In This Episode
Melissa, Kate, and Leah break down the various legal cases arising from ICE’s occupation of Minnesota, including a bid to end DHS’s Operation Metro Surge and a case from citizens seeking to block the abusive use of tear gas and pepper spray. Then, the hosts welcome Crooked’s Tommy Vietor to talk about all things foreign policy: the President’s blatant disdain for international law, the so-called “DonRoe Doctrine,” the President’s wildly incoherent and pointless tariffs, and why Trump’s claim that he’s ended eight wars is beyond laughable. Finally, a deeply concerning FBI raid on the Fulton County elections office supervised by Hawaii’s least favorite daughter, Tulsi Gabbard.
Favorite things:
- Leah: Streets Of Minneapolis, Bruce Springsteen; The Blood-and-Soil Nationalism That Killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good, Ta-Nehisi Coates (Vanity Fair); Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong, Adam Serwer (The Atlantic); Chris Hayes’ reporting from MN
- Kate: This May Be the Only Path to Accountability for the Minneapolis Shootings, Barry Friedman and Stephen I. Vladeck (NYT); Who Gave ICE Permission to Trample the Constitution? Amicus (Slate); JVN Hair; Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy
- Melissa: His and Hers, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model (Netflix); King of the North
- Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South, Jeanne Theoharis
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2026!
- 3/6/26 – San Francisco
- 3/7/26 – Los Angeles
Learn more: http://crooked.com/events
Preorder Melissa’s book, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader
Buy Leah’s book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes
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TRANSCRIPT
Leah Litman [AD]
Show Intro Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court, it’s an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they’re going to have the last word. She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.
Leah Litman Hello, and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We’re your host today. I’m Leah Litman.
Kate Shaw I’m Kate Shaw
Melissa Murray And I’m Melissa Murray. And we are in a unique period in the court’s calendar. Usually, the court takes a one-week break between different argument sessions. So after it hears arguments over the course of two weeks, it will take a week off and then return for the next sitting. So they just manage to give themselves little breaks here and there. And got to say, don’t mind if I do. Not like I’m working in the public interest or anything. Not like the tariffs are out there.
Kate Shaw Their calendar is something to aspire to. Yeah, it sure is. Okay, so that’s normally how it works, but it’s actually different between the January and February argument sessions, which is where we are now. So the court actually takes a three week break from hearing arguments.
Melissa Murray And don’t mind if I do.
Kate Shaw Um, not right, not like there’s anything important to resolve. Although, given what’s likely to come down the pike, I don’t think we should begrudge them. They can take years off. Three years, 30 years. Exactly. We’ll take it. Yep. That’s good. Yeah. I wish they’d take…
Melissa Murray I wish they’d taken a break between 2023 and 2026.
Kate Shaw That would have been nice. And in perpetuity. But a couple weeks off from arguments at least is, you know, a tiny little gift in this otherwise cursed timeline. And we should say the justices may still get up to no good on the shadow docket, which does not respect the calendar or anything else. But the break between arguments does give us a little bit of time to cover some of the many other legal issues that are unfolding. And that’s how we’re going to spend the next few weeks going a little deeper on some of the important issues we often have to go short on when the court is in session.
Leah Litman So this particular week, we are going to cover developments in Minnesota and the ICE occupation of that state. We will also talk about the Trump administration’s destructive approach to foreign policy, where we will be joined by a very special first time guest. And finally, we’ll touch on some legal news.
Melissa Murray Let’s talk about Minnesota ICE developments. Last episode, we talked about the tragic, terrible ICE shooting of Alex Preti, an ICU nurse at a VA hospital who was observing ICE’s presence in his neighborhood and filming ICE officers as they shoved other observers. The shooting happened a month into DHS and ICE’s mass deployment and occupation of Minnesota, of wear, as Kate has said. The federal government has seemingly suspended large chunks of the constitution that it finds inconvenient to its project of terrorizing and punishing communities that did not vote for the president.
Kate Shaw So there have been a few important developments since Melissa and Leah recorded the update to our last episode that we wanted to bring you up to speed on. They involve various developments in litigation, in political responses to the latest killing, and new frontiers in the weaponization of the Justice Department, specifically arrests for the crime of journalism. So the last episode noted some of the ongoing litigation related to the ICE occupation. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about what the state of play with those cases is. There are actually four separate cases. And just so you have the lay of the land, we will tick through all of them. One is Minnesota versus Nome, a case brought by the state Minnesota that seeks to end Operation Metro Surge, which is what they’re calling their occupation of Minneapolis. We will come back to that one in a second. Another is the police suit against federal officers that is trying to ensure that the federal government doesn’t destroy or contaminate evidence, any more than they’ve already done, which is considerable, related to the ICE shooting of Alex Preddie. Minnesota law enforcement obtained a temporary initial order that prohibited the federal government from destroying evidence related to Preddie’s case.
Leah Litman There’s also a separate case filed by the ACLU that seeks to bar ICE from stopping Latino and Somali residents without probable cause or without using their apparent race and ethnicity as probable cause. And the fourth case is one brought by private citizens that sought to enjoin particular discrete ICE practices like tear gassing or pepper spraying observers or using non-lethal munitions on people observing or protesting. We’re also gonna come back to this one.
Melissa Murray All of these cases are in different stages, so we’ll focus on the ones that are a little bit further along and unfolding at more significant phases of litigation. So in the private citizen’s case, seeking to block the use of particular practices, the plaintiffs obtained a temporary restraining order, a TRO, that blocked the abusive use of teargassing and pepper spraying practices. But then the 8th Circuit, a runner up for the World’s circuit court. Decided that it would stay that lower court ruling. And this occurred just days before Alex Prettie was murdered as ICE agents peppered sprayed him and another observer. We should note that the Eighth Circuit is an intermediate appellate court that includes 12 active judges. But 11 of those active judges were appointed by Republican presidents.
Kate Shaw The 8th Circuit gave two separate grounds for why the district court’s injunction was issued in error and, unsurprisingly, we take issue with aspects of both of those grounds. The 8h Circuit first said that, quote, the grant of relief to such a broad, uncertified class is just a universal injunction by another name.
Melissa Murray But wait, wait. I thought we weren’t just going to give people no opportunity to seek redress in an aggregate fashion. If we weren’t going to do universal injunctions, we were going to this class certification thing. George Conway told me it would be fine.
Kate Shaw Real Baton Switch.
Leah Litman In fact, Trump versus Casa specifically said that while universal injunctions aren’t permitted, class actions are. Universal injunctions are where courts block a policy from being applied to anyone. Class actions are where court say, you plaintiff can litigate this case on behalf of you and a class of people like you. And Casa said that courts could block policies from being apply to anyone who is part of that class.
Melissa Murray You know, we hate to say we told you so, but we did tell you. So one of our big concerns with the Casa decision was that while the court was trying to soothe everyone with its promises that they’re ruling on nationwide injunctions was no big deal because there were still class actions. We were like, uh, wait, what the same court, the same Republican appointees that literally make their antipathy for class actions known every possible chance they get. And here we are. So if they won’t certify a class action, well, that’s not a real backstop to eliminating the universal injunction as they did in CASA. So we’re basically stuck with a whole whack-a-mole catch me if you can style of litigation. I believe Katandee Brown Jackson said we might get one of those where the only people whose rights are protected are those who are in a position to mount their own litigation.
Kate Shaw Now, the Eighth Circuit attempted to smooth over what seemed pretty clearly to be an effort to claw back this part of CASA by saying, well, it’s really just that this particular case quote has no chance of getting certified as a class and class certification quote is not necessary to preserve our jurisdiction. Let’s noodle over those reasons too.
Leah Litman So on why this class supposedly couldn’t or wouldn’t get certified, the A-Circuit said that it watched the videos that were submitted to the district court and just kind of disagreed with the district court’s characterization. Because deference to district courts, for who? Dumbos and dickheads. Everything to novo, to novo all the way down. The A-circuit claimed that the videos show, quote, observers and protesters engaging in a wide range of conduct, some of it peaceful, but much of it not.” unclear what they thought wasn’t peaceful, like, was it the whistles? Because those do seem to be triggering a lot of MAGA heads. Like, words aren’t violence, but whistles are. Gotta keep up with the discourse.
Melissa Murray But more generally, a lot of different conduct might be part of observing ICE or protesting. And guess what? That still doesn’t make it OK to pepper spray people for all of that varied conduct. So yes, a class that is certified still makes sense. And on the idea that class certification isn’t necessary to preserve the court’s jurisdiction, my guys, no one ever suggested that it is a prerequisite to obtain class certification. The Supreme Court just mentioned that as a reason why they granted an extraordinary injunction pending appeal to a prospective class of people that wasn’t even certified. That was in the Alien Enemies Act case where the government was trying to ship more people off to CICOT, that Salvadoran prison, when then claimed that they could not bring any of those people back because Salvadoran Prison. There, the court said that blocking the expulsions was necessary to preserve its jurisdiction. So the federal government couldn’t hurry people off, where courts couldn’t review their claims and their expulsons. And that wasn’t a prerequisite for getting a class action. So six, seven, I guess. Yeah. You
Kate Shaw My kids inform me they’re no longer saying that.
Leah Litman Whoa, what the 8th circuit is! The 8th Circuit! Yeah. Six, seven, eight!
Kate Shaw Every time I tried, they’re just like, no, please don’t. So the Court of Appeals also felt that the injunction was too vague in its directions not to, quote, retaliate against persons who were engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity. Seems pretty clear to me, actually, but apparently not. It even thought that the provision of the injunction that singles out the use of, quote pepper spray or similar non-legal munitions and crowd dispersal tools. Was also too vague because it requires federal agents to predict what the District Court would consider, quote, peaceful and unobstructive protest activity.
Melissa Murray Again, my guys, it’s not some big secret what peaceful and unobstructed protest activity is. It’s not like the district court is sitting around here like, let’s play hide the ball. They are telling you what they don’t want you to do. No spraying tear gas directly into someone’s face. No spreading pepper spray. I mean, it is like the abuse is the problem. It’s the abuse, stupid. The fact that ICE can’t distinguish between a wine mom with a whistle driving a car. And unlawful activity is not the plaintiff’s fault here. The district court got it, and maybe the Eighth Circuit could too. Verdict’s still out on ICE. Nor is it the plaintiffs’ fault that ICE officers are pretty gratuitously and shamelessly and randomly tear gassing and pepper spraying people for different kinds of behavior. In those circumstances, you have to write a very broadly worded injunction to get them to stop doing all of the things. Because you couldn’t actually sit down and enumerate all of the insane things that they’re actually going to get up to. That’s the thing about unchecked government authority. Sometimes you don’t even know how unchecked they’re gonna be.
Leah Litman And we also have some notes on the court’s discussion of the stay factors, where the court expressed concern that the injunction’s breadth and vagueness might, quote, cause federal agents to hesitate in performing their lawful duties, end quote. Ah, yes, the concern. ICE officers are too timid and too hesitant. This definitely checks. The Court of Appeals also questioned what possible need there was for an injunction, quote, when all it says is to follow the law, end quote. Well, I don’t know. Maybe the need is ICE isn’t following the law. And we know they are saying they can enter homes without warrants, arrest people for being black or brown, or shoot people who fill them with phones. And yet you’re telling me that telling them to obey the law is not needed and no big deal. It’s just absurd. And after they said this, lots of video has come out about subsequent ICE activity. So take this video that was recorded after the A circuit declared there was no need for an injunction.
Clip I will tell you this, brother. What? You know? I will say you this. You raise your boys, I raise your boy.
Clip If I raise my voice, you’ll erase my-
Clip Exactly, yeah.
Clip Are you serious? You said if I raise my voice, you’ll erase my voice?
Kate Shaw Okay, that’s the first case. Next on to Minnesota v. Gnome, which is the case in which the state has asked the court to enjoin the mass deployment surge in Minnesota. The case is before the same judge that had issued the injunction that was at issue in the conversation we were just having about the Eighth Circuit, the one blocking specific ICE practices, and the judge in that case heard argument last week.
Leah Litman The theory that seemed to draw the most attention is that the federal government is basically coercing through extortion the state, holding an entire state at gunpoint with these roving ICE patrols in order to demand things from the state that the Federal Government isn’t entitled to and couldn’t demand on its own, like voter rolls or Medicaid data or the state reversing its sanctuary city policy, very mafioso, your money or your lifestyle, governance, the presidency as a protection racket.
Melissa Murray Part of what seemed to raise questions at the hearing was the fact that the judge seemed to want the litigants to proffer cases that say that the federal government can’t do this. But here’s the thing. The federal government has never deployed mass armed untrained agents and told them that they’re absolutely immune in order to punish a state for its political views and its policies. Now, to their credit, the advocate for the state and the judge acknowledged that they in uncharted waters. The advocate said, look, it’s unprecedented to have essentially an army essentially stir the pot with conduct that is pervasive and includes illegal violent conduct. And the judge says she appreciated the advocate’s candor in that, quote, it goes without saying that we are in shockingly unusual times.
Kate Shaw I mean, I think that that conundrum is so pervasive in the age of Trump 2.0, which is like, show me a case that says the president can’t have a private paramilitary force funded by a Qatari bank account that terrorizes and murders American citizens. And like, no, There is no case that says that, because no one has ever tried.
Melissa Murray We have this.
Kate Shaw Good segue. What are you holding, Melissa?
Melissa Murray It’s the Annotated Constitution, a guide for the Modern Reader by Melissa Murray.
Kate Shaw Right. So Melissa’s new book and the document that it elaborates is an obstacle to much of what the federal government is doing here, whether or not there is a specific case that says that, right? That, I think, is critically important. So back to this hearing. Afterwards, the court asked for additional briefing on our girl, Pamela Jo Bondi’s clearly extortionate demand that suggested that maybe DHS would remove ICE officers if Minnesota turned over its voter rolls. Which a court said DOJ wasn’t entitled to when DOJ tried to sue Minnesota for the same voter rolls in a separate proceeding. Bondi also said that part of the conditions for withdrawing ICE was that the state had to turn over its Medicaid and SNAP benefit information, which is definitely not related to immigration enforcement, and, just to add on, the state would also have to withdraw its sanctuary city policy, which the state is constitutionally entitled to have, and the president is not constitutionally allowed to order the state to change.
Leah Litman Got to hand it to Pamela Jo. Once again, girl, you do not take notes on a motherfucking criminal conspiracy. Much less put it on letterhead and send it off. During the hearing, the judge focused on figuring out what the surge is supposedly doing, like what harms or policies it’s designed to fix. Because if it’s not fixing anything, that means it’s probably more likely part of an effort to extort a state through terror and occupation.
Melissa Murray Pamela Jo Bondi saw Harmeet Dhillon calling other conservatives hoes and said, you know what? Hold my beer. I, too, can be clown this administration as much as she can. And she’s been engaged in even more antics that basically make fools of the federal government and DOJ. She has been posting on X the mugshots of Minnesotans who were arrested for impeding ICE and the Customs and Border Patrol. And DOJ rules prohibit sharing a defendant’s photo publicly. There are all kinds of things that relate to that sort of disclosure, like due process, again, also in the Constitution. But you know what DOJ policies are for, folks? Do you know? And due process. And due to process, you know, what that’s for? Dummies, dunking on, all those things, right? Yeah, and plebs. So she’s like, I don’t care. I’m just doing it. Harmeet, your move.
Kate Shaw It wasn’t even good sort of social media strategy. I mean in addition to violating DOJ rules and policies and constitutional principles and particular provisions, the mugshots, each individual mugshot was paired with an HSI, I think it was Homeland Security Investigations agent with their back to the camera. Just like my overriding impression from these photos was these are like brave badasses, these protesters and They are completely cowardly like goons who will not even show their faces. So I guess nice work, Pamela Jo Bondi.
Leah Litman After we recorded, the district court on a Saturday, no less, issued the opinion in Minnesota’s case challenging Operation Metro Surge and denied Minnesota’s request for an injunction to block the ICE surge and mass deployment. A disappointing result, albeit kind of an expected one after the hearing. The court basically relied on a lack of analogous precedent saying there just isn’t any case where a court has concluded that the executive’s mass of law enforcement amounted to unconstitutional coercion or commandeering. The judge also said there would be line drawing difficulties in that theory about when does law enforcement become too much and excessive. And the judge said both of those considerations weighed against the preliminary injunction. It’s tough because the reality is we are in an unprecedented situation of surges of casually lawless law enforcement that just crush a state or at least try to. So as Kate said, of course, there isn’t any case law. That doesn’t make it. Now, the judge said that didn’t necessarily rule out ruling for the state later on. But as in so many cases, these preliminary interim rulings about what is going to happen from now until whenever there’s a final adjudication, that is the case because that determines whether ICE remains in Minnesota. The district court also said that a preliminary injunction was inappropriate at this point because there was some competing evidence in the record. Specifically, the United States said they were doing the surge for legitimate reasons. Not extortion. Pamela Jo Bondi’s letter, notwithstanding. To me, the opinion kind of read both sad or disappointed and tired. I think it’s important to know that the judge in this case, Minnesota’s challenge to Operation Metro Surge is the same judge that issued the opinion that blocked specific abusive ICE practices only to see that opinion stayed on pretty dubious grounds by the A circuit as we just discussed. It did make me wonder if the outcome in the Minnesota case might’ve been different, or if the opinion might have been written differently, perhaps with more gestures to how catastrophic Metro Surge is for the people of Minnesota, if the A circuit hadn’t stayed that other opinion. So while this decision is not unexpected, it’s also hugely disappointing. The state and its people are undergoing just incredible hardship. This is really day in, day out, every aspect of people’s lives economically. Businesses are burdened and often have to close. Personally, physically, educationally, schools are shut down or go online. The courts aren’t going to save us, but we have to keep looking for another way. Now, in happier court news, though, also on Saturday, a district judge in Texas ordered five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, the child in the blue hat who had been detained by ICE in Minnesota and sent to Texas. The judge ordered him and his father released. As the government is apparently going to pursue, its case to deport. The judge wrote, quote, the case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children, end quote. The opinion then cite some of Thomas Jefferson’s grievances against the English King that led to the American Revolution, including quote, he has sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, end quote, sounds familiar. The court added, quote, civics lesson to the government, administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the hen house, end quote. The order concluded, quote with a judicial finger in the constitutional dyke, it is so ordered, ordered that Liam and his father be released. In the judge’s signature block, usually pro forma, the judge included the viral photograph of Liam in the blue hat, jacket, and backpack being held by an ICE officer. And cited two Bible verses, Matthew 19, 14 and John 11, 35. Just as FYI’s, the first verse is, but Jesus said, suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me for of such is the kingdom of heaven. The second verse is just Jesus wept. Representative Ilhan Omar and representative Joaquin Castro said, Liam and his father were released in our home where they will be able to see a video that the New York Times compiled of Liam’s classmates and the messages they sent to ICE. One, a girl wearing braids and barrettes is asked to talk about Liam, and to Liam, she includes a drawing of Liam’s blue hat. Another child interviewed says, quote, you’re making people really sad because you’re just taking them away. While another says, I just hope everyone can have their loved ones next to them, end quote. Now, if that did not warm your heart and if you really want to use the force of federal government to go after five-year-olds, good news for you. The Department of Justice is hiring. You can take notes on a criminal conspiracy with Pamela Jo. Because over on X, Chad Mizzell said, quote, if you are a lawyer or interested in being an AOSA, that’s an assistant US attorney, and support President Trump, DM me. And Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller retweeted that. Yes, federal prosecutors now being hired on X over DMs. One last quick update. After we recorded the New York Times reported in the Department of Things, I did not see, not see coming that Greg Bovino, the former face of these mass deployments and terror campaigns, mopped a Jewish attorney’s faith on a call. The attorney is an Orthodox Jew who observes Shabbat. Bovino repeatedly used the term, quote, chosen people in a mocking way. And according to the New York Times, quote, asked sarcastically whether Mr. Rosen understood that Orthodox Jewish criminals don’t take weekends off. End quote. This is my shocked face. Also, if you’re watching this on YouTube, yes, I will be making and bringing the shirts that I am wearing. To our live shows in Los Angeles, which you can still buy a ticket to, and San Francisco. But now back to our regularly recorded episode.
Kate Shaw So the response to the most recent ICE killing and abuses is very much still developing. Last week, ICE demanded entry into the Ecuadorian consulate in Minneapolis, which they cannot enter. The consulate is labeled on the door. The Atlantic broke the story that in the aftermath of Pretti’s murder, Greg Bovino was removed from his post. That’s great. He is evidently now out of Minnesota and it seems pretty clear that none of the people in charge of DHS should continue to have their jobs after this outrage and travesty. But the departure of Greg Bovino is nowhere near enough. Especially since he’s been replaced.
Leah Litman By Tom Homan. Oh yeah, we’re about to get to Tom Homan. But I mean, how much do you think Bovino’s departure is because he just looked short in photos and Donald Trump was like, he’s not a manly enough man.
Kate Shaw He’s not looking for it anymore. Yeah, right. Yeah very possible
Leah Litman Honestly, that’s what’s gonna save us from a Justice Emile Bove, is Trump thinks he’s just too fuggo. Seriously.
Melissa Murray Trump doesn’t like a short king. So there should be more demands and more fights for a meaningful response to ICE’s plan to terrorize the entire state of Minnesota. Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, all those folks were in charge, and that kind of makes them responsible, right? You broke it. You buy it. And maybe also unfit for any position of public authority. And this is why the midterm elections are so important, and they know it because. If you get even a tip on the house, if the house changes hands, and you can actually haul some of these folks in and have some hearings and like literally light a fire under this.
Leah Litman And Democrats are negotiating now, like, what kinds of things are necessary for them to agree to any funding deal. You know, it’s possible they are just going to separate out, you know, ICE, DHS funding and separately negotiate about that. But like, here’s an idea. Get ICE the fuck out of Minnesota and prohibit surges elsewhere. Like, do not let cosmetic or symbolic changes be the extent of it. Like the people of Minnesota, the victims of these ICE abuses, like the people who are out there protesting and patrolling, they deserve a lot more.
Kate Shaw Yeah, and it’s important to understand that despite the rhetoric from the federal shift, which we’ve heard much about. Things have, it seems very much not changed on the ground in Minnesota. So Bavino is out, but they have not withdrawn the ice roving goon squads from the streets of Minnesota. As Melissa just alluded to, they have sent Tom Hohmann Inn in some kind of weird PR campaign. If that name sort of vaguely rings a bell this is literally the architect of the family separation program in the first Trump administration and also what is the status of oh I don’t even know whether allegedly the recipient I guess um allegedly the recipients of a kava like the fast casual cuisine chain kava bag with fifty thousand dollars in the United States cash in it Anyway, so that guy is the guy who’s being sent into, I guess, cleanup. He gave a press conference announcing that he was now the man in charge, and it made clear that the federal government is still extorting Minnesota through terror and violence and occupation. Here he is, saying yes, this is very much still mob-style extortion.
Clip The withdrawal of law enforcement resources here is dependent upon cooperation. Like I said, one agent arresting one bad guy in the jail means less agents on the street. We have some agreements. We got more to talk about how we’re going to implement those agreements. But as we see that cooperation happen, then the redeployment will happen.
Leah Litman Here he is blaming the federal agent’s killing of two civilians on the tone of Minnesota politicians.
Clip I begged for the last two months on TV for the reddit to stop. I said in March if the reddick didn’t stop there was going to be bloodshed, and it has been. I wish I wasn’t right.
Leah Litman Again, words aren’t violence, except when they’re uttered by Democrats, then they’re responsible for actual violence. And also, if you don’t like people calling you the Gestapo, I mean, the people of Minnesota are out monitoring ICE with whistles and cars, not because Tim Walz called ICE Nazis. Like they’re doing it because they see how ICE is acting.
Melissa Murray You know what, Leah, guns don’t kill people. Tone kills people.
Leah Litman Right.
Melissa Murray And not to be outdone, I, too, have my own greatest hits of Tom Homan. Here he is referring to Minnesota as a theater, as in theater of war.
Clip Can you please be specific about how many ICE and how many Border Patrol agents are currently operating in the state?
Clip I think we’re near 3,000. There’s been some rotations. Another thing I witnessed when I came here, I’ll share this with you, I met with a lot of people, a lot of the agents, they’ve been in theater, some of these people have been in theater for eight months.
Melissa Murray Later, he describes how day after day, you can’t eat in restaurants and people are blowing whistles at you. Yes, that’s how the veterans described their time storming the beaches at Normandy. I could not sit down and have a bouillabaisse. People were blowing whistles as we landed on the beaches, and it was just untenable.
Leah Litman Moms and minivans.
Kate Shaw And in case there were any lingering doubt, Trump has now expressly said that the federal government is not pulling back in Minnesota.
Melissa Murray Trump posted an absolutely disgusting statement about Alex Pretty on Truth Social that we are not going to repeat, but we will just say that it underscores the absolute callous disregard for life that is coming from the top. And that this president is not especially sorry. He’s not pivoting and he’s not pulling back or changing tune, although we should note that they have agreed to. Investigate Alex Pretti’s killing. That is a bit of a walk back from where they were earlier in the week, although they have not announced who will be doing the investigation. It could just be DHS, which might be like letting the burglar investigate the burglary, but whatever. But for the most part, though, they are hewing to the same tune. And in the last week, ICE took into custody two more children from the same Columbia Heights school that five-year-old Liam Ramos attended. We talked about Liam and his father in our last episode. This time, the children apprehended were a second grader and a fifth grader whose mother was detained. Because there was no one else to care for them, the children had to be delivered to their detained mother. School officials said that the boys cried and asked to hold a nurse’s hand when they were walked into the building. One person noted, quote, she was holding both their hands. It’s a lot. It’s lot of people in there with guns and weapons and formality and security and masks. And I don’t know what else to say. That is the reality, children being walked into detention centers because their parents have been detained.
Leah Litman And while there doesn’t seem to be a pullback of ICE in Minnesota, there has been some change in what’s happening in Maine, because there was some escalation and surge there, and there are now reports that the federal government is pulling back and withdrawing ICE. Why? One very real possibility is it’s to help Susan Collins’ reelection campaign, which only serves to underscore just how appalling and predictive and illegal and what a scandal the deployment is in Minnesota. And it should remind everyone that the solution here can’t be every person for themselves. ICE deployments and surges have to end everywhere. It’s not a win if they pull back in one place just to terrorize another place the next week.
Kate Shaw And one additional and really chilling piece of reporting has revealed that DHS slash CBP apparently is maintaining a database of people arrested for interference with DHS or CBP officers. And incredibly disturbingly, Alex Preddy seems to have been on DHS’s or CBPs radar. He was in a confrontation with federal agents a week before his death, according to CNN. Friends say, and there’s video footage of this encounter that he was tackled by police officers. While protesting their attempt to detain other individuals. The video that has emerged also shows Pretty spitting at and kicking ICE cars, or one ICE car, which raises an incredibly disturbing possibility that he was on some kind of target list. We know that they have been threatening and circling around the homes of people who are following and monitoring them from many, many dispatches from folks on the ground in Minnesota. It’s also been captured on video and reported widely. And a memo sent earlier this month to DHS agents in Minneapolis told them to quote, capture all images, license plates, identifications and general information on hotels, agitators, protesters, et cetera, so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.
Leah Litman [AD]
Melissa Murray Some other things going on in Minnesota. The administration managed to piss the fuck out of the chief judge of the district of Minnesota, who also happens to be a former law clerk to the great man himself, Antonin Scalia. When you’ve lost the Scalia clerks, you’ve got to think about it. Chief Judge Schultz, who clerked for the great man when Scalia was on the DC Circuit, helped prepare Scalia for his SCOTUS confirmation hearings, and he then clerked for Scalia when he served on the Supreme Court. Judge Schiltz has decided that he’s had enough of this BS the administration is shoving down the throats of the federal courts.
Kate Shaw So at the end of last week, he issued an order that told Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, that he had to appear personally before the judge and show cause why he should not be held in contempt of court. The order arose because the court had ordered the administration to release or provide a bond hearing to one of the people they had arrested and detained. And the administration just did not do that. The court wrote, quote, This is one of dozens of court orders with which respondents have failed to comply in recent weeks. The court has been extremely patient. Even though the federal government decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result, unfortunately though, the violations continue. The court’s patience is at an end.
Leah Litman The hearing, unfortunately or fortunately, depending how you look at it, never came to fruition because ICE got its act together and released the petitioner detainee. So in the order canceling the hearing, Judge Schiltz wrote, quote, attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s non-compliance is almost certainly substantially understated. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January, 2026, and some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence. ICE is not a law unto itself.
Melissa Murray But that’s not the only way that Krispy Noem and her henchmen have managed to tick off one of the great men, Antonin Scalia’s former law clerks, who is now a judge. They also gave him the middle finger when they attempted to give him the runaround in their effort to indict more people who participated in a demonstration at the St. Paul Church, where one of the pastors is the head of the St Paul Ice Field Office. As we discussed, In our last episode, DOJ failed to obtain arrest warrants from a magistrate judge. The judge rejected their applications on the ground that there wasn’t probable cause that some of the people that they were trying to indict, including journalist Don Lemon and his videographer, had committed any crimes. More on that in a second.
Leah Litman As Judge Schiltz detailed in a letter to the Eighth Circuit, the U.S. Attorney notified him, apparently minutes after the magistrate judge’s ruling, that they wanted a district judge to review the magistrates’ determination. Just as an FYI, magistrate judges are judges who aren’t appointed through Senate confirmation. They’re actually selected by judges on the district and serve only terms and have more limited dockets. Anyways. Judge Schiltz wrote that after speaking to all of the district judges and chief judges elsewhere in the Ace Circuit, apparently the government has never asked a district court to review a magistrate judge’s decision to deny an arrest warrant. Our friend Steve Vladeck has a great write-up of this incident at 1 1st Street. We’re just going to give you some of the highlights or lowlights.
Kate Shaw Chief Judge Schultz indulged the government and said he wanted to consult the rest of the court and wanted to see a brief. But then he had to postpone the meeting with the court because security concerns created by the presence of both the vice president of the United States and the attorney general of the united states in Minneapolis compelled him to delay.
Leah Litman And DOJ decided to go behind his back and file a sealed emergency petition for mandamus in the A circuit claiming the case presented a national security emergency. Schilt found out about this and he decided the administration had fucked around enough and it was time for people to find out about it. So he sent one letter where he was trying to guess what the mandamus petition was about because they never even served him with it. So, you know, he described why, you now, the people the government was trying to indict. Had not committed any crime. And the A circuit denied the petition for mandamus, but with a concurrence from one judge, a Trump appointee, who suggested there actually was probable cause to issue the arrest warrants or an arrest warrant, but still not enough to issue the writ of mandamus.
Kate Shaw That, unfortunately, was not the last word. On Friday morning, we learned that federal agents arrested journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for their coverage of the protest at the St. Paul Church against ICE. This is another escalation and a terrifying one. They are arresting journalists who cover protests for covering protests. I mean, this feels like the next stage in the construction of a genuine police state. The last month, I’ve seen… Just an incredible ratcheting up of what was already a pretty terrifying set of assertions of unprecedented authorities by the president and the administration. And we are in I think a timeline that is the worst possible version of what a Trump 2.0 could look like. And we always knew there was a chance they would start going after journalists and you know, This is them breaking, I think, incredibly dangerous new ground.
Leah Litman Yeah. And even when these people are inevitably released, you know, whether that is because a judge says there is a probable cause, whether that it’s because there is an indictment, whether that is because, you know, a judge directs the dismissal of the charges, it’s clear this is done as an effort to just deter other journalists, right? To make them scared about undergoing, right, the hardships that, you know, Georgia and Don are undergoing, right.
Melissa Murray Let’s maybe end this on a lighter note. All of the Sturm und Drang surrounding Chief Judge Schiltz has apparently led to a couple of meltdowns within the administration. So Trisha McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for DHS, dismissed the judge’s concerns about ICE’s violations. She characterized them as, quote, a diatribe from this activist judge. Justice Scalia would like a word from heaven. And then she went on to say, quote, we will not be deterred by activists, either in the streets or on the bench. Then, not to be outdone, our Assistant Attorney General of Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs, Hermi Dillon, decided to have her own bite at the apple. Again, we’ve said in the past that Harmeet Dhillon is willing to bring the noise to fellow conservatives who have critiques of this administration. She is already denounced as hoes, conservative bros who don’t think the administration is doing enough to advance its agenda. And last week, she decided that she was going to take her campaign to Ed Whalen, one of the most conservative right-wing lawyer commentators in the biz. Whalen like. Chief Judge Schultz is also a former law clerk to Justice Scalia, so he is no liberal swish. People in the administration and those who are friendly to the administration have all begun to insist that Judge Schiltz should recuse from this case because he donated to legal services associations. So these are organizations that provide representation to individuals who are indigent, including in immigration matters. FYI, the rules do not require judges to accuse when they support legal aid organizations and the representation of individuals who can’t afford lawyers. But that did not stop Harmeet Dhillon from weighing in. So we will recount the exchange for you.
Leah Litman So she retweeted a statement by Ed Whalen that suggested the judge didn’t have to recuse by saying, Ed, do you have any clients? Do you actually practice law in court? All caps.
Melissa Murray And then Ed responded, do you know what a non sequitur is? I can’t even conceive how your question has any bearing on the official ethics advice that I quoted. To answer your question, I have spent the last two decades promoting originalism and textualism, sidebar can confirm, working to transform the courts, also can confirm and promoting blah, blah, block. Show more says Twitter
Leah Litman To which Harmeet responds, I majored in ancient Greek and Latin at Dartmouth. Your pretentiousness merely underscores your utter lack of street cred.
Melissa Murray To which Whalen responded, are you drunk? When she has me out in these streets cheering for Ed Weyland. I know. Where are we? I know, the time. Where are we? Who am I? Who am?
Leah Litman The times they are bleak, the times they’re bleak.
Kate Shaw So with that roundup of the news from Minnesota, it is time to turn to Donald the Dove’s peacemaking around the globe.
Leah Litman [AD].
Leah Litman Now, we will shift to the Trump administration’s decision to maybe occupy the entire world. And for this conversation, we are delighted to be joined by Crooked Media’s foreign policy expert and co-host of Pod Save the World, our producer, Michael Sidehustle, Tommy Vietor. Welcome to the show, Tommy.
Tommy Vietor Long time listener, first time caller, thank you for having me.
Melissa Murray Well, we are very glad to have you today, Tommy. So let’s start by replaying this little tidbit from an interview that President Trump did with the New York Times.
Clip Do you see any checks on your power on the world stage? Is there anything that could stop you if you wanted to?
Clip Yeah, there’s one thing, my own morality, my own mind, it’s the only thing that can stop and that’s very good.
Clip Not international law?
Clip I don’t need international law…
Melissa Murray So, Tommy, just a question. How is this morality thing as a restraint on government working out for us?
Tommy Vietor I think it’s going great. I think its moral to murder people in boats in the Caribbean. I think is moral to kidnap heads of state. I think moral to bomb Nigeria on Christmas day based on what seems to be totally made up evidence of a Christian genocide. I think that it’s moral to lock out all refugees except for white South Africans. I’ll stop there, but I think it’s just going.
Leah Litman Okay, so that was uplifting. There has also been not just talk of morality, but also the so-called Dunrow Doctrine, which is honestly one of the dumbest and most pathetic wordplays I’ve ever encountered. Whoever came up with this and then decided to try to make it a thing is an enemy of the English language. But the doctrine as far as I can tell is as a 21st century… Update makeover of President James Monroe’s designation of the Western Hemisphere as America’s sphere of interest. Now, put aside the inconvenient fact that some of what you rattled off has been Trump meddling outside of this hemisphere, you know, including in Nigeria, but also Syria and Yemen. What does the world look like if the U.S. Owns, air quote, the Americas and leaves the rest of the world to be carved up by other great powers?
Tommy Vietor Yeah, it’s very weird. Like the original Monroe Doctrine was like, okay, you guys stay the hell out of the Western hemisphere, we’ll stay the Hell out of Europe. And so what I would, my first reaction to like the Don Rowe Doctrin is that wordplay is horrendous, as you said. The second one, the second one is brass tacks, like it makes the United States weaker, because we view ourselves as a global superpower. We have tens of thousands of troops in Germany, we’ve got troops in Italy and other parts of Europe, Does the Donra doctrine mean that we now take them home and we cede all that territory to the Russians to kind of just do whatever they want? Like we got 50,000 troops in Japan, 28,500 in South Korea. Do they come home? And that means we’re no longer a Pacific power and we just cede that territory to China, like what does it mean for Taiwan? So there’s a lot of questions, but it’s just not clear to me like whether Trump is kind of giving up on being a Pacific superpower or not.
Kate Shaw So you’re saying they maybe didn’t think this all worked it all out.
Tommy Vietor Pete has gone through, like apparently they just released a national defense strategy. They sent an email on a Friday night in the middle of that snowstorm. So that’s how seriously they took this.
Leah Litman Okay, it’s not over signal. Okay, that’s
Tommy Vietor No, no, no.
Kate Shaw Okay, so, leaving to the side some of the open questions and sort of zeroing in on this alleged, again, scare quotes, sphere of influence, it is wild to us that Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president, Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores almost feels like old news. That is, I guess, 2026 in a nutshell for you. It was an entirely different calendar year. So, page has turned. But we did want to ask about, because we refuse to let this story go quietly into the rearview mirror, what message this Venezuela operation sends to strongmen around the world, right? Does Trump’s blatant disregard of national sovereignty legitimize Putin’s war on Ukraine and bolden China when it comes to Taiwan. And just in terms of kind of our ongoing involvement in Venezuela, this is something that you follow really closely, like, am I right that there seems maybe to be a slush fund with seized oil revenue in a bank account in Qatar? What is that account? Who has like the access passwords? And is this just an easy way around Congress actually having the old power of the purse? Like, what is going on?
Tommy Vietor I share all of your questions about this Qatari fund with like hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, and they’re like, what is happening here? Can the United States government just like open a Venmo? Is that what’s happening?
Melissa Murray First you take the Qatari jet and you fly the seized money to Qatar, then you deposit it.
Tommy Vietor It’s so crazy, and Marco Rubio is at that hearing talking about it like it’s normal. He’s like, no, we’ll figure out what to do with the other 200 billion, everyone just chill out. It’s nuts. To your actual question though, yeah, I really wonder what it means for Xi Jinping in Taiwan. Xi Jinping is leading this gigantic military purge. He just fired the top general. Seems like maybe part of the reason is he doesn’t feel like the PLA is getting ready fast enough to take Taiwan, so coming attraction. I think it, certainly it could embolden Putin in Ukraine, though he’s pretty emboldened there. But you could also imagine a scenario where there’s some other leader in a country smaller that sort of, you know, is around Russia and Putin one day decides to pluck that individual up and replace him or her with a new prime minister or a president and say, what, you did it? What’s the problem? There’s this crazy thing that happened in 2017 that no one ever talks about that I just like can’t get out of my head, which was Saad Hariri, the prime minister of Lebanon, took a trip to Saudi Arabia And then all of a sudden he did a video feed. Where he announced that he was resigning, like clearly under duress. So Mohammed bin Salman just kidnapped the guy and they made him script this thing. And so like the French freaked out, like Emmanuel Macron got involved. I’m sure the Trump 1.0 kind of, you know, put some pressure on MBS to reverse this. And so he did. But like, what if the US government just doesn’t care? I don’t think, I think that story ends very differently. So yeah, like we’re emboldened in kidnapping of heads of state. I think, that’s probably bad.
Melissa Murray Oh, my God. Not just kidnapping heads of state, actually taking territory. So that seems like a good place to talk about Greenland, which we haven’t had the chance to talk about yet. Trump seems to have walked back his threat to use force to seize Greenland. He announced coming out of Davos that he’d agreed to a framework of a future deal, which sounds like concepts of a plan. Uh, but just… How much damage has already been done to the NATO alliance, Tommy, by threatening another country in the alliance? Greenland is a semi-autonomous Danish territory. The Danes seem to be a little troubled by all of this and Trump just seems to be like, there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark and no, I know he’s never read Hamlet.
Tommy Vietor He’s never at anything. Yeah, I think I think he did incalculable damage to NATO Um, I Think they already thought we were unreliable, but this is probably the nail in the coffin On top of it I don’t know if you guys caught this like he was doing an interview with the maria barteromo kind of on the way Out of davos and he said something like nato never really helped us out They didn’t actually like they may have deployed to afghanistan, but they didn’t really do any of the fighting which is just like Insanely wrong, you know the brits lost like 450 men and women in combat. I think the Danes per capita lost as many individuals as the U.S. Did. So like, he offended every veteran across the NATO alliance because it was just so gross. And so like, I don’t think NATO goes away tomorrow because the United States is just so core to its existence. Like, I think we’re like 60% of the funding we provide, the nuclear deterrence, the majority of the logistical infrastructure that you need to fight a war. ISRS, surveillance and intelligence assets, missile defense. The top NATO commander is usually an American commander. There’s like a command post in the US, like the second biggest one. So like we are still integral to the broader enterprise. But I just worry that they’re moving on. And like, you know, Trump brags about how he’s like pushing the Germans to spend more and more on defense. But we never really talk about whether that’s a good idea. When you also look at like the neo-Nazi AFD party is like maybe gonna come to power, and we’re like. Pushing to remilitarize the Germans and the Japanese. So I don’t know, the whole thing feels very unsettling.
Leah Litman So my anxiety levels are getting higher and higher. And they were already quite high because, of course, we are anxiously awaiting the court’s ruling in learning resources versus Trump, which will decide whether Trump has the authority to impose tariffs using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Stay tuned for a bonus episode when we ever get that opinion. TikTok, guys. It seems like Trump’s tariffs serve a few purposes, like some as punishment for not towing the line in the case of Brazil, maybe as bargaining chips for his own personal enrichment, like in the cases of Vietnam, and also a very expensive game of chicken with China. So as someone who tracks this stuff every week on your show, can you make any sense of Trump’s trade strategy and where, if at all, do the penguins fit into it?
Tommy Vietor I love the penguins, those little monsters. Yeah, it’s tariff first, ask questions later, right? I mean, I think you’re referencing, what was it called, the Herd and McDonald Islands, which is like, I thing, a two week boat ride from the furthest west point of Australia, and it’s like glaciers and penguins and we just tariff them like 10%. The takeaways I’ve, so it’s hard to like track the tariffs because so many get announced and then not applied. So you’re like looking for this major economic impact, but it’s less. So you wonder like, oh, are the economists wrong? It’s like, actually, no, we just not implementing these things. The main takeaway for me is they are a way for him to bully medium sized and small sized countries. A lot more tariffs get announced to get implemented. But again, like they can be devastating if you’re Canada, for example, because 75% of Canadian exports go to the US. If we suddenly make them twice as expensive, like their economy could be crushed. They were devastating for, remember Lesotho, the tiny little landlocked country. Like two million people in South Africa, they got a 50 percent tariff and it was like about to just crush every industry they had. I think it got walked back to 10 percent, but again, it’s like what are we doing here? But that said, when it comes to China, the tariffs are still very high and we’re all paying the price for that, but they’re not the like liberation day exorbitant level similar for Europe. Like, I think Trump backed down from the Greenlands. Threat in part because Europe was preparing two things, like one big tariffs, and then Country off from the European market and like they have it’s like the US China and then the EU in terms of like economic heft that can they could put a cost in place so it’s madness it’s just whatever it is madness
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Kate Shaw So you mentioned Canada in that answer, and sort of speaking of Canada and medium-sized countries, as you discussed at length on Pod Save the World, a couple of weeks ago, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a pretty extraordinary and extraordinarily honest speech about global power. Leah listed it as one of her favorite things that week. So let’s remind our listeners of it with a small clip.
Tommy Vietor We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. We participated in the rituals and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain. No longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Kate Shaw And, you know, Carney said a lot of other things in that speech, including nostalgia is not a strategy. If you haven’t listened to or read the speech in its entirety, it just really packs a punch. So I highly encourage our listeners to do that. But Tommy, as we look ahead to a time, because we like to trade in a degree of optimism and hope here, when we have a Democrat back in power, I mean, this is a big question, but like, what kind of new world order and what is America’s place in it that you hope to see?
Tommy Vietor That is a big, a good question. You know, Ben and I got in trouble on Pods Day of the World, because initially we didn’t focus on Carney’s speech. We just excerpted a clip of it and a clip on Emmanuel Macron’s speech, and I’d only listened to it, I hadn’t watched it, and I didn’t realize he was wearing like blue blocker sunglasses, and I started giggling so hard. And you know when you’re giggling and your friend starts giggling and you know you’re not supposed to laugh and you’re trying not to laugh, and we both just lost our shit and started crying, and we got in a trouble in the comments, but.
Kate Shaw We’re not mad
Tommy Vietor We came back to Carney. It was so funny. So funny. So I think a few things like one, you know, Trump, like obviously Elon Musk took ketamine and destroyed USAID. I think we need to think about building back a new version of what USAID looks like that isn’t just fighting for the same thing, but what is the smarter, more targeted version? I think need to like reinvigorate all these international institutions and organizations that we’re kind of letting die. Like NATO was one. We should fund the World Health Organization, that seems like a good idea. We should disband this stupid Board of Peace bullshit and recommit to working through the United Nations, even when it’s very inconvenient for us, and also think about reforms to make it so the Security Council isn’t just a broken mess. And then I think whoever the next Secretary of State is, it’s just going to be on the road trying to do diplomatic spade work. Congress hopefully could pass some laws that limit the power of the executive that makes us seem maybe long-term more reliable, but we’ve got a lot of work to do.
Leah Litman So, finally, Tommy, something of a lightning round. Can you do us and our listeners a solid and put to bed once and for all Trump’s constantly repeated claim that he has ended eight wars, so- And therefore deserve-
Melissa Murray And therefore deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
Leah Litman We’ll make it easy and like we’ll list the alleged wars he has ended. And then you can tell us how the whole world peace thing is going on in these cases.
Tommy Vietor That works. Deal.
Leah Litman Okay. Israel and Hamas.
Tommy Vietor So I give him credit for getting that ceasefire done, but we should, folks should just know that like there’s a ceasefire name only at this point, because the Gaza health ministry says, I think 480 plus Palestinians have been killed by the IDF since the ceasefire went into place on October or whenever it was last year, and Hamas is not disarmed. So it’s like work in progress, I’d say.
Leah Litman Israel and Iran.
Tommy Vietor Uh, so you might recall we bombed them too. Uh, not really peaceful, not so PC. And now Trump is like, as we speak, it’s Friday at like what noon Pacific, we are sending an armada as Trump said to the middle East to potentially bomb them again. So another work in progress, I’d say.
Leah Litman Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Tommy Vietor Yes, or Albania is what Trump sometimes says. Okay. He likes to get it wrong.
Melissa Murray Very easy to confuse them.
Tommy Vietor Yeah, he just, you know, it’s easy to confuse him to those two countries fought for about 40 years over a disputed part of territory called the Nagorno-Karabakh. In August of 2025, they announced this peace agreement, I think, at the White House or with Trump in some way. I think you get some credit for putting the two sides together. But in reality, what happened is Azerbaijan pretty much routed the Armenian side in part because they got a bunch of drones from the Turks and the Israelis. So sure, like the war has ended, but it was because one side lost.
Leah Litman The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.
Tommy Vietor Another one where Trump has held a bunch of events, like good on him for caring. Like I’m glad he sort of cares about these things, though in practice they turn out to be like ways to provide deals to extract mineral resources in the most disgusting way possible. But he held an event with like leaders from the DRC in Rwanda. But the problem is in this conflict, the primary driver is a group called the M23, which is like a rebel group that is not a party to the conversations, does not, do not accept the deal. And my understanding is despite this announcement in the paper of an agreement, like there’s fighting all the time every day, indiscriminate killing of civilians. So it’s just, there’s no peace.
Leah Litman India and Pakistan.
Tommy Vietor Another long-standing beef here. This one goes back a while. Did it just go away? Yeah, you know, we started like partition, I don’t know. They’ve been fighting over the disputed Kashmir region since the 40s, don’t like each other, treated as mortal enemies in the press and by the militaries. There was a really bad clash last year because there was a terrorist attack in Kashmir that killed a bunch of Indian tourists. The Indian government blamed the Pakistanis who historically have supported, it kind of harbored. Terrorist groups like the Taliban or TTP and others. And so it was really scary. It got really fucking intense for a few days. There was, you know, intense bombing deep into their territories. Trump says he was instrumental in brokering a ceasefire. The Indian government says that is entirely bullshit. And the Pakistanis were like, yeah, sure, you did it. You’d like, you’re trying to do a favor to Trump. But it’s kind of led to a rift between Trump and Modi in the U.S. And India. But bigger picture, like, none of the underlying problems are resolved. So it’s like… Sure, they’re not fighting now, but nothing is fixed for the future.
Leah Litman Cambodia and Thailand.
Tommy Vietor It’s another similar one, like long standing border dispute that dates back to poorly drawn colonial boundaries. There’s been sporadic fighting for a century. Last summer, again, there was a really bad kind of spate of fighting over, there’s like a cultural sites, like a temple that both sides claim. Trump tweeted about it. He put sanctions on both sides. He got them to sign a peace agreement, but. My understanding is that as of this recording like there’s still kind of sporadic clashes and again like the underlying challenges are not resolved
Melissa Murray Sporadic clashes don’t seem conducive to peace, just gonna say.
Tommy Vietor And that’s the thing like they just love to spike the ball on the 50 yard line. It’s like, you know, the peace prices usually come from, you know, like if you actually created Middle East peace, like a Palestinian state, something that resolve the underlying political challenges that are drivers of conflict.
Leah Litman Okay, so last two, Egypt and Ethiopia and Serbia and Kosovo.
Tommy Vietor Egypt and Ethiopia is my favorite one because there never was a war. There’s an ongoing diplomatic dispute.
Melissa Murray Really easy to broker peace when there’s no war.
Tommy Vietor You feel so crazy saying this to people? He’s like, no, okay, so they have a diplomatic dispute over hydroelectric dam on the Nile River, which is important to both for water access and power production reasons. That still exists, but there was no war to stop. He just says he prevented one. So it’s like pre-crime. So, and then Serbia and Kosovo, so you guys might recall lots of fighting in the Balkans in the 90s, breakup of the Soviet Union. Turns out some complexities there after that. There’s tensions, like Kosovo declared independence in 2008. The Serbs don’t recognize it, but there hasn’t been a war. This is another one that was like, there wasn’t a war for you to solve, sir. There was an economic agreement that Trump brokered between the two sides in 2020 that I don’t even know if it’s been implemented. So it’s like, again, like, what are you talking about?
Leah Litman War to fix, a war that didn’t exist. He’s so good, he prevented a war from ever happening.
Tommy Vietor Happening. He’s just that good.
Leah Litman What?
Kate Shaw Amazing. So, I mean, the kind of fact download per minute ratio there was incredibly high, Tommy.
Tommy Vietor Okay, we try here.
Kate Shaw Yeah, and I mean, we are really not foreign policy experts and, you know, flooding the zone as they have done on the domestic front works. And so we’ve been very consumed with what they’re doing domestically and haven’t really attended a foreign policy. And so we are very, very grateful to you for taking the time to join us for this conversation. You are a real expert and we and our listeners are grateful. So thank you so much for being with us.
Tommy Vietor Thank you for having me, thank you for just putting out a great show, I love. I especially like the episodes where I get most of it, because I do feel like sometimes I’m in class and I needed the 201 or the 101, and then the three.
Kate Shaw We need to, we need to leave a few things just out of reach to keep people coming back.
Tommy Vietor Yes.
Kate Shaw All right.
Leah Litman Give people something to work for.
Tommy Vietor I want to be smart.
Kate Shaw All right, well.
Melissa Murray Keep training. Keep training, Tommy.
Kate Shaw We so appreciate you listening and we would love to have you back another time. And while we have you, we have to ask you to tell us that you are going to have Melissa on the pod to discuss Meghan Markle and or the British royal family at some point when it is a germane topic of conversation because.
Tommy Vietor Anytime.
Melissa Murray It’s always a germaine topic.
Kate Shaw When is it not, I suppose. But all right.
Melissa Murray When is it not a germaine topic.
Tommy Vietor Trump apologized for this NATO insult, I think because he got a call from the King. And my wonder is, what did the King say? Hey, you know that your 250th birthday bullshit you want me to come to this summer? I ain’t coming if you insult our dead troops. I sincerely think that happened. And also Prince Harry of Montecito weighed in too.
Kate Shaw All right, see, this is something you could have had Melissa shed some light on. I could talk to you all about this. All right. All right next time. I’m sorry. Yeah. And before we go, special thanks to our producer Michael Goldsmith for his help putting together this segment.
Leah Litman That was a great conversation. And now we just have a little bit more legal news to touch on. After our recording, the Department of Justice released another tranche of Epstein files. Just as grotesque as the last, confirming, again, the extent to which elites in really all circles were just totally cool with Jeffrey Epstein and joked with him about girls and women even after Epstein had pled guilty to solicitation and procuring a minor for prostitution. Some notables from this batch include Melania’s close relationship with Colleen Maxwell. I understand this probably wasn’t covered in Melania documentary though, wouldn’t know. Elon Musk lobbying for an invite to Epstein Island asking quote, what day night will be the wildest party on your island question and telling Epstein that the quote ratio seemingly of girls and women to men wouldn’t be a problem for Elon’s then wife. Also, Elon is tweeting through this. There is a ton of disturbing info in this latest batch, a draft indictment that included conspirators, co-conspirators on name, deeply disturbing accounts and allegations of sexual assault, further tips about Trump’s relationship with Epstein and alleged knowledge of Epstein’s abusive girls, notes from witness interviews that mention Trump and Bannon, Epstein and a giant’s co-owner emailing about setting up the giant’s co-owners with women, just truly grotesque stuff. Oh, and there is a SCOTUS hook. Trump’s new nominee to be a governor of the Federal Reserve Board, Kevin Warsh, he’s in the Epstein files. I’m sure Trump will withdraw his nomination since Trump is so concerned about law-abiding this in his governors of the Fed. But here’s the legal news update we had in our regularly recorded episode.
Melissa Murray Last week, FBI agents executed a search warrant that targeted the Fulton County, Georgia elections department. Now, if you’re thinking, wait, Fulten County elections, that sounds familiar. It should. That’s one of the places where during the 2020 election, the president attempted to gin up baseless claims of voter fraud to throw out the results of the 2020 election and remain in office. Georgia is the state where he asked the Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, to find him a few extra thousand votes. All of the claims and allegations of voter fraud that the administration offered have been thoroughly debunked and refuted. That has to be said over and over and over again, apparently.
Kate Shaw And this is really very scary. It seems designed in part to sow more distrust in our election systems. This primes Trump’s space to accept claims that he won the election, which could trigger more violence like January 6th. It also seems like an escalation in a forward looking as opposed to just backward looking way. That is escalation of threats to tamper and interfere with the midterms and potentially the 2028 presidential election through abusive exercises of law enforcement authority and maybe as a test run for interfering with elections. In the midterms later this year. Either way, it’s an enormous.
Leah Litman And apparently, the cracker jack who has been leading this is Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence and maybe possibly, I don’t know, some people say a Russian asset. Anyway, she was given the task of leading the administration’s efforts to re-examine the 2020 election and look for potential crimes. Another true story of failing up to fuck up our democracy. Just the tip. And speaking of tips. This is your reminder that you can experience a Strict Scrutiny live show on the beautiful West Coast, best coast. So our San Francisco show is already sold out, but you can still join us in Los Angeles on March 7th at the Palace Theater. The show is going to be amazing. We have- Will be wild. You may have heard that before. We are crafting some very special merch some special games. We’ve got some special guests in the works It is going to be a very good time. So grab your tickets before they’re gone at crooked comm slash events And now, before we go, our favorite things. If you haven’t heard it, Bruce Springsteen released a song, Streets of Minneapolis. I am not going to recite the lyrics because I will cry if I do. I feel like I’m just a raw nerve edge these days with all the news. I will just say if someone made a song about, or Bruce Springstein specifically, made a songs about my dirty lies like he did with Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller, I would yeet myself into the sun. Only I couldn’t because I would have already spontaneously combusted due to shame. A few other pieces, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Homeland is War on America, Peace and Vanity Fair, as well as Adam Serwer’s piece in The Atlantic, Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong. Also wanted to shout out Mr. Kate Shaw, AKA Chris Hayes reporting from the Minnesota Ride Alongs. I just think it’s super important for people to understand like the day to day. In Minnesota and just how wild it is and how much it has upended people’s lives.
Kate Shaw I’m really glad he went for a couple of days. He’s back now. He did the first show he was out there outside and like not really warmly dressed enough. And I thought he was going to lose a couple toes, which you know, he would do if called upon. But luckily he seems pretty intact. But I’m glad you appreciate the coverage, Leah. Okay, let me shout out a few things. I thought Steve Vladeck and Barry Friedman in the Times had a really good piece about the potential for state prosecutions, even if the federal government is not going to do anything. Although, as Melissa mentioned, there is evidently Now A. Investigation that the federal government has agreed to open over the killing of Predi, but you know the state prosecutions remain something that should be on the table. My old colleague and friend Alex Reinhardt was on the Dalai Lathwick show Amicus talking about Bivens and qualified immunity and it was a great conversation that I really recommend to people. Also Melissa and I, sorry Leah I wish you were you had been there, but Melissa and I had an awesome conversation with Jonathan Van Ness JVN on the Getting Better podcast, and JVN gave us a bunch of awesome hair care products. Leah, I still need to send you yours, but that’s like awesome dry shampoo and various kinds of creams and stuff. And this week I actually had another, I think, really good escapist read, I read Migrations by Charlotte McGonaghy, who’s the same author of Wild Dark Shore, which Leah, you recommended to me. It’s about the similar in lots of ways, and I also really enjoyed it, so Migrations, highly recommend it.
Melissa Murray OK. I’m just telling you right now that I’m not doing anything highbrow until all the stuff is resolved in Minnesota, until it stops being in single digit temperatures in New York City, and until they start clearing the snow so I don’t have to vault over mountains of ice as I try to cross the street. So there’s nothing highbrown this. I’m, not reading newspapers. I’m ,not reading the Atlantic. I’m .not reading ProBubblica. I’m just looking at trash on TV and. Reading for fun. So here are my favorite things. And they include His and Hers on Netflix. I love Tessa Thompson. I love Jon Bernthal. And I love them together as a married couple and trying to get through a difficult patch in their marriage while also solving a crime. What could be better? Amazing. I’m also very excited for something I have not yet seen, but I’m very much anticipated. And that is the America’s Next Top Model. Documentary that is going to be coming out on Netflix. And in honor of MLK Day, which was a few weeks back, I started reading King of the North, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside of the South by Jean Theo Harris. And I just finished it. It’s absolutely fantastic. It’s really great. Again, locates MLK in the broader struggle for social justice, which includes economic justice as well. I guess that was a little high, bro. Definitely. I mean, I’m just like, I don’t want I’m so tired of newspapers at this point. I just, I can’t.
Kate Shaw Strict Scrutiny is a Crooked Media production, hosted and executive produced by Leah Litman, Melissa Murray, and me, Kate Shaw. Our senior producer and editor is Melody Rowell, Michael Goldsmith is our producer, Jordan Thomas is our intern, music by Eddie Cooper, production support from Katie Long and Adriene Hill. Matt DeGroot is our head of production, thanks to our video team, Ben Hethcoat and Johanna Case. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to Strict Scrutiny in your favorite podcast app and on YouTube, at Strict Scrutiny Podcast, so you never miss an episode. And if you wanna help other people find the show, please rate and review us, it really helps.
