The White House is very distinctly not a palace, right? Yeah give it time. There’s so much gold. Well, believe it or not, we are not going to talk about the elections that are happening on Tuesday. We’re going to save our powder for next week, when there will be lots of results and fascinating data to dissect. Instead, our conversation today is going to be about Congress. David, I’m so sorry. I know you would probably rather talk about something more upbeat, how the courts are still actually doing their jobs, but should we. You lost the coin toss. This week. So we’re just going to go with congressional dysfunction. Michelle I’m all about this. I’m all about this. You’re all I can. You’re ready. I can do this topic at Joe Rogan length. I promise you that. So buckle up, everybody. Delicious. Buckle up because both Jamelle and I have been writing this week about the sad, extreme dysfunction of the legislative branch. Whether we’re talking about the House Speaker not swearing in a new member or Congress putting the hurt on millions of Americans with this shutdown. So let’s just start here. We’re taping on Thursday morning. So the government has been shut down for a month. On Nov. 1, SNAP benefits are going to just abruptly stop a program that provides food assistance to lower income households. David, you’ve had time to process. What’s your take on what’s happening or not happening with this Congress. Are we seeing a difference in or degree from the level of dysfunction that we’ve all pretty much become accustomed to. I think this is a difference in. I think what we’re seeing with House Speaker Johnson especially, is handling the house is something novel. He is keeping it out of session, right. He’s essentially – no one’s meeting. And critically, there’s not really any negotiations happening. Nothing to begin the process of trying to wind down the shutdown. It’s as if Speaker Johnson and House Republicans are acting as if they have nothing to do. And I mean, what I find not baffling, but just striking is even as this snap cliff approaches, Republican members seem completely, by and large, seem completely indifferent to the fact that many of their constituents are about to lose food assistance no matter what kind of old stereotypes they may throw out about who they think SNAP recipients are. The fact of the matter is that many people who are represented by Republican governors and Republican lawmakers are recipients of SNAP, and they’re disproportionately children, disabled people and seniors. So just observing how House Republicans feel no urgency about this and have taken no steps to try to negotiate as if they have no obligation to. I find genuinely striking and something that turns this from something that marks this as a different kind of phenomenon. David, what about you? I’m going to agree that we are dealing with a difference in on two fronts here. So one is the absolute total subservience of the majority of the legislative branch to the executive branch. I mean, that is a thing that is a difference in, this idea that whatever the president says, we’re going to snap into line and do, combined with an absolute abdication of the power of that entire branch of government. And so the impetus seems to be that so long as the president is ready to fight, there will be no real discussion here. There will be no compromise at all that this is going to all be about who gets to point at the scoreboard at the end of this whenever this occurs. And so you are looking at the absolute breakdown, at least so far, of anything approaching a legislative process. And look, this is not unprecedented to have differences between Republicans and Democrats in a budgeting process. And what happens is they typically in year generations past, they would get in and hammer out, say, a 65 to 35 or a 70 to 30 compromise that would leave of people at the extreme edges upset. But a majority would be at least accepted, comfortable with it. And now, just that very word, that word compromise is seen as synonymous with defeat. It’s seen as synonymous with humiliation and subjugation. And that is just that is a difference in. And coming from a low baseline, I should say we’re not coming. This is not like a sudden change of an otherwise healthy and functional branch of government. This is like the utter deterioration of an already diminishing branch of government. I just want to add real quick to David’s points, that what’s especially strange about the supplication of Congress of the Republican led branches to the president’s kind of priorities and political stances is if you are a long serving member of Congress the theory and what has been the practice in the past is that actually provides you a bit of insulation from the president’s political priorities. If you’ve been there for 20 years, from your perspective, presidents come and go. I’ve you’re not the first president I’ve served with. You won’t be the last one. So that gives you a level of Oh, I can break from the president here to an extent, because I have a separate base of power from the president. And that’s even more true. That’s supposed to be even more true of senators who are not even who are elected on an almost entirely different schedule than the president. And what’s striking, and this might be a product of the fact that so many members are relatively new. They’ve been there for one, two, three terms. But what’s striking is how they really do fully identify their political futures with that of the president, even in circumstances where it’s clear to me at least, that Trump is dragging you down substantially, the incentive here actually runs in the different in the opposite direction. But they cannot break from him. Well, I’m interested in particularly how Trump is impacting each team’s behavior here. So my suspicion is that Republicans in Congress, who ordinarily are worried that they’re going to pay a huge price if they are participating in a shutdown or seen as obdurate, are counting on the president to do whatever that weird magic he does is to blame the other team, make this all about how the Democrats are doing something horrible. I have no idea if this will work, but I do think that they’ve done the cost benefit analysis and they find it, less scary to risk being blamed by the public than to have to cross this president who they are absolutely terrified of. Whereas on the other side, the Democrats, if you talk about negotiations, the Democrats don’t trust the Republican congressional folks to be able to stick to any promises they make. Because the Democrats have watched this president claw back stuff that Congress has already pushed through. So the idea that Democrats are going to agree to something with the confidence that it will actually come to pass is just out of the picture at this point. So I think it’s become a very ugly, hardened situation. Well, absolutely, Michelle. And that does raise a really important question. What’s the Democrats end game here. I mean, I think the Republicans what’s going to go forward is pretty clear to map out as far as the process. We don’t know the outcome. The process is going to be they’re just waiting for the king on the throne to raise his scepter in a particular way and to say, make a deal, don’t make a deal. Hold the line, whatever. We know all Republican eyes are on Donald Trump, but what is the Democratic endgame here. Because, Michelle, you said it very well that they can’t trust a deal with this president. I mean, the president has taken a position on executive power that is, in essence, I get two Vetoes. I get the veto that is in the Constitution, the one where I veto legislation, it can be overridden by supermajorities in both houses. But also I have this other veto, which is just called executive power. And I get to choose which laws to enforce and which laws not to enforce. And so that then raises the question, what is the Democrats endgame here. If there is no deal that they can rely on. At this point, we seem to be in a situation where we’re just waiting for someone to crack or break, and then in every day that passes, the cost of cracking or breaking to your own side becomes higher. Of course, something could pop very quickly and break the logjam. But at this moment on as we record, I’m not seeing how that happens. Yeah, I don’t know how it happens either. I mean, this is what we’re seeing. What we’re seeing are the problems with this imperial notion of executive power. Like, this is why this is bad, because it actually renders governance impossible to do. You have to if there’s no commitment to the broader rules of the game. One of the rules of the game being Congress does a thing and the president carries it out. And to the extent that the president has any wiggle room, if Congress gives him wiggle room. But absent that, we pass spending. You carry out the spending. But if you’re going to break if you’re not going to follow that rule, if that’s not going to be on the table anymore, then you can’t govern anymore. The only thing that can happen is for Republicans to just unilaterally govern. And they don’t want to do that either. So I don’t know how this ends. And what I want to say is you can’t have a forever shutdown for very practical reasons. You don’t want every air traffic controller to quit. Don’t want, you don’t want the properties owned by the federal government to fall into disrepair. Like there were actual things that have to happen for the country to run. And there is some wiggle room and redundancy over the course of a month, maybe if we’re stretching it two months. But beyond that, it matters that the federal government is operational. It seems to me that the president thinks you can have a forever shutdown, and that in the president’s conception of things, the shutdown gives him more power through some magical, convoluted, transmogrifying mechanism that no one understands. The shutdown means the president is even more powerful. Well, I was going to nod to that because we are seeing him. I mean, he’s been happy to use the shutdown as a tool for doing what he. I mean, we’ve seen Russ Vought at the OMB. Talk about how they’re going to just take this and run with it. They’re going to try to lay off federal workers en masse. And right now the courts are currently blocking. But this clearly is something that they’re willing to experiment with. Trump has taken money from a rich donor to help pay the military, which, I mean, David, is that even legal? I mean, they’re freezing congressionally appropriated funds for projects in states that don’t like. Basically, anything that they can do to just kind disrupt the whole functioning of government, especially in blue areas. Trump is going headlong into this, and his response is always like, come at me, bro. Oh, I don’t think there’s any question that if Donald Trump could engineer a situation where the Congress stays out of session or the house stays out of session for the rest of his presidency. I think he’d be totally fine with that. I honestly think that he has no real desire to work with Congress in any substantial way. Otherwise what. He would have had a very different opening to his presidency. His party controls the House. His party controls the Senate. And instead of this flurry, this tsunami of executive orders, if he had an actual governing agenda to dictate how America is going to be governed for the foreseeable future, he’d have had a legislative agenda. He’d have walked in passing actual laws. Instead, he came in with a giant amount of executive order vaporware. And so what you’ve done is you’ve created a situation where the president is more powerful than ever. But presidential actions are more ephemeral than ever because they’re all channeled through executive orders, rather than using his power to actually shape and change the law. And so this is so unstable. It’s just it’s hard to overemphasize how unstable this makes American governance. How unstable, how unreliable. I mean, it’s bad for business. Like, I’m not one to be super solicitous of the business interests. But if you are someone who makes money, this level of instability and inconsistency in government operations is intolerable. Like, how do you plan for the future. Well, globally, it’s a problem too, right. Other countries cannot remotely predict what our foreign policy or trade policy or anything is going to be. Well, I wanted to say just a real quick comment about Russ Vought. I feel like so much of the coverage of Vought is about how he’s some kind of evil genius, and the photo they always pick has them with, bags under his eyes and they’re kind of bloodshot. Looks like a Sith Lord, right. He looks like a Sith Lord. He looks like he’s like asking, Anakin, has he heard the story of Darth Plagueis? So I love that reference. That was for you, David. Thank you. But like, all he’s doing is just breaking the law. All he’s doing is saying, I’m just not going to follow the law. And it’s like don’t have to be a genius to just be like, I don’t think the law counts anymore. And I find it very frustrating that so much of the coverage of him, buys into this image of this, devious, plotting, scheming vizier. Well, it’s just like, no, he’s just a guy who’s decided the law doesn’t apply to the president anymore. And that’s all. And if there were a Congress interested in enforcing its prerogatives, you could just cut that short in an afternoon. You drag you drag Russ Vought up for oversight hearings. Like, what are you doing? Do we need to hold you in contempt. Here’s my question to both of you, which is that — Trump is authoritarian curious, I guess we’ll call it. But how much of this do we think. Is that either the people around him or even some of the establishment Republican players knew that this Congress and that Congress in general for years has been basically abdicating its responsibility on all kinds of level. And so they were basically ripe for a takeover. I mean, you can certainly blame Trump for a lot of the extreme degree that we’re looking at as to how far he has taken over congressional power. But Congress has been happily shoveling that out the door and letting the executive branch or the judicial branch do its job. And so if you’re standing around looking from the outside going, all it would take would be a really strong man in the White House to take advantage of this and input whatever policies or changes I’m interested in. So as much as I like to blame Trump for what’s going on, I feel like we should spend a lot of time here, maybe smacking Congress as an institution, as well. Yes absolutely. Michelle I mean, look, I’ve said this before, I’m not a big fan of trigger warnings and things like that. But I do have a trigger Warning for myself, which is the phrase co-equal branches of government. Don’t say that. Remember that. I’m going to remember. Don’t say that. It causes involuntary spasms twitching because it’s Article I for a reason. Like, if you actually look at the Constitutional structure, it’s not that the legislature is supposed to reign unchecked in Supreme. It’s just that think of the legislative branch in the formulation of the founders is like first among equals. This is the one that you can’t spend any money without it. It can fire the president. It can fire any member of the Supreme Court. You’re not supposed to be able to go to war without it. I mean, all of the basic fundamental functions of government, you just can’t do in theory without Congress, according to our structure. And this is intentional, because Congress is crafted to be the most representative part of our tripartite system of government. And so what we’re seeing here isn’t just congressional abdication in an abstract sense. What we’re seeing is constitutional devolution, almost like a constitutional revolution where Article I is receding down to Article III level and Article II is Article I now with a bullet. And it’s not the way the system was supposed to be created or administered. And it’s putting huge strains on us. Just huge. Because if Congress is basically irrelevant and the presidency is decided really by the swing states and the presidential election, then the vast majority of Americans have no meaningful say over the core functioning of the American government. And that creates a real. Again, all of these things, everything we’re talking about they’re all destabilizing. So, Jamelle, this is kind of leading directly into what you’ve been writing about this week. And before we jump in, I just want to I just want to note that I have done a lot of reporting on this among senators. And both sides know this is a problem and both sides are really unhappy about it. It’s just a question of how do you address it. And you have been talking this week about an imperial Congress being potentially needed to push back because we’ve reached such an imbalance at this point. Yeah, I feel like that’s a term of art just for what David is alluding to just a very active Congress that is taking its role in the constitutional firmament very seriously. So I think I’m interested in writing quite a bit about is like reconstruction. And if you’re basically familiar with the timeline, there’s two parts to reconstruction. There’s presidential reconstruction under Andrew Johnson, and there’s congressional reconstruction after John, especially after Johnson’s impeachment begins a little earlier than that. But basically, Congress sidelines Johnson and really takes the full reins of reconstruction. It’s like it’s Congress leading the pack. It’s Congress. Spearheading constitutional amendments. It’s Congress doing the kinds of close oversight and monitoring. It’s Congress flexing its authority and really aggressive ways. And I think that is what I’m talking about when I say something like an imperial Congress, a Congress that recognizes the full sweep of its formal and informal powers and then just uses them to try to shape things in the way that it wants to be shaped and engages with the public. And there’s still room for the other branches to push back, of course. But the key thing is the other branches are responding to Congress, not Congress responding to the other branches. It changes the direction of the energy in the system. So what is there any practical path toward that, do you think. Well, so I’ve been thinking about this and some of it’s structural. Like over time, for a variety of contingent reasons, a variety of reasons that reflect the fact that this is like a big, complex, modern country, modern economy power has siphoned up to the executive branch. I think a little bit of that is basically unavoidable. But I think some of this really is just the members themselves. I think that if a newly elected majority of the members said, we don’t want this to be so leadership focused, then it wouldn’t be right. If the Senate said, we really want to be active, then they would be. And I do think that some of this is actually just like cultivating an ethos among members, among people who want to be members, to think of themselves, not as passive members of a party, but active members of a legislature who have a lot of individual power. But I also think it reflects the absence of real ambition, real ambition, not simply to ascend to a higher office, but ambition to use the office you have in the most aggressive and maximalist way that you can. So before we get your take, David, I just want to throw in one of the things that senators have complained to me about in respect to this whole leadership focused way that it’s run, is that fueling that problem, in part, is, unsurprisingly, the way that money is dealt with. The Senate leaders control huge campaign funds that they can decide who gets this piece of or things like that. And that is a very powerful tool in a system where money is just so vital to surviving in these campaigns. O.K, that’s just one piece of that, David. What is your thought on all of that? Yeah, I think we’re going to be in a difficult position until a fundamental – there’s a change in a certain fundamental reality. And that fundamental reality is that every Republican member of Congress believes that their entire career, every Republican member of Congress, knows that their entire career, their place in that house, depends on Donald Trump’s approval. So I think even Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, if Trump came out and said he needs to go, then Mike Johnson loses his job. And why do we know this. Because look at the last 10 years. How many people are left in the Republican Party that who Donald Trump has specifically targeted. I mean, I can think of one in the state level. You have Brian Kemp in Georgia. This is somebody he’s the Harry Potter, “boy who lived of” the G.O.P. He’s viewed with a kind of magical reverence. Yeah, exactly. But this will not last forever. So I think there’s two a couple of things to point out here. Number one is it’s a mistake to think this will be a 50/50 nation forever. We’ve had the 50/50 moments in American history, and the logjam has always broken in a particular direction one way or the other. The logjam tends to break. If you go back and you look at American history many, many times when you’ve had extreme presidential power and abuses of presidential power, that’s been followed by a snapback by constitutional amendments or Congress acting in some decisive ways once the logjam is broken. And so I have some ideas for thoughts, I have thoughts, I have constitutional amendments that I think could really help this. And I know that sounds pie in the sky because we have a logjam right now. But the logjam will break. And I think there are some lessons we have learned about the original 1787 Constitution that just lend themselves to abuse. And the anti-federalists spotted this coming from miles away. So, for example, the pardon power. The pardon power is a Republic destabilizing vestige of monarchy that needs to be fundamentally reformed. That’s one. Here’s another one. The first sentence of Article II is, as George Clinton wrote, as Cato, an anti-federalist beg and inexplicit. And that lends itself to lots of mischief. Can I interrupt real quick. When you said George Clinton, I was like, is he about to quote parliament-funkadelic? And then of course. Oh, no. Normally, I would normally know he’s thinking New York, New York, New York lawmaker George Clinton in the. Yeah O.K. Yeah not parliament-funkadelic. Yes O.K. Let me just throw in. You guys are such geeks, I love it. Sorry continue, continue. So there are here’s another one that I think is an important idea. Expand the house. So I think there’s a number of ideas of reform that are floating around out there that can help prevent this situation from happening again. But we have to get through this moment. And the real impediment here, the real impediment is the vote. Primary voters, even something as grotesque as Jan. 6, did not break that bond between Trump and the primary voters. And so in that circumstance, they think legitimately there are no lines that Trump can cross where he will lose the loyalty of the primary voters in the Republican Party. I don’t think we have to wait until this cult of personality has. Yeah however, it’s going to end has ended before we can move on from this. That fever has to break. But then I do want an episode devoted entirely to David and Jamelle’s list of amendments and reforms. So I’m just putting my – It’s funny David said that because I myself have on a document like me putting together like an omnibus Amendment one I throw in there is just in the same way that the first lines of the 14th are basically overturning Dred Scott. I think we need to constitutionalize overturning Trump v. U.S., which is just a ruling that totally agree that O.K, I to be fair, I guess some reasonable people can disagree about that ruling. Can they – but can they really? But at the very least, I think what we’re seeing is that how a corrupt president interprets it is as a license to do whatever they want. And I think that it there needs to be some constitutional clarification of the president’s criminal liability. So I’m changing my we’re now going to have a whole series of episodes on this because clearly one’s not going to do it. So now before we switch for our closing recommendations, I did want to take you guys back because we haven’t been together since the magical renovation project of the East Wing began, which to me smacks of Trump trying to take us towards some kind of glorious, I don’t it’s got old empire written all over it, gilded ballroom or whatever. And I have been, I guess, pleasantly surprised or taken aback by how much this has really ticked off a lot of the country. Were you guys surprised by this. I mean, I’m not surprised that people are mad. It’s crazy. It’s a crazy. It’s listen, when he was like, I want to put up a ballroom, I was like, all right. I mean, it’s ugly, it’s like garish. But if it’s just going to be looming over the White House whatever. I don’t like it. But whatever. I would prefer that he went to Congress and said to Congress, I need money to build this thing. Well, why do that when you’ve got rich friends will do whatever they would do it immediately. I mean, this is it’s because this is like a but he doesn’t need Congress. This is a pay for play operation. I would be shocked if a ball room ever gets built, but then when I open up my computer and I see that they’ve demolished the East Wing as if it belongs to him as if it’s just something he can do. It’s the White House – the White House is very distinctly not a palace. Yeah, give it time. There’s so much gold. The palace and the capital is the capital. The White House is a relatively modest executive mansion by design. And it’s as imperfect as American democracy is as often quite bad.. American democracy has been. The White House is this symbol of the relationship of the government to the people. It’s open to the public for the most part. You can go visit it. You can go hang out. You don’t need to be a rich donor. You can just go. And given the importance of the symbol to how Americans conceive of themselves, and symbols matter. These things really do matter to how a people understand themselves. It makes total sense to me that you’d be like, even if you’re basically sympathetic to Trump, you’d be like, wait a second here. This isn’t yours to demolish. And if you want if you want to tear it down you at least have to go to Congress. You to go to Uc and ask us if we are going to allow this. But isn’t this project, then the perfect metaphor, the perfect symbol. Oh, yeah. He’s taking he’s taking a wrecking ball to. It’s a hat on a hat. It’s like it’s so on the nose. Yeah I don’t care if there is a ballroom built, in other words, that do we possibly need a ballroom? I’m very open to that argument. I’m totally open to that. I like to dance. I am not open. I’m not open to the idea that the president can just demolish any part of the White House on his own authority, or all of it. Like, what’s the limiting principle here. Right? You hate to go from White House to Venezuelan boat strikes. But as I was talking about the other day, what’s the limiting principle here to stop Trump from designating anybody as a terrorist enemy and ordering their death. Like, what’s the limiting principle. What’s the limiting principle. Can he demolish the whole White House. And when you see the White House demolished, just suddenly part of the White House just demolished suddenly with no real conversation or discussion, it has a very kind of tangible effect that other things don’t have, because it’s just right in front of people’s faces. But one last thing before we get to our recommendations, I just want to say, Michelle, somebody needs to stage an intervention for both Jamelle and for me, because I also have a Google Doc of constitutional amendments. And so there is there a is there a name for this condition. Is there something going to come up with one before. It’s Nerdlinger that’s what the name is. Nerdlinger that works for me. O.K, guys. So let’s end on some lighter recommendations. Maybe or at least something that does not involve a Google Doc, perhaps. David O.K. So O.K. bear with me here because this show has changed a lot in its evolution. So season one of “The Morning Show” on Apple TV was very heavy prestige TV. I felt a very cinematic, weighty, really well done in my view. And then seasons two, three and now I think in four got just like a soap opera, more do you remember “Dallas” and “Falcon Crest” from the 1980s. I’m sorry. Have you met me. Of course I do. Yeah yeah. So all of a sudden, it’s gone from this big meta commentary around me to something much more like “Dallas” and “Falcon Crest” for the 2020s. And I just got to say, I’m here for all of you. You’re there for that. I’m here for it. So “The Morning Show” on Apple. It’s been great. It’s on my list because you are reliable, I have to say. You are – You are nothing if not reliable in streaming recommendations. O.K, Jamelle. I’ve been trying to catch up with movies. I usually watch a lot of movies every year. Last year, I think I clocked like 230 movies. This year, I’ve just been not watching for whatever reason, just not watching as much. But I’m trying to pick up the pace again and try to catch up with stuff that came out this year, and I watched the “28 Years Later,” which is the kind of legacy sequel to “28 Days Later” and “28 Weeks Later,” or whatever the previous two films, and I went into it thinking it was just going to be I like those other two movies, but it was just going to be like a fun zombie picture. What I was not anticipating it being was an actually very thoughtful coming of age story, and at times quite profound and moving kind of meditation on life and death and rebirth and coming to terms with the nature of the world in which we live. There’s zombie thrills and there’s kind of gruesome and stuff, but the emotional core of the film is so thoughtful. And there are moments of like, genuine visual and emotional beauty and in the film and it’s like this legacy zombie sequel. So I’m going to recommend “28 Years Later.” It is maybe becoming I think it might be my favorite film of the year so far. It was such I was so struck by how deeply felt it is. And it has maybe the best child actor performance I’ve ever seen. Yeah, I’ve seen it. He carries – he carries the film. O.K all right. Well, I’m going to pivot and I’m going to do less a recommendation than a plea. And I don’t want it to be like a kind of downer. But I want to recommend that as we roll into November, you find a local food bank and donate. I have a friend who launched one during the pandemic and they are just overrun already. Even before we get into the Thanksgiving season, I’ve had other friends come to me asking how they can get in touch with her and donate. I’ve got my husband, contacting the local food bank in our neighborhood. It’s one of those things where it’s good for your soul and the need is just overwhelming. So that’s mine. Wonderful suggestion, but I’m just going to say you made us look bad. Michelle like, around the Thanksgiving table when people say, what. What do you want for Christmas. And someone says, I want a new car. And somebody else says, I want a, I want a new boat. And somebody else says, I want suffering to stop in the world. No, no. See, I would have pitched sinners the movie, but Jamelle had already gotten me with his horror movie. We can’t have too many horror movie recommendations, so fine, donate to your local food bank. Get out there and watch the horror movie centers. Is that better. There you go. There you go. O.K all right. All right. And with that, we’re going to end it. Guys, thank you so much. I have missed you. We’ll leave it there. Have a great election day and I will see you next week. See you next week. Thanks, Michelle. See you all later.