The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 149 ｜ Want a Tyrannical King？ The Left's Court-Packing Plot Ensures It ｜ Mike Lee ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 Earlier this month, someone leaked Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion to overturn

00:00:04.920 Roe v. Wade. In the 233-year history of the Supreme Court, there have been a handful of leaks.

00:00:12.240 Not many, but some, including news about Roe v. Wade in 1973. It was leaked about an hour before.

00:00:18.540 But this is the first time that a leak has included the draft decision. In other words,

00:00:23.800 this leak, unprecedented. As a senator, today's guest has watched the collapse from the inside.

00:00:31.160 Before he was a senator, he served as a clerk for Justice Samuel Alito, when Justice Alito was still

00:00:37.460 a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. In his latest book, Saving Nine, it is a must-read,

00:00:45.260 the fight against the left's audacious plan to pack the Supreme Court and destroy American liberty.

00:00:51.580 This is probably the most perfectly timed book that I've ever seen. It documents the left's

00:00:59.000 mission to pack the Supreme Court, their latest attempt to politicize it, and destroy it.

00:01:06.800 But the Supreme Court isn't supposed to be political. It's something you feel when you walk

00:01:13.500 up those stairs, or should feel. As today's guest writes in Saving Nine, when climbing those stairs,

00:01:20.080 you find yourself leaving the swamp of Washington, and often the petty political conflicts that abound

00:01:27.400 behind. And you enter a higher plane of existence. That's what you're supposed to feel. But once again,

00:01:37.280 politicians, activists on the left are making exceptions for themselves. Today, fascinating conversation

00:01:43.900 on the Glenn Beck podcast, Senator Mike Lee. It's getting hot outside, and really, at least in Texas,

00:01:53.440 like about a thousand degrees once you fire up the grills. But with summer upon us, I am willing

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00:03:42.760 My good friend, Mike Lee. How are you? Doing great. It's good to be with you. Um, your book

00:03:49.720 is, um, I think you have taken it, and you can be at any level and read it. Not know much

00:03:58.640 about the Supreme Court, not know much about even our history and why, um, what's happened

00:04:06.200 in the last hundred plus years. Uh, or you can be somebody like you and know a lot and

00:04:10.880 still learn something. I think that's, uh, that's a lot because, um, the Supreme Court

00:04:17.140 is so important right now. And I don't think most people have any idea what it's supposed

00:04:24.280 to do or how our government even works.

00:04:27.160 That's right. And it's important for us to understand what it is and what it isn't right

00:04:32.180 in order to comprehend it.

00:04:33.380 Especially because there are people on the streets protesting, you know, and I think

00:04:38.900 it's only going to get worse. And, uh, we have to know what the facts are.

00:04:44.560 That's right. And that's why I dedicated an entire chapter simply to explaining what the

00:04:48.480 court is and what it isn't. In chapter one of Saving Nine, I talk about the fact that it

00:04:53.240 has a limited role. It operates in a rear view mirror sort of way. Its job is to decide what

00:04:59.020 the law says, what the words enacted into law meant at the time they became law.

00:05:05.000 So let me, let me ask you a couple of things on that. Um, it, it is the weakest. It's not

00:05:10.160 three equal branches, right? It's, it's weaker than the other two. It's just a check on the other

00:05:16.260 two by far the weakest of the three branch, just a check on the other two. And, and really

00:05:21.040 even narrower than a check, its job is to resolve disputes. The law says X and we disagree

00:05:28.360 about what X means and which way the law cuts. Uh, you and I can have that resolved in court.

00:05:33.960 Ultimately the Supreme court of its federal law. Okay. So the Supreme court is supposed to,

00:05:39.280 you just said, supposed to look back at what these words meant when they were written.

00:05:45.420 Yes. That is a originalist point of view. Yes. Then there's the contextualist, right? Is that right?

00:05:52.680 Yeah. Some would call them purpose of us. Uh, but people who would say, let's look at what

00:05:57.580 the purpose of the law is. Others still would, if they're looking at provisions of the constitution,

00:06:03.500 talk about a living constitution. Correct. One that the ought to change what they mean by that

00:06:09.600 because the constitution can change. Article five of the constitution provides the mechanism for doing

00:06:13.780 that. But that's, they want to change it to the court. That's an amendment. That's an amendment.

00:06:17.660 Constitution. Um, the, is this unusual as a nation that we, we look to the meaning of what it originally

00:06:27.720 meant? No. So the rest of the world does that as well. Well, look, I, I don't concern myself with how

00:06:35.280 other courts operate. What I know is that our Supreme court functions under our constitution and our

00:06:41.340 constitution places defined limits around judicial authority. And so within the United States, we,

00:06:48.180 we do, and we always have sought to try to define what the statute means within our court system.

00:06:54.200 And what that means is you have to look at the original public meaning, the understanding of the

00:07:00.120 public, of what those words meant at the time they were drafted and put either into the law or into the

00:07:05.320 constitution. All right. So let's, let's use a real life example because so many people today are

00:07:10.240 saying, you know, uh, this isn't, this is a democracy and, and how can the minority rule the

00:07:17.820 majority? Well, first of all, they're talking usually about the Senate. You lost 51 to 49.

00:07:28.220 That's a majority. You know what I mean? Right. Um, and, um, we are not a majority rule kind of

00:07:37.340 country. Are we? No, we're not. And most of the time when people raise that argument about the

00:07:43.100 Senate, that the Senate is anti-democratic, they're talking about the fundamental structure

00:07:47.700 of the constitution that they don't like. What they're saying is if theoretically it's possible

00:07:53.040 to secure a majority of the votes in the Senate without those States holding the majority in the

00:08:00.140 Senate, representing a majority of the population of the United States. Yeah. That was the whole idea.

00:08:06.560 That was the whole point. We were going to have one, uh, chamber of the legislative branch that

00:08:11.660 would, uh, be allocated according to population. We've got 435 seats currently. Those are allocated

00:08:17.520 according to population revised every 10 years. The Senate was always to be a place where each

00:08:22.800 state would be represented equally. In fact, if there's one kind of constitutional amendment,

00:08:27.320 that's preemptively unconstitutional, you can't change that feature of the constitution

00:08:32.380 that entitles each state to equal representation.

00:08:35.440 But they did change the Senate, the way it was elected, the way they're chosen. Yes. Because it

00:08:42.940 was never meant to be a public, uh, election, right? Well, your, your, your state house selected.

00:08:51.400 Yes. Prior to 1913, 1913 one was when the 17th amendment was ratified. And, uh, prior to that

00:09:00.300 time, U S senators were chosen by state legislatures since 1913, with the ratification of the 17th

00:09:07.120 amendment, they've been elected popularly within each state. So was that a good change? Do you think?

00:09:12.540 Look, it is, it is water under the bridge. I do think we lost something. I think we, I think we also

00:09:18.860 importantly gained something. If you look at it from a progressive view, we gained a national

00:09:25.720 look instead of a local look that the idea was that person, uh, is selected by the state and is

00:09:35.600 just doing what's right for his or her state, right? And accountable subject to being fired

00:09:42.220 by the state lawmakers within that state. Correct. They were there to represent the states as such.

00:09:46.780 And so since then we haven't had that not coincidentally, we've seen a drift away from the

00:09:53.720 Senate looking out for the interests of the states as states. Okay. So everything began to change

00:10:01.800 really in the progressive era. And the one thing I think Mike, I love about you is you hate Woodrow

00:10:07.380 Wilson as much as I do. Um, and, and FDR, no love loss for FDR, especially when it comes to the

00:10:17.320 Supreme court. So can you give us a brief, cause you, you spent a lot of time on FDR and I, and I want

00:10:25.060 to get into that cause I think it relates to today a great deal as you point out. Um, can you tell us

00:10:31.640 who we were before the progressive era? Uh, like I think the Supreme court at the beginning met in a

00:10:39.320 closet, uh, in the basement of the Capitol pretty much. Yeah. And it was FDR that changed that and

00:10:44.820 gave them this big grand building, which changed people's perception of, of the Supreme court. Right.

00:10:52.460 Yeah. So to be clear, uh, the, the wheels were set in motion prior to FDR's presidency for them to have

00:10:59.480 their own building, but, but yeah, it gave them a, a, a sense of who they were and perhaps a sense of

00:11:04.940 jealousy, not wanting, uh, to have their parade rained upon. But yeah, prior to the progressive era,

00:11:10.860 uh, you had a country in which we recognized top to bottom that the federal government was not a

00:11:20.440 general purpose, national government. This was one of the most fundamental principles of the American

00:11:25.240 revolution. And that was built into the constitution. We, and then guaranteed or tried

00:11:31.540 to guarantee with the bill of rights. Yes. And culminating with the 10th amendment that made

00:11:36.020 abundantly clear, made expressly clear what was implicit in the text of the original constitution,

00:11:41.740 which is that the federal government would have powers that James Madison described as few and

00:11:46.060 defined. And those reserved to the States were numerous and indefinite. Most government power

00:11:50.340 was not to be exercised in Washington because this is why we fought the revolution. We weren't just

00:11:55.340 tired of singing God save the King at the time. We weren't just tired of having a monarchy. It was

00:12:00.440 much more than that. It was about the fact that we were subject to a large distant national government

00:12:05.220 that knew no boundaries around its authority and didn't respect local autonomy. So again, let's go back

00:12:12.660 to what looks to be, um, the verdict, maybe, um, the verdict on Roe versus Wade. And I want to get into

00:12:20.720 all of the details on that, but if I'm not mistaken, the, the walk away from me reading the decision is

00:12:27.440 this is highly controversial and different States and different populations have a very different look

00:12:34.740 at it. And it's not in the constitution. So it should be decided by the people, not a court of

00:12:43.240 unelected men and women. Yes. Right. That is exactly right. A 10 year old when properly informed

00:12:49.760 can answer that question. And in fact, I know that because as a 10 year old, the first conversation I

00:12:54.920 remember having with my dad about Roe versus Wade, uh, he seemed pleased when I said, that's kind of

00:13:00.860 strange because it seems to me that this is a legislative decision, not a judicial one and it ought

00:13:05.780 to be a state, not federal. He was happy that, uh, yeah, yeah. My kid's on the right track. Uh, he'll never

00:13:11.060 date, but he's on the right track. Um, the, uh, okay. So if I'm read, am I reading it? Explain how I, I, I, I'm

00:13:22.420 misinterpreting this. It seems to me that they're saying this is not in the constitution. So it, it's the

00:13:30.680 10th amendment. It's got to go back to the States, right? Yeah. But the first thing that people in

00:13:36.760 Congress and the Senate did was try to make a federal law on it. If it's not in the constitution

00:13:44.800 and it belongs with the 10th amendment, can Congress on this or anything else pick that up

00:13:51.380 and make it a federal law? They shouldn't, uh, they shouldn't, they wouldn't be able to, but for the,

00:13:57.180 the, the deviation away from the constitutional norm that we saw during the progressive era

00:14:01.520 that we've been stuck with ever since. So in theory, you could see Congress adopting a very

00:14:07.560 aggressive reading of the commerce clause. Uh, one that I talk about at some length in, in chapters

00:14:13.680 four and five of saving nine, they could in theory address that they could also, Congress could adopt

00:14:21.080 restrictions on abortion when it comes to federal funding of Planned Parenthood, federal funding of

00:14:25.900 other programs within the United States and overseas, the so-called Hyde amendment and Mexico

00:14:31.680 city policy, uh, things like that are plainly within the federal government's jurisdiction.

00:14:36.640 But yeah, this was interesting because you have the Supreme court saying this now needs to be sent

00:14:41.420 back to the people's elected lawmakers, right? Typically that's going to mean the States. I mean,

00:14:45.640 we've got general power over, um, you know, uh, us military installations, district of Columbia and things

00:14:53.180 like that. But for the most part, this ought to be decided by state lawmakers, not federal ones.

00:14:58.060 The Democrats swoop in right after this opinion leaks and they say, we're going to make this federal

00:15:03.920 by statute. We're going to reinstate Roe by statute. And they tried to do that, but they went 10 steps

00:15:10.480 further. Their version of this was not just Roe type protections. It was any and every abortion up to

00:15:18.900 the very moment of birth is now lawful and no restrictions, uh, time, place, manner, proximity

00:15:25.180 to hospital, uh, uh, health and safety regulations. None of those can apply. No bans on sex selective

00:15:32.180 abortions or abortions targeting down syndrome babies. You can't do any of that. Fortunately, 0.86

00:15:38.200 it failed, but they think this is somehow the imperative, uh, of, of the world to do this.

00:15:46.500 And I find that stunning, by the way, they're substantially to the left of where the American

00:15:52.280 people are. Oh, they're way out of step. And I hate to say way to the left. They're just way out

00:15:58.400 of step. The American people, it's like 12% of the nation is for that. Um, and you know, I can get 12%

00:16:08.700 of the population to agree that we never went to the moon. That's right. That's right. Because most

00:16:14.260 people intuitively understand regardless of their own religious beliefs, uh, about when life begins

00:16:21.120 or their own other personal beliefs, most people, even those who believe in abortion as something

00:16:27.340 that they want to protect, we'll acknowledge that there comes a point as you get closer and closer

00:16:32.160 to full term, right? That this becomes indistinguishable from infanticide. Yes. Some of us would draw that

00:16:39.780 line a lot closer to the beginning than others, but almost all Americans will say there does come a

00:16:46.180 point where you've got to protect that unborn human life because it is a human. It is a person.

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00:17:45.720 Let's go back on how the government, uh, and we can, we can either, can we start with the three

00:17:53.180 musketeers and the, and the four horsemen? I don't think most people even know anything about that.

00:17:58.500 Yeah. Look, it's, it's very important. And I talk about this in, uh, chapter chapters three, four,

00:18:05.960 and five of saving nine about the fact that at the time that FDR, uh, Franklin D Roosevelt was

00:18:14.040 president as he was beginning his second term in office, he had suffered a series of setbacks,

00:18:20.080 uh, setbacks by the Supreme court because it was under FDR that we started expanding. FDR said,

00:18:26.620 uh, look, I'm not content with having the federal government be a limited purpose government.

00:18:32.120 I want it to have the power to solve all sorts of social problems. I want it to regulate all kinds

00:18:37.840 of markets, uh, uh, labor manufacturing, agriculture, mining. These are all things that have historically

00:18:45.320 been regulated at the state level. I don't want to do it that anymore that way anymore because we're

00:18:49.620 in a crisis, the great depression. So in a crisis, before we say a crisis, it, he defined it with

00:18:56.680 emergency powers, right? Then this, all of this stuff started with just him seizing the power away from

00:19:05.200 Congress under emergency powers. Yeah, there was some of that, but a lot of this he did through

00:19:11.200 statute, uh, because the same framework wasn't in place as is now giving him power to just issue

00:19:17.420 executive orders willy nilly. Uh, so all of this started with statutes where he was trying to

00:19:23.720 regulate this and that labor manufacturing, agriculture, mining, all these things that

00:19:27.940 while economic were not interstate commerce, he got smacked down in case after case, uh, cases like

00:19:35.200 Carter versus Carter coal company, uh, Schechter poultry, all these cases where the Supreme court said,

00:19:40.640 you've overreached, you can't do this. He got tired of it by the beginning of his second term,

00:19:45.980 he had had it. So back to your question, you had these, um, um, loosely speaking three camps

00:19:52.500 on the Supreme court. You had his closest allies who we call the three musketeers.

00:19:58.120 We have his arch enemies who we call the four horsemen of the apocalypse. My favorite of whom

00:20:03.920 was George Sutherland, uh, Utah, the only Utah ever to serve on the Supreme court. And I graduated

00:20:08.260 from the Supreme court of Brigham Young university, uh, who had previously been a Senator from Utah.

00:20:13.340 They were steadfast proponents of the constitution and they weren't about to let FDR just run over

00:20:20.340 them. And then you had two sort of unaffiliated, unaffiliated justices, those who were holding

00:20:26.540 their cards close. Um, and, uh, uh, uh, those two, uh, were, were, were Charles Evans Hughes and Owen

00:20:35.700 Roberts. They were sort of floating out there in the middle. Nobody knew which way they were going

00:20:40.020 to go. So there was this constant tension. A lot of these cases had been decided against FDR's

00:20:45.020 interest, uh, because of the fact that, uh, the two floaters or some combination of them joined with

00:20:51.560 the, the four horsemen and they toppled, uh, pieces of legislation that were in fact unconstitutional.

00:20:59.460 That's what led us to FDR's court packing plan. That's why he did it. He was tired of those people 0.57

00:21:05.260 doing it. So what did he do? He started up by trying to delegitimize the court, certain members

00:21:10.260 of the court in particular, especially the four horsemen. He tried to denigrate the whole, the

00:21:15.980 court as a whole, as an institution. And it culminated, of course, in his introduction and

00:21:22.000 support for legislation that would give him the power to pack the court appointing additional

00:21:26.880 justices. If we can go back in time and you can read it in time magazine, you can read it in, uh,

00:21:33.720 New York times, um, of the era. We try to go back and we, we could say, Oh, FDR is a fascist or

00:21:45.100 whatever. At that time, fascism and communism weren't, didn't have the stigma that they have now

00:21:54.140 because they were new. They were modern. Yeah. And hadn't killed everybody yet. Okay. Um, and so it

00:22:01.560 wasn't a bad thing. I, I give the, some of the early progressives, uh, some benefit of the doubt

00:22:08.860 because it was new and it was scientific. Uh, you know, it, it's an early algorithms, you know? Uh,

00:22:17.600 and, uh, and so they took this on. He really thought, I think that it was the new way to rule

00:22:26.020 just through managerial, um, uh, managerial process before he gets in, how much damage had

00:22:35.520 been done. Did we have these big, um, uh, administrative arms? No, no, no, not at all.

00:22:47.320 It was anathema to the structure of the constitution. It didn't work. That's why you had to do

00:22:53.180 some, some real massive surgery and, and, and not therapeutic surgery, destructive surgery

00:23:01.400 on the system in order to even allow this. We did not have an administrative state. What we had was

00:23:07.200 a system that said, you've, you've got three branches of government. I think they're best

00:23:11.160 described as, uh, two pens and a sword. You've got the legislative branch that says what shall be,

00:23:17.440 what will be, uh, going forward, sets the ground rules. You've got the executive branch that wields,

00:23:23.180 the sword. And then you've got the judicial branch that wields a different kind of pen,

00:23:27.900 a backward looking pen to decide what the law meant. As of the time it was put into law and on

00:23:35.640 that basis, resolve disputes. So the pen is veto. Yeah, no, the, the, I mean, sorry, the sword.

00:23:43.240 Yeah. The sword is the veto, but so the, there's one feature of the legislative power that the

00:23:49.680 president has, and that's the veto pen. But aside from his veto pen, he does also wield that pen.

00:23:56.740 The executive branch is the sword, meaning that's where the action is carried out. It's the executive

00:24:01.560 branch that has the power to enforce the law. Okay. And so my point is this, all this administrative

00:24:06.300 bureaucracy, it's all a creature, uh, that lurks within the executive branch. But when Congress

00:24:15.260 passes a law, it has the sole lawmaking power. Article one, section one, clause one, and article

00:24:22.260 one, section seven, make clear that you cannot pass a federal law. You cannot make a federal law

00:24:28.200 except it's through Congress. And article one, section seven makes clear that the only way to do

00:24:33.180 that is you have to pass the same proposed law, a bill in the house and in the Senate, the same text

00:24:39.140 that's got to be then submitted to the president for signature veto or acquiescence. So unless you do

00:24:44.620 that, there is no federal law. Okay. Hang on. And it's my understanding that the veto is really

00:24:51.080 is, is supposed to be exercised by the president if he feels it's unconstitutional, right? It's not

00:25:00.060 like, I don't agree with any of this, right? Right, right. Exactly. The president's job is

00:25:05.340 supposed to be that and a guard for the constitution, the first guard, right? And until relatively

00:25:12.540 until the last few decades, it was understood that the president should independently assess

00:25:18.900 constitutionality. George Washington made an inquiry, I believe it was in 1793. Uh, he wanted to

00:25:26.600 find out prospectively whether some of the proposed actions within his administration were constitutional.

00:25:31.760 He reached out to the court seeking an answer. Uh, I talk about this in, uh, in chapter one of

00:25:38.400 saving nine. Um, they responded by pointing out, look, we can't do this. That's an advisory opinion.

00:25:43.880 You're asking us to give an advisory opinion. We can't do that. We can only decide ripe cases

00:25:49.240 and controversies between individuals after government, uh, has acted in one way or another.

00:25:54.560 Uh, uh, my, my point is, uh, there is simply to say that because of that separation of powers,

00:26:03.280 every officer within the federal government who's required to take an oath under the constitution

00:26:07.440 is expected to do this. It's only in modern times that we've started to think of the constitution

00:26:12.700 as if it were a judicial document. It's owned, it's defined in every instance by the nine lawyers

00:26:19.740 wearing robes on the Supreme court. I don't mean to denigrate them or their role only to point out

00:26:25.360 what the court is and what it isn't. It's not there to decide what it says in every instance. It's just

00:26:30.880 there to decide specific disputes. All right. So, um, when the, um, when the court started,

00:26:42.700 to go awry, um, it, it was disputes over things like coal companies, um, and, um, can we regulate

00:26:54.540 them? The commerce clause was forever changed. I don't remember the case, but you talk about it

00:27:00.500 with a farmer, right? Yes. The wheat. Yeah. Well, record versus Philburn. Yeah. Thank you. Uh,

00:27:06.820 a horrible decision, but a decision that highlights, uh, the problem with this. This is why we have

00:27:14.120 OSHA and everything else in our lives, right? Yes. Okay. That's what leads to all that. Explain

00:27:18.660 that. Okay. So what is the commerce clause? Yep. And then how did it change? The commerce clause,

00:27:27.140 article one, section eight, clause three gives Congress the power to regulate trade or commerce

00:27:34.180 between the states, uh, with foreign nations and with the Indian tribes. Uh, it was always 1.00

00:27:40.680 understood. It was understood at the time is giving Congress the power to make sure that

00:27:45.180 interstate commercial transactions could take place uninhibited by state authority. It was there

00:27:51.060 to protect against economic balkanization. We didn't want States erecting trade barriers such

00:27:58.220 that we couldn't function with a national because we were a, we were really 13 separate countries.

00:28:05.720 And at the time before, uh, the constitution there, the federal government couldn't solve

00:28:12.640 debates or, or, or disputes between the states. Right? Yeah, that's right. Right. Right.

00:28:18.360 So after the revolution, we won the war, we put in place this document called the articles of

00:28:22.300 confederation. It was a very loose, it's almost a treaty between 13 nations. And it didn't have,

00:28:27.820 for instance, the states had power to print their own currency, which was then also a trade problem.

00:28:35.960 That's why the constitution says only the federal government can mint money. Right. Right. And

00:28:41.920 they were taxing each other's goods, which made them like 13 separate isolated economies. We

00:28:47.100 couldn't survive that way. It's the principal reason why the founding fathers converged, convened

00:28:52.400 in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 was to deal with that very problem. So they gave Congress this

00:28:58.380 power for the next 150 years or so. It was understood that that gave Congress the power to regulate,

00:29:04.540 uh, interstate commercial transactions and channels and instrumentalities of interstate commerce.

00:29:10.960 So what did that mean at the time? Like to, uh, regulate interstate transactions mostly meant that

00:29:19.260 they could get rid of, they could preempt out state laws that were erecting trade barriers,

00:29:23.540 uh, against interstate commerce. It could also regulate things like interstate canals or roadways to make

00:29:29.340 sure that, uh, commerce didn't get stuck, that states weren't interfering with it that way.

00:29:34.520 Uh, and for the most part, it was just understood that that's what it meant. And this is one of the

00:29:39.520 things that kept, uh, the federal government within its lane is that none of the enumerated powers in

00:29:45.260 article one, section eight was expanded as being limitless because the minute you have that, then

00:29:51.780 the 10th amendment means nothing. The minute you have that you're no longer of a limited purpose

00:29:57.620 federal government. You're a general purpose national government. So all of a sudden FDR comes along

00:30:04.320 and he says things like labor, manufacturing, agriculture, mining, always subject to state

00:30:10.380 regulation, not federal, except in rare instances where we're talking about, uh, one of those

00:30:15.740 activities inside of the district of Columbia, for example, but he said, I want to save America

00:30:22.460 from the great depression to do that. I need these sweeping new powers started pushing the limits of 0.90

00:30:28.940 the commerce clause. The court pushed back and said, no, that's not what it means. And that's

00:30:34.080 when FDR said, I'm going to pack the court. I'm going to remake the court in my own image.

00:30:40.100 I'm going to give myself authority to appoint more justices, not because they're understaffed,

00:30:45.320 but because I want to change the outcome for my own political purposes. So that's where we get to

00:30:51.240 this moment. I pinpointed even before the 1942 case of Wickard v. Philburn, we can talk about that

00:30:57.400 more in a minute. The seeds for that case were, were planted, uh, seven years earlier,

00:31:03.900 five years earlier in a case called NLRB versus Jones and Laughlin steel company decided April 12th,

00:31:10.420 1937, incidentally, right in the middle of the debate regarding FDR's court packing plan.

00:31:19.920 FDR wanted to delegitimize, denigrate, and ultimately change the court to its benefit.

00:31:24.240 And that's when justice, associate justice, Owen Roberts flipped his vote. He had previously been

00:31:31.360 with the four horsemen and standing up for limits on, on federal power. He switched his vote at the

00:31:38.180 last minute and redefined the commerce clause to give Congress the power to regulate anything,

00:31:45.020 everything that had an effect.

00:31:47.580 Because his last name was Roberts.

00:31:49.240 Yeah, it, it happens. Apparently these things are inherited. Maybe they're related somehow.

00:31:54.120 Are they related? Are those two?

00:31:55.600 I've, I've never checked. I'm going to look into this now. We'll find out. But regardless,

00:32:00.460 history doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.

00:32:03.060 And so then, um, in the case with the farmer years later, that's a pushback.

00:32:10.380 Yeah. In the case with the farmer, they pushed it so far. This guy named Roscoe Filburn. Roscoe

00:32:19.120 Filburn, uh, was a farmer in, uh, what's today a suburb of Dayton, Ohio. He was fined many thousands

00:32:26.940 of dollars, a lot of money in those days. Uh, uh, his, his offense against the federal government,

00:32:33.120 he was not a kidnapper, not a bank robber, uh, not a smuggler. No, he, he grew too much wheat.

00:32:38.340 He grew more wheat than the experts, uh, in the U S department of agriculture using their authority

00:32:44.300 under the agricultural adjustment act of 1939 thought was appropriate for any farmer to grow

00:32:50.000 too much wheat. So they find him thousands of dollars. He had a good lawyer and he decided to

00:32:56.080 challenge this law, but he said, look, um, the wheat that I grew in excess of the federal grain

00:33:02.960 production quota that you gave me never entered interstate commerce. In fact, it never entered

00:33:09.900 commerce at all. It never left my farm. I used that wheat, the wheat that I grew in excess of the limit

00:33:16.580 you gave me to feed my family, my animals to use the remainder as seed for the next season.

00:33:22.400 The Supreme court in this act of, uh, of Franklin D Roosevelt induced post court packing, uh, uh,

00:33:32.640 consolidation of power mentality. The Supreme court said, ah, but by growing that wheat and using it

00:33:39.340 on your farm, you still affected interstate commerce because you would have otherwise had to buy that on

00:33:44.520 the open market. And just like butterflies flapping their wings in the Amazon have an effect on wind

00:33:50.280 currents in Florida. Uh, so too, your failure to buy that incremental wheat on the open market

00:33:57.480 is subject to Congress's control because it substantially affects interstate commerce.

00:34:02.800 What this shows is that since 1937, certainly since 1942, when that case was decided, but really since

00:34:09.400 1937, Congress can regulate basically anything as long as it can identify some impact on interstate

00:34:16.740 commerce. Throughout the whole world, the leading cause of death is abortion in the U S murder has

00:34:24.600 become a wholesale business since Roe versus Wade. We've killed over 63 million children, nearly 25% of

00:34:32.580 pregnant mothers don't choose life. There's a ministry out there. It's called pre-born and pre-born and

00:34:40.560 blaze media have partnered up to rescue 50,000 babies from abortion in 2022. And it's really easy to do.

00:34:48.240 They're the direct competitor to plan parenthood, the largest provider of free ultrasounds in the U S. So

00:34:54.500 they know when you let a woman see her baby or hear the heartbeat, she's 80% more likely to choose life for

00:35:03.280 her baby. I've talked to some of these remarkable mothers and their children. Uh, it is, this is the

00:35:10.780 best thing you can do really is when the mother chooses life, we all win. We all win. By the way,

00:35:19.360 they also, uh, provide maternity, baby clothes, diapers, car seats, counseling, all free of charge.

00:35:26.100 Pre-born has a passion and I know you do too. I want you to donate now use the keyword baby or go to

00:35:34.800 pre-born.com slash Glenn pre-born.com slash Glenn. So let me go here. This is a strange jump, but, um,

00:35:45.240 the Supreme court just a few days ago, um, sided with Biden on the, right. Did I write it?

00:35:56.100 Put it down the, yeah. Um, the, the social cost of carbon, um, because of wildfires, sea rise,

00:36:07.080 hurricanes, floods, um, they say there is a, there is a, uh, a real social cost to carbon. Uh, and so

00:36:17.560 they, it's going to allow them to regulate everything, everything Supreme court. It was stopped lower court

00:36:25.260 and the Supreme court just said, no, we agree with that. Yep. What does that mean? So I haven't read

00:36:30.300 this particular case yet. I assume it involves the EPA and it's, uh, authorities under the clean air,

00:36:35.380 all of it. Um, this is the natural outgrowth of the cases we just discussed because what happened,

00:36:42.340 and this was all a feature, not a bug to FDR. This was about consolidating power, not just to

00:36:48.940 Washington, but also to him personally, to the presidency directly, because once Congress had

00:36:56.720 this virtually unlimited power to legislate on any topic they wanted, as long as they could connect

00:37:01.940 it to interstate commerce, he knew as turned out to be the case that Congress couldn't handle all

00:37:07.560 the ins and outs of a painstaking line drawing that has to be done with legislation. So Congress would,

00:37:13.760 and ultimately did delegate these difficult decisions to executive branch agencies to the

00:37:19.460 point where we now pass laws that say in effect, we shall have good law in area X. And we hereby

00:37:25.140 delegate to department Y in the executive branch, the power to make interpret and enforce federal law.

00:37:31.760 I remember that's what happened in that case you're describing. I remember, um, reading Obamacare

00:37:38.200 and page after page after page says, uh, this will be defined and enforced by the, uh, secretary of,

00:37:48.760 of health and human services. I'm like, that's insane. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And as I recall,

00:37:55.840 it may have been, I think it was about a thousand times in the affordable care act when they had

00:38:00.640 delegated that out. Right. And it happens every day. And that's why in our government more and more,

00:38:06.800 it seems you can't pin anybody down. You can't blame anybody because you don't know who did that.

00:38:15.300 Right. You had some faceless bureaucrat. Right. And that's why in the case that you're describing,

00:38:21.700 and again, I haven't read this one, I assume it has something to do with the clean air act and EPA's

00:38:26.560 enforcement of the clean air act. But in effect, it's a slight oversimplification, but what Congress

00:38:31.020 has done is to say, we shall have clean air, something we all want. We hereby declare as Congress,

00:38:36.420 we shall have clean air. We hereby delegate to the EPA, the power to make and interpret and enforce

00:38:42.340 rules that are in effect laws that tell us what clean air is, what pollution is, what amounts to

00:38:48.980 a pollutant, what happens to polluters. And at that point, everything is in their power. Everything is

00:38:54.500 in their discretion. And then when people are harmed by this, if all of a sudden they adopt a radical

00:39:00.680 view of what a pollutant is, and they adopt some new definition, people come to members of Congress

00:39:07.720 and complain. Members of Congress, including some who may have voted for the law in question,

00:39:12.340 will beat their chest and say, yeah, it was barbarians at EPA. Do you know what I'm going

00:39:16.320 to do? I'm going to write them a harshly worded letter as if that were our job. But still, we continue

00:39:23.680 to delegate fundamentally legislative power. So that's why I explained in Saving Nine why this is

00:39:31.360 so much, it's about so much more than court packing. What they did the last time they tried

00:39:36.000 to pack the Supreme Court allowed FDR to consolidate power in Washington and more power within the

00:39:41.760 executive branch. So when I say, you know, I said to President Trump, you'll, you'll only have four

00:39:48.780 years. If you win, you'll have four years. You have to fire and shut down all of this,

00:39:57.520 all these administrators, you know? And he said, I can't do it. I can't do it without,

00:40:03.060 with a Congress or, I mean, a Senate run by Mitch McConnell and congressmen like I had last time.

00:40:09.700 He said, I need people on this, on the same track that will, because they have the, the power to fire

00:40:16.280 fire and close things down. But you talk like that and most Americans feel like you're a nut. 0.96

00:40:24.420 We have to have all of these administrators. Yes. They say we have to have the administrators

00:40:31.080 because they have confidence in those administrators expertise. You see, this is part of the progressive

00:40:37.180 vision. The progressive vision is we're going to leave governing and governance decisions to the

00:40:42.780 experts because we, the unwashed masses are incapable of such action. The problem is

00:40:48.860 their version of the law and of lawmaking is unconstitutional and we have to be prepared to

00:40:57.240 call it out as such. It is also antithetical to, I mean, one of the things that I loved about when we

00:41:05.960 were constructing the jury trial is how Thomas Jefferson, there was, you know, a debate, should

00:41:11.760 we get the experts to be the jurors? And Thomas Jefferson said, no, I'd rather have farmers than

00:41:17.820 scholars. There's something about a man who has his hand in the dirt all the time that roots him into

00:41:24.500 truth and common sense. And that's true. We had a, you know, I think it was, I think it was Jefferson

00:41:34.280 and then again, Churchill that said, you can always trust the American people to do the right thing

00:41:39.780 after they've done the wrong thing. They wake up and go, ah, we'll do the right thing. This new system

00:41:48.040 sees people outside of government as flawed and idiots, but anybody in these positions is genius. 1.00

00:42:00.440 Yes. And in effect, we've now replicated the very type of system that we despised when our national 1.00

00:42:09.080 government was based in London. It's consolidated, relatively limitless, run by people who are experts

00:42:15.920 detached from the people, relatively unaccountable to the people. And that's a problem.

00:42:21.820 When Venezuela packed the court, I think they have now 42 judges. What happens to countries that 1.00

00:42:31.760 pack courts like that?

00:42:33.980 Their courts become a rubber stamp, a rubber stamp for the political authorities in charge.

00:42:39.700 And Venezuela is not the only example of this. I mean, at the same time,

00:42:43.220 FDR was experimenting with court packing here. Uh, uh, other efforts, uh, one way or another to

00:42:51.720 give military figures or dictators control of their system of government, uh, in Italy and in Germany,

00:43:02.300 uh, Hitler and Mussolini were doing their own things to try to throw off the objectivity,

00:43:07.040 neutrality, and independence of their court system. So this is just what you do. If you regard

00:43:12.920 yourself as having a, uh, a mandate from, uh, from God, a mandate, uh, uh, from principles of

00:43:19.000 whatever, uh, ambitions you have, it's what you do. You consolidate power because you're right and

00:43:25.700 nobody else gets it. That's what you have to do. You can't have an independent, neutral judiciary

00:43:31.160 and be a tyrant. It doesn't work, which people would self-select right now. I think our problem is

00:43:40.100 especially the left, but there are those on the right too. I'm going to force everybody

00:43:47.940 to live my way and the way I want. I'm going to force the people in Texas to live the way that,

00:43:57.000 that California lives. Well, I don't live in California for a reason, right? You know,

00:44:02.700 it's got the greatest weather who wouldn't live in Colorado in, in California if you could, if it

00:44:08.840 wasn't insane. Right. And I don't mind Californians and San Francisco, do what you want. Poop in the

00:44:16.440 streets all you want. I'm not going to come and visit and I won't live there. You know what I mean?

00:44:20.600 But that was kind of the, the genius of this system that we're all little laboratories. It's like,

00:44:32.540 I didn't have a problem with Mitt Romney's stupid healthcare up in Boston. I mean, intellectually I 1.00

00:44:37.800 do, but I never spoke out against it for Massachusetts. You want to do that? Do that.

00:44:43.600 Right. Except now we're on the hook for people. Now, if you do a bad idea, the federal government's

00:44:51.120 going to come in and bail you out and I'm paying for that. Well, I could have had the sunshine

00:44:57.140 and the high taxes, you know, and just been part of California. If I, if I wanted it, I,

00:45:05.160 I wanted to live in a place that was sane and knew that this financially is going to be a wreck

00:45:10.020 at some point. That's right. None of this works unless you adhere to the central promise of the

00:45:15.880 constitution, which is to say, we're going to allow you to govern yourselves on most issues

00:45:20.940 locally. We will join together. We will have a unified government hitting with a closed fist

00:45:26.420 at a national level, only with respect to those areas that we're going to define as national,

00:45:31.080 which are narrow. Trademarks, copyrights, and patents, interstate and foreign trade,

00:45:36.680 military matters, granting letters of mark and reprisal, immigration laws,

00:45:40.020 bankruptcy laws. That's about it. Um, you talk a lot about the, the commerce clause,

00:45:46.300 but there's something else that you are working. Cause I've, I've been thinking we're seeing a lot

00:45:54.040 of things change in the Supreme court. I mean, I'm seeing the, the ninth circuit court of appeals

00:45:59.300 and I think I've slipped through a wormhole. When did they start making sense? After four years of

00:46:05.680 the Trump presidency, we got some really good nominees on that court. Uh, people like my friend,

00:46:10.960 Ryan Nelson on the ninth circuit from Idaho, um, uh, champions of Liberty who, uh, and people who

00:46:18.920 believe first and foremost in the constitution and in their oath to it, they believe that their job is

00:46:23.880 to interpret the law based on what it says rather than what it means. It's made a huge difference,

00:46:27.940 huge difference, huge difference. Um, but it's causing, uh, consternation with the left who has had the

00:46:40.920 courts their way for quite some time, uh, that will force everybody. And, and now they're saying

00:46:47.360 the courts have changed and they're saying, no, you don't have the right to, to do that. Can you explain

00:46:55.760 what a natural right is and how you don't have to believe in God for a right? Yeah.

00:47:05.980 We believe fundamentally that our, our, our rights exist. They exist in the abstract. I believe,

00:47:11.580 and I, and I believe you believe that our rights come from God, whether you believe in God or not,

00:47:17.300 there are certain rights that just exist because they are there because we exist. Those rights aren't

00:47:24.800 given to us. They're not, uh, uh, a generous bestowal by government. They just exist. And so

00:47:32.020 one of the things the constitution does is explain what inalienable means. Inalienable,

00:47:37.900 something that can't be taken away. Uh, in, in this context, when we speak of rights,

00:47:43.700 we should speak of rights in the sense that we're identifying things that the government can't do

00:47:48.400 to you, not things the government must provide to you. When we talk of those things as rights,

00:47:53.920 that's not it. It's not it. It's the things that nature's God or nature, right? Right. So if it's

00:48:02.500 happening in the animal kingdom, a bear can maul another animal or a animal that happens to be mad,

00:48:10.280 a man, maul them to death in their cave, because you walked in going, I want to pet the baby bear,

00:48:18.180 right? That's a natural right. Well, that's a natural law. If you walk in. Yeah. A natural law, 0.89

00:48:23.780 which gives us the natural right. Correct. Right. And you don't need God to tell you or any

00:48:29.920 politician. Everybody knows. Of course you walk into that and they're going to maul you to death.

00:48:35.220 And if the bear knew how to make a gun and use a gun, he would probably shot you. Right. And if 0.94

00:48:41.340 you've got a weapon and the means by which to defend yourself, you have a natural right to defend

00:48:46.080 yourself against a beast, against a machine, against other humans. Right. Okay. So that's what

00:48:51.940 natural rights are. Yep. Okay. So, um, now go back to what we were discussing on how, you know,

00:48:59.700 what a, how you know what a right is. For instance, everybody's saying Roe versus Wade. Um, I have a

00:49:07.760 right to an abortion and the Supreme court said that's not anywhere in the constitution. We can't 0.51

00:49:15.380 find that. Right. And if they can't find it, then it absolutely does belong to the state. Yeah. Right.

00:49:23.160 Yeah. But it doesn't make it a right. That's right. That's right. The fact that you like something,

00:49:27.640 the fact that you want it to be available to people or that you think it would be good policy

00:49:31.980 for a given thing to be available. That's not a right. That is a policy choice. They are different

00:49:39.640 things. Do you have a right to your own body? Yeah. I mean, the best description, the best summary

00:49:46.920 of natural law, um, derived from the writings of John Locke and others is in the declaration of

00:49:54.060 independence itself, inalienable rights, uh, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,

00:49:59.980 uh, elsewhere described in the due process clauses of the fifth and 14th amendments,

00:50:05.080 life, liberty, and property. Um, government can't take those things away from you without due process

00:50:12.540 of law. It can't interfere with those. And ultimately it is the job of the government to protect life,

00:50:18.560 liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. So those are our natural rights. They, they exist

00:50:27.600 because we exist. Now on the constitution, we have a number of rights that are spelled out

00:50:33.660 in the bill of rights that say things that the government can't do to us. Government can't tell

00:50:39.200 you when, whether, how, uh, or how not you're going to worship or believe. Can't tell you what to say

00:50:46.720 or not say. Can't take away your right to bear arms. Can't subject you to unreasonable searches

00:50:51.980 and seizures. Uh, uh, uh, uh, can't do those things without a warrant. Can't make you testify

00:50:57.940 against yourself. Right. Can't try you without a jury unless you request it. Exactly. So those are,

00:51:04.060 those are our rights that we've specifically protected in the constitution. And then the 14th,

00:51:10.460 those are all, uh, protections as against Congress, as against the federal government.

00:51:15.040 Um, so can states violate those? No. See, that's, that's, that's, that's where this gets

00:51:22.980 interesting. The 14th amendment comes along after the civil war and the 14th amendment also contains

00:51:29.940 a due process clause. Uh, you can't deprive someone of life, liberty, or property without due process of

00:51:36.080 law. It was later interpreted to mean that most of the substantive protections in the bill of rights

00:51:43.620 are incorporated by the 14th amendment and, and applied by the 14th amendment as operating against

00:51:51.400 the states. Meaning it's not just the federal government that can't mess with your freedom

00:51:56.000 of religion or your freedom of speech or of the press or your second member rights. It's

00:52:00.860 also the states. And so, but in examining those and examining how this works and how the states are

00:52:07.560 prohibited, the court will look to whether a particular right is deeply rooted in our nation's history and,

00:52:15.560 and traditional and whether they are essential to any scheme of ordered liberty. And so in going through,

00:52:24.840 uh, my, my former boss, Justice Alito, for whom I clerked twice, first when he was on the third circuit

00:52:29.880 and later when he was on the Supreme court, wonderful human being, a real role model and mentor to me,

00:52:35.880 did a masterful job of outlining all of this in his draft opinion that was leaked. And he explained,

00:52:41.600 you know, going back to 700 years of Anglo American legal jurisprudence, there's nothing in there that

00:52:49.100 identifies this as deeply rooted in our nation's history and tradition or essential to any scheme of

00:52:55.800 ordered liberty. It doesn't meet any of those characteristics, nor is it even uttered or hinted

00:53:03.020 at in any protection of the bill of rights or elsewhere in the constitution. All right. So I,

00:53:08.640 I look at this as two separate human rights. I believe the baby is a human. So those rights have

00:53:15.920 to be protected no matter what the mom wants to do. Okay. Um, and the left tries to make it about my body,

00:53:23.300 my choice, which doesn't seem to apply when it's a vaccine. My question is, do you have a right to

00:53:32.580 your body or can the government say you are putting this in your body? Because if they can say you have

00:53:40.420 to put it in your body, can't they say you absolutely, uh, have a right to take something

00:53:47.680 out of your body? Yeah. You have rights that in here in the, uh, protection of life, liberty,

00:53:54.960 and property. Those are liberty interests. It takes something into your body. You know that it,

00:53:59.880 whatever that thing is, if it's not supposed to be in there, it could kill you. That could take away

00:54:04.040 your life. Uh, if you just prefer not to have that thing in your body, it's a pretty substantial

00:54:10.000 invasion of your personal liberty and autonomy. And so the, the, the, the government's going to

00:54:16.600 have to make a pretty hefty showing as to why they need to be able to do that. So yeah.

00:54:20.440 Did they do that for COVID? Do you think? Uh, no. Yeah. I mean, particularly with the COVID vaccine

00:54:27.280 mandates is one of the gravest usurpations of power I've ever seen to look at the presidential,

00:54:34.740 uh, uh, abuses of power of this magnitude. We have to go back to 1952 to find a, uh, an analog

00:54:40.860 where Truman seized every steel mill in America to support the Korean war effort. But even that

00:54:46.180 doesn't even come close to how sweeping and dastardly this was by the way, uh, president Biden in

00:54:52.140 ordering, um, tens of millions of Americans to be vaccinated against their will. He swept aside

00:55:01.460 the vertical protection we call federalism that makes most government powers state rather than

00:55:06.840 federal. He swept aside the horizontal protection of separation of powers because he was exercising

00:55:11.480 effectively legislative authority, not executive power. He doesn't, he's not a legislator. Uh, and he

00:55:18.660 also violated, uh, substantive protections in the constitution, in the bill of rights, among others,

00:55:24.940 um, uh, freedom of religion. Many people have religious objections. He swept all those aside and said,

00:55:30.640 look, um, I just really want everyone to get this. All right. Cause he declared an emergency or

00:55:36.200 Donald Trump declared an emergency, right? Yeah. And so he could do that under emergency orders

00:55:42.460 the way he interpreted it. Or, or so he claimed. Yeah. Right. And the, and what he claimed was the,

00:55:50.000 the emergency temporary order, the most sweeping among those vaccine mandates was by OSHA.

00:55:55.180 OSHA's enabling statute gives OSHA the power to issue these temporary emergency orders. Uh, and it's

00:56:06.400 another example of bad lawmaking brought about by bad jurisprudence and enabled by the Supreme Court's

00:56:12.880 unwillingness to stand up to things like this. So Congress passes a law saying OSHA will have the

00:56:18.280 power to make good policy on safe workplaces. And then they run roughshod even over what scarce

00:56:26.920 limitations can be found in that. And the president directs OSHA and OSHA dutifully complies

00:56:32.900 by saying, look, if you're any company with more than 99 employees, you've got to fire everyone who

00:56:40.040 hasn't been vaccinated. And if you don't fire them, we're going to issue crippling fines, fines that

00:56:45.460 would cripple literally any company, not just in America, but in the world. We, we, we looked at

00:56:50.680 those and we had to make a decision as a business. Well, it's father's day. And trust me, if you're

00:56:56.600 going to get your dad's socks, all men want three things in socks, comfort, durability, and never 1.00

00:57:03.240 having to worry about any of that stuff again. It's kind of a life philosophy. This year's, uh, this

00:57:09.600 year, dad's got enough on his plate. Uh, he's got enough ties, flashlights. Why not get him

00:57:14.720 socks? And I don't mean ordinary socks. That's as bad as a flashlight or a tie. I mean, grip,

00:57:22.180 grip six socks. They're comfortable, they're durable. And best of all, they're made here

00:57:27.780 in America. These, this came as a surprise to me. They're all wool. I thought I knew what

00:57:34.140 a wool sock was like. And I would never have said this because they're, um, they are moisture

00:57:41.200 wicking. I think is what they call. I wear them all the time, but in the summer, I would

00:57:46.640 never think put on a wool sock. These are great. And they're knitted on special machines

00:57:51.100 that make them thinner than traditional wool socks. And they're made from a fine micron

00:57:56.940 wool, which means they don't itch. They're really comfortable lifetime guarantee grip six.

00:58:02.920 You can find them now. Just go to grip six.com slash back grip six.com slash back.

00:58:10.960 So let me go back to, you know, the one thing that Donald Trump told me, he said, uh, I knew

00:58:17.260 I would, you know, not be popular. I knew I'd have to fight. He said, but I didn't realize

00:58:22.740 I was going to fight for my life and my family's life every day from every side. Now, part of

00:58:29.980 that is, I mean, he likes confrontation, you know what I mean? Um, I think he lives on that,

00:58:36.980 that he thrives on that. Um, however, he had no idea about the deep state and this is all

00:58:44.580 the administrative arms and they don't care. They don't care who's elected president. And

00:58:52.360 I thought, how are we going to get past all of this? And I thought first commerce clause,

00:58:58.100 do we get, can we get a good case in front of the Supreme court, but the reigns act is the way

00:59:07.220 to do it. The reigns act is the way to do it. This is a legislative proposal. That's very simple.

00:59:12.700 It's purpose is elegant. Put lawmaking power back in the hands of elected representatives. 0.58

00:59:19.480 Because this is something in the constitution, the framers never,

00:59:23.220 they thought everybody would be so jealous of their power that no branch would give their power

00:59:30.500 up. Right. Right. They didn't foresee the day when the elected federal lawmaker would decide,

00:59:36.060 you know, what I really want to do is skate through, uh, an easy next election. And it's easier to get

00:59:44.300 reelected perpetually. If you're not the one actually making many laws because laws are controversial.

00:59:50.380 So we'll just make other lawmakers instead of making laws. They didn't foresee that that broke

00:59:56.540 the circuit that, that got rid of the circuit breaker on the Congress protecting its own power.

01:00:03.120 Because you don't, they're not using the power of the purse. Exactly. Which is the way to stop it

01:00:07.620 because we don't have a budget anymore. Right. Right. And then they're, they're not having to make

01:00:12.020 the laws. So what the hell are we even hiring these people for? It's an excellent question. And that's

01:00:17.080 why we need the reins act. The reins act would say, whenever these new executive branch regulations

01:00:22.100 come out that are just federal laws, they shouldn't be self-executing. They shouldn't take effect

01:00:28.200 unless or until both houses of Congress have affirmatively enacted them into law. But see,

01:00:33.540 all of these things, Glenn, the erosion of our bill of rights, the creation of other rights that are not

01:00:39.140 rights at all, resulting in the taking of innocent human life, the erosion of federalism and separation

01:00:46.640 of powers, our rights. They're all part of the same thing. They are all the outgrowth. They're all

01:00:50.900 the consequences that we're living with from FDR's desire to pack the Supreme Court in 1937.

01:00:56.920 That effort failed. And this is why I wrote Saving Nine. It's about so much more than court packing.

01:01:02.620 Wrote Saving Nine because all of this ties back to that. We're still living today

01:01:06.840 with what happened then when he tried to pack the court. He failed, but he succeeded in scaring

01:01:12.760 Owen Roberts, Justice Owen Roberts, enough to change the Constitution. Ever since then,

01:01:18.100 we've been living with it. Think of it this way. $31 trillion in debt. We have regulatory compliance

01:01:24.520 costs that cost the American economy, hardworking Americans, more than $2 trillion every year.

01:01:31.640 Everything you buy is more expensive because of those regs. Most Americans work for many weeks,

01:01:38.360 many cases, many months out of every year just to pay their federal taxes. It's about half the year.

01:01:43.700 About half the year. All of this is the result of FDR's failed court packing plan. Failed legislatively,

01:01:51.280 succeeded in every other way. So really, Obamacare is the same failure. The court stopping that.

01:01:57.880 Yes. Because John Roberts, we know, was afraid of tainting the court or having troubles or having

01:02:05.320 people lose faith in the court. That's right. That he rewrote it himself, which is not their job.

01:02:13.600 John Roberts, and I was raised to always refer to them by their title. I should say Chief Justice

01:02:19.480 Roberts. But in this instance, he was not acting as Chief Justice, even while claiming to be. He was

01:02:25.220 acting as John Roberts, the guy, because he took lawmaking power. He rewrote Obamacare, not once,

01:02:32.220 but twice in order to save it from two independently fatal constitutional abnormalities that either of

01:02:39.740 which should have sunk it. This is the same legacy that really is the consequence of the first

01:02:49.140 Robert Roberts. Exactly. Exactly. It's the same legacy. They're more concerned about preserving

01:02:54.720 what they view as the court's institutional reputation. The problem is, is nothing has a

01:03:02.380 reputation anymore because no one stands for anything. Mike, and you know what's so crazy is

01:03:09.520 you're seeing this. You see this in, in your own race. You are the most rational, reasonable guy I

01:03:19.760 know. It's so easy to predict what you're going to be for and what you're going to be against

01:03:25.660 because politics doesn't play a role with you. Not that I've seen. It doesn't play a role with you.

01:03:31.000 You know, oh, this one's going to cost me. You know what I mean? But you stick to the constitution.

01:03:37.160 That's why I think you have a decent reputation. Nobody else seems to be doing that. And, and you are

01:03:47.260 under attack in Salt Lake, like crazy from, from a media that is owned by the church, both of us go to.

01:04:01.480 And they're calling you a radical. And I don't know how, Mike, I have no offense. You've never been

01:04:11.840 a radical. You, at what was it? Nine. You said to your dad, wait a minute, that should be a

01:04:19.140 legislation. That's not a radical. No, I don't think that's radical to, to try to support that

01:04:27.380 document. And those set of rules that have protected the American people for nearly two

01:04:33.220 and a half centuries. It's, it's not radical, but yeah, in many places, look, our, our, our media

01:04:39.100 establishment in this country is run by the left in Utah. It's particularly acute because we're a

01:04:43.920 pretty conservative state. We're a state inhabited by, uh, between three and three and a half million

01:04:48.380 people who love and revere this country and the constitution. And yet with the exception of, um,

01:04:54.960 uh, uh, two radio talk show hosts, uh, uh, my friend Boyd Matheson and, and, and our, our mutual

01:05:02.400 friend, Rod Arquette, two radio talk show hosts. Other than that, our entire media establishment in

01:05:07.600 Utah leans solidly to the left. Yeah. Not liberal broadcast television, radio, the whole bit, not just

01:05:13.760 liberal, but solidly progressive. Right. And, uh, that's, uh, it makes things tough. That's why I'm

01:05:20.720 glad you exist. I'm glad there are a handful of people nationally who can still amplify the truth

01:05:27.620 and are still willing to stand up for the constitution, even when, especially when it's

01:05:31.480 difficult. I will tell you though, that, I mean, we need to be able to count on somebody standing up

01:05:41.080 in media. And I don't know if it's, you know, you just, uh, keep going to the barrel for the new

01:05:46.860 apples, the new journalists. That's too late. I, I, I'm working right now with some, um, people

01:05:54.340 just to, just to question, what are we doing? You know, we, we are the industry, the entertainment

01:06:05.540 industry keeps getting either the people who couldn't make it or had the spine to stand up.

01:06:13.900 And that's few and far between, uh, or the people who are really accomplished that don't have anything

01:06:19.740 to lose anymore. You know what I mean? We have to go to the tree and we have to start training those

01:06:26.380 people. And I hear from people in the media all the time, Glenn, you got to hire the journalist.

01:06:31.400 Why? Why? If you know, it's poison, why? There are other people who can speak truth. There are

01:06:42.400 other people who know how to write, who don't come from that tree. And it's one of the advantages of

01:06:48.200 these innovations in technology that we've seen in recent years. Uh, there are now other ways of

01:06:53.820 disseminating truth that don't necessarily require a printing press that don't necessarily require all

01:07:00.240 the things that you used to have in order to speak truth to masses. But it's one of the reasons why

01:07:05.020 you've seen efforts by, uh, Google and Facebook and, and Twitter and other entities to, um, sort of

01:07:12.660 snuff out, uh, uh, take out the oxygen, uh, from those entities. But it's also why I'm so disappointed in

01:07:20.700 organizations like the Deseret News, you know, better a, your owners at least know better. Uh, and, uh,

01:07:29.240 why aren't you going to the tree? Right, right. And a lot of people don't question them because if

01:07:36.420 they believe in their owner's ability to discern truth, they'll assume that that discernment

01:07:43.480 transfers to the owned entity, which it does not. Um, okay. Um, let's just go over a couple of things

01:07:52.760 here before we wrap it up. The, what's coming this summer? First of all, we will see a decision

01:08:00.560 by the Supreme court in the Dobbs case, an abortion ruling between now and the end of June. I personally

01:08:06.720 wish, uh, that the court had issued its ruling immediately. I, I, I don't think the sun should

01:08:12.700 have gone down the next day before they issued at least a per curiam unsigned order saying,

01:08:18.040 here's the result. Rose overturned full opinions to follow later. Your guess, uh, my guess is June

01:08:23.560 30th because decisions like these tend to be drawn out until the last weekday in the month of June,

01:08:29.980 the court adjourns, uh, that way they can get out of town that way they can get out of town. But

01:08:34.780 they're really controversial ones are always drawn out because the way the court works,

01:08:39.100 you know, you don't issue an opinion until every justice is comfortable signing on to whatever

01:08:44.060 opinion he or she will sign on to at the end of the day. Your gut tells you which direction five

01:08:50.060 to four, possibly six to three in support of justice Alito's opinion, six to three chief justice

01:08:55.600 Roberts could end up joining it. I hope that he will. I think that he certainly should justice

01:09:01.320 Alito's opinion is correct. Well, I hope that I can get together a flying monkey army like the

01:09:08.540 witch did in wizard of Oz, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen. It could happen. You look at

01:09:12.940 the questions that chief justice Roberts asked at oral argument on December 1st of last year in the

01:09:17.380 Dobbs case, they indicate along with other things we've seen from him, he does know the difference

01:09:22.900 between legitimate constitutional analysis and made up policy agenda, uh, uh, uh, material that was

01:09:31.440 sort of passed off as constitutional jurisprudence. Okay. So they issue it. Are we going to find out,

01:09:36.640 are they going to punish the person that leaked? Cause I, I believe, and I think you believe

01:09:41.000 absolutely they know by now they have to know. I think they know. I, I think they haven't told us

01:09:47.180 yet in part because they don't want to, uh, shine too much of a spotlight. Do you think they've even

01:09:54.140 told anybody in, in the inside with the trust? I heard justice Thomas the other day, he said,

01:09:59.680 we're forever changed because we don't have trust now. Oh yeah. Look, this is, this is going to have

01:10:05.400 lasting consequences, uh, and not pleasant ones. There's always an air of trust. When I clerked at

01:10:11.860 the Supreme court, there was an air of trust between the justices with the law clerks, free flow of

01:10:17.060 information and exchange of ideas. It was good. It was a good thing. Not everyone always agreed,

01:10:22.180 but, but it got to better outcomes, better opinions that were sharper because of that dialogue. This will

01:10:29.000 be harmed by that. The, uh, some of the other cases that are coming out, ones on guns, dramatic

01:10:36.240 case on guns, right? Right. It's bigger than the Heller case. I, I, I think it could end up being

01:10:43.080 as big as possibly bigger than the Heller case. Uh, at least in the sense that it, um, it has the

01:10:50.640 potential to be a case that if decided the way I think the court will decide it, will allow the Heller

01:10:57.740 case to finally have its full impact. In other words, in this case, that's pending in front of

01:11:02.600 the Supreme court, uh, state, uh, New York state rifle and pistol association versus Brune. Uh,

01:11:11.740 the state of New York tried to take the second amendment right to bear arms and limit it to those

01:11:18.620 people whom the state deemed sufficiently in need of government guns to justify it, giving the state

01:11:24.980 sweeping, subjective discretionary powers to decide, okay, Glenn, you may have a gun. Yeah. You,

01:11:31.540 you, people don't like you. And, uh, uh, so we can have a gun, but he might turn to Stu or,

01:11:37.540 or Pat, the same state official in New York and say, no, you don't really need it that much. You're not

01:11:43.400 as well known. Uh, just, um, you know, be careful and, uh, try to wear a helmet when you're outside.

01:11:49.300 Mm-hmm. That's the kind of sweeping power they gave him. Now I, along with a number of my colleagues

01:11:54.760 submitted a friend of the court or amicus curiae brief, uh, written by a fantastic lawyer named

01:11:59.340 Gene share, a mentor of mine, making the case that the second amendment doesn't give that discretion

01:12:06.580 to a state. In fact, the whole point of the second amendment was to make a deal. So the second amendment

01:12:14.980 as incorporated against the states by the 14th amendment says that that negotiation, that, um,

01:12:21.800 balancing of interest has already been struck. The founding fathers knew when they wrote this,

01:12:27.280 when they wrote the second amendment and when they ratified the 14th amendment, a long time later,

01:12:30.820 they knew that there are safety interests, that this is a balancing of interests that yes, some bad

01:12:37.400 things will happen if we let people have guns, but that on balance, it's better if you let them have

01:12:42.800 guns. I think the court is going to amplify these sentiments. It's going to embrace them and it's

01:12:48.720 going to ultimately empower the Heller decision. Um, when you look at, um, the state of the world,

01:12:58.700 the power of the public private partnership. Now that we're in ESG, um, the federal reserve, the idea of

01:13:12.040 a fed coin, all of these things that are really truly at our doorstep, people who aren't paying

01:13:20.240 attention, think that it's, oh yeah, well that's, no, it's here. Um, and, um, if God forbid, we go into

01:13:31.660 an emergency on food, energy, or war, which all are at least maybe not likely, but very well could happen. Um,

01:13:45.520 how do, how do, how do we brace for this, Mike? How do we, in, how do we get past an emergency

01:13:53.480 like this intact? Well, first of all, we have to remember the risks of emergencies. My wife has two

01:14:01.900 fundamental tenets that, uh, I believe in my wife, Sharon's very wise. Um, all socialism starts out as

01:14:08.960 emergency socialism and socialism is never for the socialist. We have to be aware of these grave risks

01:14:14.980 that we face if we run headlong into that. Next, we have to remember that sometimes the only thing

01:14:20.300 standing between us and the dangers associated with the excessive accumulation of power in the

01:14:26.420 hands of the few and all the things you just described, these emergency sweeping actions

01:14:31.300 in response to this or that crisis, they all have that in common. The best bulwark we have against that

01:14:38.460 is sometimes the courts, the Supreme Court in particular. And in order to exercise those

01:14:45.980 powers, to be that control rod that steps in and says, no, we're not going to let this proceed because

01:14:49.840 this violates about 10 different features of our constitution. You've got to have an independent

01:14:54.820 federal judiciary. This is not merely an academic exercise. This is one of the reasons why we've been

01:14:59.820 the biggest economic powerhouse the world has ever known. It's also have an independent court system.

01:15:04.420 Right. And it's also why our constitution, the average length of a constitution for any country

01:15:09.940 is 17 years. Right. Right. Not ours. 235 years. Yeah. And, and it's worked. It's, and regardless of

01:15:19.380 whether you, you believe like I do, that it was written by wise men raised up by God to that very

01:15:23.420 purpose, it works. So, but in order for it to continue working, we have to have an independent federal

01:15:29.520 judiciary, the court packing plan that the left is pushing president Biden, many of my democratic

01:15:37.540 colleagues in the Senate, most of them in fact, and their counterparts in the house. It is there to

01:15:42.860 destroy that and to consolidate power. We can't let that happen. Even if it fails legislatively this

01:15:49.240 time, as it did with FDR in 1937, it will leave another lasting mark. One that could saddle us with

01:15:55.780 something else horrible, just as it did last time when FDR tried this. And that's why I wrote saving

01:16:00.600 nine. But always we have to keep in the front of our minds that we shouldn't trust government.

01:16:07.800 Government is not a deity. It doesn't have eyes with which to see you, arms with which to embrace

01:16:12.360 you or a heart to love you. Government is just power. It's just force and it's got to be controlled.

01:16:18.620 That's why these separation of powers, that's why these, all these protections in the constitution

01:16:23.260 matter. And they're not just academic. Mike Lee. Thank you. Thank you.

01:16:33.100 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it

01:16:39.120 can be discovered by other people.

01:16:53.260 Bye-bye.

01:16:54.100 Bye-bye.

The Glenn Beck Program - June 04, 2022

Ep 149 ｜ Want a Tyrannical King？ The Left's Court-Packing Plot Ensures It ｜ Mike Lee ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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