Another attack on federalism and new details of a weaponized DOJ | Hour 2

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to vpetclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. So if you were worried, let's just say you were running one of the national political parties, okay, and you were worried that the states that you control are hemorrhaging voters. Right, You've got populations that are declining, You've got immigration illegal and even legal immigration basically shut down, so you're not getting any more bodies. Right, If you were worried that your state may be close to, you know, flipping control, You may be entering swing state territory, maybe going from solid blue to little purplish. You know, what would you do if you wanted to try to secure the presidency? Now, I think they've got bigger fish to fry, Like these these Democrat run states have massive problems that they need to address. But you have to give them credit when they get into power, like they just did in Virginia. They took the House, they took the Senate, and they took the governor's mansion, the trifecta. And as soon as they got in, what did they do, right? They gerrymandered their maps in violation of their state constitution. They've run a bunch of bills to take people's guns, and now they just signed into law this bill that will, as NPR calls it, circumvent the electoral College. In other words, usurp it. Like circumvent is the NPR euphemism for a nullification play. That's what they're doing. This is an unconstitutional thing that they are doing by joining this thing called the National I always forget the name of this thing. It's the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which I just refer to as the compact. You got like now eighteen states, I think, and the District of Columbia. You add them together, two hundred and twenty two electoral votes. That's what those states represent right now. They control two hundred and twenty two electoral votes, and they're all blue states. And so the idea is that whoever wins the popular vote will get all of those states electoral college votes, because once again, we do not elect our president in America. We never have elected our president in America based on a popular vote across the country. It was specifically rejected as a method to do so by the Framers. They knew what the pitfalls of doing so were, and they said, we don't want to do that. Remember, at the time, the Articles of Confederation were in place, and this was causing a lot of problems in governance because the articles did not give a federal government or a national government enough power. Right, So they went into the Convention with the idea to scrap the articles come up with something better. And so the. Framers explicitly sought to prevent an alliance of states from forming because they were seeing it happen in real time under the Articles of Confederation. This is from a fellow by the name of Patrick Vlaecia writing at the Harvard Law Journal, and he is now Iowa's Deputy solicitor General. He says the Framers focused great energy on the election of the national executive. They had extensive debate and voted on numerous different electoral proposals What is clear from the historical record, as well as subsequent ratification debates and early congressional debates, is that the Framers feared combination, an alliance, combination among the states, and they strongly opposed a direct popular vote. Yet once states that possess at least two hundred seventy electoral votes past the compact, they will effectively impose a direct popular election on the rest of the country. Think about that. We don't join the compact, but you get enough states where they have two hundred and seventy votes. Now they control the presidential vote. Well, what's the point of us voting? Why bother one states that possessed the Yeah, I already read that line. Sorry. They will effectively impose a direct popular election on the rest of the country, facilitated by explicit combination among the states, and will have extinguished any effective political power of the non compacting states in the national election, despite the guarantees of protection to the small states that the Constitution formalized. That's why we have a federalist model. A federalism model. It was because the small states, the not geographically but population wise, they didn't want to get bigfooted by the more populous states. They wanted protection from democracy, right, because democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on dinner. Great if you're the wolf, I guess you eat. Not so great if you're the lamb. Along with the threat of political division between the states, the threat of combination among the states was a major impetus for the Federal Convention and the adoption of the Electoral College. And thus it's an important contextual point if you're going to analyze the debates on the electoral process. In the period leading up to the convention, when the Articles of Confederation were still in power, the mid Atlantic states, so you're talking Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, they were all about to enter into a commercial alliance. With the Confederation Congress lacking the power to block states from entering trade wars, or raise its own revenue, or enforced national law, or even supersede state's own printed currency. The threat of the American economic heartland joining forces at the other state's expense prompted the states south of Virginia to create their own commercial alliance. Contemporaries assumed that the Southern Pact would then lead to a combination of the Northern states into a third commercial alliance. Thus, without intervention by the Convention the Constitutional Convention, the states were at risk of becoming disorganized quasi national rivals under these regional commercial alliances. So to avoid this and the other pitfalls precipitated by the Articles of Confederation, James Madison and others sought a stronger federal government, although it would still be limited, but a stronger federal government that would provide the alliance and organization that the states needed. Against that historical background of weak states forming separate commercial alliances to counter the strength of larger state alliances, the Framers set out to drift a constitution. In addition to giving the federal government more power, they wanted to prevent internal alliances among states that could ultimately fracture the republic. And that's what Democrats are playing with with this compact right now. There were two hundred and twenty two electoral votes of the two hundred and seventy needed, and when they say that, when they get to two seventy, that's when it takes effect, and it's unconstitutional, completely unconstitutional. The Framers debated numerous methods before they settled on the electoral college three proposals actually got serious consideration. There was one that would have the president be selected by the national legislature, so by Congress. The other idea was selection by state legislatures, so all of the fifty state legislatures would decide who it would be the US president. But the method that they ended up with was the electoral college system. And then they spell it out for everybody, right like, they go into great detail about how this is supposed to be organized. Direct national popular election never gained track nor received any extensive consideration among the framers. Part of the original understanding of the electoral college was to prevent both domestic and foreign powers from intervening in the electoral process through the electors. This was one of the things that they were guarding against as well. That's why we have fifty state elections on the same day and they are secret ballots, so this way, if some foreign actor is trying to influence the election, they have to play in every one of the fifty states in order to make sure that they win. That's the idea. We don't have a national election for president, we have fifty state elections. It's very simple. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven in Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. From the text line, what can get this from the Hellion? What can get this nonsense to the Supreme Court? Right away? They're creating a ton of real anxiety. People that work for a living will be really hacked off, the people that want to be left alone. I don't believe. Yeah, can it not be taken to ac court until they actually try it? I think that's right. Somebody has to sue. But in order to in order to proceed with the litigation, you have to have standing, which means that you were somehow affected or impacted by it. And because it isn't implemented yet, it's just sitting there waiting to explode. Right, It's like Democrats just keep pouring more and more TNT into the box and at some point they're going to, you know, light the fuse, or maybe they've already lit the fuse and it's just a really long fuse. We don't know when it's going to go off. But when it does boom constitutional crisis, that's when that's when the litigation would have to start. I suspect, but maybe not. Maybe you have to go through an election first, and then you can claim that you were you were armed, right, then you have voters that got harmed. But then what happens after that? Now you've got to have another election or something, or do you just let whoever one stay in there. What if they won through this mechanism, they just get to stay in the office for four years and Democrats will do then at the national level what they've been doing at the state level in Virginia, just running as fast as quickly to the left as possible, getting as many things implemented. For example, they've already told us they will do this if they get control of the trifecta. At the national level, they are going to expand the Supreme Court and pack it with Democrat judges. So this way, anything that gets challenged along the way that they're doing, they know they have solid Democrats there that will rubber stamp all of their unconstitutional acts. Right, so they are already promising to do that. They are promising to give statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, DC. The idea there is you'll get four more Democrat US senators. That's the point. They are going to try to entrench themselves in power to reign for as. Long as possible. That's the goal, because again, as I went over the last hour, with the demographics, they're not reproducing enough, and so like the the chances are like their ideology, and especially with people now having school choice, more people fleeing the school systems, parents are taking their kids out of these indoctrination factories, and like that's a problem long term for the Democrats. Let me go over to Ray. Hello, Ray, welcome to the show. Hey, hey, hey, I'll thank you. Matava already answered the first question. It was if they accomplished this, will it be as hard to undo this as it is to undo the senator getting the elected at a national level rather than being appointed by the state legislatures. And the second point, well it is, okay, go ahead, Well I can answer that. So the way they're doing this, it would be easier to challenge it in court and have it defeated, right, because they're not doing it through a constitutional amendment. When the senators became elected versus appointed by the legislatures, that was an amendment to the constitution. So if you want to change that back, you got to do another constitutional amendment. So that's harder. Yeah, okay, so a little difference. They're yeah, easier to don do this. The other thing is if they do accomplish this, he kind of gets kind of touched on it just now. But what scenario or more than one scenario would you see happening. It would be something like maybe a civil war or a you know what, what kind of scenarios would usually have. Well, I mean Democrats keep they keep inching closer and closer to this line, right, they are adopting violence again just as a as a principle. More and more demo've We've done the polling on this. More and more Democrat voters are okay with the use of political violence, committing acts of violence against their political opponents. They are okay with this, more and more of them, and so you're inching closer to this line. You also then have the nullification efforts with immigration enforcement, where states are in open defiance of federal law, refusing to cooperate, but then also whipping up mobs to go and assault federal agents and such. And you never know, you know where that line is that prompts wider violence, You never know, and you know you have Charlie Kirk's assassination. We see more of those types of things happen, right, do you. We don't know where the line is, but Democrats, with these nullification efforts, they keep pushing us closer and closer to this line. So it looks looks to me like what you're saying is that they keep pushing and pushing during the Charlie Kirk type of things, and sooner or later it'll get so bad that it will erupt in whoever, whoever is the strongest using the guns and force are going to be the winners. Well, you never know, that's the thing, Like, you never know how that stuff turns out. And that's because war is a breakdown of all the rules, So you don't know how. Nobody knows how that turns out. And people think civil war is some sort of oh that's going to happen somewhere else, or you know, it's just going to be disruptive. Sure, but then we'll emerge better somehow and I'll you know, my side will win a lot of people think in these terms, but that's you know, civil war is like, hey, Ray, your your brother's body is over there at the landfill that you know, after the neighbors kidnapped him and tortured him and dumped his body. Like that's a civil war. Right, Okay, Well, thanks for all right my question, Pete. Yes, sir, all right, good hear from you. Ray, I appreciate it. Let me see I'm back on the text line. Yeah, okay, Joey. An end run around the electoral college will result in the Supreme Court ruling that the blue wall must come down. But who can inspire with mister Democrat tear this wall down? This is da While it's true that land doesn't vote, people do, but that's a valid point why the counties matter. They represent communities across the state that make up the state, and they have unique cultures and values themselves. I agree with that they completely lose representation when large urban areas control the state's federal election. True. For this reason, the founders gave us the electoral college, but they didn't go far enough, going lower to the individual states. Some similar protection is needed at the state level. Yeah, I don't know if that wasn't the original design, because the point was the states were supposed to have created. They did create the federal government, and then they said, here's the enumerated powers the federal government can do. Everything else is reserved for the states, for the people. From the WBT text line, Stanley says, when you said wars have been fought over this kind of stuff, you could not have been more correct. This kind of stuff is exactly what the revolutionary and civil wars were both fought over. I think that a long time before this is actually implemented and tried, there will be another shot heard around the world, and it'll be on It's like having someone point a gun at you and waiting to be shot before you can shoot back. Not happening. Let me go back to this piece here by Patrick Valencia. He's Iowa's deputy solicitor general. But he had a very lengthy write up on this that I've been quoting from the Harvard Law Journal from twenty eighteen as this project was gaining steam. This compact, he says, part of the original understanding of the electoral College was to prevent both domestic and foreign powers from intervening in the electoral process through the electors. It was a compromise between the large states and the small states. This compromise, which left a strong federalist imprint on the electoral College, was the means and price of the formation of the Union, without which no constitution or union could have been formed. Is that clear, Democrats, this entire project would not have happened had it not been for the electoral College compromise. So if you're going to try to do an end run around it. You are in adopting this compact, you are negating the larger one. When evaluating when an electoral reform proposal fundamentally alters the electoral college principles of seventeen nineties, federalism should weigh heavily in any modern analysis. So here are the arguments that the pro compactors are using. The main argument is that the national executive represents a singular constituency and thus having a direct national popular election where only one vote as opposed to fifty one among the states, and the protectorate matters. This is intuitive, It's a more common sense approach. Right, We're all voting together. This is the misunderstanding that these are actually separate state elections on the same day. But we're all voting together on the same day, so it's kind of like a national election. So let's just pretend it is and the president represents all of us. The problem. First, the president explicitly represents not one set of voters, but fifty one separate groups. Because of the numerous and distinct constituencies that elect the president, some of which have disproportionately greater influence in national affairs due to their size and location. The Framers set up a process that was manifestly non majoritarian. Why to allow for each state's distinct interests to be represented. The Framers crafted the appropriate process to achieve this product because they understood the importance of that product, which is an executive who represents the will of the states and not just regional interests. The Framer's allocation of disproportionate power for small population states confirms their intention for the executive to also represent the small states, not just the big ones, not just the urban centers whose voters are inherently easier to market to due to their densely packed nature. Right like, you're not going to see any ad outside of any of the big cities ever. Again, you do this, well, okay, that could be a benefit. The Compact would disrupt this delicate balance by urbanizing the presidential election, resulting in an electoral process not focused on a national campaign. Another argument, the electoral college is inherently supposed to mirror the popular vote, and therefore the compact will prevent misfires in which a president wins the electoral college and the presidency while losing the national popular vote. Third argument is that it's consistent with federalism because the states have plenary power. What does that mean? They have the power to appoint electors and needs no approval, thereby circumventing any constitutional procedures like Article one, Section ten compact clause or the Article five Amendment process problem. While the state's power to regulate elections has been to described as plenary, this one word descriptor does not resolve the matter because the compact, like all interstate compacts, would be required by the Constitution, to be submitted to Congress for approval. But even if compact supporters went ahead and did that and submitted their compact for approval by Congress, Congress does not have the authority to approve it because Congress cannot approve a compact that accomplishes something that Congress does not have the power to do. Congress does not have the power to change the Constitution. So you submitting this compact to Congress for approval doesn't do anything. Yeah, I'm sure if this thing gets to a Supreme Court that's packed with Democrats, they'll they'll read between some lines and conjure up some authority regarding the Supreme Court. They have not had opportunities many opportunities to rule on these issues related to attempted state alterations of the electoral process, but in three cases where it did review state attempts to alter federal election procedures, the Court noted that both elector discretion and federalism were central pillars to the electoral process, and they said any alterations going beyond those powers have to be effectuated through Article five, an amendment to the Constitution, and not a state law. The Supreme Court reviews fundamental changes closely. Fundamental means, if a state is attempting to transform the electoral system into a national direct election, that's pretty fundamental. If that's not fundamental, I don't know what is. When the framers took great pains to craft detailed procedures in the Constitution, the Supreme Court has repeatedly defended the constitutional text, and they have held that the only way to change the constitutional text is through an amendment, and the only way to do an amendment is through Article five. You either initiated in the Congress and then have it ratified by three fits of the States, or you started in the Convention of States and then then it goes through the same ratification process. That's it. Those are your options. People stick to the rules. Let me shift gears and tell you about the explosive report boom from the Trump Administration's DOJ. In an explosive report boom released on Tuesday, the Trump administration revealed the lengths to which the Justice Department went under Joe Biden's watch to target religious Americans who opposed abortion. The Trump DOJS Weaponization Working Group reviewed over seven hundred thousand internal records, which they then distilled down into a report that runs amasingly eight hundred pages long. It details the Biden administration's weaponization of federal law to target peaceful pro life activists. It also outlines how the Trump administration plans to correct the previous administration's wrongs. So at the center of the Biden effort is the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or the FACE Act. This is the thing that got Don Lemon in such trouble when he stormed that church in Minneapolis, right because churches are also included in this That law was originally designed to protect access to pro abortion and pro life facilities alike. Biden infamously used the FACE Act to prosecute and imprison peaceful pro life protesters. The report found the Biden DOJ senior leadership and members of the Reproductive Healthcare Provider's Task Force just call it the Abortion task Force Reproductive Healthcare Provider task Force. So DOJ senior leadership and members of this task force provided extensive support to abortion clinics while ignoring and downplaying vandalism and attacks against the pregnancy resource centers and houses of worship. One Justice Department official often texted an abortion activist and worked to track the travel plans of Christian pro life activists who had not been charged with any crimes. The emails also show how pro abortion groups provided dossiers to the Biden DOJ with pictures and information, and that was later used by the FBI to make arrests. This is what actual weaponization. Of the DOJ looks like. Democrats. Okay, I know you're all big about very concerned Trump is going to weaponize the DJ against us. Oh my gosh, this is terrible. No kings, right, this is what actually occurred, and we were saying this at the time. You got DOJ top leadership texting with abortion activists, putting out essentially hit lists on pro lifers. The task force attorneys did not communicate with any pro life pregnancy centers until September of twenty twenty two, which was months after the massive spike in violence against pregnancy centers. Do you remember what occurred to prompt the spike in violence. It was the leaking of the draft Supreme Court opinion on that overturn Roe v. Wade. And then we saw this rise in violence. And supposedly we had a Department of Justice that was supposed to be looking into this stuff, but apparently wasn't. The Task Force then had to And by the way, think about the mindset of the abortion activist crowd. You have a direct line to your allies in the top positions of the DOJ. Think about what kind of permission structure you then have, right, Like, I'm in tight with the head of the DOJ's Reproductive Task Force. Like, hmm, we're pals. I can send along hit list to them. Go arrest this person. This person's posting stuff online. Oh they were outside praying silently, Go get them. What else are you? What else are you then able to do or willing to entertain doing? The Task Force then had several meetings with pro life groups after the attacks on these places were going on for months. Internally, CRT attorneys questioned whether to provide pregnancy resource centers with the same resources as abortion clinics. So they're like, I guess we got to invest, but do we really want to help them as much as we help the abortionists? The United States versus Gallagher, for example, the Defense Council asked for historical data on Face Act prosecutions, but the DOJ Task Force director refused to give the data, saying he didn't keep those records and the DOJ would not provide them. So this was supposed to help in the trial for the defense of a pro life defendant or something, and they were like, are you doing any prosecutions besides pro lifers? Can we get some data on this? Oh no, sorry, don't have it. Even if we did, wouldn't give it to you. But notably, the report says he did have the information readily available, but decided not to share it with the defendants, despite sharing substantially identical information with the National Abortion Federation. I'm pretty sure that. You're supposed to turn over this kind of information to attorneys during trials. Biden prosecutors also tried to screen jurors based on their religious beliefs, according to the report, and they refer to Christian pro life views as quote Culty and Lambastad the defendants' beliefs in the courtroom itself. No kings though, right people, weaponization of the DOJ is really a big concern. Right No, it's only a concern if you don't have the power, which makes me believe that you knew this was going on and you were afraid that Trump's DJ might do the same to you. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.