Is Trump Ignoring Court Orders on Purpose? | Skye Perryman

0:00It's okay to be scared. That's the purpose. This administration is trying to make it scared and they are in fact doing scary things. So there's no shame in being scared. The question is what we do in response to it. With all that is going on in the courts and democracy right now, there was one person I needed to get on the podcast immediately. And that is Sky Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward. Sky, welcome back to defending democracy. Always good to see you and man what times we're in. There is a lot swirling around voting and elections and democracy. And we're going to cover a bunch of that as well as your new book. But the kind of topic that is dominating every one's top of mind right now is a whistle blower complaint, I guess, that was issued or filed and sent to Senator Blumenthal's office who released it. The gist of it is that the US Postal Service has been building a system to process state data

1:02about who is eligible to receive a mail-in ballot as well as requests that are submitted from the states on behalf of voters to receive those ballots. And this portal then has to match. And if they don't match, then ballots don't go out. And there is a lot of confusion and chaos around this. The whistle blower suggests the system is not ready for prime time that it was built too fast. I have suggested that perhaps this is actually doing exactly what Donald Trump wants, which is creating uncertainty in chaos and allows for disentrant triadment of voters. But I want to start with a different question for you about this, which is part of what the whistle blower says and which I've written about for democracy docket is about whether the Trump administration is following court orders. And there's a good argument here, just for everyone's background. There's a good argument here that the Postal Service here

2:04did not follow the court's orders. That the court had put a block in place against the development of this portal. I don't so much need you to weigh in on the needy gritty of whether they gator didn't in this one instance violate the court's orders, but rather more broadly, kind of where are we on the whole topic of whether the administration follows court orders, doesn't follow court orders, follows some, but not others, because honestly, democracy forward, which you run and which for disclosure, I chair the board of, is litigating more cases against Trump administration than anybody else. And so you probably have a pretty good bird's eye view of this question. Does unbelievable, let me just first of all say the factor, asking me this question, the fact I'm about to answer it, it is not normal because we do have an administration in a department of justice that is engaged in what justice Jackson and one of her dissents penned as catch me if you can justice. This is a sort of, you pay, well, we're going to win a court

3:05order here, but then we're going to kind of sneak around and try to get it around it in this way, sometimes blatantly not following the court orders other times really being too clever by half, where you can see that the administration really doesn't have any respect, frankly, for the federal judges and the federal courts that are issuing these orders. So what that means is a practitioner is our team at democracy forward. We are in court every single day, suing this administration when they do unconstitutional things, which is every single day. We also, truly, about several times a week, I would say, I mean, depending, we are working up something, having to send a letter to the Department of Justice, having to file a paper with a court, to track down and to chase down, literally engage in a chase about enforcement of our court orders. So the answer is, in many instances, the administration is trying to skirt court orders to be too clever by half. Sometimes they don't want to follow them at all. But in all of those cases, what that means for us as lawyers is that we just have to work twice as hard, which our team is, of course, amazing.

4:06And they are committed to doing. So we go in and win the court order. That used to be kind of all you had to do. That's hard to do, but think our team and your team and the teams of lawyers around here make that easy. The administration makes it easy sometimes because they so flagrantly violate the law. But then we have to be right back in there the next day on compliance-focused issues. So we're seeing that across the board. We've seen that in the immigration context and the context of federal funding and the context of grant making. And then, of course, also in the context of voting in elections, which I know you see a lot as well. OK, so there's two possibilities. First, that you have the Department of Justice that is just not doing what lawyers are supposed to do in terms of complying with court orders, right? I mean, the lawyers at DOJ or officers of the court, they're supposed to follow the court orders, they're supposed to instruct their clients, you know, other branches of the government follow the court orders. So option one is the people playing it to keep by half or not being straight up are actually the lawyers at DOJ. Option two is that no.

5:07It's actually not the DOJ lawyers, it's their clients. And so like the DOJ lawyers are doing the best they can to like, you know, defend the indefensible. But then they are studiously telling their clients to abide by these court orders. But they are in the dark. Like they don't, they can't control what these agencies do. You know, I reflect on the back and forth in one of the very first big cases, which was the immigration case and the flights that went to the El Salvadorian Gulag. And there was, you could see this kind of tension between like, are the lawyers not telling the judge the truth or is it they don't know? So do you have a theory as to which of those two it is or what proportion it is? I think it's a little bit of both. And let me tell you why. There are clearly, I think in some cases, times where the administration in terms of the federal agencies, the clients,

6:07the social security administration, DHS, are really trying to not let their lawyers know probably what's going on because they know that the answer from the lawyers is going to be, we have a court order that says, you have to do this. One example, I will give you there. And again, we're still in the middle of this and we're taking discovery. So by the way, we're not sure right now where the lawyers were on this. I want to be very clear about that. But what it appears is in that social security case that you're familiar with where we sued DOGE and social security, a year after they said that DOGE had no access to social security data, the lawyers come in with the filing from the Trump administration and say, you know, when we said that, that wasn't really true. And it turns out the DOGE team members did have access to data. It's relevant to your workmark, as you know, because some of those team members were talking with voter suppression organization. So we're getting to the bottom of all that in discovery. We're also going to get to the bottom of who misled the court there, but it appears from the filings. If you're reading between the lines, that at least the Department of Justice, it appears that that was potentially the social security administration was keeping that

7:08from the lawyers and that as soon as it came to the lawyers, the lawyer or spile that with the court. We don't know that, we'll figure it out, but I think that's a big category of cases. There are cases though, and I just, you know, we'll say this, that the Department of Justice is in a really interesting situation. They've lost, I think, over 70% of the career attorneys that have been typically defend the administration, that's the federal program's branch. And increasingly, in some of the cases that we're litigating, only politically appointed lawyers at the Department of Justice are even signing their names to papers. So for instance, in the slush fund case, where we block the president's slush fund, those lawyers are, you know, political appointees. And I think, you know, it appears as in some of those cases, perhaps you can't as easily rely on the representations of the lawyers. So we're kind of getting to the bottom. I think it's probably a bit, both of it, but I do think that in many instances, these agencies, including DHS, Social Security Administration, whatever, just kind of want to, you know, be too cute for the lawyers a little bit. So I want to talk about data,

8:09because I have a unified theory of the Second Trump Administration. And that is that they are avid consumers of data. So they want to, for example, build a national voter file, because they want to have the ability to dictate to states who gets to vote and who doesn't get to vote. And so they go to the states, they ask for that data when 30 states refuse. They sue, they're currently in 23 in those lawsuits. My law firm and I have intervened and fought those, and so we are undefeated. That's like one kind of data case. The US Postal Service, this whistleblower complaint that we've been talking about, and alluding to, is in some sense a data case, right? The US Postal Service under pressure, or as a result of an executive order, they would say not as a result of an executive order, just coincidentally, the US Postal Service decided that it would not allow states

9:10to have mail-in ballots delivered to their citizens, unless that number one, they put a identifying barcode on every ballot, which is a way of collecting data. But second, that the states then have to upload to the US Postal Service, essentially the portion of their voter file that relates to mail-in voting. And the Postal Service has been pretty clear that they will share this information with law enforcement, right? Other parts of the federal government. You have litigated a number of cases that also involve the collection of data, so security data, DHS data. And so talk a little bit about what you think the Trump administration is up to. And I'm particularly interested in the DHS case because it does seem to be a block against the department of justice and DHS, and maybe the Postal Service, the White House, whatever. Like it does seem to have been the thing,

10:11the stick in the gear that sort of caused a lot of this to halt. Absolutely. And this has been a total Trump 2.0 has been all about how this administration can engage in chaos and confusion and how they can misuse data. And I will say even outside of the voting in elections case, we have a lot of concern about Americans personal data that may have been in the hands of Elon Musk or Doge Bros. or members of the administration. And we're democracy boards litigating that separately, but it's a real concern. And you will remember, Mark, because it's one of the first cases we did when you found a democracy forward years ago in the first Trump administration. The administration tried to manipulate data resources with their Pence-Cobock voter commission case, which was bought by the Privacy Act. So for us, this is sort of what's old is new again, but like everything in Trump 2.0, it's new and it's magnified. So we have been litigating several cases that I think, we believe is sort of our contribution, a substantial contribution to trying to prevent

11:12the administration from misusing data and from misusing data sources to undermine the ability of people to vote and to have their votes count it. And one of those big efforts they undertook was to use something called the SAVE database. Now, I know we're talking about the SAVE Act, which is terrible. There's also the SAVE database. And that database, just by the way, stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement System. So it is a system that the US government keeps that has some information from across agencies that is relevant with respect to immigration enforcement and relevant with respect to benefits, procurement at times or benefits, but it is not at all an accurate database around whether you are able to vote or what your citizenship status is at all. Like it's totally unreliable for that. And the administration sought to have DHS use that data,

12:12what we would call intraagency data for an improper purpose, for the purpose of going through voter files and trying to compare things. And our team at Democracy Forward, along with our friends at Crew and at the Fair Election Center, brought a case, a federal court case where we have blocked the use of that modified SAVE database system. What that means is all of the victories you're getting in the States to say, you know, God is States don't have to give over their data to the federal government. We have those victories. Then we have states like my home state of Texas and other states that just seem to be like willingly giving this data over to harm their citizens. But the government still can't use the data it is getting and put it through this modified SAVE database because of this significant court order that we won. And I will say in that, that's another example of a case where we've had to go back and forth at times to make sure that there is compliance, which we're very vigilant about doing. So if chaos is the point, one of the things we have to do

13:13in this moment is to try to cut through the chaos. And we can't guarantee that we can't guarantee everything about this upcoming election. But I know, and I know I speak for our team, I know you've said the same thing about your team, of course. Lawyers are going to be there. And they're going to be there to file these cases and to do everything we possibly can. And this is an example of how our cases sort of contribute to this overall voting landscape. But the administration's going to try everything. And so it's important that we be very vigilant. So part of the Trump executive order involving mail-in voting, that everyone's paying attention to is the part involving the US Postal Service. There is a separate part of that executive order that I call the kind of like carrot and stick, right? It is like, hey, states, we're going to send you a list of who we believe are US citizens and are eligible to vote. Oh, and by the way, did we tell you the Department of Justice is going to prioritize the criminal prosecution

14:15of election officials, not voters of election officials, who allow people to vote illegally. So we're not saying you have to use this data, we're sending it. We're just telling you that, you know, if you don't, you might wind up under criminal investigation. Talk to me about how the DHS case relates to that. Because is that the same data that they are creating they're so called citizenship lists from? We are investigating that. And of course, this whistleblower complaint that came in today, everyone's looking at very carefully. But in general, there's any number of sources of data at the federal government. What the Trump administration has failed to understand is that there are limits on what you can do with different sources of data. Something that's good for the save database purposes that DHS is not reliable for something like voter files or citizenship verification or those types of things. And so, you know, I don't know how the administration is fully making their list. I think we're going to find out because you're going to file a wall, you know, we will find out. We have a way of finding out which is to go to court.

15:17And what do you tell people whether they are interested in voting? They're elderly and they, or they're a survivor of disability and they get social security payments. They maybe, you know, use Medicare or Medicaid. And they're scared. I mean, they're hearing that the federal government, I mean, they're listening to this and they're saying, okay, so the federal government is compiling databases of me and will have all of this disinformation. All of this different information. And maybe they're getting from Texas, they're getting voter file information. So maybe they know that I vote for a certain party or in a certain primary, you know, can extrapolate out information. Like, what do you tell individuals? Because I want to turn to your book and your book is not just about what lawyers can do. It's also about individuals can do. So get to that in a second. But what do you tell the person who is just worried that there is all this data and that maybe it'll be misused to their disadvantage? Yeah. So first of all, I say it's okay to be scared. That's the purpose. This administration is trying to make it scared

16:18and they are in fact doing scary things. So there's no shame in being scared. The question is what we do in response to it. And the commitment that I'm willing to make on behalf of Democracy Forward that I've seen you make on behalf of your firm and on behalf of the clients you represent is that lawyers are going to be in court. So anybody that's sitting around at night wondering like, well, what about this and what about that? Lawyers are wondering the same thing. And they're going to go be able to file lawsuits if the courts can do something to prevent what the administration is doing. So I think just love a lawyer, write them, tell them you want to file in a case, but like the lawyers are going to do this. And we have seen that in every category, there's not major unconstitutional things that the administration is doing right now that there are not lawsuits right now, fundamentally challenging if we have clients that are willing to step forward and challenge them, which of course is the courage of our incredible clients. So that is like lawyers are going to do their job. People need to understand that this is an administration that's trying to take away our voices and our votes.

17:20And so we've got to register to vote, make sure we register to vote, be sure that we're telling our communities that about registering to vote is not just like saying, hey, assume this, like really get active and there are people doing this. Somebody the other day said, I heard you speak, I went and registered to be a poll worker. The elections in this country, they're run by the people. Like go take part, like go be part of it and see what goes down, right? Because we're going to need you. And then right now I'm telling people, I think you are too, to make sure that you are verifying that you are registered to vote, which you can do through the League of Women Voters resource vote for 11.org pretty easily in Texas and my home, like the county I grew up in, there was a big local news story today about people that feel like that they've been removed from roles. I'm not entirely certain what's going on there, but the main thing people can do right now is to make sure they're registered to vote. Don't just assume it, be vigilant and checking it, use the voter hotlines. That's what we can do in response to this fear. Now if you've got questions about the government keeping files on you, I promise we're litigating those cases.

18:22And the administration is losing these retributive cases, I mean they're losing these cases. It's hard to see sometimes, but lawyers will file the cases. I think what we want people to do is to use the tools they have to make sure that this is an election where everyone participates, because it is going to have to be a big election in order to keep this administration from trying to manipulate at the margins. So you were with democracy forward in Trump 1.0. So that puts you in kind of rarified air in that you were both litigating aggressively against the first Trump administration and you're litigating against the second Trump administration. So we oftentimes hear as like conventional wisdom about the differences between the first Trump administration and the second, but those are usually described in political terms or preparation terms, like they had a better transition this time or project 2025. It's usually described whether they had more competent guardrails or less competent guardrails,

19:22but just from a pure, they do more illegal stuff, they do the same kinds of illegal stuff, they do different illegal stuff. How do you quantify or describe kind of what you were doing in the first Trump administration to protect democracy versus the second administration of the democracy? Yeah, I think there's a few things. I mean, they're doing more illegal things. I really think and they were really terrible before. You know, some of us obligated against administrations that weren't Trump, that also were doing illegal things. I mean, we did have Guantanamo. I mean, we've had some of these, the history rhymes. Okay, so we've seen some of these things, but this is a much bigger, this is just a much bigger threat and much bigger concern because of the way in which the administration's operating in two pointers. They're doing more illegal things. The litigation that we're filing can be very challenging because since so many competent and well-intentioned lawyers have left the Department of Justice,

20:23that actually becomes harder to litigate cases when you were dealing with people that you can't actually, can you believe what they're saying? You know, and this is the problem the courts are having. The courts used to say there was this like presumption of regularity, they've had to get rid of that. I was never a huge fan of that generally, but they've had to get rid of it because like, you know, who do you believe? So I think those things are more complicated. And then the speed, speed has always been something that I think the Trump administration, Trump and his allies have understood. The way humans respond to speed, the chaos that speed can create. But the speed that this administration seeks to operate with, I think is more, is with a greater velocity than what we saw in the first Trump administration. But, you know, we've built teams that are able to be there, you know, one for one with that speed. And I do think for people that are tuning in, it feels like, oh gosh, they're going so fast. And I just want to say that like, they go fast and they're in lawsuits filed almost immediately. If there's something going on,

21:24there's hasn't been a lawsuit filed. It's probably because people that want to challenge it are really, really afraid of getting into court and usually we're able to really harness folks and get people in quickly. But we move quickly. We blocked the slush fund before they were ever able to write a single check. And so I think that the speed is more with this administration, but the lawyers I think are up to the task as well too, as we've seen. So have you noticed if the administration makes decisions differently? I know in the first iteration of Trump, you had a lot of successful litigation over essentially like literally the rules of government meeting with itself. And you mentioned the Pence-Cobach commission, your litigation helps like frankly, the thing kind of implode on itself. Is it that the law has changed? Is it that they have more different ways of meeting? Do they not meet? Like what's the, like, what can you tell us about how the government, like from your observation, how the government makes decisions? Yeah, I think that they make very rash decisions.

22:26I mean, in the first Trump administration, one reason that there are some laws for those that are tuning in that can, that govern the way in which certain commissions are framed up and the way in which people meet. And in sometimes that's like the way you challenge something that's really corrupt that's going on. What this administration has done, which has been, you know, key, I think, one of the keys to our winning record and to all the lawyers winning record, is they just go out and do things. I mean, they don't set up a commission to say, we're going to think about setting up a slush fund. I mean, they just go out and do it. And so once the government takes final action, there are a lot of laws that enable us to get into court very quickly to challenge the merits of what they're doing, which we've been able to do successfully in a lot of cases. I think, you know, the administration's corruption in 2.0 is much more widespread, obviously. And some of that people, commentators have said, and I think it's right, the guardrails have come off. There's not a lot of people who are willing to, to be political appointees in these administrations that really care about the law or these types of things. And so you don't have those internal checks

23:28that maybe once existed and then with the decimation of the civil service, there are less internal checks. And so what that has meant for us is that often the administration's like so much more haphazard. That's a good way to win a court order, because the law requires that they actually engage in reason, deliberation, and not be arbitrary. But so much of what they're doing is so arbitrary, we've been able to get in and win a fair amount of court orders there. You're winning record sort of undermines one of the big critiques and criticisms I oftentimes hear, which is, well, the courts are now so dominated by conservatives, the Supreme Court is dominated by conservatives or a lot of Trump appointed judges. I'm not so much interested in getting into court reform and all that, we can discuss that if you want. But I'm really more, I always tell folks that we can give up on the courts, that I think the good guys are still winning enough of the cases, maybe most of the cases even in your area, that you just can't, you just can't see that ground.

24:30But what's your answer to people who say, but having the courts gotten really bad? Two things, one, the courts are a power that people have. Being able to initiate litigation against your government, by the way, you can't do that in certain authoritarian regimes, you can't. Okay, so the ability that we still have in this country to initiate litigation against our government to force a member of the Trump administration regardless of what they're tweeting, what they're doing to show up in court and account for what they're doing and explain it to the American people. And then the fact we actually have laws that are supposed to protect us and judges that have in many cases been protecting us and enable us to win those orders, that is a power that people in this country have right now. And when democracy is as under attack and when people are as under attack as they are right now, you better be using every power you have. And the courts have shown time and again, continue to show their important power. That doesn't mean that they don't let us down. It doesn't mean that they're the silver bullet for everything, but this is a time where we can't leave anything on the table.

25:30And that is one of our most powerful tools, not just because of the orders we win, but because of the timing that we can disrupt, because of the explanations that we can require people to give. I mean, Todd Blanche's entire confirmation revolved around his lack of being willing to tell a federal court that the slush one was dead, because he doesn't have any desire to kill it. The only reason is dead is because we blocked it, but like that entire exposure that even though Senate Republicans decided to show they didn't have any courage, the American people saw for themselves would not have been possible without the litigation that we're also litigating and winning. So that's the first thing. The second thing, which I hear a lot, I'm sure you do too, because you do so much voting work, is I'll hear people be like, you know, in 2020, in direction, I'm like the court stood up and like I'm just worried they won't stand up like they did. And so, you know, I take a line that I've heard you say before, it's like, well, the courts are better than they were in 2020. In 2020, and in January 6th, Donald Trump had already created his six three Supreme Court.

26:33The difference between that time and now is that during the Biden administration, the administration and the Senate were able to fill a variety hundreds, over 200 judicial vacancies with people that believe in the Constitution that have had relevant experience like defending civil rights or, you know, relevant professional experience to interpret these things. And so the court, the overall federal court landscape is actually far more favorable to people in democracy and a Constitution that holds all of us today than it was in 2020. And even then, the six three court, I mean, you all prevailed in all of these cases because what the administration was asserting around elections is just blatantly unconstitutional. The president doesn't have the authority and in there, of course, they have their state legislature theory that you successfully debunked. All right, I need to turn to your book. So we've talked a while now about the power of lawyers, the importance of lawyers, the value of bringing litigation. Yes, we're not biased at all though.

27:33So when I found out you were writing a book, because you told me in advance, you were writing a book and I was very interested, I figured, all right, this is gonna be a book about lawyers and the importance of lawyers. And instead, the title of your book is Ordinary People Extraordinary Times. And I'm thinking, shouldn't this be Extraordinary Lawyers Extraordinary Times? So why did you decide to write a book that actually doesn't, I mean, it doesn't, not highlight lawyers, but doesn't focus on the legal system, actually focuses on what everybody can do. Yeah, so I mean, I have a busy day job and a busy, a lot of time that turns into a night job. And so as you know, Mark, as we talked about at the time, I was not looking to write a book. I'm working to try and focus on filing lawsuits and protect people in that way. But very early on in this administration, people started getting the memo. I mean, I don't know how they voted, if they voted, whatever their views are, but they started getting the memo that this is not normal and that we are all at risk. And the number one question that all of us, and I'm gonna speak on behalf of you

28:34and every lawyer out there that I've spoken to here is like, what can I do? I mean, people saying like, what can I do? Literally, every day, that is the biggest question that a lawyer could get. Every question, I got some feedback from people we're coming asking if I would write about this and saying like, we don't always trust politicians, we don't know what to think about X or Y, but like, we wanna know what we can do. That's a beautiful, like if you think about the opportunity that that presents where we are now in a place in this country and this is why I can remain somewhat hopeful about where we are, we're ordinary people, including those who haven't engaged, including those who may have had any number of views about whatever or like, what can I do? This is too far, I love my country, I love my community, I love myself. What do we do to get out of this? That is a huge opportunity that we have in our generation to make a difference. And so I wrote a book about what people could do and I thought it was important that because of the legal work that I'm honored and privileged to get to be part of and get to lead some of, people know the lawyers

29:36are doing all they can do, right? And so I kind of wanted folks that think that the lawyers are just gonna solve everything for you. Like we're gonna solve everything we can. We've been in the middle of this fight and I'm here to tell you that it's not gonna be a perfectly framed legal case, it's gonna save yourself, your rights or American democracy, it is going to be everyone. That everyone does include lawyers, but it includes all of us. And so that's really this book is a guide about, I mean, it came out exclusively in paperback, which is I think a little unconventional and I think was the right thing to do. I'm now learning that may have implications for what lists we get named to or not, but like it's in paperback, audio book and ebook, but it's meant to just truly be a guide to help people navigate this political environment. And so give us some examples of what people can do. Yeah, so there are seven steps. I wanted to make them easy to do. And they start from shifting our mindsets from like a doom scrolling, outraged base mindset,

30:37where again to your point, what do you say to some of them? Right, I already failed step one. Right, well, no, but you do something, right? Cause like in the light of that, what can I do? You're a lawyer, you have things you can do. And so I provide lots of information there. And then we move through taking steps in your community, understanding that democracy begins at your front door. It's not in Washington, it's right where you are. And then going through remembering our past, fighting for our future. So there's lots of steps. One of the steps I recommend, that I'm not just saying this because I'm on the podcast or the YouTube today, but is to, there's a, in the first chapter, I decided to like put a big thing about how people can help with voting rights. I started writing it before Kale, we kind of knew, didn't know exactly what was gonna happen with Kale. Bag the publisher, let me go back and put a few words on that end. But one of the main things I have is to be well informed and to subscribe to lists like democracy docket. That's not a doom scroll subscription. That is a list about actual things that are happening. And then you all do feature things that you want people to do and know.

31:39And so yeah, those are some of the steps. You mentioned at the beginning that you are from Texas. And so one of the particular questions I get, not always from people from Texas, but often people from Texas is, look, I don't live in a swing state. I'm not in a, I'm not in a purple state. I hope it will change, but I'm not. And I live in a conservative community, congressional district, conservative state. And it just feels like we are powerless. And like there's nothing I can do. I'm not like in Michigan or Georgia or Wisconsin. What do you tell folks who maybe you grew up with? Maybe you, your neighbors or people you know who just really feel like down by it all because they've got Greg Abbott and Ken Backstead. They just feel like they are disempowered

32:40from the whole political system. And I don't mean that part of it in a partisan way. I just mean that they just don't feel like they can make a difference. Yeah, so the book actually talks a lot about this. I mean, one is we need to understand that when we feel that way, it's not just because we're humans and that's how we feel. There is a system working in this country. The president and his allies are part of that system. Greg Abbott's one of his allies. This far right system, it's been, you know, that is designed to make people feel that they can't do anything. And it's designed to make people feel that they are alone and they can't do anything. And so the book does provide a lot of practical tips because I talk to people all the time that feel this way about how to break out of that and then decide what you can do based on where you are. Data shows us Mark that the presence of one dissenting voice in a room. I've been in rooms where you're that dissenting voice. The presence of one dissenting voice in a room can sometimes give other people the courage to also call the same question. And that becomes important, maybe it's important politically,

33:42but it's also important in how we interface with each other. I mean, you're in a community and somebody says something derogatory about another member of the community based on their demographics or where they're from or something that they can't control. You speaking up in that moment can be the thing that can help others speak up and get in touch with their humanity. And there's everything from those very practical intimate kinds of places in the book to larger scale political, there are systemic and structural barriers now to people being represented even apart from what's happening in this election with Jerry Mander districts and people that are trying to disenfranchise voters, but there's so much we can do. And there's like checklist and to-do list and websites. There's all kinds of things in here about how folks can plug in. And we're hearing from a lot of people that live in more red areas or in areas that where they feel hopeless that this book is giving them hope. We're just a weekend, but we're hearing lots of great feedback. We know independent book source have been sold out and we've already made a best sellers list.

34:43So maybe you can put this in concrete terms. And I want to give you two examples from issues that I know you're both passionate about that you've been involved in litigating. So let's talk about the crisis of ICE and CPB and what they have done to create terror in communities. And then the other is, frankly, the absolute horrific state laws that we saw after Dops. And I know you've been involved in litigating both. And I can imagine people listening to this thinking, I feel like I've been stripped of my rights in both instances. I am terrified to speak out because of I speak out. I mean, I think in Texas they've had some crazy law that lets someone sue someone for, you know, like, and we've also the images of what happened to US citizens who were killed in Minneapolis.

35:43So if you care about those issues and let's say you're not, you don't live in New York, or to Jersey, or Illinois, where those states are doing, no, the Yomans work, but you live in, I'm gonna come back to your home state of Texas, right? What do you tell them? Well, first of all, let me say, for people that are not being completely targeted by ICE, which is a lot of people in Texas, a lot of people that have the privilege and the position and the demographics where they are not being targeted. In this book, in chapter three, beginning at your front door, I have an entire two-page list of how to protect your neighbors. And that is what we are seeing happen. It's one of the reasons that I became so motivated to write this book is that we are seeing an even deep red places. With the terror that this administration is seeking to engage in and to terrorize people in communities, we are seeing all kinds of people come out, delivering meals to their friends. Mark, I got a direct message from a person in Miami who said, I have not left my house in three and a half days.

36:43I downloaded, because of the ICE raids, I downloaded this audio book and I started having hope. Not like, you know, the answer to people that are actually being terrorized as we need to keep you safe in your communities, need to work to help keep you safe. It's not for you to go out and pick a fight with the president. That is not what this is advocating for, but he was, he had hope that so many people were listening to it. And they might be part of this work that ordinary people can do to say you're not going to treat our community members that way. And then of course, the same is true with respect to reproductive health care. We've seen a number of just tremendous efforts at very local levels to help people get the care they need, to help people become, you know, be transported when they need to be transported. We need to be pushing back with our elected representatives and in the courts and there's a lot of resources about how to do that in this book. But some of this is also to say you also as a human get to be part of this work. The question you ask about fear is really important. And it's one I know we've talked about because so many of the clients we represent are targeted because lawyers are being targeted in this moment.

37:45And I have an entire step of the book. One of the seven steps is to get serious about fear, courage and joy. And to understand what fear is, like there's no shame in being afraid, like it's a scary time. But to understand that in this time, it's going to be scary regardless of what we do. So the question now in this time is, is the cost of acting higher than the cost of not acting. And we're with new rules now. In this paradigm, the cost of inaction is far, far higher than the cost of taking action. And I give so many examples of that. And then also some really just practical tips of how in our day to day lives, we have to go about building courage. One of those things is to build community because it's a whole lot easier to find courage when we're not doing it alone. Last question for you is you, and we talked about this on an earlier episode. You were one of the early predictors about Project 2025. Like when people were not paying attention to it, you were laser focused on it.

38:45You had a plan, you led a coalition. I mean, you really, you organized the entire progressive space to be ready for Project 2025. Let's assume for a moment good news. And Republicans lose control of one or both houses of Congress. And we go into 2027 without more crises than we currently have. Okay, it's basically the same level of crises. What do you see the second half of the Trump administration being like? Is it still being governed by Project 2025? Like it was that you were so pressient about or do you see, will there be a new thing that they will do? Like do you have a, what are you preparing for for the back half of this administration? We're preparing. So I want to say the reason these elections are elections are always important. But the reason these elections are so critically important

39:45is that to dismantle democracy, you have to dismantle Democratic norms and institutions and a leader has to consolidate their power. That's what you have to do. Donald Trump has succeeded in many instances in dismantling democratic institutions. He hasn't fully succeeded because we've been able to stop and slow some of what he's tried to do. But he has succeeded in some of that. What he has not succeeded in is consolidating his power. And that is because even with this Congress, people are pushing back through the courts or pushing back into the streets. But we're on a time clock here. And these elections are so important because they are a mechanism by which we can prevent this administration and this regime, frankly, from consolidating their power further. And that is why the elections are so critically important. But I've been trying to tell people like the elections aren't gonna change who is in the White House. And they're not going to change who is at the Supreme Court. And they're really just a mechanism to help us

40:47stop and slow the consolidation of power of a regime that does want to take away all of our rights and our democracy and terrorize our communities. And so what we are preparing for is to continue to combat Project 2025 because they are continuing to implement it. But we are preparing for really dark days because this is an administration that we have seen when they get desperate and they are continually becoming more and more desperate. They will double down on their fear mongering and they will try to bring, they will try to target people. They're not gonna be able to target people as much as they could if they held the United States House. But they will try to target people. They will continue to try to misuse the DOJ. The corruption that's ranked and widespread throughout government from this administration, the House that will be able to investigate that, will be able to probably utilize some of its power to bring some accountability. But this is an administration intent on harming people. And so we are really prepared for the hardest part of our work to be the last two years of this administration,

41:47which is hard to say because people have been through so much and lawyers have been working so hard. But we believe this administration is gonna try to, you know, we'll continue its reign of terror. But it's really important if Congress was a different Congress, I think that they could check some of that, which would be helpful because right now the lawyers in the courts are the only things checking it. President, wear these up.