Here, Harry Litman of Talking Feds Podcast, speaks with Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and former AUSA (Assistant U.S. attorney) about the state of things. I’m posting this one because it’s an easy 20 minute or so listen from someone sitting in Congress with an up-close-and-personal view and also because listening to two attorneys speaking together about the state of the union is helpful right now while we have the King Kong of rampant criminality running the country and attacking the rule of law at the very foundation of our government.
Yep. It’s through Apple podcast. You might have to go find it on another platform. Sorry about that.
Podcast Episode · Talking Feds · 04/24/2025 · 32m
podcasts.apple.com
“Is Trump Strangling Democracy?” With Rep. Dan Goldman [Talking Feds;Ep. 375;4.24.25]
Blurb: “In this 1-on-1, Harry sits down with Congressman Dan Goldman, who previously worked on Trump’s first impeachment and before that was an AUSA in New York City. Goldman gives a sobering analysis of a series of stealth moves from the Trump Administration that are pulling us closer to authoritarian rule, including secret IRS-ICE data deals that shred privacy, economic sabotage through chaotic tariffs, and a GOP too scared to stop him.
See Privacy Policy at
https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at
https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.”
Goldman answered a question I've had regarding tariffs. t0000 levied tariffs using the Emergency Powers Act. I don't know exactly what that says. I could look it up. But, Goldman makes the point that, under the Emergency Powers Act, if POTUS invokes emergency powers, as t0000 did, Congress has 15 days within which to vote on . . . well, I guess, on the proposed emergency. Congress could have stopped the charade before it brought the US a pile of trouble because the tariffs are based on the Emergency Powers Act.
Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, didn't want to put it up for a vote. He literally took Congress's statutory authority away, his own authority away, likely because a vote against granting potus emergency powers would pass and reverse or overturn t0000's invocation. Enough republicans are concerned about the tariffs' effects on their constituencies that they might not have supported the invocation of the Emergency Powers Act. Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t want to put a check on t0000’s power. He has fully capitulated to the idea of t0000 as king.
I’ll mix apples and oranges here for a moment because I have another question, this time about the validity of the use of the Alien Enemies Act to justify deportations. The podcast above doesn’t address that question. People opposing the removal of people taken without regard for their constitutional rights, I.e. against the law, use the word 'renditions' because the removal of people is more akin to 'disappearances' than anything legal. The word ‘deportation’ confers a legitimacy that the administration’s actions lack. We still don't know the identities of the 168 or so people that were flown out of this country to a gulag. Deportations implies that people are sent out of the country, but these people were renditioned to a gulag without any prospect of an end date nor any access to independent legal representation nor anyone outside the prison, such as family.
The one thing that I know about the Alien Enemies Act is that it requires the US to be at war with another country, or be under invasion by another country. Neither of those conditions applies. We are not at war with Venezuela, nor is there an invasion by that country. I’m mixing apples and oranges because that question bothers me and has nothing to do with the podcast.
Some many hours later: Oh. the NYTimes does have an update on legal steps challenging the t0000 administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act. Here's a link:
An updated lawsuit filed in Washington was the latest in a flurry of suits challenging the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to send migrants to a prison in El Salvador.
www.nytimes.com
Lawyers, in an updated suit, seek the return of migrants deported under the Alien Enemies Act. [NYTimes; 4.25.25]
Quoting the article: "Over the past two weeks, immigration lawyers, scrambling from courthouse to courthouse, have secured provisional orders in five states stopping the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law, to deport Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a terrorism prison in El Salvador."
The article goes on to address the two different situations, one being giving due process to people still in this country, the other addressing the people in the El Salvadoran prison, who were never given due process before the law prior to the government removing them.