Latest / 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel / This week’s US update: behind the headlines look at attacks on the rule of law and democracy

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This week’s US update: behind the headlines look at attacks on the rule of law and democracy · 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel

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  SPEAKER_00: So with Trump’s and Netanyahu's war in the Middle East escalating, other
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  SPEAKER_00: stories have kind of been pushed to the background, understandably.
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  SPEAKER_00: However, there are some things that have happened
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  SPEAKER_00: that undermine the rule of law and democracy over the last week
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  SPEAKER_00: that I really think you should know about.
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  SPEAKER_00: So starting with the rule of law, the Justice Department
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  SPEAKER_00: has proposed a new regulation
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  SPEAKER_00: which would authorize Attorney General Pam Bondi
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  SPEAKER_00: to suspend state bar ethics investigations
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  SPEAKER_00: into current and former Department of Justice lawyers.
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  SPEAKER_00: So this would directly undercut the power of local
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  SPEAKER_00: bar associations to hold government lawyers to account.
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  SPEAKER_00: this comes as ex prosecutors say that the Department of Justice
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  SPEAKER_00: has increasingly become Trump's political wing,
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  SPEAKER_00: with criminal investigations of perceived economic
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  SPEAKER_00: and political enemies and an FBI raid of a Georgia
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  SPEAKER_00: election office trying to find evidence
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  SPEAKER_00: for Trump's debunked claim that the 2020 election was rigged.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then the Trump administration
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  SPEAKER_00: asked a federal appeals court to revive Trump's executive orders
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  SPEAKER_00: that tried to punish four major US law firms.
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  SPEAKER_00: So they argued that the federal judges overstepped their authority
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  SPEAKER_00: by blocking directives that rest with the president.
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  SPEAKER_00: However, the law firms have said that no, what was happening
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  SPEAKER_00: was that Trump was illegally retaliating
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  SPEAKER_00: against them for representing his political adversaries.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then alongside this, a Reuters analysis has laid out
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  SPEAKER_00: how Trump's administration has launched
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  SPEAKER_00: a much more systematic effort
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  SPEAKER_00: in the US Supreme Court to diminish the power of the federal judiciary.
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  SPEAKER_00: The administration in the past year has gone to the Supreme Court
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  SPEAKER_00: dozens of times
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  SPEAKER_00: with emergency requests to basically push through policies that lower
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  SPEAKER_00: court judges have kind of questioned or asked for a halt on.
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  SPEAKER_00: So although the administration
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  SPEAKER_00: includes lots of legal arguments in its filings,
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  SPEAKER_00: the really worrying bit is how often it is
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  SPEAKER_00: used, these emergency requests to basically put into question
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  SPEAKER_00: the very authority of lower court judges
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  SPEAKER_00: to say anything about Trump's policies.
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  SPEAKER_00: last week, Inspector General Joseph Cuffari sent a letter to Congress
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  SPEAKER_00: where he basically accused the Department of Homeland Security,
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  SPEAKER_00: of having systematically obstructed his work across 11
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  SPEAKER_00: different investigations, including a criminal investigation.
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  SPEAKER_00: So the then and now former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi
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  SPEAKER_00: Noem denied this, even as she attacked
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  SPEAKER_00: the inspector general
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  SPEAKER_00: for wanting unfettered access to every single thing in the department.
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  SPEAKER_00: The fact that the Department
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  SPEAKER_00: of Homeland Security is flouting the rule of law was in evidence
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  SPEAKER_00: last week.
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  SPEAKER_00: As ICE arrested a journalist in Nashville without an arrest warrant.
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  SPEAKER_00: She works at the local news outlet Nashville
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  SPEAKER_00: Noticias and frequently reports critically about ICE
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  SPEAKER_00: And then thinking kind of more broadly about undermining democracy.
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  SPEAKER_00: These actions, and more kind of a host of individual
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  SPEAKER_00: things that all kind of chip away at the basis of democracy.
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  SPEAKER_00: So first, moving to Texas, where there are two Republicans
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  SPEAKER_00: challenging each other
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  SPEAKER_00: for the primary to be nominated as the Texas Senate candidate.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Trump basically said that he wants
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  SPEAKER_00: whoever he doesn't endorse to drop out of the race,
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  SPEAKER_00: even though he hasn't decided who that is yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: But what that would do is basically deny Texans their chance
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  SPEAKER_00: to pick the representative that they want for the Senate.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Tim Scott have asked the US
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  SPEAKER_00: Treasury Department to approve a $200 billion tax
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  SPEAKER_00: cut without prior authorization from Congress.
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  SPEAKER_00: The next thing that happened is that the US officially deemed
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  SPEAKER_00: artificial intelligence firm Anthropic a supply chain risk.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's the first time that the government
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  SPEAKER_00: has ever given a US firm that label.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this is really, an escalation because what's been going on
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  SPEAKER_00: is that Anthropic has refused to give the government
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  SPEAKER_00: unfettered access to its AI tools, because Anthropic is concerned
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  SPEAKER_00: that they would be used for mass surveillance of U.S.
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  SPEAKER_00: citizens and autonomous weapons.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, all Americans
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  SPEAKER_00: should be worried about the potential for the US
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  SPEAKER_00: state to massively increase its surveillance of their lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, President Trump says he won't sign
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  SPEAKER_00: any bills into law until the SAVE act is passed.
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  SPEAKER_00: So the SAVE act is, a basically a law
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  SPEAKER_00: that's currently going through Congress that would restrict voting
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  SPEAKER_00: by requiring much more stringent voter ID for registration.
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  SPEAKER_00: And also restricting mail in ballots at the next election.
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  SPEAKER_00: So the midterms basically.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that's all I wanted to cover this week.
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  SPEAKER_00: Again, all actions are on Trump action tracker.info.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I will see you next week.