- 15 hours ago
The Last Word with Lawrence ODonnell - Season 13 - Episode 36
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00All right, tonight, as you know, the Supreme Court reminded the country that even the most powerful president in the
00:05world does not get to rewrite the Constitution to win an argument about economics.
00:10Tonight, Donald Trump lost, and he lost decisively, on one of the defining policies of his political identity, tariffs.
00:19For years, Trump has described tariffs as economic magic, a way to punish foreign countries, enrich Americans, and fund the
00:27U.S. government all at once.
00:28He has insisted that other nations were paying us billions, actually he said billions and billions in his word, holding
00:36tariffs up as proof not just of policy success, but of personal strength.
00:42Today, the Supreme Court rejected the legal foundation behind key parts of that strategy.
00:47In plain English, a president cannot simply declare an economic emergency and impose sweeping tariffs on imports whenever he chooses.
00:56The court said there are constitutional limits, even for a president who's long argued that there should be none.
01:03Trump's response was immediate and swift, and as expected, defiant.
01:08Here's a portion of what he said today in the White House briefing room.
01:13The Supreme Court's ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing, and I'm ashamed of certain members of the court.
01:24The Democrats on the court are thrilled, but they will automatically vote no.
01:30They also are a, frankly, disgrace to our nation, those justices.
01:36They're just being fools and lapdogs for the Rhinos and the radical left Democrats.
01:42They're very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.
01:46It's my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller
01:53than people would ever think.
01:58It's unpatriotic.
01:59Trump said he's got a backup plan, by the way.
02:01He claimed this ruling doesn't affect his tariffs, and he can make even bigger tariffs, something we'll discuss over the
02:06course of the next hour.
02:07And that may be the most revealing part of the day, because this was never only about trade.
02:12It was about power.
02:14Whether a president can bend law to his will when Congress refuses to cooperate.
02:19So let's be clear about what these tariffs actually were.
02:21They were not tariffs that were debated and enacted by Congress, which is the way it's supposed to work.
02:27The Wall Street Journal explains it this way.
02:28Quote, the case involved two categories of tariffs.
02:31Trump imposed one category on virtually every country in the world, ostensibly to repair trade deficits.
02:38He imposed the other set of tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, saying those countries are responsible for the flow
02:44of illegal fentanyl into the United States.
02:46Many were imposed using emergency or national security authorities, laws that were written for narrow cases and then expanded to
02:55cover everyday goods, steel, aluminum, consumer products, even automobiles.
02:58Economically, they functioned exactly like taxes.
03:04And despite years of political messaging to the contrary, economists across the ideological spectrum agree on one simple fact.
03:12Americans paid them.
03:14When goods entered United States ports, American importers paid tariffs to the U.S. government.
03:19Businesses then absorbed the cost through lower margins or they passed on higher prices.
03:25Either way, the burden landed here at home, which brings us to a contradiction that today's ruling makes impossible to
03:32ignore.
03:32Donald Trump has claimed that tariffs generated enormous revenue for America, far beyond independent estimates,
03:39while at the same time insisting that there isn't enough money available to refund businesses if courts ruled the tariffs
03:45unlawful, as they did today.
03:48Both of those things cannot be true.
03:51Either tariffs produced massive windfalls or the money was never what he claimed it was.
03:56The court's decision forces that reality into the open, and now comes the question that millions of Americans may reasonably
04:03ask.
04:03Tonight, who gets paid back?
04:06If you bought a car last year and you paid $1,000 more because tariffs had pushed the prices higher,
04:11do you get a refund?
04:14Probably not.
04:15Refunds, if ordered, go to the companies first that paid tariffs at the border.
04:20The importers, the manufacturers, the distributors.
04:22Whether consumers ever see that money depends on lawsuits, contracts, and competition.
04:27Donald Trump said today the litigation this ruling is likely to create could take years.
04:32Again, we'll have our experts react to that as well.
04:36Economics moves forward quickly.
04:38It almost never rewinds.
04:39And after years of disruption justified in the name of reshaping global trade,
04:45you may ask, what was the measurable result?
04:47The U.S. trade deficit, which Trump carries on all the time, improved last year by roughly $2 billion.
04:58$2 billion.
05:00It's a $30 trillion economy.
05:04$2 billion is not transformation.
05:06It is statistical noise achieved at enormous economic and political cost.
05:10And states absorbed much of that cost.
05:12Farmers faced retaliatory tariffs abroad.
05:15Manufacturers paid more for materials at home.
05:18Port economies endured instability as supply chains lurched from policy to policy.
05:22And now states and businesses confront uncertainty again.
05:25As courts now try to sort out refunds and companies adjust for the second time in just a few years.
05:31So, yes, this was a trade ruling.
05:34But it is actually a constitutional moment.
05:37Because tariffs are not just trade tools.
05:39They are taxes and the Constitution is explicit about who controls taxation.
05:45Congress, not the President.
05:47And this case ultimately asked a question larger than tariffs themselves.
05:51Whether political ambition can expand presidential authority beyond what the Constitution of the United States permits.
05:58Whether power can be claimed first and justified later.
06:02Today, the Supreme Court answered that question.
06:05Today, the Chief Justice of the United States said so plainly.
06:09Writing for the court, John Roberts reminded the country that, quote,
06:12The framers did not vest any part of the taxing power in the executive branch.
06:17End quote.
06:19That sentence reaches far beyond tariffs.
06:21It reaches back to the founding principle that concentrated power, especially economic power,
06:26is the very thing that the Constitution was designed to prevent.
06:30Donald Trump made tariffs a political symbol.
06:33He promised they would remake global trade.
06:35They would generate vast wealth.
06:37They would come at no cost to Americans.
06:39Today, the Supreme Court says the Constitution still sets the rules.
06:45The Chief Justice chose the Constitution over Donald Trump.
06:50And at a moment when many Americans wonder whether democratic institutions still have the strength to restrain power,
06:56However, the court delivered a reminder written into the country's original design.
07:01The guardrails are not gone.
07:04They held today.
07:06There is hope yet for the republic.
07:09Leading off our discussion tonight is Neil Katyal.
07:12He's the former acting United States Solicitor General who argued the Trump tariff case before the Supreme Court on behalf
07:17of businesses challenging the Trump tariff policy.
07:19He is also a professor at Georgetown Law and an MS now legal analyst.
07:24Neil, thank you for being with us.
07:26Thank you for having me.
07:28I would say the unusual case would have been if the Supreme Court did something different.
07:34Because you, as an expert on this, all the way down to somebody who's read, just read the Constitution and
07:40has no legal training,
07:42would have understood that Donald Trump was in over his skis with his tariffs.
07:47Yeah, I think that's right.
07:48But I would also just say, you know, it's really difficult to challenge a major presidential initiative in the courts.
07:56If you go back over American history, the Supreme Court maybe once or twice has struck down a president's signature
08:03initiative as being unconstitutional.
08:05But that's it.
08:06And, of course, many, many people try all the time.
08:08But there's such a tradition in our court system of giving deference to the president that it almost never happens.
08:15But, as you pointed out, today it did.
08:18And it is potentially a very massive moment in our history because the Supreme Court is saying,
08:25and this is not some Democratic Supreme Court or something, six of the nine justices appointed by Republican presidents.
08:32Chief Justice Roberts writes the opinion.
08:34He's appointed by President Bush.
08:36He's joined in his opinion by Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, who are both Trump appointees to the Supreme
08:43Court.
08:44And all of them are saying with three other justices, so six of the nine are saying these tariffs are
08:51blatantly un-American.
08:52They're unconstitutional.
08:53That's a pretty dramatic moment.
08:56Neil, I know when you are arguing before the Supreme Court that you need to stick to the merits of
09:01the case.
09:01You can bring in precedent, but you need to stick to this case, not all cases.
09:04Everything is not about everything with the Supreme Court.
09:06But this is monumental because the words that the Supreme Court, that the chief justice chose to use in the
09:14decision,
09:15do speak about presidential authority and its limits.
09:20Yeah, that's exactly right.
09:22I think what the justices were saying is that the Constitution sets out certain parameters.
09:27And if the president thinks he has some really good reason to evade them, he can't do it because our
09:33founder said, nope.
09:34Like, if you really want tariffs, there's a simple thing to do.
09:37Go to Congress and get authorization for them.
09:39That's what the president tried in his first term in office.
09:42It failed.
09:43It doesn't mean you can just go around it and blow it off.
09:46And I think, you know, it was telling that President Trump's appointee, Neil Gorsuch, at the end of his opinion,
09:52has this beautiful language about how the Constitution is what matters and the Constitution requires that separation of powers.
10:00And, yes, he says sometimes it takes time to get legislation through, but that is the American way.
10:06And so I read this decision less about tariffs, more about the constitutional system, our founders' vision, which held today.
10:14And it held today not because of the self-restraint of the president, but because a group of small businesses
10:21took the risk and said to themselves,
10:24boy, you know, this is so illegal, I've got to stand up and challenge it.
10:28And I had the privilege of representing them and speaking for them in the Supreme Court,
10:33these small businesses against the nation's most powerful man, the world's most powerful man, the president.
10:38And I wasn't speaking in some rinky-dink traffic court.
10:41I was speaking in the highest court of the land.
10:43And today the Supreme Court said we won.
10:47That, to me, is what the country is about.
10:49It's not about me winning or small businesses winning.
10:52It's about the Constitution winning.
10:54Sometimes presidents are going to win those cases.
10:57Sometimes they're going to lose.
10:58But the genius of our founders of Madison and Hamilton and others who set it up is this idea that
11:04it's going to be debated, reasoned, argued.
11:07And, boy, I mean, the justices gave me an incredibly hard time in oral argument on November 5th.
11:13But in the end, they reached a decision, and that is a decision to confine the president to the Constitution.
11:20The decision to define the president to the Constitution.
11:22There is yet hope for the republic.
11:25Neil, thank you for your service to the country and for joining us tonight.
11:29Joining us now, Rick Waldenberg.
11:30He's the CEO of Learning Resources.
11:32They were a lead plaintiff in the Trump tariff case.
11:34Rick, thank you for being with us.
11:35I wanted to talk to you to understand where the rubber hits the road, because for a lot of people,
11:41tariffs are an abstraction.
11:43They were not an abstraction for you.
11:44Tell us your story.
11:46Well, they weren't an abstraction because they threatened the existence of our company.
11:50Ours is a family business.
11:51I'm third generation.
11:52The fourth generation is in the business.
11:55We're also mission driven.
11:56We make educational products for schools and homes.
11:59And hundreds of families depend on us for their livelihood.
12:02It wasn't something that we could tolerate being threatened by a politician's initiative.
12:08So we decided to stand up and defend our legacy.
12:12Tell me how the tariffs affected your business.
12:16Well, we spent over $10 million in 2025 on IEPA tariffs, which caused us to pay effectively more than 100
12:26percent of our net income in taxes, federal, state and IEPA, which is not affordable, caused us to reduce our
12:33new products releases for the year.
12:36We had to reorganize our supply chain overnight.
12:39We cut our spending to shreds to survive the maelstrom, and we sued the president.
12:47So one of the things that Neil Kochel just pointed out that is obvious to some people as this decision
12:52was by the Supreme Court, it's hard to sue.
12:56It's hard to be in the Supreme Court up against the president and the administration of the United States.
13:01Well, I'd certainly never done it before.
13:03I'm an ex-lawyer, but I was just a corporate lawyer.
13:06So this was the first time for me.
13:08I think that actually when the decision was made, I went looking for litigation in early April.
13:15The decision was it was much riskier to do nothing than to stand up for our rights.
13:21This is, after all, a claim that the law is being misapplied.
13:25It's a case in the public interest.
13:27Everyone who lives in this country has an interest in seeing the law correctly applied.
13:31But I couldn't take the risk of them destroying everything that we had created.
13:36It's too important.
13:38You know, the Yale Budget Lab calculated that these tariffs would cost the average household about $1,700.
13:44Your governor, J.B. Pritzker, was just on with Jen Psaki talking about the fact that he wants Donald Trump
13:49to send a refund check to everybody in Illinois.
13:52When you deal with individuals, when you're a company and you deal with individuals, you saw that there was a
13:56real cost.
13:57This wasn't an abstraction.
13:58This whole business about they're going to pay more.
14:00It's not actually how tariffs work.
14:02No, and the effect of tariffs is quite clear, too.
14:06It's a regressive tax.
14:07Since our tax rate is over 100 percent, we and all the other companies that pay these taxes have to
14:13pass them on or we won't survive.
14:16And the people who pay the taxes are people who spend the most, the highest percentage of their income or
14:22their savings on things subject to tariffs.
14:24Those are not billionaires.
14:26Those are everyday Americans who buy shoes and clothes and toys and power tools as a significant percentage of their
14:33earnings.
14:34The billionaires don't do that.
14:35So the tax falls on the lower end.
14:38And, you know, that's not right.
14:39Most Americans would say a regressive tax is immoral.
14:45Rick, thank you to people like you and other members of the business community who did decide to stand up
14:50on behalf of all of us.
14:51Rick Waldenberg, we appreciate your time tonight.
14:55All right.
14:56Coming up today, Donald Trump was defiant in his reaction to the Supreme Court's ruling.
14:59So what does the law say about other ways that he can or cannot keep imposing tariffs?
15:05The Harvard constitutional law professor, Lawrence Tribe, joins me next.
15:12All right.
15:13Today, a defiant Donald Trump claimed that he could bypass the Supreme Court's decision that ruled that his use of
15:18the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs was illegal.
15:25The good news is that there are methods, practices, statutes and authorities as recognized by the entire court in this
15:35terrible decision and also is recognized by Congress, which they refer to, that are even stronger than the IEPA tariffs
15:44available to me as president of the United States.
15:48Apparently, Donald Trump missed when Chief Justice John Roberts said, quote, the president's assertion here of broad statutory power over
15:55the national economy is extravagant by any measure.
15:58Here's Donald Trump's strange perversion of what the Supreme Court's ruling means for how he approaches dealing with foreign countries.
16:05I can destroy the trade. I can destroy the country. I'm even allowed to impose a foreign country destroying embargo.
16:14I can embargo. I can do anything I want, but I can't charge one dollar.
16:19I can do anything I want to do to them, but I can't charge any money. So I'm allowed to
16:27destroy the country, but I can't charge them a little fee.
16:31Actually, he's not allowed to destroy another country, but that's another topic.
16:35Sulking from his loss, the petulant president proceeded to impose new global tariffs under different statutes, as The Washington Post
16:41details, quote, those will include a 10 percent global tariff under Section 122, which allows the president to swiftly impose
16:47tariffs, but only for 150 days, as well as several new tariffs under Section 301, which applies to unfair trade
16:55practices.
16:55But the Supreme Court's decision made clear that Donald Trump could not impose tariffs without Congress.
17:01And here's how he responded when asked about working with Congress.
17:06Why wouldn't you just work with Congress to come up with a plan to push tariffs?
17:09I don't have to. I have the right to do tariffs.
17:13I don't know. Apparently, he just wasn't going to read that decision.
17:18Joining us now is Professor Lawrence Tribe, who's taught constitutional law at Harvard Law School for five decades.
17:24Larry, I need you on days like this, because the court was pretty clear.
17:27It was not written in hard to understand language, even for non-lawyers like me.
17:32Donald Trump, I don't know if he's not getting the point or he just doesn't want to get the point.
17:37Well, in fact, to clarify just a bit more, this was not, despite what many people seem to think, it
17:46was not a constitutional controversy, believe it or not.
17:50Yes, correct.
17:50All nine justices agreed that the Constitution gives only Congress the power to tax and impose tariffs.
18:00The only question is whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act was an act by which Congress delegated that power
18:13to the president.
18:13The court read the court, it was a simple case, actually very simple, and it said, no, the act does
18:22not give the president any tariff imposing power.
18:27End of case.
18:28That's why most people, me included, had no trouble predicting this would be a decision against the president.
18:36It was also not so strange that the case reached the court, because Neal and his client, Mr.
18:44Woldenberg, sued in a federal district court.
18:47That case ended up being dismissed by the U.S.
18:51Supreme Court, saying the district court didn't have jurisdiction.
18:54It was the court of international trade that had jurisdiction.
18:59That court read the law simply and said, the president doesn't have the power under the International Emergency Economic Powers
19:09Act.
19:09At that point, the U.S. Supreme Court had no choice but to take the case, because whenever the act
19:18of Congress is held not to cover something and the president loses something that's central to him, the court always
19:26takes the case.
19:27Once it took the case, it was slam dunk.
19:31Now, Neal argued the case brilliantly.
19:34It was a wonderful argument, but there was no doubt how it would come out.
19:38And what is left over, now that the Supreme Court has said 6 to 3, you don't have the power
19:46under this statute, is that he is invoking power under Section 122 of 1974 Trade Act.
19:56It is not true that the president automatically has that power.
20:00That was the suggestion by Justice Kavanaugh in dissent.
20:04The chief justice, in footnote 4 of his opinion, said, not so fast.
20:09Whether that applies depends on whether certain findings are made.
20:15And it only lasts for a certain amount of time.
20:18And it can't go above 15%.
20:20There are matters still to be litigated.
20:23And when the president says, I don't have to deal with Congress, he obviously hasn't read the law, which says,
20:30you damn well better deal with Congress, because your power here will expire after 150 days.
20:39Right.
20:40But that means that the shoe is on the other foot.
20:43But instead of having to get Congress to act to stop him, he now has to get Congress to act
20:50in order to extend these tariffs.
20:53So the president lost big on a statutory issue.
20:57There were all kinds of very valuable constitutional sort of quiverings in the opinion.
21:05The majority opinion by the chief justice talked about how emergency powers tend to spawn emergencies.
21:14They tend to give a president's excuses for usurping Congress.
21:20There were a lot of indications that when push comes to shove, the court will stand up for the law.
21:30And happily, the president didn't say, well, I'm not going to obey the court.
21:36What he did was he said he's going to use another law.
21:40That's fine.
21:41And then he went out of his way to call the justices, including principally his own appointees, fools, lapdogs, doing
21:53the bidding of the far left and of the right hours.
21:57He asserted with no evidence that the justices who voted against him were influenced by foreign nations, that they were
22:08basically traitors.
22:09I mean, this is unprecedented for a president who himself cannot plausibly deny that he is influenced by his friends
22:21and buddies and that he's not exactly acting always in the national interest to accuse the Supreme Court of abdicating
22:32its duty as an independent judge of the law
22:36And to say that their families should be ashamed, which is a terrible signal in a country where their families,
22:45including the family of Amy Coney Barrett, have been threatened, have been put in danger.
22:54This president doesn't mind putting his own appointees in danger for their lives in order to make his ridiculous point
23:05that they were stupid and didn't understand the law.
23:09I want to explore something that you just mentioned.
23:11It was a 6-3 vote.
23:13Possibly could have been a 7-2 vote if Justice Kavanaugh would come around on this.
23:18But here's something that he wrote in his dissenting opinion.
23:20He said in essence, the court today concludes that the president checked the wrong statutory box by relying on IEPA
23:27rather than another statute to impose these tariffs.
23:30In the meantime, however, the interim effects of the court's decision could be substantial.
23:34The United States may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEPA tariffs, even though
23:40some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others.
23:44As was acknowledged at oral arguments, the refund process is likely to be a mess.
23:49Now, he's not wrong about that.
23:51That's true.
23:52But that's not the work of the court to determine how the government should administer the refund process.
23:57The court could have told the government, refund the money.
24:01You know, it seemed like strange arguments.
24:03Well, it's very strange, especially for a justice who says we look at the law and apply it.
24:10Of course, it's reasonable for justices to be pragmatic when they're interpreting an ambiguous statute to think about the consequences.
24:22But here there is no ambiguity.
24:24The president didn't have the power.
24:26And the fact that it's going to be a mess to unscramble these eggs is the president's fault, not that
24:34of the court.
24:35And in no way did Justice Kavanaugh explain the relevance of these observations.
24:43The fact is that the people who were most hurt were the consumers, and they are very unlikely to get
24:52a refund.
24:53Then the small businesses like the one whose CEO you talk to today, maybe they'll get a partial refund.
25:00But if they end up being out some money, it's because the president, it wasn't just that he checked the
25:09wrong box.
25:10He used a statute that didn't apply.
25:13The Kavanaugh's suggestion that if he had checked a different box, the same thing could have happened.
25:19That's true.
25:19All of these retaliatory taxes, these 100 percent, 30 percent taxes under the law he's now invoking, the 1974 Act,
25:32there's a 15 percent ceiling.
25:34He couldn't have done much of what he has done in this case, basically randomly using his delegated authority outside
25:47the boundaries that Congress itself set,
25:53because it didn't give him the power to impose tariffs, though he could do all kinds of other things like
25:59licensing fees.
26:03Professor, it is helpful to hear from you tonight, because this is hard.
26:08You know, I enjoy economics, but yeah, this is a lot.
26:13So I appreciate you.
26:14Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Lawrence Tribe.
26:17All right, coming up, Donald Trump will not rule out limited strikes against Iran, but he doesn't have the approval
26:21for it from Congress.
26:23Surprise, surprise.
26:23Our next guest is prepared to force a vote in the House next week on Trump's Iran war powers.
26:28Congressman Ro Khanna joins us after the break.
26:35Tonight, Donald Trump is inching closer toward military action against Iran, despite having no approval from Congress to do so.
26:41The Wall Street Journal reports that President Trump is weighing an initial limited military strike on Iran to force it
26:46to meet his demands for a nuclear deal.
26:48The opening assault, which, if authorized, could come within days, would target a few military or government sites, people familiar
26:55with the matter said.
26:56If Iran still refused to comply with Trump's directive to end its nuclear enrichment, the U.S. would respond with
27:02a broad campaign against the regime facilities, potentially aimed at toppling the Tehran regime.
27:07On Thursday, Trump said he would make a decision on strikes within the next 10 days.
27:12And when asked again today, he said this.
27:16President, are you considering a limited military strike to pressure Iran into a deal?
27:21Thank you, press. Keep moving. Thank you.
27:23Are you considering a limited strike, sir?
27:29The New York Times reports the U.S. military has built up forces close to Iran, including the aircraft carrier
27:34Abraham Lincoln, which is accompanied by three warships that are equipped with Tomahawk missiles that were used to strike two
27:40of Iran's nuclear facilities last June.
27:42The warships also carry air defenses well within striking distance of dozens of targets in Iran.
27:48Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee issued this statement.
27:50We strongly oppose preemptive U.S. military action against Iran, which endangers U.S. personnel and risks drawing Israel and
27:57Gulf partners into a wider conflict.
27:59The Constitution is clear. Decisions to go to war require congressional authorization.
28:05If the president believes military action is necessary, he must come to Congress and make the case that it is
28:10in the national security interests of the United States to do so.
28:13Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna and the Republican Congressman Thomas Massey, who have worked together to great effect recently,
28:19say they are preparing to force a vote in the House of Representatives next week on Trump's war powers to
28:24strike Iran.
28:25How exactly?
28:27Well, to answer that, I'm joined by the Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna.
28:29He's a member of the House Oversight Committee.
28:31Congressman, thank you for being with us tonight.
28:33I have to say my wag the dog antenna is up, right?
28:38Donald Trump has lost face with the Supreme Court, and I feel like he sometimes keeps these things in his
28:42back pocket.
28:44And I'm worried that if there's an attempt to attack Iran, which is a murderous, dictatorial, horrible regime, it might
28:51happen for all the wrong reasons.
28:54Well, he's lost the trust of the American people on the Epstein matter.
28:59He's lost the Supreme Court on tariffs.
29:01He has a big State of the Union address coming up when he knows that the economy isn't working for
29:08most working-class Americans.
29:10And so he puts out this threat.
29:13The problem is that striking Iran has real consequences.
29:17It has real consequences for our troops in the area.
29:20It has real consequences for our allies.
29:23And he ran on a promise to end these wars of choice.
29:27He ran saying, we're not going to have regime change wars.
29:30And now he's betraying that promise.
29:33Are you and Thomas Massey, what are you looking for here?
29:36Because there's value to having a debate about what should be done with Iran.
29:41As I recall, we had a deal with Iran that was working quite well until Donald Trump himself pulled us
29:46out of it.
29:46And that deteriorated matters.
29:48But this is for Congress to debate.
29:50We've got ourselves into wars in the past, you know, on false pretenses.
29:55What are you aiming for?
29:59Well, first of all, we should have that debate, right?
30:02Even George W. Bush, who took us into Iraq, and I disagreed with the Iraq War, took that matter to
30:08Congress and got an authorization to do that from Congress.
30:12What we are saying is, if you want to strike Iran, if you want to get us into another Middle
30:17East war, then you have to come to Congress and get the votes in the House and the Senate.
30:22The second thing, though, is why are we doing this?
30:25Why aren't we spending that money on our education, on our health care, on our building up our communities and
30:33our jobs?
30:33Why are we putting, again, billions of dollars into an overseas war that has not served this country well in
30:41the past?
30:42Well, Donald Trump would tell you, or at least he said this, he changes his tune on this a lot,
30:46but it was to protect protesters who were being attacked by their government,
30:50which I found when he said that a little bit rich, given the two American citizens been shot by their
30:56own government.
30:59Look, there's no doubt that the Iranian regime has been brutal on the protesters, and I condemn it unequivocally.
31:07But what history teaches us is that our interventions don't end up making matters better.
31:14They didn't win Saddam Hussein, who was brutal on his own people.
31:17We got rid of him, and then what happened?
31:19We got rid of Gaddafi in Libya, and then what happened?
31:22There was a civil war.
31:23And so the question is, okay, if we go in and we try to topple this regime, first of all,
31:27it's a country of 90 million with a huge army.
31:30How many Americans are we going to lose, and what is going to come after that?
31:36Representative Gottheimer and Lawler have made the point that to argue the war powers resolution is a sign of weakness.
31:44I fundamentally disagree with that.
31:45I mean, people say when you prosecute former presidents for doing things, it's a sign of weakness.
31:49And yet history tells you that countries that prosecuted their leaders are stronger for it.
31:53Countries that debate the right way to go into war or to attack other countries I think are richer for
31:59it, not lesser.
32:01I really don't understand that argument.
32:03I've challenged Representative Gottheimer and Representative Lawler to debate Thomas Massey and me.
32:09That's what we're supposed to do.
32:10But Congress is the one who gets to decide whether we get to go into war or not.
32:16Are they saying, well, let's just give the power to the president, that Congress shouldn't ever speak up?
32:21That is exactly what our founders didn't want.
32:25They didn't want a king to be going in and deciding war or peace.
32:29And I think the democratic process actually makes it stronger.
32:32And by the way, if you get Congress, that shows an extraordinary mandate.
32:36If you don't have Congress, it will show that there's not the appetite for a war.
32:42What you and Congressman Massey are doing are really interesting stuff.
32:46You guys are bipartisan participants for the ages.
32:49I don't know that you agree on many policy issues, but you agree on what the process should be and
32:54the role that Congress should have.
32:56So we appreciate both of you working so hard on this.
32:58Thank you for joining us again tonight.
33:00Thank you, Ali.
33:01Congressman Ro Khanna of California.
33:03All right, coming up, Donald Trump is looking to Republicans in Congress to make it harder for Americans to vote
33:08ahead of midterm elections.
33:09But Democrats, including my next guest, are pushing back.
33:11The Arizona Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, joins me next.
33:19Seeing an increasingly likely midterm defeat on the horizon, Republicans in Congress are at it again.
33:24NPR reports a Republican voting overhaul is back on Capitol Hill.
33:28The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which is called the Save America Act, narrowly passed the House last week with
33:35all Republicans and one Democrat backing the bill.
33:38The overhaul would require eligible voters to provide proof of citizenship like a valid U.S. passport or a birth
33:44certificate plus valid photo identification when registering to vote.
33:48The new iteration adds a requirement that voters also provide photo ID when casting their ballot, not just for the
33:55first time, every time.
33:56That creates problems for a lot of people.
33:59The Brennan Center for Justice notes our research shows that more than 21 million people already lack access to those
34:04documents.
34:05The Save Act would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races, but younger voters and voters of color who would
34:11suffer disproportionately.
34:13Now, after passing the House, the Save Act does face an uphill battle in the Senate where Republicans remain short
34:18of the 60 vote threshold there.
34:20Meanwhile, the White House is ramping up its efforts to find the so-called voter fraud that Donald Trump claims
34:26is out there somewhere.
34:27Citing sources and officials, The Washington Post reports the Justice Department has struggled to meet White House demands to prosecute
34:33non-citizen voters as conspiracy theories that President Trump and his allies have pushed in public fail to hold up
34:40legally.
34:41The Trump administration has also been pressuring states to turn over voter information, which my next guest, the Arizona Secretary
34:46of State, Adrian Fontes, said last month, quote, I'm not going to give it up.
34:51Joining us now is the Arizona Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes.
34:54Secretary Fontes, good to see you again.
34:56I want to just I want to touch on the Save Act for a second.
34:59You're doing stuff in Arizona that I want to get to.
35:00But just to be clear, about 48 percent of Americans have passports.
35:04I travel all the time.
35:05I know where my passport is all the time.
35:07Fifty two percent of Americans don't need a passport.
35:09They don't have one.
35:10It's it's it costs them money to get it.
35:12Birth certificate.
35:13Couldn't really tell you where mine is at the moment.
35:15I'm not even sure what my naturalization certificate is because we're not in a country that causes us to need
35:19these things.
35:20Right. You need to know your Social Security number and you need to have your driver's license.
35:23We are not a country built for this imposition of documentation that they are looking for.
35:29Yeah, we're not supposed to be.
35:32But if folks got their way, we would be.
35:35Because apparently signing an affidavit under penalty of perjury that you are a U.S. citizen isn't enough for some
35:41folks.
35:42And which is what it is.
35:43I just want to remember that that is that is punishable by law.
35:46If you lie about your eligibility to vote, it's punishable.
35:49In many states, when they find noncitizens, it's infinitesimal.
35:52The number they prosecute them.
35:55Well, yeah.
35:55Not only do we prosecute folks for being noncitizens and voting or attempting to vote, but we prosecute folks for
36:02a bunch of other things.
36:03In fact, just last month in January, I sent 28 cases to our attorney general for prosecution for either double
36:09voting here in Arizona, voting out of state, someone using somebody else's voter registration who may have been passed away.
36:16Look, the bottom line is this.
36:17We maintain our voter rolls very, very well.
36:20And if we could use the ERIC system nationally, which is where we got all of this information from, we
36:25could do a better job.
36:26But this idea in this SAVE Act about documentation and photo ID, it all stems originally from a lie.
36:33And if it were to go into place, let's talk about older Americans, older American women who, for example, may
36:41have been married a long time ago.
36:43And who knows where your birth certificate or your marriage certificate is.
36:47I mean, I don't know too many people who keep track of that.
36:50And what if you're from one of those parishes in southern Louisiana or some other place like Lahaina or another
36:57community whose records were destroyed because of natural disasters or something like that?
37:02You suddenly don't get to vote because, you know, the good Lord willed it?
37:06I mean, that's not how this is supposed to work.
37:08And it's insane to me that all of this is based on a lie.
37:13And in your opening, you pointed out very clearly they're frustrated because they can't find any of the folks they
37:19say there are millions of.
37:21And as the chief election officer here in Arizona, I'd like to see the list of people who you say
37:27are voting illegally in this state because I want to take them off the list.
37:31So, you know, hey, Secretary Noem and Mr. President, send me the list of names that we can fix our
37:37roles with.
37:38Let's be partners, not scare people into thinking that we need to lock down some sort of a system that
37:44frankly already works pretty well for everybody.
37:47I think in Michigan they had 16 people, of which they're prosecuting 13 out of 6 million.
37:51I think Georgia had eight.
37:54Maintaining your election system should not be on autopilot.
37:56And one other thing I like talking to you about, it's not on autopilot.
37:59You're constantly doing stuff.
38:01In fact, you're currently doing stuff right now.
38:02You need to update machines.
38:03You need to update all sorts of things.
38:05That's what happens.
38:06Donald Trump would have you believe that you're just working out of an old phone book or something.
38:10Well, maybe he's working out of an old phone book.
38:12But we use technology that frankly here in Arizona is a little bit old and it needs updating.
38:16But across the country, folks are doing the work every single day.
38:20Think about this.
38:21At every MVD across the United States of America, people are registering to vote every single day.
38:27These are dynamic lists.
38:28The stuff changes and it has to be updated.
38:31And we have to make sure every single day that our election systems writ large are in place.
38:38Now, we can't help it that most people just notice elections administrators around election time.
38:43And that's OK because we shouldn't be the main focus of what people are thinking about.
38:48They should take care of their homes and their families and their communities.
38:51But the bottom line is this, without the kinds of resources that we need to keep these systems updated and
38:56keep things moving along, we're going to have significant problems.
39:00But at the end of the day, we're not getting the resources that we need, particularly here in Arizona, from
39:05our Republican legislature.
39:06And that's why we've proposed one of the things that you talked about a little bit in your opening is
39:11the Arizona Voters First Act, which would put money into our systems to make sure that we can shore them
39:17up and have healthy and robust systems to, I don't know, maintain the voter rolls.
39:22Keep security in our IT systems, give access to voters, like returning the permanent early vote list.
39:28And it's really ironic where you have 80 percent of Arizona's voters voting by mail.
39:33And just the other day, on a 17 to 13 partisan vote, our good friends on the other side of
39:40the aisle voted for a measure that would kill ballot by mail voting in Arizona completely.
39:46Wow.
39:46It's just insane.
39:47And I don't know where they're getting their information that this is popular from because it's not.
39:52And look, it was invented.
39:55Mail-in voting was created in Arizona by Republicans.
39:57Yeah, you guys are good at it.
39:59We're really good at it.
40:00It's just kind of like non-citizen voting.
40:02It's not a problem.
40:03Here's the other thing, Ali, and it's crazy to me.
40:06Like, OK, let's assume for a minute you decide we're going to kill mail-in balloting.
40:10Eighty percent of your voters now need somewhere to vote.
40:12Who's going to pay for the equipment?
40:14Who's going to hire all of those people?
40:16Are these cheapskates going to put money into a system that they've been starving for years all of a sudden
40:20to meet up with?
40:21This goal?
40:21No, they're not.
40:22So, like, it's just unrealistic from a fiscal perspective.
40:26It's unrealistic from an access perspective.
40:28It doesn't help from a security perspective.
40:31And in the first place, it's all based on nonsense.
40:33So it just doesn't work.
40:35And I think the American voters are sick and tired of this nonsense.
40:39Yeah, I think you're right.
40:39Adrian Fontes, good to talk to you.
40:41Thank you again for being with us.
40:42The Arizona Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes.
Comments