Social Justice - A Conversation

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Charles Stanton 0:16
Good evening. My name is Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Boyd School of Law and the UNLV Honors College. My

Kira Kramer 0:23
name is Kira Kramer. I'm a fourth year honors college student, a public health major and a pre law student. And this

Charles Stanton 0:30
is social justice, a conversation, a conversation you

Well, good evening. This is Professor Stanton. Welcome back to social justice a conversation. I'm here with my partner, Kiera Kramer, to discuss, I don't know if to solve the problems of the world, but we will. We will have a discussion over the next 30 minutes. The first thing I wanted to start with, which I think is really an extremely serious problem or dilemma we're going to have, has to do with all the executive orders that the President has has enacted. And the problem that we have, basically, is that a lot of those orders have been found by the courts to be insufficient or downright illegal, and a number of federal courts have ruled in this way. We have two problems, though. One problem is that when these orders have been signed by the various judges and presented to the defendants, the defendants have been largely non compliant, which leads, which leads to an even bigger question. And that bigger question, whether it be at the district court level or the Court of Appeals level, or, I'm sure, probably at the Supreme Court level, what is the enforcement mechanism that we're going to have to see that these rulings are carried out. And I say that because the Justice Department and the FBI are basically, at this point, satellites of the White House and their whole existence vis a vis employment and jobs of influence has to do with subservience and fealty to the President. So first of all, who's going to enforce these judicial rulings and what can be done, if anything, to compel them to comply? And I think this is a very serious matter, an essential matter, as to our continuing as a democracy. And I do not know what will be the outcome if basically these voters are basically just disregarded, and I think that there needs to be a bigger contribution than there's been from both the Democratic Party, but also the Congress as a whole, as to upholding the rule of law. Because if there's going to be widespread disregard of these various orders covering a whole bunch of topics, pretty much all the essential things that the government does, we have a problem, right?

Kira Kramer 3:21
And I think what is really relevant to this discussion is why and what is fueling all of these executive orders, like, Why is Trump? And many of these executive orders include pausing funding of government agencies, increasing tax cuts, and to think back to 2017 and is where the answer lies as to why the Trump administration is doing this in 2017 or 2016 when he first, when Trump first got into office, he enacted the tax cuts and Jobs Act, The tcja, and it was the largest tax code overhaul in three decades. And many of the tax benefits, and these were humongous, about 4 trillion worth of tax benefits to the wealthiest people in our nation and corporations is going to expire this year. And so the federal government, who would be responsible for paying these tax cuts, has to figure out where that money is going to come from, and they need 4 trillion of it. Essentially, what we're seeing right now is executive orders aimed at defunding federal government programs in order to fund the biggest tax breaks that we've ever seen for the top 1% of this nation, and pretty much everyone you saw behind Donald Trump on the day he was inaugurated. Yeah,

Charles Stanton 4:49
absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. I don't think that there's any doubt as to who the beneficiaries of his largesse are going to be. Nor do I think there's any doubt as to the communities that he is retracting the money from. It clearly shows to me that he has proven, once again, that he is in no way a president of all the people. He's a president of a very small subset of like minded individuals who basically, through his influence and through the power of the lobbies around the country. And we are going to see, probably in so many essential services, diminishment of funding, or in some cases, elimination of funding. And that's where, and that's where, of course, I, you know, began my talk at the beginning of this program, because the as some, as even some Republicans, have said it is the power of the Congress to, you know, enact these funding bills. But he seems to be usurping that, that responsibility, the question, the question becomes, to me, how far can he go with this before the Congress or or the public rebels against it? I know that there are a lot of people who voted for him who are having buyer's remorse about their decision, and I also know that there's a lot of people in the Republican Party who have to get reelected, and their re election, chances are will be considerably diminished if the tax bill, which is going to benefit a very few, and the and the and the budget reductions, which is going to hurt money, hurt many, is is enacted, but I think at heart, it's A power grab. I think this is a man who does not believe in democracy. I think this is a man who does not believe in the Constitution. You know what he believes in? By those people who, who he expresses admiration for? It's Erdogan. It's Vladimir Putin. It's Xi it's all these different people who are, who are either dictators or would be dictators. The other problem that you have, though, which is also a major problem, is that, while there's non compliance with court decisions, the other problem that you have is, let's say that the court brings into its purview people who were under the responsibility of enacting what the court set down as the law and they sentenced these people for various things, what's to prevent him from pardoning all those people and just sending them back to their jobs to continue following the same commands that he gave them before? I don't know, I don't know what the answer is to that, but I think a lot of this, I think a lot of this, a lot of this, is the fruit, primarily of the immunity decision, because he's really even given the the largesse not to have any sanction by law as to anything that he does. So what, what actually could he do in that case? Well, he could turn out, he could turn out the military to suppress dissent. He could use the army to go through all of our major cities and remove people that they believe are illegal. I mean, and there's all, and there's a whole bunch, there's a whole bunch of other things. And I think what really needs to be done at this point is, is, is to put pressure in whatever way, whatever way we can, in a non violent way, primarily at the Supreme Court, because I think the Supreme Court has evaded responsibility in this matter. They were largely the creators of this power grab by him, but but also being held accountable for, you know, the fact that they, they behave in so many unethical ways. And I think that's needs to be the gist and the focus of not just the Republican Party, but also, but also of the Democratic Party, of the whole Congress, actually. And I think, I think it's really incumbent on getting leadership in the in the Congress, and I'm not, I'm not crazy about Chuck Schumer. I was listening the other night to Elizabeth Warren. I was listening the other night to Bernie Sanders, AOC, of course. And that's the kind of response we need. We need an aggressive, aggressive, multi level response to this. We don't need a wish washy response because his intention and his his goal, I think, is very, very clear, but at the moment,

Kira Kramer 9:37
and just echoing that, what Trump and Elon Musk and his whole administration is relying upon, as did other authoritarian leaders in the past. Is not their actual power, but their perceived power. How much power people think they have to get away with everything they're getting away with? I don't think we can trust the Supreme Court to protect us. And eventually, of the third over 30 lawsuits that state governments are bringing against the administration, many will likely hit the Supreme Court at some point, and I don't think we can trust the courts will save us from this. However, what we can do is the house majority of Republican majority in the in the house is only by four people, and not only that, many members in the House and Senate that one positions that were typically democratic or typically Republican. These seats, these swing seats, are vulnerable, and they're vulnerable, particularly to constituent desires. And at the moment, what is imperative is that if you have a senator in your state who usurped a democratic seat, you need to be calling them non stop telling them how to vote, because they know their seat is fragile, and they know that them getting elected was by slim margins, and they know that when Biden was running in 2020 they would never have been able to achieve their seat currently, in the current or in that climate. So with that in mind, it is imperative that everyone do not like we cannot comply in advance with everything that's happening. And that means you are calling your Democratic senators. You are calling everyone. You are telling them to not advance and approve of Trump's cabinet picks. And you and not just calling them, but you find out what committees they're on in the House and the Senate, and you do the research, and you keep up to date with what mechanisms are in place to block or slow the executive orders and other types of policies that are getting pushed through Congress. Because currently, since there's a majority in the House and Senate, there is Republican control of every single bill and every committee that's going to be presented to the House and the Senate. So that means we have to slow their role. That is all we can do at this point, is slowly but surely chipping away at their confidence. Because as easy as it's been for them to fear monger the Democratic Party and to fear monger the people of the United States, we need to make it as much of a pain in the butt for them to advance their initiatives, we need to exhaust them, because they're relying on the fact that we are exhausted of watching the news. We're exhausted of being afraid. So eventually we're just going to lay down and accept everything. But no, we need to make them exhausted of trying to push their agenda forward.

Charles Stanton 12:54
I think the question is also too that we need to make them more afraid of our reaction then, then they are afraid of his reaction. I think this is one of the things that has been responsible for a lot of the legislation and a lot of the silence on the Republican Party's part. Was very interesting to me when the hexa nomination was being deliberated in the Senate. And Tom Tillis, who was the, who's the senator from North Carolina, has sort of done an independent investigation of some of the charges against hexa from different people, and he was able to get an affidavit from this woman as to what actually, what actually transpired when he when he looked at the affidavit and studied it and spoke to her, he had decided, he had decided to be a no vote. And he approached, he approached John Thune, who's the majority leader of Senate, and told John Thune to tell the President that he was a no vote. And John Thune said to to Senator Tillis. He said, I can't tell Trump that. You have to tell him that. So the question is, the question is, how do you change the Republican Party? As to number one, the power that he has over them? I think there's two kinds of power that he has over them. He has an actual power, which is to primary them, get somebody to run against them in the next primary. But he also has subliminal power. And by subliminal power, I believe that he has, he has, he has information on everyone this guy, and I don't think a lot of these people that are in the Congress, really, in a lot of ways, may have the freedom to vote in an ethical way. This is another, this is another major problem. But the question is also at this point, it's a question of time and timing. How much time do we as a society have left to let this man accumulate? A power before the whole essence of democracy is evaporated, and we will still have the house, we'll still have the Congress, will still have the presidency, we'll still have the Supreme Court, but but really what we'll have is one man rule, and once that's once that becomes a regularity, it's going to be very hard to go back, see this is the problem. This is the problem with his edicts, his his, you know, executive orders. Yes, we can. We can go to the courts, and yes, we could even get the court to agree with us. And yes, we might even be able to get the rulings reversed and them being enacted upon. But the question is, how much damage already has been done to a lot of these institutions where there's been wholesale firings people have left the mechanism, the mechanisms of these institutions, whether it be the Veterans Administration or any other big organization that the government has. The second problem that you have though, the second problem that you have though, which is in a sense, a major obstacle, is, yes, we can do all the things as citizens to try to keep him in check, but all the people that he's put in positions of power are basically, are basically his minions. An institution operates in two ways. Certainly there's, certainly there's, there's progressive policies that may have been impeded already by what these people have been trying to do. But the bigger threat that you have is not so much that it's non action at all, basically, people who are in charge, and they might not, they might not be able to comply with an executive order, but having said that, it doesn't necessarily mean that they could do anything else that was positive, so they could basically, they could basically let the institution, the agency, go to seed one of the one of the agencies. And I'm surprised nobody's really talked about this very much, but I'm sort of familiar with it because I know a bunch of people who work for the agency is the post office. The post office has taken a massive decline over the past eight, nine years, and the guy who's in charge of the post office basically has not been an agent of positive change. I mean, I cannot tell you so many people who basically now when they have to send important mail. Everything is priority mail. Now they're not sending stuff regular mail because they can't be guaranteed of delivery, and the delivery times have been way expanded. Well, that's because there's basically been a non, if you want to call it non compliance or non interest in the efficiency that they were promised. Basically, what's happened in the in the country, particularly in government, that was even president, even president. When Joe Biden was the president, was the president was there's been a breakdown of a lot of these, these departments and institutions. And, I mean, they, they want to, you know, privatize the VA, that's one of the, one of the things that they've been they've been touting, but the VA, even under government control, has been a disaster. And there's so many other things. See, many of the many of these things that we, we rely on, in a sense, have fallen into disrepair. And this is sort of almost like the coup de grace. They're going to put them out of their misery. Of course, they're going to harm millions and millions of people who depend on them. See that's the problem. It's very, very involved. It's a very, very involved situation. But certainly, as you say quite correctly, we need a much more aggressive posture, certainly service, certainly among the citizenry, but all but also from from the Congress. And I think what needs to be done. And I think, I think I mentioned this before, but if I hadn't, I'll mention it again. I think the Republican and Democratic camps have to coalesce among certain basic principles, and that COVID coalescing has to make it clear to the President that there's a line which can't be crossed, and if that line is crossed, then all these budget requests can't be passed,

Kira Kramer 19:32
right? And we, I only think this is going to be accomplished if we put pressure on them. Republican senators need to know what their constituents are caring about. If they think their constituents don't care and or don't know what they're doing, they need like, even if you call and you don't know everything about what they're doing, you need to signal alarm bells that you know something and by calling. Them and making them understand how many people are watching them and of their own constituents are watching them. You we need to put that pressure on them to act accordingly. I agree.

Charles Stanton 20:11
I agree. You do. The other thing that you have too is there's been so many orders that have basically swamped the judicial system, and also swamped people's attention to a large degree, where people can't just focus on one or two or three things. There's been like, 30 things, 40 things, how you, you know, how you organize a response to all those different things in so many different areas, pertaining to so many different agencies, involving, you know, so many different kinds of remedial help that people need, and you would almost need to have an organization that was an umbrella for all the different programs, of all the different communities, of all the different interests. I have said for a long time, and you've heard me say it in the classroom, and I've said it outside of the classroom too. The biggest problem that the progressive movement has had in our country, the biggest, the biggest efficiency in the progressive program is the progressive program has not been the umbrella for all the various causes that needs to take in. We have black lives matter. We have, you know, the women's movement, we have the trans movement, we have the LGBT movement, we have the disability movement, like so many movements, but we need one movement, because it's only that one movement, movement that will have the effectual power of a huge and enormous voting block that will present itself to all those people in Congress as to you don't want to get on our bad side, because we're going to bring in all these different groups who are going to protest, who are going to write to you, who are going to telegraph you, who are going to email you, what have you. And I think that's what's missing. I think that's what was missing in the past election that you had all the different groups, and it was almost, in a sense, which is crazy to say it, but it was almost like each group was fighting to get their piece of the pie. And it was almost like a resentment between some of the groups that why is Kamala Harris just talking to this group when we have our group? So what needs to be done also is that all those people need to come together. All those people need to come together, because without that unity, they'll be picked off one by one. I have no doubt in my mind that just to take LGBTQ rights as just one example. I have no doubt in my mind that they want to they want to revoke LGBTQ rights. I have no doubt in my mind that they want to end gay marriage. I have no doubt in my mind that they want to completely invalidate transgender people. And the only way that can be fought is if they have the power behind them, of people beyond themselves, of

Kira Kramer 23:03
course, because those populations, at least for the transgender population, is one or 2% of the United States, which people seem to think it's way more than that, but it is not. Those are very small portions of our country. And ultimately, we have to understand that when the rights of some are threatened. All of our rights are threatened because, as we can see with past authoritarian regimes, they didn't stop with the disabled or the LGBTQ plus community or people of color. They didn't stop there. So we really need to understand that threats to any of us are threats to all of us. And

Charles Stanton 23:42
I think the other thing is too, especially with with with the transgender issue, I think there needs to be much more public education about that. I think people need to understand what what it is to be transgender, what those issues are, what their needs are. And by doing that through education and learning, not have these people be vilified because they're being vilified in a lot of ways, and a lot of that vilification comes from ignorance that people don't understand what that whole medical social situation is. And I think by bringing getting that out to the people, and talking to the people about it, I think that would be, I think that would be something very, very positive. I think the problem with a lot of you know these progressive causes is is what's combating them is not knowledge, but it's ignorance and mythology that's been sold as a bill of goods to a lot of people who really are not, are not understanding of what actually these these situations are right,

Kira Kramer 24:47
and one way to combat this lack of involvement, empathy and education is to take action to get involved in your local community. This week, I want to share about. Volunteer opportunities, events, petitions and other actions that can be taken with the progressive leadership alliance of Nevada, this week, they're going to be hosting Nevada because we have our legislative session that started, there is a great focus on learning how to submit local to attend local hearings and to submit public comment on current bills that are being presented in our legislature. And I would highly encourage everyone to become familiar with the Nellis website, which and with your local representatives to understand what bills they're sponsoring and to get involved in the bills that will impact your work, your family and your community. And you can sign up online to regularly receive communications and emails about how best to get involved with the progressive leadership alliance. I found information about their organization through mobilize.us and I would encourage you to get involved and do not just sit around idly. They have a become a planista for planning and organizing leadership in our community. And we do not have enough. When I'm perusing this website, I see a couple events here and there, and I look at California and they are signing petitions, writing letters, going door to door, and at the moment, that is what we need to do. If you are not comfortable with that, then educate yourself. Take time to know your rights, because knowing your rights, no matter what background you come from, is important. Maybe if you don't want to submit public comment or call your Senator, you can go to your local coffee shop and bring Know Your Rights, paperwork and flyers, posters that can be found on the ACLU websites and even some of our Congress. Men and women have information located on their websites and social media. Print out the flyers, bring them everywhere you go regularly and ask if those local organizations are willing to share and post that information, because there is always something that we can be doing to mobilize and spread the word.

Charles Stanton 27:07
Yeah, I think, I think there's two thoughts that occur to me. One thought is that one thought as, as has been said, The only, the only thing that allows evil to triumph is that good people do nothing. And there's a very fine movie called Good night and good luck, having to do with the McCarthy period. And it gets into, you know, how all these people were victimized by McCarthyism. And at one point in the movie, Edward R Murrow talks, and he was one of the great broadcasters of the 20th century. And he talks about, you know, all these people complaining as to what's going on, but not really doing anything about it. And he closed it. He closed one of his programs with, uh, with, with these, these lines from Julius Caesar, where, in Julius Caesar, the conspirators had killed Caesar, and they were involved in this battle with Mark Anthony, and it was not going well, and Brutus was decrying all the problems that they were having. And Cassius said to Brutus, he said to Brutus, he said, Brutus, he said, the fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves. And we each individually, have to look at ourselves and see what we're doing.

Kira Kramer 28:24
Yes, thank you all for joining us for tonight's podcast episode, and I hope that you go through the week and think about what little drop you can put in the bucket that will ultimately make a great wave.

Charles Stanton 28:38
Thank you all for listening again, and on behalf of myself and my esteemed partner, good night, good night.

Kira Kramer 28:51
Thank you for listening to this broadcast, and if you have any questions or ideas for future discussion topics, please contact myself at K, R, A, M, E, K, two@unlv.nevada.edu. Or Professor Charles Stanton at C, H, A R, L, E, S, dot, S, T, A N, T, O n@unlv.edu, see you next time

Charles Stanton 29:20
we look forward to it, you.