Weekly Roundup: Hegseth Declares War On the Military + Trump Declares War On You

Brad Onishi: Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. I'm Brad Onishi, author of Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next, founder of Axis Mundi Media, here as always with my co-host—

Dan Miller: Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College. Nice to see you, Brad.

Brad: You too, Dan. Some of you are watching this, some of you are listening. If you're watching, you're seeing Dan in closer to HD than he's ever been, which is nice. We get to see all of the wisdom and beauty that is Dan Miller. It's pretty great.

So, all right, y'all—today we're going to talk about Pete Hegseth's gathering of the generals, the meeting that could have been an email or just maybe not have taken place. Just didn't need to happen. We'll then get into Trump, the shutdown, and Russ Vought, the proponent of the unitary executive theory, and what he has planned for the shutdown and what we think might happen there. We'll then go to a court case that is not being covered enough, but is in some ways one of the most notable things from the week. So as always, lots to cover. Let's go.

Brad: All right. Take us through it, Dan.

Dan: We got Hegseth. We got the generals. I'm so excited about Hegseth. So everybody probably knows some of the background of this—that Hegseth called a meeting requiring the attendance of all generals and flag officers like admirals and generals, as well as their senior enlisted staff. Nobody was exactly sure why they were called to Quantico. Over 800 of the highest-ranking military officers in the country. People talked about the cost—it was super expensive. Trump decided he was going to come along too, so you had all kinds of security issues and so forth.

As you say, nothing happened that needed to be there in person other than Hegseth wanting to, I think, flex and try to seem important or something. He essentially lectured the military commanders about his priorities for the military—what he called the "warrior ethos" of what he demands for the military. For those who follow Hegseth, and things that we've talked about, it was nothing new, nothing different. It was consistent with all his anti-DEI policies, his stance against women in the military, very frankly preference for white guy grooming standards, all that kind of stuff.

So what he did is he sought to advance his vision of, as I say, this warrior ethos. That's his language. That's not our language. That's what he was calling this. A few things that he emphasized—and I've got a couple quotes from what he said when he was speaking to them:

He emphasized the imposition of male fitness standards for all positions. He rescinded religious exemptions to the ban on beards—Sikh men who have a beard for religious purposes, explicitly rescinded that. He complained about due process rules in sexual assault investigations because, you know, they just do too much to attack the assailants. He complained about "constraining rules of engagement" and "stupid rules of engagement" that need to be rescinded. They rescinded rules for the retention of "adverse information" in personnel files. And he insinuated that officers who were women or people of color attained their rank for that reason alone—again, the anti-DEI kind of thing.

And then he said some things like this. I'm quoting: "I don't want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in combat units with females who can't meet the same Combat Arms physical standards as men, or troops who are not fully proficient on their assigned weapons platform or task, or under a leader who is the first but not the best." We could unpack that. You've got the anti-women stuff, you've got the anti-minority—any kind of minority officer is there because they're a minority officer and so forth.

Regarding not keeping so-called adverse information files, he said, quote, "People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career." It's worth noting here, several of these things were self-serving. He has in his file that he was not allowed to participate as a National Guard member at the Biden inauguration because they determined that he had white supremacist tattoos. We've talked about this. It's that kind of stuff he wants to scrub from people's files.

He said—here's another statement—"Frankly, it's tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country in the world. It is a bad look."

Lots of people have pointed out it's not clear that that's a thing, that there are lots of really rotund military officers. But he said this. There were just straight-up fabrications that he said. He asserted that in 2015, quote, "Combat Arms standards were changed to ensure females could qualify." He's made a lot of comments about the fitness standards and women not meeting the fitness standards and so forth, but he has never specified an instance where this actually happened, where there's actually been a case of the fitness standards not being met.

Other commentators noted that no service has lowered its fitness standards to accommodate women. And in one case, the Army actually created an entirely new system and test for determining physical fitness, with gender-neutral scoring to determine which types of jobs new recruits are qualified to do. So you kind of do a physical test, and if there are different positions that require different physical standards based on how you fulfill the test, which positions you can be open to—gender neutral, it could be gender blind. They just got a sheet that shows how people did, and then they match them to it.

Brad: If you just do a basic Google search of military standards for combat readiness or training, it's very clear. You can read article after article after article—I mean, you can go wherever you like and find the fact, like military.com. I was reading this board. I mean, you can read this in 1,000 places that in terms of combat readiness, it is a gender-neutral scoring system across the board. There may be other systems at various stages of military training, but combat readiness, “warriors in combat”—it's just not what he's talking about.

Dan: Yeah, exactly. It also pointed out—and this just gets to some of the old school stuff—as I was prepping this and looking around at different things, there are a lot of military trade newspapers and publications that are really tuned into this, that are aimed for a military audience. They are not all sympathetic to this. A lot of the critiques are coming from that perspective. That is certainly not anti-military. It is not anti-Department of Defense or Department of War, whatever we want to now call it. So these are, I would call them, critiques from those who are very pro-military, who are critical of this. I'll have more to say about that in a minute.

But it also pointed out that his review requires a justification for any standards put in place after 1990, right? So I mean, this is 35 years ago. As one person said, suggesting that it prefers a default to that era's gender and age-determined scoring of pushups and situps and a run—just like super old school kinds of things. He's also got stuff about height and waist ratio measurements. This is straight out of post-World War II conceptions of fitness standards.

Other ways his statements are self-serving: He said, quote, "We are overhauling an Inspector General process, the IG, that has been weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues, and poor performers in the driver's seat." Hegseth is currently under investigation by the Inspector General because of the whole Signal app thing. So he's like, we're going to—the Inspector General has been politicized.

He again called for troops to ignore, quote, "stupid rules of engagement." And he said this, quote: "We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement."

In saying this, Brad, as you probably know, he also criticized a retired U.S. Army General, Peter Chiarelli, who formally reprimanded Hegseth's former brigade commander in 2007. Hegseth's former commander, Michael Steele, was accused of issuing improper orders to his soldiers that led to the death of unarmed Iraqis, and so he was chastised for this. So lo and behold, Hegseth says we need to do away with what are pretty standard rules of engagement at this point.

And then finally, in terms of what Hegseth said, he said: "I look out at this group and I see great Americans, leaders who have given decades to our great Republic, at great sacrifice to yourselves and to your families. But if the words today are making your heart sink, you should do the honorable thing and resign."

So he basically tells the so-called warfighters, as he would call them, that if they don't like what he's saying and they don't like the way that he's saying it, that they should resign.

I have some thoughts about the responses to this. I'll throw it over to you for other just takeaways or things that stood out to you. It's just every hit point of Hegseth and the Trump administration in this speech that, again, didn't need to be delivered in person, didn't need to have everybody there.

Brad: So I want to zoom out. I think you just gave us so many of the highlights, lowlights, however you want to characterize them. I think people listening and watching have probably seen some of these clips and read some of these snippets. And so if I zoom out, there's a couple things that hit me as I watched this speech this week.

I think this is sometimes the benefit of doing the show on Friday—you know, sometimes I'm worried like, oh man, this happened Tuesday, we're not going to talk about it till Friday. But I've had a couple days, everyone's had a couple days to ruminate. And one of the things that hit me as I ruminated is something that was on my mind as I watched the speech, and I've been able to cultivate it.

A lot of people said this could have been an email. Okay, great. And it actually could not have been an email, because this kind of email doesn't do anything, just like this speech didn't do anything. Email, speech, gathering—doesn't matter.

A lot of commentary has focused on the reaction of the admirals and the generals in attendance, who seemed stone-faced. If you watch the clip, the very end of the speech, when Hegseth finishes—he says, "We're the War Department," and he kind of looks at everyone, expecting them to clap, erupt in applause, stand up, cheer—and there's no reaction whatsoever from anyone in attendance. And he kind of looks like he's thoroughly confused by this.

But I have a couple points here if I zoom out at a kind of star level looking down. One is: this was the most egregious display of Pete Hegseth being divorced from reality and Donald Trump being divorced from reality that I've seen in a long time. Watching him on stage in that blue suit that looks like a Fox News suit—it doesn't look right—and his whimsical socks and his coiffed hair, this guy looked and felt more like a TV man or a car salesman than he did a career military official or officer.

Everybody he's looking at in that audience is way more accomplished than him and outranks him in terms of the military. And yet, watching him, Dan, I think that he truly believed this was going to be something that inspired, transformed, revolutionized. I think he thought they were going to hear this and go, "Finally! Yeah, the warrior ethos! The shackles—"

Dan: The shackles are off. We can finally be the soldiers we've always wanted to be, or whatever. Yeah, absolutely.

Brad: And you could just see the disconnect. And as I'm watching this, Dan—I'm not a military person. I have people in my family who've served, I have not. My perception of career two- and three- and four-star admirals and generals is that these are very serious people. I may not always agree with all of them on politics, but I don't agree with anyone on politics all the time. These are serious people who take their roles very, very, very seriously.

There was no way this was going to do anything but feel like paternalism and feel like it was talking down to a group that does not take kindly to being talked down to. So that's number one.

The second part of this, though, is I want to come back to a mantra that I've had for months since Trump took office, which is: they do not want to govern. They want to rule.

This was a display of not governing and not leading, but ruling and telling. What do I mean by that? If you take over any organization—if you take over a role as the leader of a nonprofit, if you take over a football team, if you take over a new department in your company, if you become someone who's promoted, or you come from the outside—you know Dan, you and I used to see this in church life. A pastor comes from outside the church, and there's been congregants at this church for 38 years, and here's the new guy, Dan Miller, and he's got some crazy ideas.

If you want to be a leader, what do you do? You take stock of the climate of the institution, and you go to key stakeholders in that institution, and you try to explain to them your vision. You bring them on board. You try to get them to see what you see, so that they will buy in, and the people who listen to them will buy in.

What Hegseth could have done, Dan, is tirelessly, endlessly, persistently gone across the globe to the command centers of each and every admiral and general and sat with them to say, "Here's my vision for a new chapter in the Department of War. Here's what we're going to do."

Hegseth's not a leader. Trump's not a leader. They're rulers. They want to rule. They believe Trump is the king, and Hegseth believes he is a knight serving that king. And they believe they have this right by legacy, by divine revelation, by so many things. So they're not leaders. They want to be rulers.

And when it comes to this performance, I think all of us watching were like, "This is not how you get serious people to buy into your vision." You have to go and explain. And you can give an ultimatum. You can sit with somebody, explain the vision for where things are going, and if they don't get on board, if the person just doesn't want to buy in, then it's like, "Well, you probably need to leave because I'm in charge. Sorry. It's how it goes."

This looked like a car salesman yelling at a bunch of four-star generals, thinking that that was going to have some kind of imprint on them, and it clearly had zero. I've got more to say. I want to get to the Trump remarks. But you go—what else you got?

Dan: Well, to one of your points, I want to highlight—there was a, I think I'm getting this from CNN—a former senior Pentagon official who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. Listening to Hegseth's speech, he spoke with officials in the room. He described his remarks as quote, "uninspired," and he said it was largely what everyone expected, but still sounded more like what a platoon leader in their early 20s would say to young enlisted troops—exactly right, to your point about the car salesman.

And then he said this—this is a quote: "These guys were captains and majors in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them wounded with Silver Stars and Purple Hearts. And there's this guy, the youngest guy in the room, the most inexperienced guy in the room, with the least amount of combat time in the room, lecturing them."

And this was a common response from lots of veterans and veteran general-grade and flag-grade officers that were basically like, "Who is this guy to tell us this?"

And to your point, I think you're right. It was a power play: "Let's bring them all here. We're not going to go around and visit them. We're going to bring them all here." But I think one of the things that I think is true of both Trump and Hegseth, but certainly Hegseth in this, to your point about leadership, is mistaking positional authority for leadership.

And everybody—anybody out there who has a boss knows how this works. Anybody who occupies a position where you supervise others—yeah, there's positional authority, and people have to do what you say because you're the boss and you have to do that. That's not the same as leadership. And effective leaders, even if they are in positions of positional authority, as you're saying, will try to bring people on board.

And I think I don't know that Trump and Hegseth would understand that distinction. I certainly don't think that they would ever do the work of actually bringing people along. But this is what it is: "I hold this position," and I think Hegseth—I think Trump just wants the positional authority, and he'll just decide he's going to crush you if you don't do what he says.

Hegseth, I really wonder if he knows the difference, because you talk about the response he was hoping for—that he has mistaken positional authority for leadership. These dudes do not care about you, Pete Hegseth. And guess how many Secretaries of Defense they have sat through in their military career? You are nothing to them just because you're Pete Hegseth. And that was really apparent.

And it also reminds me—it's a pattern in the Trump administration. If folks remember back to the first Trump administration, when it was all the talk about the big tax cuts for corporations, and they were going to put this all back into the thing, they'd hire more people, and it would grow the economy and whatever. And I remember the Secretary of—maybe it was Commerce, I forget which person it was—but talking to a room full of CEOs, and he asked for the show of hands: "How many people are going to put this back into hiring more, expanding?" And nobody's hands went up because they're like, "We're going to buy back our stock and make our boards richer. Our directors are going to get more money out of this. Our investors are going to get more money. This is what we're going to do."

And the surprise was sort of staggering. This dogma that this is how this is going to happen, this is an answer that's going to work. I feel like we saw the same thing again, to your point of being out of touch with reality. Who is Hegseth? He is, as we know, a Fox News analyst. He has spent his adult professional life in the echo chamber, hearing that this is what the military wants, inventing these stories of super weak women who are able to take combat roles and whatever. And confronted with reality, he really has no idea what to do. All of that was on display in this. I think it really ties into that notion of mistaking positional authority for leadership.

[Pete Hegseth clip]: "Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading, and we lost our way. We became the woke department, but not anymore. No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship, no more division, distraction or gender delusions, no more debris. As I've said before, and will say again, we are done with that shit. Removing the distractions, clearing the way for leaders to be leaders. You might say we're ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that."

 If we just wanted to take away Pete Hegseth's vision for this military, it would be everything you and I have said for 1,000 episodes on this show, which is: Christian nationalists want to make this country a straight, white, native-born, patriarchal, heterosexual country, and that increasingly includes people who are able-bodied—no disabilities, no divergence.

So if you just think of what Hegseth talked about here, he railed against women endlessly in this speech. "I don't want my son—" And "women can't—"

Dan: "and women can’t meet the standards, you know. It is what it is. What are you going to do? They just got to leave the military."

Brad: And we already talked about it. Most of what he said can be debunked within 10 seconds. If you think about what he's talking about with beards, with facial hair, with other exemptions for religion—what he's saying is, "I want a military that is Christian." And we've seen him say this in the past. He has said in the past that the military is one of the only institutions on the earth that is pro-God, pro-America, pro-Christian. I mean, he's talked about it in those terms.

So you mentioned Sikh people who are Sikh and the wearing of the beard as a religious part of their identity and practice, the wearing of the turban or any kind of religious garb that goes on your head. If these standards go into effect, you're looking at those folks basically saying, "I'm not going to sign up for the military. I can't."

There were also—many of these standards are related to Black soldiers who—shaving every day causes injury and problems for them in their face. So these standards have evolved.

I am thinking of Japanese—so I want to give everyone just a little history here. Japanese American soldiers serving in World War II were in a segregated unit, one of the segregated units of World War II, and the 442nd/100th Regiment became the most decorated regiment per capita in the history of the military. They lost more men. They got more Purple Hearts, more medals than ever. And one of the things that was true in those cases is that they were not allowed to put "B" on their uniform. Every other—not every other, but most other soldiers were allowed to put things on the uniform that marked their religious identity. So if you had "P," it was Protestant; "C," Catholic; "H," Hebrew, which is for Jewish; "X," nothing, no religion.

So there were like 90% Buddhists in this combat team, this combat regiment that became the most decorated, Pete Hegseth, and they were not allowed to put "B" on the uniform—meaning, if they died in combat, it would be very hard for people to recognize their religious identity and give them the proper funeral rites, burial rites, and so on and so on and so on.

What's the point? The U.S. military is a place where diversity is our strength, because we have people in this country who are Black and Sikh and of Arab descent and Latino descent, people who are East Asian and South Asian, and they all sign up to serve in our military. And one of the basic things they ask is like, "Hey, I want to serve, and I may die for this country. Can I wear a beard? Because that's what my religion says I need to do, and that's how I interpret my religious practice."

Pete Hegseth basically came out with a Christian, fat-shaming, able-bodied, patriarchal, male-only vision for the military, and it was coded as—it's probably whites, mainly. Whites only, whites mostly, something like that. And a lot of folks pointed out, "Hey, you're going to weaken the most diverse institution in the United States."

And this machismo ethos exists, and it's Putin's Russian army, and that army is getting its ass kicked by a much smaller country, Ukraine, over and over and over and over again. All the bluster does not lead to a more effective military, despite what the Fox News host thinks about all that. So anyway, final thoughts on this before we go to a break?

Dan: And Hegseth—you talk about the diversity, I think the issue of women in combat roles is here as well. Ash Carter, when they opened the combat roles to women, was like, "We're closing these off to half of our population." There was also just a pragmatic component. The military was not able to fill all the slots that it needed to fill. So I mean, you want to talk about combat readiness? How about being able to actually recruit enough people to do all the things that need to happen in the military?

And you talk about it evolving. Hegseth's got his stupid pull-up thing with RFK Jr.—you do all that stuff. Everybody knows in the military the military has thousands and thousands of people doing lots of different things. Does the person who works in the motor pool—does it matter how many pull-ups they can do in the same way that it does if you're a frontline combat troop? Probably not. For every combat—I don't even know—the paper pushing, the clerical work, the amount of just administration that the military takes, and all of the people in those offices who, let me be clear, are vital to combat effectiveness and combat readiness and making everything work. Does it matter as much how many push-ups they can do?

Some of the fitness standards, to me, I'm like—we live in a world, this is not the 18th or 19th century where people are marching all the time and doing this. I realize it's physically strenuous. My point is, he wants to go back to this time with this vision of an ideal warrior physique. Does that even fit? And it's all under the nomenclature of combat readiness, which has been code for a long time: "We want to get the gays out of the military." Now, "We want to get transgender people out of the military. Women don't belong in the military. People from weird religions don't belong in the military. Everybody who's not a straight, white Christian man has no business being in the military. So we'll couch it under the terms of combat readiness.”

What I'm trying to say is combat readiness, I think, means a lot of different things across different parts of the military. And this is what slowly the military has come to realize and to recognize and to make room for. And that's part of what Pete Hegseth wants to unwind.

And so just, I guess, my takeaway from this is: Let's not fall for the line that this is somehow about combat readiness. This is not a warrior ethos. This is a white Christian nationalist ethos. That's what this is, and that's what this is about.

Brad: All right, let's take a break. We'll come back. We'll get into some of what Trump said, and then we'll talk about the shutdown. Be right back.

Brad: Dan, one of the things that we've talked about often on the show is that Pete Hegseth has his eyes on, quote, "the homeland." And on Monday, I did a livestream—I did an episode about Trump's war on Americans. And one of the things that I said, even before this happened—and I'm resisting the temptation to play the clips from what I said the day before this happened, because I was pretty much correct—is that Hegseth and Trump have their eyes on you, the American. You are the enemy. You are the one in their way.

What do you have that they want? They want your money, your property, and your power. And you're like, "I don't have a lot of property." Doesn't matter. They want everything you have in terms of what they can extract from the American citizen.

And when Pete Hegseth says he wants a white Christian dude army, it's because he thinks that's the kind of army we should have, and it's because he thinks that's the kind of country we should have.

Now, what did Trump say in his speech to the generals? Well, here it is:

[Trump clip]: "Then I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard—but military—because we're going into Chicago very soon."

Brad: Dan, he says that American cities should be training grounds for the military. He says that's a kind of war—the war from within.

I'm going to say what I said Monday. I'm going to say it again. They are not going to stand up to Xi or Putin. They're scared to death of those guys. They cannot do that. They are not going to go out into the world and be people who stand up to the actual difficult, smart foes of the United States—could be Putin, could be Xi, it could be dealing with North Korea. They're not going to do that. They will talk tough and down to Ukraine or to Europe, but their ultimate sights are on us.

And Trump said that to the generals and the admirals: the war is from within. Use our cities as training for our military.

How should you interpret that, person listening to this or watching? You should interpret it like this: You are their enemy. You are the one who stands in the way of what they want. Any power you have—assembly, the freedom of religion, the freedom of speech, the freedom to dissent from them—they want that power from you. They want every dollar they can extract from this country. They don't care if the economy plummets. They don't care if most of us lose jobs, go into a recession, suffer. Healthcare, infrastructure, schools—they don't care. The goal is to extract from you every dollar they can get and every piece of property we have. That could be your house, but could also be every national park or everything they can get their grubby hands on to sell off to private equity or someone else.

That is what Trump told the generals, and that's exactly what I thought he would say. And it is what he said: The war is on us.

Now, let me just make one more point, Dan, and I'll throw it to you, and then we'll go to the shutdown. Who are the people that Hegseth and Trump have killed recently? Civilians on boats. They will gladly kill civilians on boats—these boats that they say are full of fentanyl and everything else. A lot of reports that there are fishermen on those boats trying to get home, but they don't care.

What did Hegseth say recently about the Battle of Wounded Knee, or the massacre at Wounded Knee, where unarmed people, Lakota tribe, were massacred? Every soldier who fought in that massacre or took part in it will be restored and recognized as heroes.

They're telling you, by their actions and by their historical vision, that they don't see violence against civilians, unarmed people, as a problem.

I mean, you all can tell me, "Brad, you've lost it. You're really hyperbolic these days." But on Monday, I said the war is against you. And what did Trump say? The war is against our cities. How long before it's your city? You may not live in Portland, you may not live in Memphis, you may not live in DC. How long until your suburb, your apartment building is the one where ICE agents are repelling from the windows, combing the streets for people they think are dissidents? And how long before they just call anybody they want "Antifa"?

So yeah, maybe I'm getting on a roll here, Dan, and I've had too much Diet Coke and whatever else. But that's what I took away from the comprehensive picture of Trump saying cities are the training ground for the military. These are people that have no problem killing civilians—none. And I just don't think that you can ignore the expansion of the category of civilian that they will set their eyes on.

Reel me back in if you want. Any thoughts here?

Dan: Well, no, it fits. I mean, Hegseth said, "I don't like the stupid rules of engagement," right? And based on what? On his former unit commander who led to the death—whose orders led to the death of unarmed civilians.

Trump goes out, says, "We are under invasion from within, no different from a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways." Why, Brad? Because they don't wear uniforms. I mean, it's just—it's right there.

As you say, being a civilian is no protection against military force. Being a citizen is no protection against military force when he decides that everybody who voted blue—even people in those cities who didn't. Hey, Trump, there are Republican voters in Portland. There are people who voted for Trump in Portland. They exist. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're a civilian. You're just a training ground. You're fodder for the military to practice on.

I think your point's exactly right. One of the things to just listen for is when somebody will only talk about the enemy within, it's because, as you say, Trump doesn't have the backbone or the spine to face up to the enemy without, so to speak, right? On the outside. As you say, he wants to be one of those guys. He doesn't want to fight those guys. He's the bully who looks up to those bullies. Those are the bullies he wants to be, and he knows he can't play the same game as them. He knows he can't compete with them. He doesn't have the spine for it. He certainly doesn't have the acumen for it.

So he's going to create and generate an enemy from within, an enemy of civilians that he hopes the military will stack up against and so forth.

Last thing to point out: there was—you talk about a non-enthusiastic response. People have noted how those officers were sitting there, stone-faced, silent. They're not going to come out and criticize the Commander in Chief. They can't do that. They're not going to boo him off stage or something. But there was no appetite in that room for this language of cities as training grounds for the military, American cities as training grounds.

These men and women in that room—they're not there because they want to fight Americans. They're not there because they want to attack the homeland or whatever is being called for. They were there because they took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. And this doesn't sit well with them. And I think that's maybe the last sort of tagline of this: to watch going forward and see how does this actually play out in practice as we move forward.

Brad: If you want to rule and not govern, you don't think to yourself, "Hey, you know what would be really good for the people of my community, my country?" You never ask that question. You're a ruler, not a governor. You dictate what's good for the people.

Going back to what you said earlier, you have the authority. It's the textbook definition of authoritarian. I think people hear "authoritarian" all the time. They're like, "What does that mean?" Well, it's like Dan Miller said: If you have the authority of the office—President, head of DOD, whoever you are—and you just say, "You're going to listen because I have the authority," that's authoritarian.

A leader says, "Hey, why don't we do it this way? And let me explain why that's the best way to do it. Can I get you on board?"

Dan: Yeah, maybe let me even revise what I'm saying. People who've been out in the field for 30 years have some good insights. Maybe I'll even take those on board.

Brad: That's not authoritarian. That's a leader who has authority but who's trying to—If you're a ruler and not a governor, why would you go fight Putin? What do you get? What is your reward for fighting Putin or any other tough guy? You're going to take losses, you're going to take cuts, you're going to spend money.

The reward structure for Trump is always, "Well, what do I get?" And if I wage war on my own people, I get stuff. I get more of what I want. So that's what he's going to do.

Brad: All right. Excuse me. Now, going back to what you said about blue states, this plays directly into the shutdown. So the government is shut down. You know, it's been shut down about 10 times over the last four or five decades. Trump's now overseen a couple of those. But here's what Trump put on social media yesterday:

"I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, head of Project 2025 fame—or he of Project 2025 fame—to determine which of the many Democrat agencies, most of which are a political scam, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can't believe the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to quietly and quickly make America great again."

Okay, so this got people in a tizzy because they're like, "Look, Project 2025—he's admitting it." And I—

Dan: I was shocked, weren't you, Brad? Shocked to hear that Trump's influenced by Project 2025.

Brad: There's no way. I was going to waste time in my brain—Dan, you and I have known this for months. Anyone paying attention knows this. The fact that Project 2025 is the playbook for the Trump presidency is just clear to anyone who's been looking, and any of you listening to this show know that too. You already know. You're clued in.

Now let's talk about Russ Vought. Russ Vought is the guy who we've talked about on this show quite often. He is Trump's—as the Huffington Post put it—he is Trump's hatchet man in charge of the Office of OMB [Office of Management and Budget]. But what you really should take away about Russ Vought are a couple things that we've already said on the show, and we'll say again:

He's a self-identified Christian nationalist. He loves that term and says, "I take that term." He is somebody who probably knows more about the parliamentary process, executionary details of the U.S. government—and I will say this seriously—than anyone on Earth. He knows every in and out of how the government works—every button, every lever, every process, everything.

And he, as Mike Lee, Senator from Utah, said, has been training for this since puberty—which is kind of creepy. But he lives to chop. His mission in life is to make a war on the administrative aspects of the executive branch.

Dan, you've mentioned this on the show so many times. This is the Commander in Chief of the unitary executive theory—the idea that the executive branch should have unilateral power over the federal workforce, over all administrative agencies, and the ability to act without any kind of roadblocks to its will when it comes to what they want to do.

And so here are some quotes from The Atlantic, from a recent piece. I'm not going to say it's misdirection play, but the trauma-inducing shock troops—Steve Bannon said, talking about Elon Musk and DOGE: "Russ has got a vision. He's not an anarchist. He's a true believer."

What Bannon is saying there is: Remember when DOGE was doing what they were doing, everybody got mad at Elon and ran him out of town, and Russ Vought has just been doing the work ever since, largely unnoticed.

Vought's agenda includes shrinking the government, but it goes deeper than that. His vision of state power would effectively reject a century of jurisprudence and unravel the modern federal bureaucracy as we know it. A devotee of the so-called unitary executive theory, he wants to see the civil service gutted and repopulated with presidential loyalists, independent federal agencies politicized or eliminated, and absolute control of the executive branch concentrated in the Oval Office. And he seems to think that what Congress says to do are suggestions, not policies or laws.

It's not like Congress is doing much anyway to stop him. So all of this to say, when Trump posted that on social media, what he was saying is: "Well, now I have my chance to work with Russ Vought and destroy agencies that are—that we see as unnecessary, politicized, or roadblocks to our wealth."

Now I want to get to some of those in a minute, and I want to tell you the things he's cut and he's already gotten rid of. But Dan, what are your reactions to the shutdown, to Vought? We can get into why the Democrats did this if you want. What do you think?

Dan: Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of directions to go. One overarching thing to point out is that typically, and everybody knows this, the party that is not the President, doesn't hold the Oval Office with a shutdown, kind of takes the blame for the shutdown. That's what typically happens. That's why Democrats avoided the shutdown last time. That's why some were reluctant to do it this time—they don't want to shoulder the blame for it.

But polls show that people are holding the Trump administration responsible. Whether that matters to the Trump administration, that's a whole different thing to understand.

So all of the threats to fire people, to permanently do away with agencies and things like this—we'll see. It's intended to punish the Democrats. We'll see what it does with voters and how it plays in different things like that.

But another piece of this is the targeting of blue states and blue projects. They've withheld, and very explicitly—being like, "You know, if you were a blue state, oh, sorry, you had federal funding for a rail project? Not anymore. It's just too expensive in the shutdown. Oh, New York City, you had a bridge project or a tunnel project? Well, that's gone now."

So explicitly politicizing the cuts to target, again, places that didn't vote for Donald Trump. Why? Because they're not the real Americans, right? We're going to shut down the government. We're not going to shut down the government for everybody. We're not going to take away money from everybody. We're going to take away money from those whom Trump views as the internal enemy—the same people he wants to target with the military, the same people that Hegseth wants to make sure can't be in the military.

I think it's just the way that all these things sort of fit together into a unified program is worth noting.

And I think just one other thought on this is that we'll see as we move forward how the rest of the GOP responds to this. You mentioned that the reason for this, the reason why the Democrats are holding on to this, is trying to fight to keep subsidies for Obamacare in play and have those restored after the big beautiful bill got rid of them and all that sort of stuff. The GOP says that they support this, and they're doing what they always do, which is: now is not the time to talk about it. We can talk about it before the end of the year and so forth.

I think it'll be interesting, depending how long this goes on, to see what those GOP members hear from constituents and whether or not that plays a role. But right now, it's all about Trump, unified executive. Doesn't really matter what Congress does. Trump is doing what Trump wants to do, trying to pin it on the Democrats. Polls say that that's not working, and we'll see what happens. Because he doesn't seem to care about polling anymore. He only cares about exercising power, and this is a great chance for him to do that.

Brad: Well, so what they've done—and we won't go through all of it because we're kind of running out of time today—but what they've already done is target things in California, New York, Illinois, Colorado, other states that they consider to be blue states. So they have stopped things like the building of bridges in New York. And when Vought was asked about it, he was like, "Well, there was just unconstitutional DEI aspects to that."

And Jamelle Bouie, the writer for The New York Times, was like, "So, like, a Black person was going to use the bridge or something? What is DEI and unconstitutional about a big bridge project that's already been funded?"

So what they're doing is saying: This is political war in the form of the Office of Management and Budget. So if you're California, if you're New York, if you're Colorado, if you're Massachusetts, we're going to cut your stuff. So it's not just government agencies. It's not just firing federal workers. It's revenge against those who Trump thinks of as his enemies. Again, we're talking today about a war from within.

Dan: This is revenge against American people. Revenge against U.S. citizens. Just keeping that out front. Not even revenge against politicians in the other party. Not even revenge against activist organizations. Revenge against all the Americans who didn't vote for you because they're not really Americans because they didn't vote for you.

Brad: Yeah. Well, he posted last night an AI video of him as the Grim Reaper attacking, quote-unquote, blue states with Russ Vought as kind of his henchman. And one thing that people have said online is: Why would California—if you think about how they're going to act—why would California, New York, other states, Massachusetts, send in tax dollars to the federal government so they can attack you?

And if you're listening right now, you're like, "Wait a minute, doesn't that sound like civil war?" Like, California is not going to pay the $85 billion that it contributes to the federal budget through taxes. It gives $85 billion more than it takes, and it's not going to pay that. Well, if New York didn't do that, and Massachusetts didn't do it, and Minnesota didn't do it, and—wait a minute—Washington didn't do it? Huh. It seems like we have a bunch of states not participating in the Union anymore. Wait a minute. What are you guys talking about?

That's what happens when you attack your own people, whether with the military or through money and cutting infrastructure and things that make it so your citizens can eat and survive and live and drive over bridges and go to schools that are in any way functioning. That's how it goes.

So, you know, Russ Vought is the guy getting all the attention right now. If you go to our website, straightwhiteamericanjesus.com, you go to the Episodes tab, and you type in "Project 2025," you will find probably five episodes we've done on Russ Vought, explaining who he is, where he comes from, why this is the thing that he dreams about at night and has been thinking about since puberty.

But the ultimate goal, Dan—and this is my last comment, we'll go to a break if you don't want to—

If you don't want to govern, you want to rule. You probably don't like democracy. And if you want an unbound executive who is unfettered by the other branches of government, you probably want something that looks more like autocracy, dictatorship, monarchy, whatever you want to call it, than democracy—the sharing of powers, checks and balances, separation of the different branches of government.

The unitary executive theory is moving the United States government to a place where the President can just do whatever he wants and there will be nothing standing in his way. And we're already there. This guy is coming up with tariffs on a whim, executive orders on a whim, revenge against companies, revenge against universities, and Congress has not stood in his way. That's what this is about.

Do you want to say anything about the Democrats and why they're doing it? They're doing this, Dan, because they don't want the Affordable Care Act to be gutted. They want the subsidy, the premium subsidies, to continue. They want NPR and PBS funded. They want other things to happen. Any thoughts on if this is good or bad for the Democrats before we take a break and go to our final segment?

Dan: I think overall, I mean, it's risky, but I think it's good for the Democrats. I think it's good to stand up for something. I think, again, we'll see if this matters as we move forward. But this is actually something that lots of people in the GOP also want to do. There are lots of people in the GOP who want to extend Obamacare subsidies in particular. Never mind PBS, all of that. Why? Because it's hugely popular.

They're going to bump millions of people off of health insurance—20 million. They don't want to do that before the midterms. So they would like to—they don't want to extend these forever because they don't give a shit about people and insurance. GOP never has. It's why they've never had a healthcare policy. But they now have millions of constituents who rely on that, and so they don't want to cut that out from under them before the midterms.

So I think the Democrats have some leverage actually there. I think that's what some people are hearing. As I say, I think that's what the polling is showing. People know—especially the Trump faithful are one thing, the anti-Trump faithful are another thing—but those undecided voters who are there, the people who voted for Trump this time who hadn't before, the inroads he had made with African Americans, with other minority communities, many of those are eroding. And many of those people are dependent on these, and they are listening and watching.

So I think it's worth doing for the Democrats. And the Democrats are in a position where they can't do much. They simply can't. And so I think it's something to do. At the end of the day, I don't know that it works, but I think it brings this into view. And again, I think the polling shows right now that the GOP is actually bearing the responsibility for this among voters. And that perception is reality when it comes to politics. When voters say, "You know who caused this," they're not blaming the Democrats. I think overall, it's a good move to make.

Brad: Let's take a break. Come back and talk about a court case you probably don't know enough about. Be right back.

Dan: All right. So briefly—I know we're running out of time—but Judge William G. Young this week issued a really long, 161-page opinion. You read it. People will talk about it being a book-length opinion, and really slamming the Trump administration's targeting of pro-Palestinian students and professors for deportation—so non-citizen pro-Palestinian academics, basically—and deporting them on the grounds that they're saying things that are antisemitic and so forth.

And he reasserted that their political speech is protected by the First Amendment. And so that's fine, that's important. That's really central. I think that's really key.

This decision, though, or the write-up of it, the delivery of the decision, made a lot of waves this week because of the way that it was delivered and the things that Judge Young said. And I think it's worth noting some of these.

He criticized the administration for attacking free speech, quote, "under the cover of an unconstitutionally broad definition of antisemitism." He said Trump's conduct violated the sacred oath of a president to, quote, "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States," and that the actions of the administration represented a, quote, "full-throated assault on the First Amendment."

He wrote, quote: "I fear President Trump believes that the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values, as long as they're lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected."

And I think that that's an absolutely true statement. We could say more about this, and I invite people to go take a look at some of the stuff that he wrote and stuff that he said. And people note this. I think it's significant because it didn't just say the sort of legalese of "their speech is protected by the First Amendment, don't deport them." He said—and I read one commentator who said this—he said in his decision what a lot of people have thought about and what they feel about the Trump administration.

And I thought that that was really significant, the way that he rebuked this, the way that he brings this out into the open. We'll see how this plays out. But I think this was an important decision, for the outcome. I agree absolutely that pro-Palestinian political speech should be protected speech. I don't think it's inherently antisemitic. I don't think people should be deported on the basis of their political views, all of those kinds of things.

But I think the reason why this court case was so interesting to so many and created the buzz that it did was the rationale that was given and the kind of commentary that came with it. And for anybody who wants to say judges shouldn't be giving commentary—just look at SCOTUS. That's all SCOTUS does. SCOTUS gives commentary on everything. So please don't start with the whole "the judiciary shouldn't be giving commentary on stuff" if you've got Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito commenting on everything and doing public speeches and writing their books and doing everything else that they want to do.

It was a really significant court finding, but I think—I don't know if it represents a real shift, but it was a different tone than we get sometimes. And I'll say this now: this was my reason for hope. This piece of it. I feel like on the judicial side, it's time for the judiciary to take off the gloves and say, "Here's what is really happening. We're not"—to use the language of Justice John Roberts—"it's not just calling balls and strikes there.” This is bigger, and this is more than that."

They have been under assault by the executive branch, and I think that this was refreshing to see a member come out and say that part out loud and call out the administration for what it is. And I hope that that does represent a shift, because the Trump administration loses routinely at the lower courts till it gets to SCOTUS, and 70%, 80%, whatever the number is now of what Trump wants happens. I thought it was a significant finding, and I think the tone and tenor and the content of it is what made it really significant.

Brad: I just can't resist—John Roberts, you might be calling balls and strikes, but it seems like depending on who's pitching and hitting, the strike zone is different, John. That's what it seems like to me. Sorry for using your Christian name there, Supreme Court Justice leader, but there you go.

My reason for hope is—that was a big one. There's people in the Discord this week talking about that one. And yeah, it really does strike a tone. And these things are not trivial. The judiciary putting up a fight and obstacles is not something we should overlook. It's a co-equal branch of government, if it's designed that way. So start acting like it.

The same goes for Congress. Whether or not whatever happens with this shutdown, people want to see that there's a party, Democratic Party, that is actually listening and willing to fight. Willing to just fight.

Dan: Yeah, and we want to talk about positional authority. Hey, guess what? Democrats, you are in a position of authority in Congress. Yes, you're the minority. Yes, you can't—you don't have the votes to win majorities and whatever. But you're still in a position of power and authority, so use it. Act like it for once, instead of trying to appease or be quiet or stop the hand-wringing about the last election. Let's start moving forward.

Brad: Yeah. I have two. One of them is going to seem weird, but one of them is JB Pritzker. And I'll play you a clip right now of JB Pritzker at a press conference:

[JB Pritzker clip]: "What kind of a country are we in here? The United States used to be a country where the President followed the Constitution, where the President believed in the rule of law, where the President didn't target people based on their views, but rather had debate with people and maybe won, maybe lost in an election, and put their views forward and got them passed. But the idea that you're going to go suggest that you're going to arrest people, or that people don't deserve to be U.S. citizens when they are, just because they oppose the President of the United States—there is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked."

Brad: Pritzker is the governor of Illinois. Many of you know that already, or all of you know that already. And he's calling for the 25th Amendment. You've seen Democrats basically coming out with this line recently. I think this line is actually somewhat effective. I think you have to frame Trump as he's mentally ill. And it's okay—there are mentally ill people in the world. I'm not demonizing them. What I'm saying, though, is they should not be President, especially when they have such hurtful feelings towards so many other people.

This framing, to me, the 25th Amendment framing, is one that jolts you out of the Trumpian normalization of everything he's doing. And I think that's something that Democrats should do more of: "This guy is not well. He should not be in power."

It's like the "weird" line they were taking—like, "Republicans are weird"—in the Kamala Harris campaign. The consultants told them to knock it off, and they did. That line was effective. Stephen Miller is weird. He's creepy. Do you want Stephen Miller around your kid's birthday party? I don't, because every time he opens his mouth, he's just hateful. He's weird.

Anyway, that's one.

Number two is this: There was a disgusting, vile, violent attack in Chicago by ICE agents on an apartment complex, and we could have spent all day talking about it, and it makes me sick to my stomach. I've seen footage of it, I've read about it, and every time I do, I can't breathe. It's just despicable.

But one thing someone pointed out in our Discord was so insightful: that story broke through to People Magazine. And it's one of those instances where I think—Dan, you and I spend so much of our days reading political articles, news, who said what, what clips, what policies, who is Russ Vought, all that. Normal people don't do this. A lot of people who don't care about politics that much care about People Magazine.

And if those people are seeing this, that's a moment for it to be like, "This is not—no, no." It's one thing to deport people who are criminals, but you guys were zip-tying children in apartments. And if that breaks through, it's more a sign of what Zach Beauchamp at Vox and others have said: they're moving too fast and too furious, and it is going to create backlash from the non-politically interested, normie suburban whoever's that are going to see in People Magazine or wherever else they get news.

The Chip and Joanna Gaines group—I am not making fun, I'm just saying that group is normal, Dan. [Dan laughing] Dan, I am not making fun of the Chip and Joanna Gaines segment of the population. I'm saying that group is not like—you know, "I just read Magnolia magazine's new suggestions for decorating for fall time for this 5,000-word feature on Russ Vought." Usually not what they do. Usually the person reading the 5,000 words on Russ Vought is not reading Magnolia magazine.

My point is: if the Magnolia magazine, People Magazine people end up seeing this disgusting, vile stuff from ICE, it might break through in a way that changes public opinion even further against Trump.

So, all right. Thanks for listening, y'all. I'm going to be here Monday talking about the Gospel of Peter Thiel. So tune in on Monday at 2:30 on our YouTube channel or our Facebook Live to hear me talk about the Gospel of Peter Thiel. A lot of people are confused by his views on the Antichrist, on Armageddon, on the end of the world, on all kinds of Carl Schmitt and Nazi ideology. I'm going to break that all down from my perspective, tell you what I think. I've been working on this for months now. So join me Monday for that.

Otherwise, we'll be back Wednesday—"What's in the Code"—Friday with the weekly roundup. Would love for you to subscribe to our upcoming show from Axis Mundi Media called Teología Sin Vergüenza, which is roughly translated as "Shameless Theology." It is a show from queer feminist Latinx theologians who are bringing together their politics and their faith at a table that is unique. So check that out. You can find that at axismundi.us and other places.

For now, we'll say thanks for listening. Have a good day.

Dan: Thanks, Brad.