Adam Watson (00:01) Welcome back to “Simplifying the State,” the podcast where we break down politics so you don’t have to try to figure out why the Venezuelan opposition leader just sort of gave Trump her Nobel Peace Prize. As always, I’m Adam Watson.

Nicholas Perrin (00:12) I’m Nicholas Perrin.

Drew Garfinkel (00:14) And I’m Drew Garfinkel.

Adam Watson (00:15) All right, now before we start, if you would be so kind as to rate us and follow the podcast wherever you are listening and to share it with anyone you think would enjoy it, like the cashier at Auntie Anne’s. Okay, so today’s topic is going to sort of be talking about the possible overreach by the executive branch of the government. It’s sort of why Congress is seemingly MIA during the first Trump administration. So, how active, compared to other presidents, do you think Congress has been?

Nicholas Perrin (00:42) Well, I mean, you could say that Congress has been pretty inactive. Well, I mean, I guess you could say in Trump’s first term, Congress was active enough trying to impeach him twice. So that’s something. But I mean, it’s just for modern presidents in general; Congress has been kind of taking a backseat.

Adam Watson (00:52) Hmm.

Drew Garfinkel (00:58) Yeah, especially like when it’s like such an even number of Democrats and Republicans, not much can get through. Not much can be done when there’s a stalemate like that. So we saw that under Biden as well.

Nicholas Perrin (01:12) I love the two-party system.

Adam Watson (01:14) Yeah, it’s going great. All right. Okay. So yeah, I feel like there is a degree of partisanship to it. Like, there’s always that partisanship equation, but I feel like even in the first Trump administration, there were Republicans within Congress and the Senate and in the House who were sort of checking him on a couple of the things he wanted to do. Like, there were some more like, “Hey, you can’t do this. Hey, let’s do this.” But it seems now as though Congress is acting like a rubber stamp for whatever Trump wants to do, right? I mean, there seems—

Nicholas Perrin (01:49) Well, there’s like one thing that I would say no to that on, but generally, yeah.

Adam Watson (01:55) Yeah. The Epstein Files is basically the only thing they’ve pushed back on him against. Yeah. But I mean, that is such a bipartisan issue that it would be almost impossible not push back against Trump, unless you’re that one Louisiana House representative who voted against it. You know.

Nicholas Perrin (02:15) Or Mike Johnson until he voted for it.

Adam Watson (02:18) I think his name was like Clay Higgins of Louisiana. Clay Higgins. Yeah.

Nicholas Perrin (02:22) Yeah, Clay Higgins.

Drew Garfinkel (02:22) Yeah, that was. He had his own thing going on with him, though. Wasn’t he? I don’t want to say anything, but he was a guy.

Nicholas Perrin (02:26) Yeah.

Adam Watson (02:31) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can see just the sheer overreach of the executive in just sort of the shattering of political norms —I mean, just as an example, this will sort of act as an example of two different things— the weaponization of the Justice Department, it’s going after the Fed. So these are two agencies. They differ in how they’re organized. So the Fed is a completely separate organization, while the Justice Department is part of the executive branch. Traditionally, presidents have made it so that the Justice Department is apolitical. They have not used it to go after potential political opponents. They have not influenced the department. But now you have Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, who is sort of using the Justice Department, it seems, to go after opponents of Trump. And we saw this with the recent indictment of Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, because—and this is the prevailing theory—because he would not lower interest rates. And so, just sort of using that department to go after people whom the president does not like is sort of what we seem to be witnessing.

Nicholas Perrin (03:50) I think, like adding onto that, it’s kind of different than what Trump has been doing, but I think, like a lot of, especially like executive overreach, ties back to FDR. I mean, he wanted to do such a huge revamp of the United States government and expand the executive branch. I mean, he made a lot of big claims on what he wanted to do, like expanding the Supreme Court so he could stack it with judges who were allied to him. And I feel like that’s kind of just become not necessarily the norm, but I guess like the unspoken norm, if that makes any sense, for politics nowadays.

Drew Garfinkel (04:29) Yeah, I want to say, yeah, FDR definitely had a bunch of programs that got the American people working, like programs to initiate stuff from the government. But I also want to say that about the big government versus small government topic, that in general, not always, but Republicans tend to lean toward small government. So it’s interesting to see how—and on top of that, not just small government, like not a big involvement in the government—like, we know this already. And I just thought it could be, could use just saying.

Adam Watson (05:10) Yeah. Drew, have you noticed—and I know we have not, you know, sort of been, you know, cognizant of what’s going on in politics for that long—but, you know, how would you compare how Republicans seem to approach this idea of government intervention as opposed to, like, five, 10 years ago? Because now it seems like they’re in favor of more government intervention, but only in certain areas like abortion, trans rights, etc. They seem to be much more in favor of intervention in that area than they were five or 10 years ago.

Drew Garfinkel (05:44) Five, 10 years ago, I can’t like say anything anecdotally, because, you know, I wasn’t in politics. I was like 10. But so, I do see a trend toward more government involvement recently under Trump, with all these—I’m going to say, like, ICE, for example. Like, that’s not a small-government thing.

Adam Watson (05:50) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what we’ve seen in Minneapolis with just the sheer amount of ICE agents that are being sent in, you know, as opposed to the regular police force, because I think it’s 3,000 ICE agents and 800 Minneapolis police. So ICE now outnumbers the Minneapolis police. So it just sort of seems like the executive branch is wielding its power, not just within the federal government, but now within state governments to a much higher level than we’ve previously seen. I mean, you know, that is sort of where the sort of the idea behind the supremacy clause is that the federal government is stronger than the state governments, sort of the idea. But like, you know, it seems like Republicans have always been in favor of “let the states do what they want.”

Drew Garfinkel (07:05) Yeah, like with abortion, yeah.

Adam Watson (07:05) The federal government should not—yeah, the state should do what they want with regard to most things. The government should be small. It should not interfere in state matters. And, you know, it seems like they’ve kind of been shifting since Trump 2.0 came around. Trump 2.0 is Trump post-first term. Yeah. Not even second term, just like sort of post-2020 election Trump.

Drew Garfinkel (07:22) Yeah, the second term. Yeah, like after, yeah, okay. Coined by yours truly, Adam Watson. Okay, so you parrot it. This guy’s just a parrot.

Adam Watson (07:35) Oh no, I think I heard someone else referring. No. Yeah.

Nicholas Perrin (07:37) Yeah, I’ve definitely heard it outside of Adam. I mean, that’s all humans. I mean, we just copy what the other says. Away from linguistics, I was going to say something.

Drew Garfinkel (07:44) Yeah, yeah, we all emulate.

Nicholas Perrin (07:49) So like, I think Republicans—well, like, I get like the modern-day Republican and Republicans, like, you know, 60, 50 years ago are very different. But I mean, Republicans for a while have been in favor of more government intervention. Like, I mean, with—this is pretty different from what we’re seeing today. And again, I’ll acknowledge it. But like Eisenhower used the—like the National Guard, is that—

Adam Watson (08:17) No, it was the 101st Airborne in Little Rock. Yeah, he federalized the Guard, but they refused to do it, so he sent in the Airborne.

Nicholas Perrin (08:20) Really? Okay. Yeah. Oh yeah, there’s still some—there was some intervention. I mean, obviously, the Civil War was controlled by Republicans. But for contemporary times, I mean, I mean, yeah, Republicans have been in favor of states doing their own things, but yeah, as you said, Adam, Trump has been going for more of a federal standpoint for things like… I think especially AI as well. Like Trump has repeatedly called their own state regulations about AI like a patchwork of regulations and says it’s a terrible idea, which Sam Altman also says, but we’re not going to talk about that. And yeah, it goes to show that it’s, you know, kind of a weaponization of the executive branch and a shift toward a more federal standpoint for both parties, and I wonder how that’s going to turn out in the future.

Adam Watson (09:19) Yeah. What do you guys see could be—what do you guys think are ways Congress could sort of reassert its authority? Because obviously, there are things like the War Powers Act that could theoretically stop us from going to war with the whole of NATO over Greenland. You know, we’ll sort of see how that goes, but, you know, what do you guys think Congress could do now to sort of reassert its authority over the executive branch? Because, as of right now, it’s less so that Trump is just doing what he wants because he can legally do it. It’s more like Congress doesn’t care.

Drew Garfinkel (09:55) I don’t—like, there isn’t a good answer to that question, I don’t think. Because I’m not Congress, and I’m sure Congress could have thought of something. So there’s probably a way for them to, like, you know, actually go out and do something. I don’t know if it’s a problem, like, with having a reason to or if they’re like not—for example Republicans in the Senate and the House if they’re like intentionally not doing anything, I don’t know—but it’s not really like I don’t think there’s a good way to like rally them if that’s what you’re asking.

Nicholas Perrin (10:31) I think that for specifically for like a war sort of thing, I think Congress in their best interests would develop a definition of war to make it so that the executive branch, the president, cannot just send troops wherever, like in the case of what many people would consider a war, like for example, Vietnam or like Korea or like any proxy war, which if Trump plans on doing any operation in Greenland is definitely what he’s going to do. So I think if they set out a new definition of war so that Congress would have to do that itself, that’s the best bet.

Adam Watson (11:10) Yeah. I sort of want to talk a little bit more about your point, Drew, where it’s like, whether or not Congress, whether or not Congress is just doing nothing because they’re Republicans, or if, because Congress as a whole just doesn’t want to do anything. And so I’m wondering if this were a Democrat president and Congress was controlled by the Democrats, do you think we would be seeing a similar sort of hands-off approach when it comes to that?

Drew Garfinkel (11:41) I’m sure the Democrats would act the same as Republicans if it benefited them. I have no doubt about it, but it’d be difficult to say.

Adam Watson (11:50) Yeah, I mean, Nicholas, actually, there was something you were talking about that I thought was kind of interesting before we started. The whole removing the cap on the amount of House representatives that you could have. You want to talk a little bit about that?

Nicholas Perrin (12:02) Oh yeah. So I think specifically in reference to like our topic for today, I think uncapping the House would be a good method of, you know, well, simply getting new people and more people into the House so that they can more openly collaborate so that, you know, there are more brains to put together to come to compromises, resolve like, you know, anything and for, you know, other practical benefits. I mean, yeah, there’s just more—there would be less people per representative, so the representatives would be able to represent their constituents more effectively.

Adam Watson (12:40) Yeah. How do you guys see this whole new executive power being used? How do you see that impacting high schoolers?

Nicholas Perrin (12:50) Well, I mean, high schoolers directly, I can’t really say, but I mean, for the whole war thing I was talking about earlier, you know, Adam, you could get drafted.

Adam Watson (13:01) Yeah, I would not like to see that actually. I would not like to be drafted. I don’t think that’d be very fun. And I’m pretty sure I’m not in the minority with that. Yeah, so you wouldn’t be far behind me, though. You wouldn’t be far behind me.

Nicholas Perrin (13:05) Dude, I don’t think you’re safe either.

Drew Garfinkel (13:07) It’d be so quaint. Yeah, we’re the future soldiers of America, yeah.

Nicholas Perrin (13:15) That we’re having this argument.

Drew Garfinkel (13:15) In the event a draft comes back, which I highly doubt it will, but we are the generation that would get drafted.

Adam Watson (13:19) Yeah, it wouldn’t. Yeah, we are all getting drafted to go fight in Greenland. Yep. All right.

Drew Garfinkel (13:27) We are all going to war together, yep. Okay.

Nicholas Perrin (13:31) I mean, it’s not like we have any other choice, right? Where else are we going to go with this job market?

Adam Watson (13:33) Well, we could go to college.

Drew Garfinkel (13:33) I’m moving to Canada, something like that. I’m leaving the country.

Adam Watson (13:37) Yeah, sayonara, guys, have fun with that. All right. Yeah, and with that fun note, that’s going to do it for this episode. We’ll talk to you guys next time and with our next episode, make sure to follow us on Instagram, make sure to subscribe to us on YouTube, follow us wherever you get your podcasts and we’ll see you guys next time.