from Mr. Bishop to Sarah Jacobs, you know, you to Adam Schiff, you know, the range is, well, we agree.
00:15:32.000That we should actually get a warrant.
00:15:34.000We agree that you should stop buying data that you would otherwise need to get a warrant or a subpoena for in circumventing the Fourth Amendment.
00:15:42.000And I think, hopefully, the country knows that this is how we protect our rights.
00:15:46.000We might disagree on a gazillion other things, and we do, but at least here you're saying, this is being abused by our intelligence agencies.
00:15:54.000And if it's going to be allowed to continue to exist, it should be reformed.
00:15:57.000And so when we see that type of kind of cross-partisan collaboration to try to improve this system, it makes you think, wow, that might be a real opportunity to make that change in the bill.
00:16:08.000So we've got the underlying base text of this FISA reform bill, and we've identified two key fixes.
00:16:17.000Two, the Fourth Amendment is not for sale act.
00:16:20.000My reports right now from the Rules Committee are that we're going to get a vote on your amendment, Mr. Davidson, on the warrant requirement, but that we aren't going to get a vote on the Fourth Amendment is not for sale act.
00:16:34.000If that is how our decision process is truncated, do you think that's a fair rule to proceed on?
00:16:41.000Well, I don't like the rule, the way it's going.
00:16:43.000So let's go back to the way we're here.
00:16:46.000Judiciary is supposed to be the base text.
00:16:49.000The Judiciary Committee bill that passed out a committee passed out a committee 35 to 2, overwhelmingly bipartisan again.
00:17:04.000So, you know, there were major reforms that were in the Judiciary Committee bill.
00:17:10.000And the Intel Committee said, oh, well, we can't have that.
00:17:13.000And we need to expand the surveillance.
00:17:15.000Yeah, I want to get to the expansion first.
00:17:17.000So that process was blown up because Intel wanted to do more.
00:17:23.000So the speaker in December pulled the Judiciary Committee bill and did a short-term reauthorization from December to April.
00:17:34.000And then two months ago, we were supposed to have this fight.
00:17:37.000Mike Turner, the chairman of Intel, created an international incident to blow up the debate process.
00:17:42.000We were in rules committee where judiciary was presenting this unified front between Jordan and Nadler, the ranking Democrat and the chairman of judiciary, saying, we agree, we should do these things.
00:17:56.000Turner blew up the whole thing and wouldn't even come to Rules Committee to have the debate.
00:18:00.000And part of it was to avoid answering the question on the Fourth Amendment's not for sale.
00:18:04.000And so that process was rewarded, this blowing up the process, was rewarded by the Speaker saying, okay, fine, until we'll take out The Fourth Amendment's not for sale provision.
00:18:17.000And he's actively working against the get a warrant pass.
00:18:20.000And let's not forget, Mike Johnson, the current speaker, was a member of Judiciary Committee and had previously voted for a warrant requirement and for the Fourth Amendment's not for sale.
00:18:31.000Now he's pulled the Fourth Amendment's not for sale, and he's working this week with the whip process against the warrant requirement.
00:18:42.000It's got a title, but it doesn't have content.
00:18:44.000And I'm not sure there's one more fact that probably may not have gotten through, and that is that instead of being the judiciary base text, the base text for the bill on the floor is the Intel Committee's product.
00:18:56.000So what they did is they said, the things you guys agree on, we'll put into the base text, and the things you don't agree on, you'll offer amendments on.
00:19:15.000So that was another change to the terms.
00:19:17.000That's the change I was talking about over the last two months when Turner blew up the Rules Committee.
00:19:23.000He was rewarded by saying, oh, we're going to cancel the deal yet again and go with a different product, a different path.
00:19:30.000I think people are used to watching the Republicans fight against the Democrats, but here you have this unique issue where it's actually the Judiciary Committee with strong adherence to the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment, fighting against the Intelligence Committee.
00:19:45.000And Dan, maybe respond to what some might say, well, gosh, the Intelligence Committee, this is an intelligence authority.
00:19:51.000Why should they not be given the deference on that dispute?
00:19:55.000Well, frankly, some of their arguments are disingenuous.
00:19:57.000So we've seen scheduled two or three times.
00:20:10.000The SCIF, Sensitive Compartmentalized Intelligence Facility, or something like that.
00:20:16.000And then some people, some bureaucrats from the intel agencies tell you these things, and frankly, they're not very persuasive.
00:20:24.000And yet, there's an attempt to sort of intimidate people to say, oh, things are going to be horribly, that go horribly wrong, and you're going to be blamed if you reform this and provide for people, Americans' privacy.
00:20:37.000And one argument that is constantly made by Mike Turner, the chairman of Intel, and others, Dan Crenshaw, is they say, well, this 702 database is all lawfully collected.
00:20:49.000And once law enforcement lawfully collects information, they routinely use it to look at other people.
00:20:54.000Well, you have to understand in detail what we're talking about.
00:20:57.000Intel is collecting this database under the rules that say Intel works abroad.
00:21:03.000And there's supposed to be a firm wall.
00:21:07.000And these guys are using the usual situation where if you would search someone when you're arresting them and you find something in their pocket, Yeah, that's fine.
00:21:15.000You don't have to have a warrant for that.
00:21:17.000But in this case, you've got intel information collected abroad and they're saying because that's lawful for intel purposes, they ought to be able to go through it without any limitations whatsoever or that you don't need to have a warrant requirement.
00:21:31.000It's a totally dishonest, disingenuous argument.
00:21:35.000Those are the kinds of things that I think look at tactics of the folks who are devoted to the intel state In how we've dealt with this, and I think it denigrates the, unfairly denigrates the rights of Americans to privacy, and they ought to be able to expect that from their government.
00:21:52.000And we've talked about two of the antidotes, right?
00:21:54.000The warrant requirement and the Fourth Amendment's Not For Sale Act.
00:21:57.000We get a vote on warrant, we don't on Fourth Amendment Not For Sale.
00:22:00.000How do you think that vote's going to go?
00:22:02.000Do you think that we'll have a sufficient number of Democrats vote with us to put a warrant requirement on the bill?
00:22:10.000Well, I think we would, but here's what's gone on.
00:22:13.000They've been working for months now to whip the votes.
00:22:16.000Look, I still remember this guy who's a legend, Walter Jones, who's a member of Congress when I first got here.
00:22:27.000You know, when I was a new guy here, there was something that passed the House like 420-something to 7. And I thought, it'll help solve a problem, be popular with the public, passes the House, isn't even partisan.
00:22:38.000Why in the world won't the Senate take this up, Walter?
00:22:42.000And he said, well, I hate to be cynical, but probably because it would pass.
00:23:05.000All right, well now let's get to the dangerous expansion of these authorities that may be presented to votes for us.
00:23:11.000And the first deals with public Wi-Fi.
00:23:14.000I don't think most Americans believe that when they get on a McDonald's Wi-Fi or a public library Wi-Fi, that they have consented to some new level of search into all of their digital existence.
00:23:26.000But I think as I'm hearing it now, there's going to be an amendment to essentially make The utilization of public Wi-Fi, an erosion of your constitutional protections against those unlawful searches and seizures.
00:23:41.000Either of you, I'd love your thoughts on that provision.
00:23:44.000Well, if you go to the McDonald's Wi-Fi in Eaton, Ohio, a little rural county with about 40,000 people in it, and you use their Wi-Fi, I'm pretty sure they're not targeting foreigners there.
00:23:56.000I'm not saying there aren't any foreigners there, but the balance of it's not foreigners.
00:24:00.000And when they log on to the Wi-Fi there, they're not logging on to do foreign intelligence.
00:24:07.000I'm not saying that would never happen in Eaton, Ohio, but...
00:24:10.000Normally, it's because people want to get better Wi-Fi than the cell service out there, and it's faster than maybe what they got at home.
00:24:17.000They'll come in and hang out and use it.
00:24:18.000Well, now, McDonald's, if they want to still have Wi-Fi available to the public, they have to go to, like, you're opening up a bank account.
00:24:26.000They've got to know your customer rule where they collect all this information.
00:25:20.000Why do we not need a warrant requirement?
00:25:24.000Why should that amendment be defeated?
00:25:25.000Well, because it might leave us open to attack in some way, and because the FBI has done all the reforms that are necessary.
00:25:32.000Well, the evidence would suggest There's no basis in evidence to conclude that, and the evidence goes the other direction in terms of the previous tests.
00:25:42.000And particularly on this Wi-Fi matter, I worry about someone making a foreign contact that they don't even know that they're making.
00:25:48.000If someone is utilizing public library Wi-Fi and they go there to get Customer support for their washing machine.
00:25:56.000And it just so happens that they're connected to some online chat center to help them with customer service.
00:26:01.000And some other person who works at that chat center in India is connected to a dangerous organization.
00:26:08.000There are so many opportunities for people who have no intention to even subject themselves to this spying.
00:26:15.000Even a lot of email accounts, the servers for a lot of email services and for some of the search engines are globalized.
00:26:24.000And so you may just be checking your email account and the server is now routed through another country and that makes every bit of collection on that email account permissible once it's expanded.
00:26:36.000I'm also understanding that Chairman Turner will be offering an amendment to expand the scope of FISA to have anything to do with narcotics or the narcotics trade.
00:26:47.000What's your perspective on that amendment?
00:26:49.000Well, I think, again, it's a question of what is the purpose of the collection of this database?
00:26:53.000And if you begin with that origin, then you turn it into a generalized surveillance tool to monitor a particular form of criminal activity domestically.
00:27:05.000You've violated The essence of that firm wall that's described.
00:27:13.000And I just think it can be abused right and left.
00:27:16.000Yeah, I mean, no one is sympathetic to drug dealers.
00:27:19.000But at the same time, if you're going to get rid of the Fourth Amendment in the digital atmosphere for drug dealers, why not just get rid of the Fourth Amendment altogether?
00:27:26.000In narcotics cases, there's a reason we believe these things.
00:27:30.000And I'm worried that we're bifurcating our rights from IRL to our digital existence.
00:28:11.000The cartels control the black market in America, largely for the black market drugs, but also sex trafficking, human trafficking, labor trafficking, all the smuggling across the border of all kinds of things.
00:28:24.000And a lot of the money laundering is done, facilitated by these guys.
00:28:29.000You could already do that under existing authorities if you wanted to.
00:28:33.000We can't get them to go after the cartels and prioritize it.
00:28:37.000While you're not going to the top of the food chain to the cartels and using the powers you have to do that in a legitimate way, they want to open up this vast new repository of searchable data against Americans for whatever crimes they may be involved with that turn out to be narcotics.
00:28:53.000Yeah, well, I mean, I think about just the innocent person who maybe they bought a house that had been used improperly in some time past, and all of a sudden they have no Fourth Amendment protections based on a review of all of their digital communications.
00:29:07.000It could truly be innocent people that could be caught in this.
00:29:09.000So, Warren, you really are one of the recognized experts on this stuff.
00:29:12.000You have been since I got to Congress.
00:29:15.000When I got here, I thought the FBI were the good guys.
00:29:17.000And we've seen a lot of good there, but we've also seen a lot of bad.
00:29:23.000If the way this shakes out is that we don't get a vote on the important Fourth Amendment protections, but there is a vote authorized on these expansions, Wi-Fi and narcotics, and assuming those were to pass, do you think that That our liberties would be more protected under the current system or under a system contemplated by the base bill as amended with these expansions of FISA authorities.
00:29:49.000I mean, why would we be expanding something that's already abused?
00:29:53.000And look, there are ways to do this that are different.
00:29:56.000Like I said, you could focus on the cartels and collect against the cartels if you like.
00:30:00.000And, you know, the idea that we would allow something that is Known to be abused, to continue to exist without real reform.
00:30:10.000And let's face it, if it passes the way that you just stated, it's simply a placebo.
00:30:29.000What you did is actually make your condition worse because you didn't even treat the underlying problem, which is the abuse by these agencies of authorities that they were trusted with.
00:30:41.000I mean, I never would have thought we would have gotten here, Dan.
00:30:44.000We've been on the Judiciary Committee with Mike Johnson.
00:30:46.000He sat next to me for seven years on that committee.
00:30:49.000Frankly, Mike Johnson makes the arguments that we've made in this discussion probably better than we do in debate.
00:30:56.000When he has the opportunity to question senior officials at DOJ or FBI, he often focused.
00:31:02.000As a committee member on FISA and on FISA abuses.
00:31:06.000And I told the speaker, my friend, that we made him speaker so that the speakership would be more like Mike Johnson.
00:31:13.000We didn't make Mike Johnson speaker so that Mike Johnson would be more like the speakership.
00:31:18.000And unfortunately, on this issue, we've seen the speaker make a 180 degree reversal.
00:31:24.000And if what he has encountered from an information standpoint as speaker was so persuasive That it would cause him to make a reversal, then I would think he would be obligated to convince his colleagues from the Judiciary Committee why.
00:31:38.000And I have not been drawn into any of that discussion.
00:31:40.000I don't know if you have, but as we look at our friend who was our brother in arms on these things, now wearing the jersey of the other side, what do you attribute that to?
00:31:57.000A number of us have been sympathetic to Speaker Johnson taking on that role in midstream.
00:32:05.000A lot of things had already been decided in terms of spending bills and so forth that kind of left him with not much maneuvering room.
00:32:12.000And so if more bad stuff on spending had to come through like the minibus, there's some sympathy there.
00:32:17.000It's hard to have a lot of sympathy for this one.
00:32:20.000And I fear that it really jeopardizes his support out in the country among conservatives who are counting on him as a conservative beginning to change this place.
00:32:49.000If you're a critical thinker, they are not persuasive.
00:32:53.000In fact, as it begins sort of being clear that it's not persuasive, Mike Turner sort of takes over and keeps talking until everybody falls asleep.
00:33:01.000So we know what those briefings have been.
00:33:04.000If Mike Johnson has gotten some double secret briefing that has turned him around, as you say, maybe they can't give that briefing in all of its content to all members of Congress because it would risk sources or methods or the like.
00:33:19.000But they're bound to be able to do better than the briefings that you and I have received.
00:33:25.000They're bound to be able to do better and I'm just not seeing that.
00:33:28.000This government can't operate predicated on secret information of eight people plus maybe the president.
00:34:00.000What arguments get folks more on our side of supporting civil liberties?
00:34:06.000Because we've seen from Chairman Turner and the intel community, when they talk about the open border and the threat of ISIS, that seems to motivate people to, I think, abandon the position that the three of us hold.
00:34:20.000Well, I think the base premise is when you personalize it and you talk to people about, like, let's take a look at your browser history or your Amazon account.
00:34:30.000You know, we all like we go, let's say most everybody's probably gone to Amazon, they bought something.
00:34:35.000We like when we go to Amazon and they kind of know us and they say, oh, well, since you bought this or read that, you might want to look at this.
00:34:42.000But they shouldn't be able to sell that information to somebody else Without our consent, without our informed consent, not some Weasley five-point font over 400 pages.
00:34:53.000But specifically, they could say how many of whatever book Firebrand has sold, but they can't say whether Warren and Dan bought Firebrand.
00:35:28.000And the disappointing thing is not just that the executive branch is abusing this authority, or that the courts, Article III, courts haven't held that it's unconstitutional, because it is, It's that our own body hasn't done our duty, which we swore to do, to support and defend this Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
00:35:49.000And I will tell you, one of the best speeches for people to look back to is Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address.
00:36:35.000Great, great point to end our discussion on these spying authorities on.
00:36:40.000Next week, I expect that we'll be facing a Ukraine bill of some kind.
00:36:45.000And I recall one of the high watermarks for those of us who really adhere to an America First perspective was your legislation, Warren, that said before sending more money to Ukraine, we should at least see a plan.
00:36:57.000We should at least have reduced to writing any plan from the administration that defines victory or that states our objectives.
00:37:06.000And that has really morphed now into a uniparty desire to send funds without those things.
00:37:14.000So what do you expect is coming on Ukraine?
00:37:17.000How are you going to look at it through the lens of what were your demands of folks previously?
00:37:23.000Yeah, I think there's like 10 of us that have not voted for a dime for Ukraine.
00:37:29.000And if you look at it, You know, rationally, until you tell me the mission, what is it you're trying to accomplish, how could I possibly tell you what resources I would support giving you?
00:37:41.000And when you look back, like, I found that when the State Department was pushing to do this endless war in Afghanistan, they changed the mission in 2004 from going after bin Laden and the terrorists that attacked us on 9-11 to nation-building in Afghanistan.
00:37:59.000And there was an op-ed in the Washington Post by this envoy that the State Department appointed, and he said, as much as it takes, as long as it takes.
00:38:22.000We went from 10 Last summer, we got to 129, and I suspect we'll do better this time, even amongst Republicans.
00:38:30.000And so I hope that we can expect some outcome.
00:38:32.000But look, there's clear bipartisan support for more wars in more places.
00:38:37.000They're more committed to funding Ukraine.
00:38:39.000So I think the Speaker's going to move another omnibus, essentially, that funds Ukraine, funds Israel, funds the Pacific, and fails to do anything about defending America.
00:38:51.000And what I've asked them to do is if you feel that you have to put something on the floor, give us one rule bill that requires a recorded vote, four separate recorded votes.
00:39:00.000One to defend Ukraine, one to defend Israel, one to defend Pacific, but a fourth one to defend America.
00:39:08.000And the sad reality of where we're at this Congress is the vote that would get the lowest total and may not even pass is the bill to defend America.
00:39:18.000It's so reflective of a loss of focus, it seems.
00:39:22.000You talked about what people are saying out there, and I don't know what you guys are hearing, but that's another one on which, I mean, every once in a while someone who's got an unusual perspective or a particular interest in Ukraine will come up and say they want that.
00:39:38.000But it's overwhelmingly the other way, and it is another example of Of Mike Johnson totally reversing course on something he pledged.
00:39:51.000He married up, a number of us were offended at the prospect that we have to trade off Ukraine funding to get a complete border protection package in the United States.
00:40:06.000But now it's the U.S. border that's going to be apparently thrown aside in order to just do Ukraine and these other foreign aid matters unpaid for, more money borrowed from China to do that.
00:40:24.000And, you know, what it leaves you wondering about is what is the Republican voter, how do you motivate the Republican voter to send a Republican majority back to Congress?
00:40:33.000And I think it may be sufficient, but the only answer that I can think of at this point is that Donald Trump needs to get elected president and we can't afford for him to be bedeviled by a Hakeem Jeffries House of Representatives.
00:40:52.000The folks where I come from and where I have the opportunity to talk about it always confront me with that you guys should shut her down until they fix the border.
00:41:02.000I'm not a cheerleader for shutdowns, and I don't think any of us are, but we also have to understand leverage.
00:41:09.000And I think that the great sin of our majority has been the misunderstanding of how to utilize that leverage for some of the outcomes we're seeking.
00:41:17.000Warren, you've also been one of the leaders on War Powers.
00:41:20.000You talked about the co-mingling of this Ukraine issue with Israel, with what's going on in the Pacific.
00:41:26.000Reports now are that we're going to be using our United States military to build a floating barge off the coast of Gaza.
00:41:33.000Do you worry that we're setting ourselves up for some sort of Gulf of Tonkin moment where we're creating a soft target in an environment where we can't really control the conditions to ensure people's safety?
00:41:43.000Yeah, I mean, you know, the sad reality is this wouldn't be the first time America funded both sides of a war.
00:41:49.000In the Middle East, actually, usually we do.
00:42:01.000I would love to see the classified briefing where there's some rational reason to do that.
00:42:05.000It's crazy that we're going to put a port into Gaza.
00:42:08.000They still have American hostages, let alone over 100 Israeli hostages.
00:42:12.000So the leadership in Gaza Hamas could end the fighting by simply giving up the hostages and surrendering the people responsible for the 10-7 massacre.
00:42:24.000And instead of uniting behind our ally Israel, or frankly, sending them more American tax dollars that the Biden administration will simply use as leverage to try to get parliamentary elections, according to Chuck Schumer, to force Bibi out.
00:42:38.000Or, you know, to say, well, let's enter into a two-state solution and reward the attackers of 10-7.
00:42:45.000Nothing the Biden administration is doing on foreign policy is coherent if you're going to put American interests first.
00:42:51.000So, you know, Dan, I think you're right.
00:42:52.000But I think you do need to force a debate so that you at least consider issues separately instead of in a giant omnibus fashion.
00:43:00.000We are to have single-subject bills particularly related to this issue.
00:43:04.000And for the reasons you just identified, these conflicts are so fundamentally different.
00:43:08.000You've got great power competition in the Pacific.
00:43:11.000You've got largely an urban war going on in Gaza.
00:43:15.000And then in Europe, you've got a massive power up against Ukraine.
00:43:22.000And I worry, you know, there you can see the Ukrainians run out of men before they run out of bullets.
00:43:26.000You know, Dan, this nuance that Warren's described in terms of how we ought to proceed forward, do you think that can lead to better outcomes and better decisions, or do we sort of get to the same place of funding all of it, just in smaller bites rather than one big bill?
00:43:41.000Well, I mean, and when you've seen the willingness of the Speaker and other Republicans to depart From, you know, views that, you know, it's almost amazing they'd be willing to go to voters with what they're already doing.
00:43:54.000I don't know that segregating out individual votes will do anything more than perhaps create a record for the future, but I don't know that it's going to actually bring any discipline to the decision making of the Republican conference in the House.
00:44:07.000Well, we appreciate you both joining us this evening.
00:44:10.000We've got votes in just a few moments, and so we've got to head back to Capitol Hill.
00:44:14.000And if you're still watching and haven't gotten out the sharp blade and the warm bath, we appreciate it.
00:44:19.000And I hope that you'll leave us a five-star rating on your listening platform of choice.
00:44:39.000I will vote against the rule to proceed on the FISA bill if that rule does not allow us to have a vote on the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act by Congressman Davidson and Congresswoman Lofgren.
00:44:50.000And if instead of doing that, Creates all these votes to expand the authorities that have been violated.
00:44:56.000Count on me to vote against proceeding onto that legislation unless we at least have the opportunity to get votes on the things that will fix the problem.
00:45:05.000If Speaker Johnson is unwilling to fix FISA, We are left wondering what he is indeed willing to fix.
00:45:14.000And now the very authorities that we saw weaponized against President Trump are getting enhancements rather than the reforms that are so desperately needed.