Latest / The Nation Podcasts / The Mamdani Interview—Plus, Trump in Court | Start Making Sense

Transcript

The Mamdani Interview—Plus, Trump in Court | Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

0:08
[SPEAKER_05]: From the nation magazine, this is start making sense.
0:11
[SPEAKER_05]: On John Weiner, later in the show, it's time to take a step back from the daily barrage of bad news and look at the big picture of the strategy Trump has been following.
0:22
[SPEAKER_05]: David Cole will explain how he's exploited the power of the federal government, not just to attack his political opponents.
0:30
[SPEAKER_05]: the Democratic Party, but to weaken the institutions of civil society, which form the bedrock of democracy.
0:39
[SPEAKER_05]: But first, the nation's interview with Zorin Mamdani, Katrina Vandenhuvul and John Nichols, will explain in a minute.
0:50
[SPEAKER_05]: The victory of Zoran Mamdani in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary in June is the brightest light in our currently dark political world.
0:59
[SPEAKER_05]: Mamdani is pointing the way Democrats can regain momentum windback voters that have been lost.
1:06
[SPEAKER_05]: And when elections, he recently sat down for an interview with the nation's editor in publisher Katrina Vanden Hovel and the executive editor John Nichols.
1:15
[SPEAKER_05]: That interview is the cover story in the new issue of the magazine and it's featured at thenation.com.
1:22
[SPEAKER_05]: We have excerpts of that interview coming up here, but first we need to ask Katrina and John to set the scene and explain their approach to this interview.
1:31
[SPEAKER_05]: First of all, let's talk about the nation's relationship with Mamdani Katrina.
1:37
[SPEAKER_05]: The things start with the magazine endorsing him for mayor.
1:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It started when he came in as one of the five mayoral candidates to meet with the editors, the staff, the interns.
1:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And it didn't hurt that the comm's director for Zoran Mamdani was a former nation intern.
1:55
[SPEAKER_00]: when valued his time enormously.
1:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So that led not to the endorsement, but led to being able to catch an interview, which so many wanted.
2:04
[SPEAKER_05]: John, let's talk a little bit about Mom Donnie himself and his campaign.
2:09
[SPEAKER_05]: He's thirty four.
2:10
[SPEAKER_05]: He's an immigrant born in Uganda, served in the state legislature.
2:14
[SPEAKER_05]: He's a Muslim and a democratic socialist, not your typical candidate.
2:20
[SPEAKER_05]: And yet he won big in the primary.
2:22
[SPEAKER_05]: Fifty six the forty four percent.
2:25
[SPEAKER_05]: How did he do it?
2:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think he did it by recognizing the moment that we're in politically.
2:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a big deal.
2:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Politics is we've said many times on this podcast, John, is evolutionary.
2:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It's never set in one place.
2:38
[SPEAKER_02]: New tactics, new strategies, develop new issues, develop.
2:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And Mom Donnie, I think perhaps because it was youth, but also because he has a good eye for, you know, can wear the mood of people might be.
2:51
[SPEAKER_02]: He was able to capture something.
2:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It didn't happen easily.
2:53
[SPEAKER_02]: He started at almost nothing in the polls, and he built up over time to a place where he didn't just beat Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo, the former governor, in the primary, he swept beyond him, winning one of the largest victories in the history of New York Democratic primaries for mayor.
3:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You were right.
3:13
[SPEAKER_02]: He's not a typical candidate for most magazines.
3:16
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a relatively typical candidate for what the nation likes to cover.
3:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And so as an institution, we were covering him very early on.
3:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that whether we had endorsed him or not, we had a good chance to get this interview.
3:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And for that is that we had treated his candidacy seriously.
3:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So when he did come into that winter circle, we were able to say, hey, you know, we've been watching you for a long time.
3:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And we'd like to talk to you about where you're going to go from here.
3:47
[SPEAKER_05]: So Katrina invited you to his neighborhood, the little flower cafe in Astoria, Queens.
3:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Tell us about that.
3:58
[SPEAKER_00]: This is an Afghan Kabbal place.
4:00
[SPEAKER_00]: He was drinking pink chai that guy who ran the cafe opened it for our interview, but clearly it's kind of an outpost.
4:09
[SPEAKER_00]: A secondary headquarters to the one located in Broadway in Manhattan.
4:13
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, many candidates have a like a pattern.
4:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But Zoron is so thoughtful that each question which raised issues of sewer socialism or new media, old media, he spoke very, he really took a moment.
4:31
[SPEAKER_00]: This interview, it didn't demand the most editing by any measure because he speaks
4:36
[SPEAKER_00]: with well thought out.
4:37
[SPEAKER_00]: He's very the equilibrium is what struck me.
4:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So at one point toward the end of the interview, I said, do you ever get mad?
4:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Because he's speaking about difficult issues.
4:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course he does.
4:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's mad at what he sees around him.
4:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's a great, great speaker in a very humane way connecting to people, which is what I think we see in this campaign.
5:00
[SPEAKER_00]: As he walks around the city, as he talks to all kinds of people.
5:04
[SPEAKER_05]: So John his big issues were free buses, universal child care, freeze on rent, trying out city owned grocery stores.
5:15
[SPEAKER_05]: This is the policy of a democratic socialist who, after all, won the nomination for the Democratic Party in the biggest city in the country.
5:26
[SPEAKER_05]: But this was the primary, the general election is in November, and there's still powerful forces trying to stop him starting
5:33
[SPEAKER_05]: the former governor who he'd be, Andrew Cuomo, the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, and even though he won the Democratic primary, he has not been endorsed by some of the most important Democrats.
5:47
[SPEAKER_05]: The governor, Kathy Hokel, has not endorsed them.
5:49
[SPEAKER_05]: Chuck Schumer, Senate Democratic leader, has not endorsed them.
5:53
[SPEAKER_05]: How came Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, has not endorsed them?
5:57
[SPEAKER_05]: This is not good, not good for him, but not good for the Democrats.
6:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting to say that.
6:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember in the primary, he didn't have a lot of endorsements from top Democrats.
6:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Although he had quite a few from local Democrats, grassroots activists, obviously DSA group with which he has been involved for a long time.
6:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess the best answer to this actually comes from a conversation I had the other day with Senator Bernie Sanders and we were talking about Mom Donnie's candidacy and he suggested that at the end of the day, Mom Donnie has succeeded in communicating something about issues of affordability, about making a city functional.
6:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And people hear that.
6:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And he has connected that to his Democratic Socialism, this idea of sewer socialism, like you actually deliver on things that people need.
6:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's really working.
6:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And what's the end or suggested is that, well, yeah, maybe a little bit of knowing and even perhaps burdensome for Mombani and some circumstances, it's actually more of a problem for the leadership of the Democratic Party.
7:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Because if the leadership of the Democratic Party does not have that flexibility, that fluidity, that openness to new ideas and new approaches, no matter what label you want to stick on them, then it becomes a party that may not have the flexibility that's needed frankly in this very difficult moment to take on Donald Trump and a lot of what the Republicans are doing.
7:24
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a realist and an idealist.
7:26
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked at some length about governing.
7:30
[SPEAKER_00]: He believes in a, and this is, I think, a good thing.
7:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It can sound odd, but a permanent campaign that you continue the movements after the election.
7:38
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about it in the context of Gaza.
7:41
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't press him.
7:42
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd been out there on that issue at the end, though.
7:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he spoke of his anger about what he saw the children of Gaza.
7:50
[SPEAKER_02]: What else do we need to know before we go to the clips?
7:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the thing to understand about Zaram Amdani is that he is someone who's a lot more complex than his caricature.
8:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, he came back to this concept that he wants to keep lines of communication open.
8:06
[SPEAKER_02]: He knows there are people in New York City who disagree with him on issues like Israel and Palestine.
8:12
[SPEAKER_02]: But he is willing to talk to them, willing to have those deeper conversations, willing to search for those positions, those places where they can find agreement.
8:22
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a different kind of person than we often see in American politics.
8:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would suggest it's almost the antithesis of Donald Trump.
8:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And he doesn't seem that young.
8:33
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a confidence.
8:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there's a history of young people coming into New York City government.
8:40
[SPEAKER_00]: bringing the best people and working hard to figure out what needs to be done.
8:46
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, let's go to our excerpts.
8:48
[SPEAKER_05]: And the first question for Mom Dami was about Trump's attacks on democracy and how his campaign is responding to them.
8:58
[SPEAKER_03]: For democracy to survive, it cannot be treated as simply an ideal or a value.
9:04
[SPEAKER_03]: It has to be something that has a resonance to the needs of working people's lives.
9:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And in this moment, especially there's a temptation to say that democracy is under attack from authoritarianism in Washington DC, which it is.
9:19
[SPEAKER_03]: But it is also under attack from the inside and the withering belief in its ability to deliver on any of the needs of working people.
9:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's not that we must convince people to believe in this as a notion, or as a political aspirations, that we have to convince them of its resonance in their lives.
9:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's a joy to be here with you, a little flower, because that's the nickname of the greatest mayor in our history, fear of a warrior.
9:51
[SPEAKER_03]: took on these twin crises of anti-immigrant animus and the denial of dignity to working people and did so with an understanding of what the fruition of democracy looked like and even what the fulfillment of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness looked like, understanding it in the language of
10:13
[SPEAKER_03]: the urban sphere of more parks, more beauty, more light, and you cannot defeat this attack on democracy unless you also prove its worth.
10:26
[SPEAKER_05]: Mamthami said he promised to govern our city as a model for the Democratic Party nationally.
10:32
[SPEAKER_05]: The party right now has been going through and internal debate over how to connect to working class voters.
10:38
[SPEAKER_05]: It's lost to Trump or lost to simply not voting.
10:43
[SPEAKER_05]: What is the potential of his campaign as a model for a new politics for the Democratic Party in America?
10:52
[SPEAKER_03]: It has often felt as if we in the Democratic Party are embarrassed of some of our convictions.
10:59
[SPEAKER_03]: That at the first sign of resistance, we may back away.
11:02
[SPEAKER_03]: And what I have found as a new effort is that the thing that your heart's hate more than a politician they disagree with is one that they can't trust.
11:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I have run a campaign that is unabashed.
11:13
[SPEAKER_03]: about its commitments, its principles, its values.
11:16
[SPEAKER_03]: While always ensuring that that lack of apology never translates into a condescension, but rather a sincerity.
11:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And it allows for an honest debate with New Yorkers.
11:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Or even when I go and speak to hundreds of CEOs, we have a conversation all in the knowledge that my fiscal policy, as I stated in that room, is the same as I stated on the street.
11:42
[SPEAKER_03]: A desire to match the top corporate tax rate of New York, to that of the top corporate tax rate of New Jersey, a desire to increase personal income taxes in the top one percent of New Yorkers by two percent.
11:53
[SPEAKER_03]: and it's an honest desire and it is also one that doesn't preclude me from sharing it with those who may be taxed by it.
12:02
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's a temptation.
12:05
[SPEAKER_03]: when you see how successful Republicans have been with their style of politics to believe that we have to mimic it in order to compete with them.
12:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And in fact, it is a challenge for us to showcase our alternate vision.
12:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's not just a vision with regards to commitments, it's not just a vision of regards to ideals, but even with regards to the manner in which we share our politics with them.
12:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think sincerity is at the heart of that.
12:36
[SPEAKER_05]: During the campaign, Momsdami said he would use his powers mayor, quote, to reject Donald Trump's fascism, close quote, and he was asked how he would Trump prove the city.
12:48
[SPEAKER_03]: There are a number of ways.
12:50
[SPEAKER_03]: You raise revenue, such that you not only are able to protect the city against the worst of the federal costs that are to come, but also that you are able to pursue an affirmative agenda at the same time.
13:04
[SPEAKER_03]: It is not enough to fight Trump's vision in purely a defensive posture.
13:09
[SPEAKER_03]: We must also have our own vision that we are fighting and that we deliver on, and also by
13:16
[SPEAKER_03]: enforcing and strengthening our city's existing sanctuary city policies.
13:21
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a contest also a values of the fabric of our city and of our country.
13:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I was saying that too often it feels as if we are embarrassed to just think about these policies which have been spoken of by Eric Adams as if they are an attack on what makes us New Yorkers when in fact
13:39
[SPEAKER_03]: They've been in existence for decades and have been defended prior to him by Republicans and Democrats alike.
13:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And we know that these are the very policies that can prevent so much of the horrors that we are seeing in our own city.
13:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And finally, by showing New Yorkers who are living through despair in this moment, be it a despair over how expensive
14:03
[SPEAKER_03]: This city that they call home has become, or despair, watching an anguish as their tax dollars are used to kill civilians across in Gaza.
14:13
[SPEAKER_03]: As was recently reported by NBC News, where these really military killed ten children waiting in line for a health clinic.
14:21
[SPEAKER_03]: One of which was a one-year-old child who had just spoken his first words.
14:25
[SPEAKER_03]: and it is incumbent upon us as Democrats to fight back against them and to also lift those same New Yorkers out of that despair within affirmative vision.
14:37
[SPEAKER_05]: Katrina and John noted that Trump has recently questioned Momdami's citizenship and threatened to arrest him.
14:44
[SPEAKER_05]: They asked, were you surprised by that?
14:46
[SPEAKER_05]: Do you have any capacity to be surprised by Donald Trump?
14:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Very little.
14:53
[SPEAKER_03]: He has spoken about how I look, how I sound, or I'm from, what I believe in, my naturalization status.
15:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think much of it is to distract from who I fight for.
15:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Because for all of the many differences between Donald Trump and I, we both ran campaigns on cost of living.
15:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Campaigns that spoke about the need for cheaper groceries.
15:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And while he's betrayed those same commitments, most obviously through this recent legislation that will throw millions of Americans off of their healthcare, steal food from the hungry, continue in his now well-known tradition of wealth transfers of trillions of dollars from the working class to the one percent, we will actually deliver on those commitments.
15:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And our delivery on them will throw his betrayal into stark relief.
15:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is a threat to his politics.
15:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And it is one that motivates so much of this language and this focus that he has.
16:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism, there must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God's children in this country.
16:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And in a moment when income inequality is declining nationwide, it is increasing in New York City.
16:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And within the context of city government, I understand it in the responsibility to ensure that every New Yorker lives a dignified life.
16:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And I speak of fear, oliguardia, often, because he delivered that dignity.
16:44
[SPEAKER_03]: through so much of what he did as the mayor of the city.
16:49
[SPEAKER_03]: This was a mayor who created the parks department, a mayor who built housing for twenty thousand New Yorkers at a scale in pace of which is considered unfeasible today.
17:04
[SPEAKER_03]: a mayor who understood what it meant to fight for working-class New Yorkers.
17:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And I am well aware of the immense responsibility that comes with this position and also excited by the opportunity that it presents to deliver for those same New Yorkers for whom politics has seemed less and less relevant to the struggles of their lives.
17:29
[SPEAKER_05]: Important leaders and important groups did not back mom Donnie in the primary.
17:34
[SPEAKER_05]: It's included older black voters, many union members, and of course Democratic party leaders.
17:41
[SPEAKER_05]: Since the primary, he's put a lot of effort into meetings and into direct campaigning that seeks to expand his coalition.
17:49
[SPEAKER_05]: He's won some key endorsements.
17:52
[SPEAKER_05]: Local eleven ninety nine of the S-E-I-U in just endorsed them.
17:56
[SPEAKER_05]: It's the largest healthcare union in the country.
17:59
[SPEAKER_05]: historic force in New York City politics, they head back Cuomo in the primary.
18:04
[SPEAKER_05]: So Maldami was asked, what is to be done about the people in the groups who did not support him in the primary?
18:13
[SPEAKER_03]: You have a choice of what you want to do with your head.
18:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you want to pat yourself on the back?
18:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Or do you want to extend it to someone else?
18:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And your decision has to come from the question of what is your goal?
18:25
[SPEAKER_03]: My goal is to be the mayor of this entire city.
18:27
[SPEAKER_03]: It is not to settle scores and look to the past.
18:32
[SPEAKER_03]: It's to look to the future.
18:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And looking to the future means continuing to welcome people into a coalition and not asking them why or when they joined.
18:40
[SPEAKER_03]: But knowing that they have just as much of a place in this fight for an affordable city as those who helped come up with the idea of the campaign in the first place.
18:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's that same ethos that we practice as New Yorkers when we look to defend those that have been here for generations.
18:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And those who got here the same day.
18:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's the way that this city has raised me.
19:07
[SPEAKER_03]: I listen to music because it's something that I can do as I do something else.
19:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I listen to music as I get ready in the morning.
19:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I listen to music as I take the train, as I'm walking.
19:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And some mornings I listen to a song called Osanam by Lucky Elite.
19:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Some mornings I listen to soak up music to wake myself up.
19:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Get ready for the day.
19:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know that I could do this without that music.
19:31
[SPEAKER_03]: It either gives you that which you had hoped you already woke up with, the energy, the hope to believe, or it takes you out of that which is concerning it.
20:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Shaman sakiri feriyadehya
20:30
[SPEAKER_05]: Osanam by Lucky Ali, Mam Damis morning listening.
20:35
[SPEAKER_05]: It's a Hindi hit from the nineties, the YouTube video of Osanam by Lucky Ali has eighty seven million views.
20:45
[SPEAKER_05]: The full text of the nation's interview with Zoran Mam Damis is the cover story in the new issue of the magazine.
20:51
[SPEAKER_05]: You can read it online at thenation.com.
20:54
[SPEAKER_05]: One more thing.
20:55
[SPEAKER_05]: Sienna College poll out last Tuesday showed Mamdani in first place with forty four percent of the vote.
21:03
[SPEAKER_05]: Second is former governor Andrew Cuomo who's running as an independent twenty five percent followed by the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa twelve percent and mayor Eric Adams also running as independent
21:17
[SPEAKER_05]: at only seven percent.
21:19
[SPEAKER_05]: This, Mombani is almost twenty points ahead of his nearest rival in the latest poll.
21:26
[SPEAKER_05]: Thanks to Katrina Vanden Hovel, the nation's editor in publisher and John Nichols, executive editor for introducing the segment in special thanks to Zora and Mombani, the Democratic Party candidate for Mayor of New York City.
21:53
[SPEAKER_05]: It's time to take a step back from the daily barrage of bad news to look at the big picture of the strategy Trump has been following.
22:02
[SPEAKER_05]: He's exploited the power of the federal government not just to attack his political opponents, the Democratic Party, but to weaken the institutions of civil society.
22:12
[SPEAKER_05]: The groups and organizations outside of government that are essential to a vibrant democracy.
22:18
[SPEAKER_05]: For our analysis, we turned to David Cole.
22:21
[SPEAKER_05]: He recently stepped down as National Legal Director of the ACLU to return to teaching law at Georgetown.
22:27
[SPEAKER_05]: He writes for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Review, and he's the nation's legal affairs correspondent.
22:34
[SPEAKER_05]: David, welcome back.
22:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Always nice to be here, John.
22:37
[SPEAKER_05]: When we refer to institutions of civil society, what are we talking about and why are they important?
22:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So we're basically talking about all those ways in which people come together with like-minded individuals to pursue the things that they care about.
22:55
[SPEAKER_04]: And so that can include a university that cares about learning and critical analysis.
23:01
[SPEAKER_04]: It can include a religion.
23:02
[SPEAKER_04]: It cares about salvation and community.
23:06
[SPEAKER_04]: It can include a bowling club.
23:09
[SPEAKER_04]: But it also includes things like professional associations, the nonprofit sector, the press.
23:20
[SPEAKER_04]: These are all institutions outside of government that engage regularly ordinary folks with the issues of the day.
23:32
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's not just a custom that civil society institutions remain independent of government control.
23:39
[SPEAKER_05]: It's actually in the Constitution in the Bill of Rights.
23:43
[SPEAKER_05]: Actually, it comes first.
23:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely.
23:45
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I think the best way to understand the first amendment.
23:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And I really draw this from Professor Bert Newborn at NYU Law School is as a protection of all the ways in which people can hold their government accountable.
24:03
[SPEAKER_04]: So it protects the right to criticize
24:07
[SPEAKER_04]: your government.
24:08
[SPEAKER_04]: It protects the right to associate with others in doing the same.
24:13
[SPEAKER_04]: It protects the right to march in the street to peaceably assemble.
24:18
[SPEAKER_04]: It protects the right to report on government.
24:22
[SPEAKER_04]: It's uses and abuses the freedom of the press.
24:25
[SPEAKER_04]: It protects the right of universities, academic,
24:29
[SPEAKER_04]: freedom and it protects the right to petition the government for redress of grievances to essentially sue the government because you disagree with the government and and so that is you know I think we often think of the first amendment as protecting
24:47
[SPEAKER_04]: the individuals right to speak, a kind of a core aspect of autonomy.
24:52
[SPEAKER_04]: And it is a core aspect of autonomy.
24:55
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think it's also has to be understood as a core aspect of the protection of the Constitution itself, because it is by ensuring that we all have the ability to do that, to join with others, to engage in the issues of the day, that we bring pressure on the institutions of government
25:16
[SPEAKER_04]: to do what we want them to do and to not do what we don't want them to do.
25:21
[SPEAKER_05]: But Trump, of course, is trying to attack all that.
25:25
[SPEAKER_05]: Just a few reminders.
25:26
[SPEAKER_05]: He's going after the news media.
25:27
[SPEAKER_05]: He sued CBS, ABC, and more recently the Wall Street Journal.
25:32
[SPEAKER_05]: It's going after the big law firms that represented his opponents and he's going after the universities, which of course have been a key base for opposition to Trump and actually before that to some Democrats, Joe Biden, for his support for Israel's crimes in Gaza.
25:49
[SPEAKER_05]: But first Columbia agreed to submit to many of Trump's demands and pay the federal government to under twenty one million dollars, supposedly as a punishment for its offenses, supposedly anti-Semitism on campus, Brown agreed to pay fifty million, and now we're told that Harvard
26:07
[SPEAKER_05]: which initially sued to block Trump's assault on their funding is about to make a deal for five hundred million to be paid not to the government like Columbia did, but following the example of Brown for vocational education.
26:25
[SPEAKER_05]: Next change for which they'll get back two billion dollars in grants if if Trump honors the deal which usually doesn't.
26:32
[SPEAKER_05]: What exactly is wrong with Harvard giving hundreds of millions of dollars for vocational education?
26:38
[SPEAKER_05]: They have an endowment of fifty three billion and vocational education is a good thing.
26:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with Harvard giving that money for vocational education if it did so of its own accord based on a judgment by the
26:55
[SPEAKER_04]: people who run Harvard that that was the best way to invest their resources.
27:02
[SPEAKER_04]: But that is not if it happens and it hasn't happened yet, but if it happens it will be because of coercion.
27:09
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think what's important to bear in mind in all of these cases and there are investigations of a handful of other
27:17
[SPEAKER_04]: universities as well, Princeton University of Virginia, et cetera, is that in none of these cases has the Trump administration actually identified a legal violation that would authorize any kind of sanction, much less millions of dollars in fines and payments and the like and restructuring of the institutions, which is part of what happened at Columbia.
27:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And what I think what you're seeing in these instances is, he's not using the law.
27:52
[SPEAKER_04]: He's using the power of money.
27:56
[SPEAKER_04]: He's using the fact that these civil society institutions are heavily dependent on federal funds, particularly the research institutions.
28:04
[SPEAKER_04]: And so even if they can win in court, and Harvard has thus far won at every stage in court,
28:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And we'll continue to win if it continues to litigate.
28:14
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a concern that in the long term you nonetheless lose because over the long term the administration can take retaliatory action against you that you're not able to sort of tie up neatly.
28:29
[SPEAKER_04]: to your advocacy of first-to-mem rights or your exercise of first-to-mem rights.
28:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And you just lose out because these are ultimately discretionary funds.
28:41
[SPEAKER_04]: And that is why Columbia said, there is no
28:46
[SPEAKER_04]: there was no legal basis for Columbia to have to pay two hundred twenty one million dollars and the same nor for brown to pay fifty million they settled because the the the risk of losing discretionary funds for their research might mean that they would lose you know lots of jobs and lots of really good work and important life saving work would go down the tubes and so they made a kind of
29:12
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, pragmatic decision.
29:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, it's hard to kind of, well, in some ways it's easy to blame them because, you know, we could say everyone should be courageous, but it's, but it's also hard to blame them because so much money is at stake for them.
29:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And that means so many jobs and so much good work.
29:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, you know, it's a, maybe it's a pragmatic decision, but it's totally unprincipled.
29:38
[SPEAKER_04]: And it just underscores that no matter how many legal protections the first amendment provides to our civil society institutions, if they are too dependent on federal support, federal funding, federal approval,
29:52
[SPEAKER_04]: then a federal administration that wants to weaken them has an incredibly powerful tool to do so.
30:02
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I've been saying every day that Harvard does not make a deal is a good day.
30:08
[SPEAKER_05]: And we're speaking here on August day, teeth.
30:10
[SPEAKER_05]: And so far, there's no deal.
30:13
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
30:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
30:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, it's I think it is important for to fight back.
30:17
[SPEAKER_04]: It's absolutely critical to fight back in these
30:20
[SPEAKER_04]: in these moments because each one that makes a deal makes it easier for the next one to make a deal.
30:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you've sort of lost the independence of these institutions, which is as I said, a central aspect of our constitutional order.
30:39
[SPEAKER_05]: And of course, for Trump making a deal is different from everybody else.
30:43
[SPEAKER_05]: It's not an agreement that both sides are satisfied with.
30:48
[SPEAKER_05]: For Trump, if you make a deal with him, this shows your weakness and it shows you can be further pressured, manipulated, exploited.
30:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, I think it is the model of the mob boss, really.
31:01
[SPEAKER_04]: except maybe, you know, with mob bosses, you can actually rely on their word, whereas with Trump, not so clear.
31:08
[SPEAKER_04]: But it is, you know, it's basically a power game.
31:12
[SPEAKER_04]: It is not about law.
31:13
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not about principle.
31:14
[SPEAKER_04]: It's about power.
31:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And so when you
31:18
[SPEAKER_04]: exceed to that power, that show of power, you show that you are vulnerable to that show of power, and he'll continue to do so.
31:27
[SPEAKER_04]: He's the bully in the Chinese app, and he is using his resources in ways that really have never been used before to undermine some of the core institutions of our society.
31:42
[SPEAKER_05]: And now, as you said, Trump is going after UCLA, the crown jewel of public universities.
31:49
[SPEAKER_05]: He's cut five hundred eighty four million in grants for medical and scientific research, and he's demanded a billion dollars as a fine for anti-Semitism on campus.
32:01
[SPEAKER_05]: But why a billion?
32:02
[SPEAKER_05]: Why not a trillion?
32:03
[SPEAKER_05]: If Trump were really serious about stopping anti-Semitism at UCLA, why let him off the hook for a billion?
32:10
[SPEAKER_04]: These numbers don't really, you know, all they mean is they are a symbol of you're giving in to the Trump machine.
32:19
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what the numbers are about.
32:20
[SPEAKER_04]: They're not tied to any actual legal violation.
32:24
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, the legal violations that are asserted are virtually always insufficient responses to anti-Semitism.
32:32
[SPEAKER_04]: But in none of these instances has the administration actually demonstrated
32:38
[SPEAKER_04]: that the incidents that they're concerned about were anti-Semitic as opposed to anti-Israel or critical of what Israel is doing in Gaza.
32:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And in none of these instances has the Trump administration demonstrated that the schools were deliberately indifferent to those incidents.
32:57
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, there's an encampment
33:00
[SPEAKER_04]: on your campus that's protesting what's going on in Israel, the school is not deliberately indifferent to that encampment because it allows it to go on when it could break it up in the first instance.
33:13
[SPEAKER_04]: It's always been thought to be the more responsible thing to try to negotiate, to sort of try to resolve the dispute, amicably to not use force, et cetera.
33:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's hardly delivered in difference.
33:27
[SPEAKER_04]: But to the Trump administration, any, basically, any toleration of any pro-Palestinian protest, any quates with antisemitism and then equates the university's failure to immediately clamp down on that
33:44
[SPEAKER_04]: demonstration as a deliberate indifference to that problem.
33:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's the only thing that title six prohibits, deliberate indifference by the institution to a pervasive or severe pattern of harassment based on national origin.
34:04
[SPEAKER_04]: They haven't shown either the severe pattern or the deliberate indifference, and yet they've collected now two hundred and
34:12
[SPEAKER_04]: seventy-one billion and there are two or seventy-one million and they're looking for another one point five billion.
34:20
[SPEAKER_05]: And the UCLA case is a little different because this is really an attack on the taxpayers of California.
34:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, absolutely.
34:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, this is a UCLA as a state institution.
34:32
[SPEAKER_04]: It's funded by the people of California.
34:35
[SPEAKER_04]: It's funded by the students to pay tuition, but that doesn't cover the cost.
34:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And so much of the cost is paid by the people of California.
34:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's who
34:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Trump is seeking to take the money from, and it's no accident that it's in California, it's no accident that it's in one of the most liberal states in the country that he has demanded the highest sort of payment.
35:00
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I will say that thus far, you've got to give Kudos to
35:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Governor Newsom for, you know, insisting that he's going to fight that he's not going to, you know, let he's not going to sort of just give this give this money over.
35:14
[SPEAKER_04]: But we'll see what, you know, what happens.
35:17
[SPEAKER_04]: The federal government has tremendous leverage over
35:20
[SPEAKER_04]: over universities to make their lives miserable.
35:23
[SPEAKER_04]: They've used every trick in the book with respect to Harvard.
35:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And even though Harvard is a very powerful institution, they have come close at least by public reports to getting into to pay up.
35:36
[SPEAKER_05]: The courts have defended civil society, at least the lower courts in the appeals courts.
35:44
[SPEAKER_05]: As you said, the Harvard lawsuits have received support from the courts as far, of course, as you said, if they settle, there won't be a trial on the merits, but other courts are proceeding.
35:59
[SPEAKER_05]: Naturally, the ACLU just want a sweeping court order requiring the National Institutes for Health to restore billions of dollars of federal research grants to universities that were canceled by Trump's people.
36:12
[SPEAKER_05]: The court ruled this was an ideological purge.
36:17
[SPEAKER_05]: that discriminated against the gay people.
36:20
[SPEAKER_05]: It banned the COVID research.
36:23
[SPEAKER_05]: It's rebanned the research in vaccine hesitancy.
36:27
[SPEAKER_05]: That's billions of dollars of NIH funding.
36:31
[SPEAKER_05]: The University of California just last week when a court order was restoring three hundred grants from the National Science Foundation, totaling eighty-one million.
36:41
[SPEAKER_05]: This is for sort of basic research.
36:44
[SPEAKER_05]: This was a private lawsuit brought by some of the investigators, not by the governor or the university.
36:50
[SPEAKER_05]: So of the five hundred eighty four million in suspensions of grants to UCLA.
36:55
[SPEAKER_05]: Now, eighty one million has been ordered restored.
36:59
[SPEAKER_05]: This not a cover the NIH or Department of Energy grants.
37:04
[SPEAKER_05]: And the basic argument in all of these lawsuits is the same.
37:07
[SPEAKER_05]: It's a winning argument that President does not have the authority to end funding directed by Congress.
37:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's right.
37:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I think there's really two arguments.
37:16
[SPEAKER_04]: That is the principle argument that the appropriation of funds is a congressional authority.
37:22
[SPEAKER_04]: The president does not have the power to disagree with Congress.
37:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, he can disagree and veto a law, but once a law is
37:30
[SPEAKER_04]: passed by Congress and signed by the President that directs money to go somewhere.
37:35
[SPEAKER_04]: The money has to go there.
37:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And when the President refuses to do that, he has violated that statute.
37:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And he's exceeded his constitutional authority, violated the separation of powers by trying to take on himself the power that the Constitution gives to
37:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Congress.
37:54
[SPEAKER_04]: That's one argument that has prevailed in a number of these cases.
37:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Another argument is that what's called unconstitutional conditions, that even when you're giving out money, you can give out money for all sorts of reasons and you can say this money should be used for acts and this new money should be used for why.
38:10
[SPEAKER_04]: But you can't use that money to try to leverage
38:14
[SPEAKER_04]: it to control the public debate.
38:18
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't say as they have that, you know, and national endowment for the arts funding will not be allowed if the art expresses a view about transgender identity that the administration disagrees with.
38:35
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't say we're not going to fund and otherwise we're the
38:39
[SPEAKER_04]: And I age study because we disagree.
38:42
[SPEAKER_04]: The government disagrees with the political viewpoint that is expressed.
38:47
[SPEAKER_04]: The government has to be viewpoint neutral in how it allocates funds.
38:53
[SPEAKER_04]: It can't seek to suppress dangerous ideas through the power of the person.
38:58
[SPEAKER_04]: The reason for that is what we've been talking about.
39:00
[SPEAKER_04]: The government has tremendous power of the person.
39:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Lots of speech is supported by government funding.
39:06
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not just universities.
39:08
[SPEAKER_04]: When you go out and march on the mall, you're supported by government money.
39:12
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the government money that owns that property that maintains that property.
39:16
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the government money that pays for the police, pays for the sanitation, pays for all of that.
39:21
[SPEAKER_04]: When ABC and CBS and NBC
39:25
[SPEAKER_04]: are on the broadcast stations, that those frequencies are owned by the federal government.
39:31
[SPEAKER_04]: They are given to those entities.
39:34
[SPEAKER_04]: When the nation males its magazine to you, it has second class mailing privileges, which means it gets to mail it.
39:43
[SPEAKER_04]: All the press gets to mail at a cheaper rate.
39:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And if the government could say with respect to all that funding, well, we're not going to fund those
39:54
[SPEAKER_04]: research enterprises, those magazines, those news stations that express views critical of the Trump administration.
40:04
[SPEAKER_04]: We would have nothing like free speech in this country.
40:07
[SPEAKER_04]: And so the court has said that you can't use the leverage of government money to seek to suppress views simply because the administration disagrees with them.
40:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And that has also been a basis for some of these decisions.
40:21
[SPEAKER_05]: So we've talked about how the courts have defended the autonomy and the rights of civil society groups.
40:29
[SPEAKER_05]: But of course, there's one thing we haven't talked about, the Supreme Court.
40:33
[SPEAKER_05]: What we've had so far has been pretty much rulings by appeals courts.
40:38
[SPEAKER_05]: Supreme Court first term where they face the first challenges that Trump's executive orders has ended.
40:45
[SPEAKER_05]: Of course, conservatives have the majority six to three.
40:48
[SPEAKER_05]: The majority didn't really overturn any major precedents.
40:53
[SPEAKER_05]: They didn't rule for example on Trump's challenge to birthright citizenship.
40:59
[SPEAKER_05]: But there's a big butt here about the Supreme Court's recently ended term.
41:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I think the body is the shadow docket.
41:09
[SPEAKER_04]: The emergency docket where the court has pretty consistently ruled in favor of the Trump administration.
41:16
[SPEAKER_04]: It is not entirely ruled in favor of the Trump administration.
41:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Most significantly, I think, the Trump administration's effort to deport
41:27
[SPEAKER_04]: people under the Enemy Alien Act to El Salvador on the grounds that they were Venezuelan gang members.
41:37
[SPEAKER_04]: The court has basically put a stop to that for the time being until the issue gets up to the Supreme Court for final resolution.
41:46
[SPEAKER_04]: The court has said no more
41:48
[SPEAKER_04]: people should be deported under this rubric so that's one at least one instance where the court stood up for for the for the rights of of individuals but by and large it has given a kind of rubber stamp at least in these temporary rulings they are not final rulings on the merits they're just what should the
42:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Status quo be while the case is challenged in the courts and the lower courts have found many instances because of irreparable harm to citizens and non-citizens alike.
42:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And because the government's theory is so weak, the government should not be permitted to pursue what it's doing until
42:34
[SPEAKER_04]: The case is finally resolved, but the Supreme Court has come in on a number of those cases and ruled the opposite has basically said, no, let's let the government do what it does until we the Supreme Court resolve the case, which could many instances will be well over a year.
42:52
[SPEAKER_04]: could even be longer than that before you get a final resolution.
42:56
[SPEAKER_04]: So they're letting him get away with some very questionable actions in the interim.
43:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Now I will say one thing that's I think is often lost in the
43:07
[SPEAKER_04]: commentary on the Supreme Court shadow docket.
43:10
[SPEAKER_04]: It has ruled very consistently for the Trump administration, but the Trump administration has also been selective about which cases it takes up to the Supreme Court.
43:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And they have that power, right?
43:21
[SPEAKER_04]: They can, the solicitor general can choose which cases to bring up.
43:24
[SPEAKER_04]: So by one count, a professor at Harvard, Jack Goldsmith, has said, there are about fifty cases
43:31
[SPEAKER_04]: where there are injunctions against the Trump administration that it has chosen not to ask the Supreme Court to reverse, presumably because they think their weak cases they would lose.
43:43
[SPEAKER_04]: And where they have gone to the court are the cases that they think they're more likely to prevail on.
43:50
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, how the court will actually rule on the merits of all these cases when they actually hear argument, et cetera.
43:58
[SPEAKER_04]: That really remains to be seen.
43:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I think we have to, you know, continue to hold their feet to the fire to expect them to do their job.
44:06
[SPEAKER_04]: The signs are not great right now, but I would not write them off.
44:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And partly I wouldn't write them off for the reasons I just said, it's a skewed sample.
44:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And the other reason I wouldn't write them off is, there's no alternative, right?
44:20
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, is not Congress is not going to stop the president.
44:23
[SPEAKER_04]: The states can't really stop the president, except by suing him in court and getting courts to stop the president.
44:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Civil society can't stop the president, except by going to court and challenging him.
44:35
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we are ultimately in the least in the short-term line on the courts.
44:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Long-term, it's politics that will save us, but in the short-term, we do need the courts to sort of stave off some of the damage.
44:49
[SPEAKER_05]: There are about fifty cases within junctions against Trump that Trump's department of justice has not asked the Supreme Court to reverse.
44:59
[SPEAKER_05]: because they don't think they will win.
45:01
[SPEAKER_05]: David Cole is the nation's legal affairs correspondent.
45:05
[SPEAKER_05]: David, thanks for talking to us today.
45:07
[SPEAKER_05]: Always good to talk to you.
45:18
[SPEAKER_05]: Start making sense.
45:19
[SPEAKER_05]: The podcast from the nation magazine is recorded in Los Angeles at our Blive Avenue Studios.
45:25
[SPEAKER_05]: Renee Reynolds is our associate producer, Alan Minsky is our producer.
45:30
[SPEAKER_05]: Jack Merkinson is executive producer.
45:33
[SPEAKER_05]: Oscar Sunkara is president of the nation.
45:36
[SPEAKER_05]: Katrina Vandenhuvul is editor and publisher of The Nation.
45:39
[SPEAKER_05]: Our theme music is from Barcelona, Afrobeat, licensed by Creative Commons, who can find out more about StartmakingSense at TheNation.com, and you can subscribe to StartmakingSense on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
45:55
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm John Weener.
45:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Thanks for listening.