A Man, No Plan, Iran

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1:06Welcome to Talking Feds. A round table that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Litman. The war in Iran expands and grows more deadly by the day. It now has drawn in more than a dozen countries, including some outside the Middle East. Russia has now entered the fray helping Iran whose air defenses have been ravaged to direct their still large arsenal of drones. In the meantime, the administration continues to offer a shifting series of explanations for why we started the war in the first place. And it seems to have no firm idea of what we are trying to achieve and more importantly, when our involvement will end. The news packed week also brought the first set of primaries for the midterms. Both parties had reason for concern

2:10that the prevailing mood in the country is anti incumbent. The closely watched Senate race in Texas remains in flux with a runoff on the Republican side that could prove pivotal for the democratic candidate's chances in the fall. Trump fired Christy Nome as Secretary of Homeland Security, the first sacking in his cabinet during Trump 2.0. Nome had assembled a spectacular track record of blunders and embarrassments, but her fatal move was her testimony that Trump had green-lighted a controversial ad campaign. To unpack a turbulent week of war, elections and turn over in the cabinet were joined by a terrific group of expert commentators. And they are. Jonathan Alter, an award-winning author, filmmaker, columnist and MSNBC political analyst, he's authored more books than I can count, but about FDR, Obama, Jimmy Carter, and most recently

3:17the felony trial of Donald Trump, which we attended together. And he's got a great sub-stack entitled Old Goats. Everyone check it out. And John, thanks for being here. Thanks, Harry. Connor Lam. Connor represented parts of Pittsburgh in Congress from 2018 to 2023. Before that, he served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the great and exalted western district of Pennsylvania, my old office, and spent 2009 to 2013 on active duty in the Marine Corps. He now practices law at Klein and Spectre, and teaches a course on faith and democracy at Duquesne University. Connor Lam, thank you very much for your service. And thanks for joining Talking Feds. Go Steelers. Go Steelers. What about that McCutchen move? Can you imagine the in grade? I hope the whole city is up in arms about that. Yeah, I didn't say go pirates for a reason.

4:18There you go. And Marlaison, the national political correspondent for NPR, she's reported on seven presidential elections. Her reports can be heard regularly on NPR's politics podcast, as well as its programs morning edition. And all things considered always a pleasure to welcome you. Thanks for returning, Marla. Happy to be here. All right. I think we need to start this week with the war in Iran, which seems to be spinning out of control just this morning as we tape. Trump called for Iran's unconditional surrender. We are at four explanations and counting for the war, regime change, preemptive strike, nuclear program, support of Israel. Oh, also respond to terrorism and the ever elastic Trump reason I had a feeling. Why can't the administration just get its message straight on what we're doing there? Because maybe it doesn't know. I mean,

5:18the impression you get is the president who's making it up as he goes along. And unless this is some incredibly four-dimensional chess, which usually after he offers six different contradictory explanations, you get the four-dimensional chess analysis. That if you don't have clearly articulated objectives, you're not going to get in trouble politically for not reaching them or not achieving them. I think the president wants to be able to walk away whenever he wants to walk away. He says he wants to say in the next leader of Iran, but we know that regime change has never ever happened from the air alone. And that's so far what the president seems to think he can do. Just bomb them. They'll give up and he can claim another victory. And most experts say that's highly unlikely. Can you just elaborate a bit? So that's right, regime change normally requires what that we seem not to have even taken the first step of. Boots on the ground. Now he hasn't completely ruled that out. Either has the defense secretary, but generally it takes

6:18boots on the ground. I mean, look at Gaza. Yes, some priming of the opposition. Look at Gaza. Gaza is rubble. Who still controls Gaza? Hamas. I mean, if Israel couldn't even achieve regime change with that much aerial assault, I don't know how you do it in Iran. Yeah, another way to think about it is the same people who had all the guns in Iran a week ago have all the guns there today. I mean, they might be suffering because of all these bombs dropped from the sky, but like they still have the power to control things until someone stronger comes along to house them. And you know, it sounds like that was another thing the administration woke up to after the fact they're leaking the idea that they want to send these Kurds in there from however far away. It sounds like they started working on that after the attack began, which is something if you were rational, you would do on the front end. Let me serve up a comment based on both Mara and Conner's comments. I mean, Mara says, well, you know, maybe some commentators, I don't think any of them here will be taking the hypothesis that they've got it all thought through.

7:22Others would seem that it's completely being made up as we go. We're six days into war. It's touched 12 countries. Russia now has become involved. Do we think anybody there has the idea of an end game or game plan generally? Well, Israel should. Now, I think you can do actually, I mean, just to back up for a second, like the Iraq war, this war was launched with a lie. Trump said that Iran posed an imminent threat. The Republican control Senate Intelligence Committee said that they won't have an ICBM until 2035 at the earliest, not exactly imminent threat to the United States. So that was their first reason. That's really the only reason that you can identify that's to start a war is if there's an imminent threat. After that point, I do think, and there's certainly not playing three-dimensional chess, but I do think that they have an overall objective

8:28which is regime change if possible. It's highly unlikely for the reasons that we've talked about, the protesters have no guns, and a government is defined by a group of people who have a monopoly on violence, and the regime still does. So that's highly unlikely to happen. It's foolhardy to think that the Kurds are going to be able to come down from the north and dislodge the regime, but they do have an objective to destroy Iran's military capacity. So I've, you know, ran a foul of some friends in the last day or two because I don't want this war to stop right now. I don't think it's actually responsible for the war to stop right now. We should never have gotten into it. It was a terrible idea. But once you start to not complete the mission of destroying

9:30the Iranian Navy, which is what Trump laid out at the beginning, you know, just to destroy like a few ships and then call it a day is not really a good idea. At this point, I don't know whether it takes another five days, seven days, two weeks. I don't know what the time frame is, but you know, they should try to finish the job even though Iran will pretty quickly rebuild, you know, certain of these military capabilities. They need to, you know, as long as we're at it, make sure that we really disable their armed forces. But isn't that the military objectives are pretty clear? I mean, destroy the Navy. Everybody understands what that means. But what happens after you do that? Or is this just one of those Israeli style mowing the lawn projects where every five years you go in and you destroy the Navy again? We don't know. That is what it's looking like it will be. I'm just cautioning sort of the ceasefire now crowd, you know, like to stop it

10:31today. It's even though they have no game plan, it's not going to end well. They're going to be a lot of unanticipated consequences. Mow the lawn right now since we got the mower revved up. And we probably will have to do it again in five years, as you say. Does that include their nuclear capability? Not really. I mean, I think that I don't know that that's actually really going to be all that affected by what we're doing because of the wave. A lot of that stuff is buried. You know, it looked like the takeaway from the bombing last summer was sure it was a setback, but it was not a kill shot. And that was even with the most accurate bombing down into the ground that we were capable of. So it seems like sort of foolish for us to be saying that there's a final answer on the nuclear stuff just from this bombing campaign. Oh, yeah, there's definitely not a final answer. I was just going to say that as long as we're talking about Trump lies, when he said last June that we had totally obliterated quote unquote their nuclear capacity, that was a lie. And it was clear at the time that it was a lie because they didn't release any

11:33photographs, you know, that would confirm that they had it fordo and the other facilities that the bunker busters had actually taken it out. So, you know, the press stop paying attention, but it was clear that was like what we don't know right now and doesn't really bow that well is did they go back to fordo? They do have other bunker busters to try to set them back a little further. There was some reporting with the underground facilities. They were trying to explode bombs that would basically seal them with the the weight of the bombs and the damage that the bombs did and that that could further set back their program. But, you know, they took a lot of stuff out of those facilities and they will still have some kind of program, even if we were there for two years, you know, they would have something that was left over. So, let me serve this up if I could, John, to Connor and Mara. Let's accept John's premise. I want to say Connor may disagree, but I doubt it as the lawyer in the group that

12:39this it was patently illegal. The reason stated matter, of course, if it were true that they were about to attack the US, that alone might have provided a justification on the law of war, but so now we're in illegal war, accepting his view for purposes of this question that we've got to finish the job. Do you agree that finishing the job means basically mowing down the navy for now or would you have a different supposition about what the end point would be? Based on everything the president says, that finishing the job according to him would be regime change. I think he's dug that hole. I mean, I don't know how he turns this into Venezuela where the lead singer is nabbed, but the band plays on. I mean, I don't think he can do that in Iran. I think if they survive, the regime survives, that's a win for them. I think it's more than just taking out their navy. Because of what he said, you know, that he wants to say in who's going to be the next leader and regime change and the Iranians should rise up. And yeah, I mean,

13:44I think he's set the bar kind of high for himself, even though he's also made a lot of contradictory statements. Including just this morning talking about unconditional surrender, Connor, any thoughts? Well, I just, I hate to be the difficult guest who doesn't want to accept the premise of your question, but I think it can't, we can't fail to mention that the gang who literally can't shoot straight appears to have killed 175 people at a girl's school, most of them children. There is a risk of something like that happening every hour that we're engaged in this bombing campaign. And I don't know if that was AI targeting or just, you know, a headset and company like not having their head on straight, but there's real consequences to this. And that's why it's important. I think not to push past the question of like what the job even is and who decided that was the job and whose interest that job is because I still can't tell how any of this countered an imminent threat of the United States. I can understand it from Israel's perspective kind of. I still don't think it's all that smart, but I can't understand it

14:47from the US perspective because of this nuclear issue we've talked about because of the fact that even if they had nuclear bomb, they couldn't get it to the United States since they don't have the right missiles, all these things. And so there's even answering question like what is finishing the job mean is almost impossible from our perspective. Yeah, and also maybe the most operative thing that Trump has said is when he said it was my feeling and at another time he said it was my opinion. He didn't say the intelligence community came to me with these incredible granular information about their capabilities or intentions or how fast they were moving. No, it was his opinion and his feeling and that is what I think is going to drive this going forward. Yeah, I was reminded in a bone chilling way of his quote last month. I think it was in the New York Times or January saying my the only thing that constrains me is my own sense of moral authority. I mean his statements unconditional surrender. I'll decide who the leader is. They're just horrifyingly irresponsible

15:47things to say, but Trump being Trump, he doesn't get locked into anything. And so about three weeks from now, when the 30 to 60 day requirements that are in the War Powers Act kicks in, you have some Republicans now on the hill who are saying, okay, right now he doesn't need our permission, but under the law, Obama didn't get our permission. They have some good arguments that presidents have been conducting aerial campaigns without congressional authorization for a very long time. And you know, we haven't had an actual declared war since World War II. And when the Bush has got some authorization, it was, you know, with a lot of boots on the ground, which was a very different situation. And by the way, just something about Hegseth, who I think, you know, should resign a maybe the worst Secretary of Defense in history. But when he said he wasn't

16:48ruling out boots on the ground, that was the right thing to say. And again, we're so sort of blinded by our justifiable contempt for this evil administration that sometimes we miss when somebody actually says the right thing. So remember in the 90s, I wrote a column in Newsweek where the Clinton administration took ground troops off the table. They said, this will just be an aerial campaign against Milosevic and Serbia. No ground troops. I'm saying you never say that to your adversary. Why would you do that? That's just a dumb thing to say in war to take ground troops off the table. So if they actually put ground troops in there, it would be cataclysmic. I don't think they will. I don't even think Trump will will ever do that. And my sense of this, nobody knows where it's going. I'm not pretending to. But that when the 30-day

17:52period of time elapses, at that point, Trump will just do a 180, he'll declare victory, he'll say, we've destroyed the Iranian military. You know, I told you, at the beginning, I didn't know what was going to come next. And we're out. And a month from now, we're not going to be there. That's just my feeling. All right. Let me, I want to make one legal point. But certainly, John's observation, he has again and again and again declared victory in ways that have completely contradicted the sort of terms of engagement that he previously had drawn. Just for people listening, that's 30 and 60 days in the wake of Vietnam, the Congress passed the War Powers Act, which provides that they seek authorization initially. But if it isn't given, then at the end of a 30-day period, supposedly, things stop. Of course, it's going to be the opinion of the

18:52administration, if push comes to shove, that that very act is unconstitutional infringement on the president's authority. So you may see that kind of legal battle. But I wanted to turn to Congress, both chambers this week voted down an effort to force the administration to seek authorization. War powers vote in the Senate, Senator Federman of Pennsylvania, and Rand Paul were the only ones to swap sides in the House a little bit more. Where are the Dems now about this war, which does have its own kind of momentum? And what are their practical options for any sort of rear guard opposition? I think that the heart of the party is where most of the people are that voted for the resolution, which is I think everybody but for in the House. And it's, you know, there's no minute threat. There's no reason to put our troops in harm's way. We should have learned all the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan. And oh, by the way, the number one issue is the economy,

19:52and we're spending at least one billion. I heard a report today that the Pentagon may be spending two billion dollars every day. And so I think you'll hear a lot from Democrats about what you could be getting for two billion dollars a day, which is quite a bit. This Congress and the Senate figure in at all going forward to what happens here. Well, I don't think if they do right now, I think if American casualties mount in oil prices stay high, and this war gets even more unpopular, maybe you get a critical mass in Congress to push back against it, but it's very hard to to imagine that. I mean, Congress has emasculated itself on so many issues, but none more vigorously than this than more powers. I mean, Trump is in the first president who's violated this principle. So I think that politically, as long as we're just bombing, and Americans aren't dying, and oil prices aren't going through the roof, I think that the argument is a good one for Democrats to say it's two billion dollars a day, as he brought your prices down. And here's what that could

20:54be buying, but I don't see a big revolt in Congress over that. There'll be an interesting test coming up fast because they're spending so much that they're going to need to go back to the hill to get more money in a supplemental. And DHS is still shut down, and they've started making linking that argument of how can you keep our homeland security shut down when we're at war, and there's a risk of terrorism. And so it'll be interesting to see which Democrats kind of, I don't want to say fold, but basically give into the administration now that they have started this war and say, well, we've got to properly fund it, and which ones hold the line. And that'll give you a sense kind of of how strongly the party's feeling about this. Mara mentioned the unpopularity of this. It is so striking, and it really surprised me. So maybe somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that in the entire history of polling, which goes back to the 1930s, that there has never been a case where in the immediate aftermath of the

21:54commencing of hostilities, the president wasn't well above 50% proof, because it's a rally around the flag. So that is astonishing. It's basically unprecedented ever. And before polling, you know, it's hard to imagine a president going to war without public support. And it's not like they're at 45% support, or 40% support. They're in the 20s. In Republican polls, this is an astonishingly unpopular war. It really is. And that's including MAGA, which is sort of on board by very high margins. So if you take them out, this is an overwhelming, and this, in fact, is where I wanted to end. I understand how Congress has taken itself out of the picture, but with this kind of unpopularity. And you know, it's only going to get worse. It seems to me. There will be other episodes like the one Connor mentioned, and there will be more casualties.

23:00He's already gone to war without preparing the nation. And as far as we can tell, without preparing the military for some endgame, but can he really stay the course if there's just this tsunami of public opinion against? We're not predictors, but you know, what about the public factor here? Well, I mean, that's another question that is really going to be measured when the price tag comes to quite soon, because he ultimately, just like anything else, he's going to need every single Republican vote to get this money through somehow, plus some Democrats, unless he wants to, you know, threaten to eliminate the filibuster over it in the Senate. So we're going to have that fight pretty quick. My guess is enough Democrats will back down, because they're going to not want to say that they're depriving the troops of anything. But then really soon, we're in midterm election season. And I think he just took a bad year for him and made it a lot worse. And if you're dealing with a lopsided, you know, house majority of the other party,

24:03I don't know how you sustain a war like that, but maybe he thinks that maybe he thinks it's 2004 and he's George W Bush. Yeah, or he's just trying to anything to shake up the dynamic. Yeah, this is the president who would take big risks. There's no doubt about it. The state of the union huge risk where you don't even try to empathize with people's trouble paying their bills. All you do is say how great it is. You don't have a single nod to we have more work to do, or I feel you're paying not at all. And then this that he that he stayed silent for the first what three, four days, no explanation, no trying to lay out his case for the public. I mean, these are really really risky. It shows you how invincible he feels he is, I think. Let's leave it here for now. I suspect we'll be talking all the more next week. But let's move to the subject Connor raises. The first primaries are in the books. So I wonder what signals you think they provided about where we are heading into the midterms. If you see a dominant sentiment, is it anti Trump anti maga or is it more anti incumbent because both sides had a few surprises come

25:10their way? Well, anti incumbent and the incumbents are the Republicans and Democrats are really energized big turnout for them. That doesn't mean that they're going to wave a magic wand in when Texas, but it it's amazing. The Democratic Party is at historic low approval ratings and Democratic candidates keep on winning, you know, in some cases bigger than curvature of the earth. I mean, it's it's really something. She's right. You know, that's just one of those polling numbers that means less and less. It's almost a manufactured statistic because not that many people make choices on the basis of their abstract idea of a party. I think that, you know, I spent a lot of time sort of on the trail still to around Pennsylvania and the huge premium is on new voices. And so, you know, we don't have enough data really just from last Tuesday to say where the party is, but one of the reasons I think you're seeing it feels like anti incumbent in both parties is because they want newer people, they want younger people who know how to communicate kind of across platforms. And that was something that Talleriko pulled off really well. His primary

26:13almost didn't become a moderate versus left or black versus white thing so much as it was like styles of campaigning. He was he had the whole range in his arsenal. It was really impressive. Maybe it's the Mamdani playbook. It seemed as if Crockett certainly didn't, but okay, so everyone's gone right to Texas. Let's focus on that for a few minutes. We did have Talleriko defeating Crockett and he came from some points down. And then on the other side, Ken Paxton and John Corden. It seems to me that if you're Talleriko's folks, you want Paxton to win that primary is a more extreme candidate. But, you know, there's been focus on Texas seems to me again and again in the last six, eight, ten years. And it's always kind of come back to ground as a Republican stronghold. What's going on? Do you think? And is it really in in reach? So it's in reach, but to say that it's likely that Talleriko is going to win is, I think,

27:14inaccurate. It's possible, but we're not at a point yet where we can say it's likely. And part of this is just personal experience. You know, I had a flashback to when I was covering the Ducakis campaign almost 40 years ago. Oh, really? When we were ten. Exactly. And we're in Texas and we're at a funeral. Ducakis is attending a funeral of a big Latino voter registration guy. And I'm there for Newsweek. And there's all this talk about how Texas didn't have blue and red then. That's how long ago this was Texas is going Democratic now because this guy who just died in his organization and all the people that the whole funeral was like a celebration almost of how much progress they had made in registering Latinos. And this was going to turn Texas blue

28:18again, a Democratic again. And of course, it didn't happen. And we went through it with better work. We've had many examples over the last, I don't know, how many years has it been since a Democrat has been elected statewide in Texas 16? Since 1994, I think. 94. Okay, really. In Texas. Oh, you mean since the Democrat is one statewide? Yeah. Yeah. So in Richards, what do I think so? You know, what's going to happen is, and I tell Rico is a gifted candidate. And he has probably the best chance of anybody for a variety of reasons. But if Kornin is the nominee, which I think is more likely now, because the indications are Trump is going to endorse him and that would then be decisive in the runoff, he will spend millions of dollars exposing what are quite liberal positions by Taloriko on a wide variety of issues. You know, he wasn't really to the right of

29:20he was just speaking in a different tone, a much more sensible moderate tone, but he's quite vulnerable in Texas on the issues. And Kornin will raise them and Kornin is sort of a plain vanilla guy who I think quite a number of independent voters will come home to in November. So if Paxton wins, I think Taloriko has a very good chance of beating Paxton, but not Kornin. What do you, John? What do you make of Paxton's weird offer to drop out if they just got rid of the filibuster for the save act? The guy is a frickin lunatic. I mean, I didn't understand that. Yeah. That is a that is a viral social media demand right now. And so that's where Paxton's coming from. He probably has someone telling him, you know, that's what the base wants. Oh, I guess that's what the base wants, but it's offered to drop out if they did that. You would normally think that means it's totally far fetched. That's what would make it safe. But my understanding is it's very

30:24likely. And that's a whole different grave, grave concern if they're able to pass it by dropping filibuster, right? Very likely. What are you saying? My understanding is that Trump is pushing hard, the White House is pushing hard and they will suspend the filibuster in order to pass the save act. At least that's considered a strong possibility. Really to pass an act that will disenfranchise millions of women who have a different name on their birth certificate than they do on their voting records, they're going to disenfranchise. Precisely. You heard that right. That's a cherished goal. But that's because Trump still believes that the fewer people who vote the better it is for Republicans, which I don't know if that's true anymore. Well, it wasn't true in 2024, I mean, was not. Yeah. My guess is they think it's a question of control. I think they believe it, it hands them some discretionary control in who's going to be voting where, which is like a control panel in their minds. But yeah, I think the just return quickly to what Jonathan was saying about

31:30Texas and Telleriko. If you think about one of the biggest long-term challenges for the Democratic Party, it's how we ever get more than 50 or 51 Senate seats in this country. You have to win either a Texas and Ohio and Iowa and Alaska. And there's just so many people in our party that believe you can do that by repackaging the same set of policy positions and make no sacrifices. And that's, you know, people like me have run into that buzz saw in the past where, you know, it's actually like a slight heterodoxy goes a long way in some of these places. And so, you know, James is young and although he has a lot of quite liberal things, his background, he strikes me also as Savia enough to know that it might be time to show people you're able to think differently on one or two issues. And I'll be curious to see if he can do that. So wait, I have a question for Connor. So you think the road back to the center where you can actually win rural areas and red states, which you guys have to do after that by the 2030 census or you're practically extinct in the electoral college.

32:31Is that is the path to there through cultural issues and moving to the center on cultural issues? Is that what you're saying? It's certainly one path. You know, I never like to be the one that says there's some like sort of silver bullet solution. But what I think I'm saying is slightly more broad, which is that voters in these states would need to look at a democratic candidate and have the confidence to know they aren't taking their orders from Washington because they are different in some way. So it could be a cultural way, could be an economic way. You know, down in Texas, it could be as simple as like some kind of focus on oil and gas jobs and how important they are and maybe showing that you're not going to let those be taken away under democratic administration. I don't know what it actually, but just that slight maverick quality, I think opens the door with people for you to make your case. And without that, if you're another democrat just in slightly different packaging, my experience is you don't really get through the door. This might be worth noting. In Conner's state, the governor does as best I can tell exactly the same in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh as a, you know, garden variety standard issue Democrat. You know,

33:38the old saw as it goes. Mara is right Pennsylvania. Yeah. Alabama in between. Yeah. Wow. So a guy named Shapiro is doing well in Alabama. It's like pencil Tucky. Yeah. Exactly. In the tea, in the tea we'll call it. Somebody who's not doing very well is Tony Gonzalez, who just this morning announced he's suspending his campaign after wow, talk about I just read the headlines in the paper too, but his he hasn't a fair with the staffer who sets herself on fire and kills herself. What does the Ray? So the Republicans pushed him. He's and he's now withdrawing any sense of what that looks like down there after Gonzalez. The reason the Republicans cut him loose is they're really scared. Not just about losing the house, but about losing in the Rio Grande Valley, where they just carved out these new seats. That's where the new fives are, right? And they could be a dummy manter.

34:39It could be a dummy manter. It could be. So that's a great. Can we make that the title of this episode? That's. Yeah, dummy manter. I'd never heard that. Oh, you've never heard that. That's a gerrymander that backfires. Yeah. Because every time you make a new district, you have to make it a little less solid or you make the old district less solid. Right. So it's risk of that. And that's how the Democrats run up the score and they win 35 seats instead of, you know, at margin of 10 seats because they've diluted these seats. But to me, the single most important exit poll statistic from 2024 was that 47% of Latino men voted for Trump, whether that was pull up the ladder, whether it was on cultural issues, whatever the explanation was. And this is up from maybe as high as 30% in prior elections. George W. Bush did well with Latino men in Texas, better than average in his two presidential elections. But generally the Democrats, you know, they got like

35:43better than 60% of Latino men. They got just a little over 50% of them this last time. Now all of the indications, whether it's in Latino areas of New Jersey, what we're seeing in Texas, Tallerico did really well with Latinos, a tremendous number showed up in the Democratic primary, which contributed to the fact the overall vote was higher for Democrats than for Republicans. They don't like seeing their cousins spread eagled at home depot. You know, they don't like it. And, and this is a huge, huge problem for the Republicans in, in at least the next couple cycles that all of those advances they made with Latino men are gone. They don't exist anymore. And that's the new political reality that we have that I think contributes powerfully to be to why the Democrats have a very good shot this year. And they sure placed a big bet on it. And it'll be quite the story if it turns out to backfire

36:47and be a, again, a dummy, dummy manter, dummy manter. Yeah. I love it. Okay. Let's turn to another scandal written, uh, Republican. We have the first, uh, domino to fall in the cabinet, Christine Nome, in stark contrast to Trump 1.0. He's really kept everyone in notwithstanding scandal after scandal, Bondy, Epstein, Patel, Kennedy, et cetera. What made Nome the first head to fall? Why her? I think there were a bunch of reasons. One is the immigration policy turns out to be incredibly unpopular. She was the face of it. And her making herself the face of it was another problem for her because you can only have one Trump or one Trumpy person in the administration. And you can't have somebody else who's kind of on TV all the time being the face of the deportation effort. And according to Republican senators, aggrandizing herself and boosting her name recognition.

37:52But so somebody, there had to be a scapegoat. She didn't have a lot of good will with members of Congress. She had, you know, annoyed a critical mass of administration officials. But I think the bottom line is the immigration policy is very unpopular. And somebody had it take responsibility for that. And I just saw a poll number that I was very surprised at because up until now, we've said, you know, the general immigration policy is popular, securing the border, deporting criminals, who are also undocumented. But people like the idea, but don't like the idea of how ice is going about it. But apparently in a new you-gov poll, half of Americans supported abolishing ice. Now, that is an extraordinary number. It just shows you how unpopular it is. It still think it's not smart for Democrats to say abolish ice. Oh, I totally agree 100%. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just surprised that people would express their anger by saying they agreed with abolishing ice. I'm not saying Democrats should run on them. That would be almost as dumb as defunding the police. Yes, yes. But I'm not talking about

38:53what where the Democrats should land. And I agree with John. It's saying you want to abolish eyes or defund the police. It's always, it's already been proven to be a really, really bad idea politically. I just was struck by a poll where half of Americans said they supported abolishing ice. Not that they really do, but that they're so angry about how ice is operated, that they were, that that, that we got that number. On March 28th, a lot of people are going to go out to the No Kings protests, probably over 10 million, there were 7 million the last time. And a lot of them will have signs of abolish ice. And my feeling is the sign should say stop ice. Yeah. Rain in ice, restrain ice, reform ice. But if you say abolish ice, the kind of moderate independent voter is going to go, okay, so we're not going to have any immigration enforcement. Like what are you talking about? No, no, that wasn't the point I was trying to make. Yeah, no, I know, I know. I know you were just saying people are really, really against ISIS tactics. And like you said, they don't want to see their cousin spread eagle in Home Depot. Yeah. The other thing about

39:55Nome, I think just that significant is that they want to close the whole Minneapolis chapter and have everybody forget about it. And I think the Iran, the Iran war is part of a major distraction effort. And it's just, it just can't be repeated enough times that we all watch two Americans get murdered on screen. And there's no active prosecution going in either one of those situations. And so they want you to believe that, you know, sort of finally firing Nome closes that chapter as if, you know, Trump's leadership stepped in when things got out of control. But that's not true. Like it's just one more fig leaf for the things that they're trying to do. An excellent point. And I'll just say as to Nome's role there, she actually is the one who set with no proof. And she's tried to lay it on the officials in the field. But there's no proof of that that these were acts of domestic terrorism. And as long as she's around that that quote is going to stay with her. There's reporting that that was Stephen Miller's line. He told her to say it. I'm not, I haven't independently confirmed that. There's other very interesting

40:56reporting that sounds solid to me that Susie Wiles or somebody else brought Nome's testimony where she said that Trump had signed off on $220 million in ads with feature her. Now Trump, we all know he doesn't like any ads that don't have him in it. So he's, his reaction to that is she lied and said that I signed off on $220 million in ads with her face, not me. I never heard about these ads. She lied, fire her. So there was, I can't remember what paper, I think the journal may be reported that and that made it intuitive sense to me. In my view, that was the, the pivotal factor in the answer. I had a substack on Friday to this point. You know, he's led everyone run, ragged and get away with everything. But that, you know, embarrassed to him and the public campaign, which came up in her hearing, you know, she put him in a bad light. And that to

41:59me was the cardinal rule that she violated more than anything else that really was the reason for her sacking. Harry, can I ask you a question? Why do you think there have been no arrests in Minneapolis of the people, of the murderers basically? The DA is apparently very good there. Why haven't there been arrests? Yeah, a couple of things. And Connor might have a view here as well. I think there will be arrests. And there is a little bit of infighting between the DA of Hennepin County and the attorney general of Minnesota. But knowing that the United States is going to be imposing obstacles and knowing further that the real event will play out in federal court when the defendants, the the ICE officials who shot them move for immunity. I think counsels Minnesota and they are getting this counsel from all sides to have all ducks in a row before you

43:01bring either murder or manslaughter charges under Minnesota law. Because once you're in there, you actually have a sort of side antagonist of the federal government. Never it's unprecedented and kind of nauseating. But I think it's that that they have sensibly decided we've got to anticipate everything because we're going to go into a field in federal court where the feds are opposing us. I wonder Connor, if you have any different view having been a long time at USA yourself? No, I think that's probably right. And you just have to keep in mind that they will need to compile a mountain of evidence to try to withstand all these obstacles that Harry's talking about. Think about how hard it must be for them to get access to a lot of that evidence right now. It's so different. Oh, they won't. They won't have the car. They won't have their stuff. They won't have. On the other hand, and this has been a theme, you know, including other topics we've talked about, the power of video in 2026, right? I mean, it's just a complete

44:04game changer, including in the war, including the point you're making about people spreading, gilded in the parking lots. That just sort of cuts through viscerally. And one other point about it is if you have enough videos as they do, New York Times did a great job of this very quick war story is, you know, when I worked in the Rodney King case, there was only that one grainy video and it closed all kinds of problems. When you have 30 and you can mix and match, it's the equivalent of like a whole forensic analysis. Who knew that the cell phone would be a guardrail of democracy? Yes. 100% right? The cell phone camera. The cell phone camera would be a guardrail of democracy. The cell phone and the whistle. And who knew that Minneapolis would be the new Selma? You know, when history is happening, it's sometimes hard to recognize it. We know that they went there because of their great antipathy to Somalians. And they've never explained why sending in ice troops was going to ferret out financial fraud. I never understood

45:06the connection there. But, you know, Minneapolis was a, was a very risky place to pick because they have one of the highest civic cultures in America. Yes, yes. And the highest community cultures in America. They've now set the standard, right, with the phone and the whistle. So wherever they go, it will turn into Minneapolis, especially if they're going into blue states because they don't want to go into red states because they have a harder time. Right, right. They're the blue states that they go into. It's not like there's some other city where they're not going to be people with cell phones and whistles. So I think Christopher Elin really got it right in the New York times yesterday. The former foreign minister of, right, Canadian. And a brilliant, brilliant woman. She said 2025 was the year of capitulation. And 2026 is the year of resistance. And we went from fear as contagious last year to courage as contagious this year. All right. It is now time for a spirited debate brought to you by our sponsor Total Line and

46:20More. Each episode you'll be hearing an expert talk about the pros and cons of a particular issue in the world of wine, spirited and beverages. Thank you, Harry. In today's spirit and debate, we look at three different techniques for making rosé wine to see if there's truly a best way to rosé. First, rosé is a type of wine that's actually produced quite similarly to reds. But the fermentation time of the grape is reduced, giving rosé its signature pink color. The first technique for making rosé is the skin contact method in which black skinned grapes such as Pinot noir are crushed but allowed to remain in contact with the juice for a short period of time. After about six to 48 hours, as opposed to weeks or months for the reds, the skins are separated. This method is most frequently used in the top rosé-producing region of the world,

47:22Provence, and throughout the South of France. The second method is called Sanier, which is the French word for bleeding. This method creates both a rosé and a red wine. Early in the maceration process, some of the pink juice created from the grape must is removed to make the rosé, while the remaining juice becomes a more concentrated red. A rosé made from this method tends to be richer and darker in both color and fruit flavor. This method is more rarely used, but it can be found more often in rosés from Spain, Napa, and Chile. The third method is blending. Contrary to what some people think, blending is not just a 50-50 pour of red and white wine. Instead, blending is where a white grape, such as Chardonnay, is blended with a red grape, and it's the most popular way to make a rosé champagne. Although popular in champagne, this method is used in still

48:25rosés as well. In fact, some wine makers in Provence choose to blend small percentages of white grape varieties into their rosés. It's not always obvious or easy to know which method was used to make a particular rosé, but the expert guides at Total Wine and More can help you navigate a wondrous selection to find a rosé that makes your day. So find what you love and love what you find. Only at Total Wine and More. Cheers! Thanks to our friends at Total Wine and More for today's a spirited debate. Just a couple more follow-ups on Nome. First notice, and this is true of the other people who were forced out Lindsay Halgan, Alina Habba. You know, in Trump 1.0, there's a whole kind of body count, Kelly and others of people who leave the fold. Trump was pretty careful here to talk nice, and Nome took the hint and responded, and she's got some august sounding

49:28title that makes no sense to me. Is this part of the strategy to, you know, the guillotine falls, but she still is... Well, you want to keep her in the tent. You know, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. That's what rocks from outside. Just like Mike Walsk goes to UN, you know, from the White House. And not only in the tent, I think this administration that has done some serious malfeasance in the small circle who are there. No. Well, remember that the one who this didn't work with was Marjorie Taylor Greene, and she's out there with a massive, massive online following. And in the beginning hours of the Iran invasion, she was hammering the administration on it, which that's kind of what they're paying attention to. If you're getting online flak from within your own movement, that's like the worst-case scenario for them. So they don't want, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene reaching out to Nome and saying, man, they cast the women aside on this team. Don't they? Why don't you, you know, sort of come with me? They want to prevent that. All right. And now just finally, you know, the first domino has fallen. Are we going to see,

50:30I mean, there's five, six people who I think wouldn't have lasted in a different administration, maybe including Trump, one point no, but Hegseth, Kennedy, Patel, you know, possibly others. Do we think it's a one-shot deal? Or are you looking at this point for more firings? Well, you know, you're fired as Trump's trademark. You think there would be more, but he also doesn't like to look like somebody forced his hand. So he doesn't like to fire people under public pressure. You know, Patel could be, you could make the argument that he's somebody who's caused some problems. But because this is such a Trump centric administration, it's all about him. There is no national security council. There is no process. There's pretty much as he puts it himself, my feeling or my opinion. So I don't know if we're going to see a lot of firings. It's all about Trump. I think the Democrats want to impeach some of these characters next year. They're not

51:32going to go after Trump for a third time, but they're likely to try to impeach and then put them on, you know, put Pam Bondi on trial in the Senate. I think she's a name that would figure high on the betting board. They are doing so many controversial things and she's the face of it. And reportedly, the White House has no love lost for her. So that would be a big one, really big one. Okay, final thoughts about the kind of state of the cabinet. What happens now that we've seen the first break in the dam? You know, the one name that we haven't mentioned so far, it starts with an E, you know, and we will be back to Epstein. And a lot of this, pretty much everything that Trump does, you have to see through an Epstein window. And it's an overton window too, you know. And there's a lot of shoes to drop in that case. There's an important Miami herald piece about this minor who accuses Trump and Epstein of rape. And some more documents are

52:42coming out. Some haven't been released of the FBI interviews of this young woman. It's hard to believe that just because she committed some crimes when she was a very young person that that would discredit her entire story on its face, which is what the White House's position is right now. So we're not done with Epstein. It, to me, Epstein is, is herpes. Just keeps coming back. I very much agree and Connor might agree here. It's also when you have a, you know, anyone come in and tell us anything, you do get a lot of not credible allegations. But just that the, the DOJ had to today release oops. Here's three new FBI 302s. We thought they were duplicates. They happened to be the one with exactly these allegations about Trump. So they themselves, I think having sure the perpetuation that, that herpes will come back around. We just have a minute for our five words or fewer feature. So I want to go the oral argument in the Supreme Court last week. And

53:44there was a lot of discussion about the drinking habits of the founding fathers. This for the testing of a law that says people who use drugs can have guns. So we were instructed that John Adams took a flag and avail every day with breakfast. James Madison reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day. So the question for our solid answer in five words or fewer founders were alive today. What would they be drinking with their breakfast? Well, I think the founders would be very health conscious. And maybe they'd have non-alcoholic drinks with their breakfast. So my five words are a nice big healthy smoothie. Here you go. You're Bermotte. Oh, John's counting. Okay, I just want to make sure it was five words. So under Trump, they'd drink arsenic. They'd be so appalled at what this man was doing to the Constitution that they would go the way of

54:47Kato, you know, and various other figures from the ancient world and commit suicide. There you have it. Yeah, I was kind of going in the same direction. I didn't go all the way to suicide, but I was going to say hard stuff out of disappointment because I just think that they would be so disappointed with what has become of their original intentions that they would have to drink even more than they did apparently back then. There you have it. And I'm taking on the same spectrum as also a middle ground cold brew and constitutional anxiety. Thank you so much, Jonathan, Connor and Mara. And thank you very much listeners for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review the show. Check us out on substack at harrylittman.substack.com, where I'll be posting two or three bullets a week, breaking down the various threats to constitutional norms and the rule of law.

55:52Paid substack subscribers can now get Talking Feds episodes completely ad-free. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube, where we are posting full episodes and my daily takes on top legal stories. Talking Feds is joined forces with the contrarian. I'm a founding contributor to this bold new media venture committed to reviving the diversity of opinion that feels increasingly rare in today's news landscape, where legacy media seems to be tacking toward Trump for business reasons rather than editorial ones. Find out more at contrarian.substack.com. Thanks for tuning in and don't worry, as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep Talking. Talking Feds is produced by Lou Cregan and Katie Upshaw, associate producer Becca Haven. Sound engineering by Matt McArdle. Rosie Don Griffin, David Lieberman, Hansa Mahadranathan,

56:56Emma Maynard, and Halle Nekker are our contributing writers and production assistants by Akshaj Turbailu. A few more thanks this week. Thanks to Julie Cohen and Andrea Ashworth for their continued brainstorming and to the inimitable Philip Glass for his concert for Tibet. Thanks also to Zachary Jessner. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Delito LC. I'm Harry Littman. Talk to you later.