Constitution Breakdown #7: California AG Rob Bonta

Podcast: 99% Invisible
Source: whisper-tiny
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Fetched: 2026-03-05 03:04:59

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Today we are discussing Article 4 which talks about the relationship between the states and between the states and the federal government. We're also skipping ahead a bit and adding the 10th amendment to this conversation because that also talks about the states. Our guest for this episode is California Attorney General Rob Bonta. State attorneys general provide legal counsel to their state's government, oversee state prosecutions and represent the public interest in a variety of cases. They also have the responsibility of protecting their state citizens from federal overreach. What constitutes an overreach can vary widely depending on the state's political leaning and whose in control of the federal government. During the Obama and Biden administration's red states sued the federal government over issues like Medicaid expansion and environmental regulations. Now, blue states like California have sued the Trump administration dozens of times for things like withholding federal funding and deploying the national guard without consent of the state. Attorney General Bonta talks about some of these lawsuits and why he believes the constitution is on his side. But first, Elizabeth takes us through what we need to know about Article 4 and the 10th amendment. Okay, so unlike Article 1, 2, and 3, which we've already talked about, they set up the federal government and get a lot of attention. Article 4 does not get too much love with people who have no idea what it's about. It's not thought of too often, but it is an important source of powers and protections for the states. So when we talk about the relationship between the federal government and the state, we refer to that structure as federalism and we've talked about federalism a lot of times. But maybe we could really call that vertical federalism. Okay, so there's a, yeah, so there's a, well, that's because it's the federal government sort of how it relates to each one of the 50 states. Yeah. But the states have relationships with one another and sections one and two of Article 4 are actually about the relationships among the states. And we can talk about that as horizontal federalism. God, right? Yeah. So why don't we start with section one? Reven, why don't you read section one? Okay. Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts records and judicial proceedings of every other state. And Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts records and proceedings shall be proved and the effect they're of. All right. That's a mouthful. So section one is also known as the full faith and credit clause and the full faith and credit clause embodies the idea that we need some kind of interstate cooperation in our system for the system to work. And the basic idea with the full faith and credit clause is that the states are supposed to respect the laws, records, and court decisions of other states. That's the general idea. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what it means in the specifics, however, is that if, for instance, you have a state court issue, a judgment in your favor, let's say you win a case in the court award you have a lot of damages or money, you can ask a court in another state to enforce or respect that judgment. Let's say if the person who owes you money now has left the state and taken their assets with them. Okay. The defendant doesn't get another chance to redo the case just because the dispute is essentially traveled to another state. Got it. That's really what the clause is about. Yeah. Most of the time though, the full faith and credit clause is mostly overlooked. It doesn't feel like a hot topic, right? Yeah. Well, I think it's sort of metabolized into our way of being like, I don't think that I'd have different rights in different states necessarily all that much. I just think that the United States is one big thing, which is kind of how this works in practice. That's the way it's supposed to work in theory, but there are a few areas where there have been some important questions, and actually one of them is marriage. So in 2015, the Supreme Court decided the case of Obergefell versus Hodges, and that's the case in which the Supreme Court recognized a constitutionally protected right to same-sex marriage. Right? And so there had been a long-standing constitutionally protected right to marriage before the Obergefell case, but it wasn't until 2015 that the Supreme Court formally recognized that this right also included the LGBTQ community. So that raises the question, well, what was life like before Obergefell? But remember, yeah, it's starting to remember, but the answer is that whether or not any state recognized same-sex marriages, whether the marriage occurred within the state or that of the state, was often up to a question and left up to individual states. So some states, if you recall these before times, some states recognize same-sex marriage, but other states didn't, and in fact, they went further, and either past laws, or changed even their state constitutions to say that marriage was only between a man and a woman within that state. But, of course, at the same time, there was a growing movement for marriage equality, to recognize that same-sex couples had rights to marriage. So what if you were a part of a same-sex couple, lawfully married in one state, but then moved to a state where same-sex marriage was not legal, right? So prior to 2015, the answer wasn't really clear at all, because on the one hand, it's actually not clear that it's answered by the full-faith and credit clause for complicated reasons, but let me just put it this way. On the one hand, a marriage isn't really a judgment. That's the language of the clause itself. A marriage is really a civil contract between two people, right? The court doesn't judge that your marriage, no court does that. And then second, courts allowed what's called a public policy exception to the full-faithing credit clause. So even if we agreed that a marriage was a judgment, which is a question, it really could be the case that a state court would say, well, it's against the public policy of our state to recognize same-sex marriage, and then the court might decline to do so. And in 1996, Congress went even further and passed what was called the Defense of Marriage Act, or Dom, right? I don't know if you remember that. I do remember that. Yeah. And then one of the significant things that Dom had did was to allow states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages. Even if these marriages were finalized in states where that marriage was actually illegal. Okay, so how could Congress do that? Well, because of the full-faith and credit clause, because the clause itself doesn't just say states have to respect each other's judgments. It happens to give Congress a source of law-making power. It's called the effects clause, right? So the full-faith and credit clause allows Congress to prescribe the manner in which the tax, recordings, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof. So it's actually not just saying, hey, states, you have to respect other states' judgments, it's actually a source of federal legislative authority. So with Dom, it becomes legal for states to refuse to recognize otherwise legal same-sex marriages. And while many states legalized discrimination against same-sex marriages, other states also began to recognize rights. So Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004, and that's 11 years before the Orberg of Fel Decision in the Supreme Court, and many states followed, but many states did not. And then the Supreme Court did decide the case in 2015. The Supreme Court said that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry in all states. So what is the effect of Orberg of Fel, and why should we care about this anymore now that that sort of settled? Okay, well, on the one hand, the Supreme Court case does basically invalidate every state law that refused to recognize same-sex marriage. After the Orberg of Fel Decision, every state has to recognize the right to same-sex marriage because of the Supreme Court's decision. This constitutionalized this particular right to marry. And Orberg of Fel also invalidates Doma, the federal law. That law also is no longer good law, because why it interferes with a constitutionally protected right to marry. But instead of just saying, this is like, well, it's interesting background material who cares. Well, in 2022, the Supreme Court decided to unrecognize the constitutionally protected right to an abortion in Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization. And that case overturned the right that was first recognized in row in 1973. And even though abortion might seem to be pretty distinct from marriage, and of course, it is a different topic. It was not a different topic for Justice Thomas. Justice Thomas joined the majority opinion in the Dobbs case, but he also wrote a separate opinion because he had more to say. And essentially, his more to say was, look, if we're overturning the right to an abortion, which I think is a good idea, that's his thinking, we might also reconsider some rights based on the same interpretation that the court issues today. And he calls out specifically, Orberg of Fel versus Hodges, and like, maybe we should think about overturning that case. So his opinions set off alarms, as you can imagine. And so the idea here is, look, if Justice Thomas can just convince for other justices that he's right, then presumably that right might be in question. So you said alarm bells went off, but like, did anything actually come of that? Well, in 2022, this was the Biden administration, President Biden signed the respect for marriage act or Riffma. Okay. So what is Riffma do? So Riffma formally repeals the Defense of Marriage Act from 1996, right? But it also goes further. One section of Riffma, this is the federal law, requires all states to give what the law calls full faith and credit to marriages, including same sex marriages, which identifies specifically, if they are lawfully performed within a state. So Riffma doesn't require a state to license the same sex marriages. In other words, it doesn't require a state that doesn't, you know, hadn't done that before to do it. As long as there is one state in the United States that does license, same sex marriages, the effect of Riffma, this federal law, means that those marriages should be respected in the other 49. I remember marriage as a legal idea is really important. Of course, it's important symbolically, but it carries all kinds of effects of inheritance, the ability to visit your spouse while they're ill, all kinds of things, the rights over children, things like that. It's extremely important, right? Keep in mind that Riffma is essentially responding to this threat from one justice on the court, right? Because of that. So is the reason why Congress can pass this law? Is it still related to the Congress may, by general laws, the effect clause? All that sort of stuff? Is that part of it? Exactly right. It's the same reason as DOMA, Congress is relying on the effects clause, the power given to it, under that portion of Article 4. So right now, Riffma doesn't mean too much because Riffma is the law of the land, right? But if for some reason, let's hope not, the Supreme Court were to overturn that decision from 2015, I would expect that we'd see legal fights about the meaning of Riffma, and whether Congress actually has the authority to have passed it in the first place. So that's kind of a sneaky way that we might see the full-faithing credit clause come up in some future instance. And that is why full-faithing credit is pretty interesting. Yeah, it's notable that they use that term in the law, full-faithing credit, right? To harken back to this, like if you're wondering where the constitutional basis for this is, just follow the words, you know, like, yeah, that's exactly right. And part of that is because, you know, it's pretty clear as a concept that if you have something, and again, assuming that marriage is something that is one of the things called out by the full-faithing credit clause that is protected by that clause, Congress should be able to say, hey, states, you recognize it in one state, then every state has to recognize the same thing. You'll notice what Riffma is not doing. It is not saying there is a federally protected right to a same-sex marriage, because it's not super clear that Congress has the ability to do that and presumably, you know, Congress and President Biden were just didn't really want to go there. So they kind of took a compromise measure here with full-faithing credit. Got it, right? Sounds interesting. All right. So next, section two, article four, section two is a collection of different state issues. So the first clause tells us that the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states. So I'm going to think of this as an anti-discrimination principle. The clause prevents states from discriminating against citizens from other states in favor of their own. That's true for many, but not all situations. Some of the most important legal cases here have focused on things like state residency requirements. You have to live in a state for a certain time to receive some kind of benefit. And states usually can't interfere with what are considered fundamental rights that are recognized under the privileges and immunities clause. A good example is that the Supreme Court has said, you know, you're right to pursue an occupation, something that's protected by this clause. But states do have some latitude. They can discriminate against status dateers for important reasons. That's why you can't go to another stage and just say, hey, I have the right to vote in your election. You can't. Because the state has a good reason to keep voters only to the people who are within the state. Wow. So this part of article four isn't too much in dispute, it's not very controversial. Okay. Next, the second clause here, which says, a person charged in any state with treason, felony or other crime, who shall flee from justice and be found in another state, shall on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up to be removed to the state, having jurisdiction of the crime. This is known as the extradition clause, and it applies when a person is accused of a crime in one state and then flees to another. So the extradition clause recognizes that the governor of one state can demand from the other state that the person be forcibly sent back. Again, it's not too controversial, but again, this shows us another aspect in which article four is about requiring, encouraging, making sure that the state's play nice with one another, because that's how the system should be run, instead of the state's fighting against each other, discriminating against each other's citizens, or just not cooperating in some important things like criminal justice. Yeah, that makes sense. So third clause, and that is the fugitive slave clause. Yes. In a sense, we don't really need to talk about this clause, which allowed a slave owner to cross state lines, seize the fugitive and slave person, go to court to prove ownership and then receive legal authorization to go back to their home state with the enslaved person. You know, the entire aspect of this clause is irrelevant because of a 13th amendment, which abolishes slavery. I thought we'd pause here for a moment just to note that this is just another instance in which our foundational current document that organizes our government has a reference to slavery. It's just one more. And yet it doesn't even do so directly, right? The fugitive slave clause doesn't even use the word slave. It refers to a person held to serve or labor in one state escaping into another, although at the time, everyone understood that this reference was to enslaved people and enslaved people only. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, here you have this kind of historical marker in the constitution that has no legal effect anymore, but it reminds us of kind of the very flawed origins of the document itself. Right. Right. And presumably it was put here explicitly because certain slave owners' states just required it for it to be part of the constitution for them to sign on to it. Right. And again, I mean, that's another interesting thing, too, that just reflects the fact that the document itself is not an idealized one, it's the result of political compromise. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, these are, this is sort of the baked in part of the document. We can't escape the fact that it has this very, you know, again, flawed origin here. Yeah. Yeah. But hopefully, you know, but in some ways, we escaped it by having 13th Amendment. So that's what I'm in and so forth. That's right. Let's be running along to Section 3 and Section 3 of Article 4 has two parts. The first part includes the admissions clause. And that is how we allow or admit new states to the union. So I'm going to want to read that clause. It's sort of interesting. Sure. New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union. But no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state, nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of Congress. All right. That's a mouthful. But essentially, it's how do new states become part of the United States? So this part formally allows Congress to recognize new states to become part of the country with some limitations as the text you just read points out. So if a state is formed from a new state, you need the consent of the effect of state. When you can tuck you became a state by taking a part of Virginia in 1792. Right. So that part, you know, it may seem to make sense. You don't want to chop off a part of the state without the state agreeing to do it. That's right. And while it's not mentioned in Section 3 itself, the Supreme Court has interpreted the admissions clause to have what it calls an equal footing doctrine. And so the idea is a pretty simple one that a new state, if it's going to be part of the United States and is admitted to the United States by Congress, it has to be admitted on equal terms as the existing ones. You don't have like a secondary status state. Right. You're not going through a probationary period. Exactly right. So, you know, the court has said it's not in there, but we assume that that's meant in the structure of the admissions clause. Okay. And the second part of Section 3 has what's called the property clause. It has the power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations, respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States. Now this part gives Congress broad authority to take all kinds of actions over the land the federal government possesses. And the clause also mentions territories, which is interesting too, because in many of our states, have become states after having been a territory first, like Alaska or Hawaii. And even though the admissions clause doesn't require it, Congress has sometimes required a proposed state to meet some conditions before it's allowed to become a state. Do you know about the condition that Utah had to agree to? For how many of you say? No big of me? That, well, no polygamy, right? No bigamy, right? So, we're enabling act by Congress that allowed Utah to become a state, actually required the state to ban polygamy. What's even more interesting is that Utah is not allowed by the terms of its own constitution to allow polygamy unless not just Utah but Congress agree. There was Congress was so worried that the state might just go crazy with polygamy. They were like, you can't even change your state constitution unless we let you on this subject. Interesting. Yeah. So, Congress can definitely do that. If there's something that they don't like about a proposed state, they can say, you're not allowed to be a member of the club, unless you do this particular thing. Yeah. Okay. So, hypothetically, if we were to do something like, you know, an ex-greenland, not endorsing the idea, but if we were to do that, presumably, the path would be Congress would give it the status of an American territory first, right? Which gives it free reign to regulate the territory under the property clause. And then maybe it would become a state eventually. And if it did so, it could certainly require Greenland to enter into some kind of agreement that they would not do something or do something affirmatively in order to become a state. So, we certainly have territories, you know, like Puerto Rico, of course, that have remained a territory for a very long time, even though there are certainly lots of folks who would like to see Puerto Rico become the 51st state. Yeah. So, this is the part of the constitution that kind of sets the ground rules for when a territory or an acquired piece of land can join the United States. Mm-hmm. But it doesn't set that many ground rules. It just says that they make the ground rules, but the rules could change depending on what state you're talking about. Yeah, essentially it's kind of left up to Congress, like they make the political decisions about, you know, what to do and I can't even think of what would be objectionable in Greenland culture that Congress might impose conditions, but yeah, nothing that rises to the level of the Utah issue. Right. Well, I just could be like the, I mean, in the case of Puerto Rico, it's that there's lots of complicated things there and there's sort of like a class of foreign and domestic sense that Puerto Rico has and a lot of that has to do with just like, yeah, where you are politically at this moment does it seem like it's going to favor one political party or another, and that's sort of seems to be the source of it, and it seems at least in the United States. Yeah. It is interesting though, because the Constitution does contemplate that the United States can grow and grow and grow, there's no limit on it. There's no like, and this is the last state you can have. So it's kind of, you know, in a way, it's suck in expansionist constitution, right? Like, it can be as big as you want. That is interesting, because it's also that somewhat antithetical to our notion of ourselves is that we weren't, especially expansionists, or at least for a lot of colonialists, it's how we viewed ourselves, even though it was never really part of the true 49 states, but it was, but I think that's super interesting. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I wonder how things will go in the next couple of years you're said, but we'll see. More on Article 4 and our discussion of the 10th Amendment after the break. What does it mean to live a rich life? It means brave first leads, tearful goodbye, and everything in between. 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And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves and indeed.com slash podcast terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Do it the right way with indeed. Finally the last section of article four contains what's called the guarantee clause. Do you want to read the guarantee clause? Sure. The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a Republican form of government and shall protect each of them against invasion and on application of the legislature, or of the executive when the legislature cannot be convened against domestic violence. All right. So what does it mean that the federal government is supposed to guarantee that every state has a Republican form of government? That is kind of hard to say because there's really hardly any case law on it. Part of the reason why is because generally the courts have said the guarantee clause isn't something for courts to get involved in based on what's called the political question doctrine. Like this is really a political issue that the political branches of federal government should get involved in. But presumably what is there for is to say the United States shouldn't admit new states that have to tell Terian or authority of governments, right? Right. So I mean, I think that's pretty clear, like the federal government has an obligation under this clause to prevent any state from becoming a monarchy, let's say, or a dictatorship. You know, it's an obligation to make sure that doesn't happen. And generally speaking, I think we can all agree that a Republican form of government means that the people govern through their elected officials. But that's a pretty broad statement. So I think what's not clear, it may be where we'll never have a really definitive answer on is like, is there a specific form of Republican government that is constitutionally required? So for instance, like how far could a state go in restricting who's allowed to vote within the state? At some point, would that be no longer a Republican form of government? Because after all, if we're going to go back to the founding, the founders are perfectly comfortable restricting the right to vote to themselves and nobody else. So that's kind of a question left up in the air, right? So maybe the Republican form of government guarantees a little bit meaningless in the sense that it doesn't provide strong protections against attacks on voting rights, and maybe the threat of having totalitarian state government is pretty remote, maybe. But you know, it's a pretty broad set of outlines about what is a guaranteed Republican form of government. Yeah. Yeah. And then there is the protection clause of Article 4. The federal government shall protect each of them the states against invasion. So this is pretty interesting because this part of Article 4 requires, that's the shell, right? Requires the federal government to protect each state from invasion and from domestic violence if the state asks for it. So the protection clause actually works together with another part of the constitution, which is found in Article 1, that's the invasion clause. In the invasion clause of Article 1, the states are not actually allowed to act in their own defense unless there's like a real emergency, unless they are, unless the constitution says actually invaded. So the constitution sets up a scheme where the federal government is actually the one responsible for the collective security of the states. Right? So this is the part where you're really supposed to ask the federal government for help, where the federal government is supposed to help you the states. Not a commonly used doctrine unless you are Texas. Right? So I don't know if you remember in 2023, Texas thought it would be a good idea to install a 1,000 feet system of booze along the Rio Grande River. I've heard you've ever called that, I don't know. Yeah. Well, this happened. This was a giant boozy line that were connected by heavy chains and the booze themselves were like four feet across, so so large that you couldn't kind of climb over them. And essentially, this is to prevent people from crossing into the United States, right, by swimming across the river. It's mostly symbolic because I said it was a thousand feet, right, in the Texas Mexico borders like 1,200 miles or something like that, so we're only covering a small portion. So why did Texas think it could do this? Well, Governor Abbott relied in part on Article 4's protection clause that the federal government had a responsibility to protect the state from invasion and the federal government wasn't fulfilling its obligations. This was during the Biden administration. Of course, there's a huge problem with that was argument. Texas isn't actually being invaded by anybody, right? So as soon as Texas implemented this barrier of floating booze, the federal government actually sued Texas and federal court over this. But what happened actually is that the Biden administration did not actually engage with the constitutional argument. Instead, they said the Texas was violating federal law about river control, navigable waters, and the case is still ongoing. I think you can kind of imagine why they didn't want to engage with the constitutional argument. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they did not want this to be answered in any way by the Supreme Court, you know, the possibility that the majority on the court might say something like, well, actually, maybe Texas can defend itself, because you know, do you really want to live in a world where each state gets to decide that they're invaded and engage in some kind of self-defense of acts? Yeah. Yeah. I wish we had some definitions of invasion because it's used so much and it's also invoked so much in political arguments. I think quite knowingly, because it's invoked a lot as the thing that causes an emergency to happen. An invasion of some kind, it causes something to change. Yeah. It's sort of a free-floating metaphor for terrorizing people. And then there is Trump 2.0, right? And it turns out that President Trump has used a kind of novel reading of Article 4 on January 20th of 2025, President Trump issued a proclamation called Guaranteeing the state's protection against invasion. In that proclamation, Trump declared the suspension of what the proclamation calls aliens engaged in the invasion across the southern border. What's the rationale here? Well, part of it is that Trump declared that the federal government had to take steps to fulfill its obligations under Article 4's protection clause. So you can see how a lot of this is getting politicized in ways that I think is, you know, it's going to be hard to imagine how we'd have legal answers to this because again, so much of this seems to be a political determination. If this is really war-like in some way, although even though it doesn't seem like it, it's sort of determination that courts are reluctant to say, this is correct. This is a correct determination of invasion, right? And at least in the legitimate foreign policy arena, courts tend not to second guess what the President and I states does. So it would really be up to a court to kind of step in and say, we're going to do something totally different and decide, no, this is not an invasion. Oh, well, okay. I can see why people want to avoid to have this fight even people who disagree with any of those, you know, protections. Yeah, that's why that case is still pending over the, the booze is a more dry, navigable rivers argument. Yeah, yeah, I would not want to leave this decision up to the Supreme Court at all. Right. And so that's Article 4. And I thought today, we'd also connect this to another aspect of the constitution and that's the 10th Amendment, right? Because the 10th Amendment today is a very important limitation on the federal government and what it can do to the states. So here's what it says, 10th Amendment, the power is not delegated to United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people. Right. Sounds like it just described something about the states. You know, I think any smart, my school student would say, well, that doesn't, doesn't do anything, right? But the Supreme Court has actually interpreted the 10th Amendment to impose a limit on the federal government. And the Supreme Court has changed its interpretation of the 10th Amendment over time, but since the 1990s, it's very clear that the states can rely on the 10th Amendment to argue that the federal government has violated a state's rights of sovereignty. So here, the Supreme Court isn't actually relying on the text of the 10th Amendment because it really couldn't, right? But more that the 10th Amendment embodies a particular idea of federalism and that the Supreme Court interprets that idea as a limit on federal power. So what does all of that mean? Because I found that a little bit confusing. Okay. So the primary way the court has interpreted the 10th Amendment, again, not because the text says so, because the Supreme Court says this stands in for a certain idea of federalism, is what the court has called the anti-communaring doctrine. And again, that word is not in the 10th Amendment, but it's how the Supreme Court has interpreted the 10th Amendment. And so the idea of anti-communaring is like this. The federal government can't comment here, or order, that's what comment here means, the states to enact a federal regulatory program, and it can't force state officials to enforce federal laws, right? So the idea is, the federal government can't tell the states, look, we have these things we want to do, and we want you to pass laws or regulations the way we want you to. Nor can the federal government tell state and local officials, let's say we don't have the resources for our own officials to enforce federal law, you have to do it. So since the 1990s, the Supreme Court submitted absolutely clear that this kind of action is unconstitutional. Why? Because this would upset the balance of power that the Supreme Court sees between the federal government and the government's own states. And they see that embodied in the 10th Amendment. Really, the 10th Amendment is kind of like standing in for this idea. Yeah, yeah. So that's pretty clear. So really what it's telling Congress is, there are certain things you can do, like you can regulate, you know, commerce, moving across state lines, you can tell persons, private entities, to do things, right, to behave in certain ways. But you can't tell the states to do things in ways that are treating them like their, your servants, essentially, right. That's what the infant commentary in clause means. And this idea has also been extended to the spending power, too. The federal government can certainly offer financial incentives to the states, under Congress's spending power, which we find an article one, on the condition that the states do what the federal government wants. Now, it might seem Roman, like this is kind of similar to common deering, right? Like, well, I can't, you know, we want you to do something here so many. But the idea under federal spending authority is theoretically states have a choice. I think it's right now. Yeah, they can say no. We don't want to do this. We don't, we don't feel like listening to you federal government. And because they have a choice, it doesn't raise the same problem. Except, except in some cases, the Supreme Court is said that if the choice is not a true choice. In other words, it's really deemed coercive that the spending power also can go too far in a way that is similar to the anti-comendier in principle. Because you really are forcing the states in a way that they don't want to behave. And that's essentially why, in 2012, the Supreme Court's decision upholding Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. That was the reason that one portion of it was one in which the Supreme Court struck down the way that the ACA expanded Medicaid, right? Because it was offering the states money to expand Medicaid. But if they didn't decide to expand it, they would lose all of their current funding as well. And the court said, that's not a true choice. You're really forcing them to do things that they don't want to do. Okay, and that's why when that decision came out, in the very beginning, when people read it quickly the first time, they thought that the ACA had been struggling. But it turned out that it was another part of it where it cuts by it as a tax, and therefore did have the power to it that upheld it. Yeah. And then that's why the ACA has been the way ever since. That one portion of it was struck down, but the vast majority of the ACA stood after. And this is where we get the phrase in one of the opinions that you can't have a gun to the head. That's the thing. Yeah. The Supreme Court chooses this pretty violent metaphor. Okay, you know, giving or offering money on the condition of is kind of like putting the gun to the head of the States, which is number one weird because, you know, it's treating the states as if they're people. And then they have some independent authority or like control. It's actually our representatives. We've made choices. A lot of states didn't line the Medicaid expansion, you know. But that's, in a way, what you point out to is funny, because the Supreme Court has said that the anti-comandiering principle, right, which is that the federal government can't treat the states in particular ways, that applies even if the states say, let's say the states want to participate in a regulatory program and they say, sure, regulate us this way. And the federal government doesn't. The Supreme Court has made it very clear. The states can't even consent to it. The states can't even get together and say, oh, please come and hear us. According to court says, federalism is so important. It doesn't matter if nobody wants it, that we are to uphold it. So it's not that some goals are good and some are bad. It's simply telling Congress, you cannot do it in this way. Yeah. Yeah. I admire that sort of ideological consistency, honestly. It's just like a little bit. I mean, like, amongst all this sort of like floating on the sea of all this argument and stuff, it seems like things just break politically. It's kind of nice to know that even if everyone is agreeing to the coercion and the commentary that they're just like, no, this is not how we do things we do things differently. Right. I'm kind of down with that. Okay. Well, for sure, even your agreement with majority, which, you know, the court is saying, no, it doesn't happen a lot, but everyone's not well. Yeah. In a way, it doesn't make sense to have that consistency because we see the 10th amendments anti-common during principle. It's not a blue state weapon, nor a red state weapon. It is an argument that states make against the federal government. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So there's another less commonly discussed aspect of the 10th amendment, and it's called the equal sovereignty doctrine. Again, it's not in there. It doesn't refer to it. Yeah, clearly. None of those words are there. None of those words are there. But the court has recognized this idea. And the idea of equal sovereignty is that Congress can't pass laws that treat states unequally, or at least probably they can't do so unless they have a really, really, really good reason. Right. No, so that's one of those good reasons. Yeah. So in Shelby County versus Holder in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act. And part of what was disputed was certain identifications. Like, if you're a jurisdiction with a history of racial discrimination, you had a certain formula that applied to you. And that formula meant that these jurisdictions had to obtain what the law called preclearance from the Justice Department before changing any voting procedures. And part of the reason the Supreme Court struck down these provisions of the VRA, they said that it was a departure from the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty. So that's a big voting rights case, of course. But it's sort of unclear what that would mean outside of the Voting Rights context. But I think in Trump's second term, I would expect with more and more threats against some states and others. You'll see some states with democratic governors invoking this idea that we are being punished because we're not going along with Trump's agenda. So it will certainly be used the 10th Amendment generally and perhaps the equal sovereignty doctrine in particular as some kind of constitutional shield as Trump tries to force the states to do his bidding the second time. Yeah. Yeah. And in the past, this has been used because the states were bad actors in this case. Like, or these counties were doing racist things to stop people from voting. And therefore, the long history of that has made it so that you have to check with us if you change anything. But that's not the case when it comes to, however, people think these states are misbehaving today when it comes to immigration. Yeah. And so it really, you know, it just shows you how much like all of these doctrines in one era look like bad idea can sometimes be a good idea. A lot of this is contextual. It definitely makes the process of governance really messy. I mean, when states get to object in all of these different ways, you know, if we want a sort of national system where you have a uniform laws, in some ways, the courts response to this because they've interpreted the 10th Amendment in all these different ways. They're saying, you know, efficiency is not the goal here. The goal is to make sure that the different parts have their kind of respect, that the Constitution records them. Okay. Hey, I find myself feeling more or less into states' rights depending on the subject. So you're the truth. It's fair. Yeah. Well, and we've definitely seen those font lines already. So that's all of article four and a little bit of, you know, a 10th Amendment, which relates to it. Cool. This is awesome. Thanks so much. Thanks, Irmith. When we come back, California Attorney General Rob Bonta talks about the powers granted to the states under the Constitution and how California is using the courts to push back against the Trump administration. 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And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Lysol is known for proven disinfection. And today, it also delivers a clean that smells great, including 11%. Lysol disinfecting wipes all purpose cleaners spray and power toilet bowl cleaner, clean and kill 99.9% of viruses and bacteria. The all-purpose cleaner can be used on hard, non-porous surfaces in the kitchen and bathroom disinfecting wipes help clean everyday surfaces like remotes tablets and smartphones. And the power toilet bowl cleaner disinfects both the toilet brush and bowl for two-in-one disinfection. Don't just clean. Lysol clean. And now our conversation with California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Since Trump took office in January of last year, California has sued the administration more than 50 times about a rate of one lawsuit a week. Courts have found in the state's favor about 80% of the time, although many of those decisions are from lower courts. Attorney General Bonta wasn't always so concerned with the federal government. He took over the job in 2021 when then AG Javier Paseira left to join the Biden administration. Over those four years, Bonta's office was mostly focused on issues like consumer protection and upholding Biden's environmental regulations. Now his relationship with federal government is decidedly adversarial. We start with how the job has changed for him before Trump was elected. And after. We are doing the things we're supposed to be doing, being by the side of the people as they face their biggest challenges, tackling issues of public safety, fentanyl human trafficking, hate crimes, organized retail crime. We were fighting for rights and protections, constitution rights, civil rights, access to healthcare, making sure the housing was being built, making sure there was safety from gun violence, making sure we were taking appropriate climate action. And then Mr. Trump was elected president. And all the things we were doing before, we continued to do. And we also are taking on the additional role and work of holding this administration accountable when it breaks the law. Where are we of a simple proposition? If Trump breaks the law, we sue him. If he doesn't break the law, we don't sue him. Our sweet spot is the facts in the law. Courts where we're in sanitized environments, free of politics, where we can present the facts and apply the law. And we have brought 55 lawsuits in less than that many weeks. So more than one lawsuit a week. And we won 80% of the time. We've protected a hundred and eighty a billion dollars worth of funding that Trump unlawfully tried to withhold from California. We've protected key rights and freedoms like birthright citizenship, voting rights. We were able to get the unlawfully federalized national guard out of California for six months of fighting tooth and nail. And we're fighting on many fronts. So that is the politician's answer to a short question. I didn't imagine. I would be doing this, but our life has changed considerably, but we continue to do all the things we were doing before plus on top of that. We've added the important work of holding a president accountable when he breaks the law. So, you know, Trump's campaign, obviously, for his second term, focused on his mask deportation agenda. And we're seeing that in action for the past year, in places like Los Angeles and Chicago, and of course Minneapolis, but I think one of the things that is often confusing is there are many terms in the immigration debate. And the biggest one is probably the idea of a sanctuary jurisdiction. And California is, as a matter of state law, a sanctuary state. So, could you explain what being a sanctuary state means in practical terms? Sure. And it's not a term I prefer, I prefer to say a pro, public safety pro community trust state. Okay. As enshrined in our California values act, which you've referred to past in 2017, in turn Trump on point out. And it basically says that the limited and vital criminal law enforcement resources of California will focus on crime. They'll focus on tackling crime like murder and rape and robbery and assault and battery. And not be used with some exceptions to engage in civil immigration enforcement. Particularly when there is a whole set of federal departments and agencies that enforce immigration laws, ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, among them. And so that is fully within our 10th Amendment rights to take that position, to want to focus on crime, to take the position that when victims feel safe and able to come forward when witnesses can come forward and report crime to law enforcement, then crimes will get solved in communities are safer. And certainly the federal government can enforce federal immigration law if they do that lawfully and the states cannot obstruct or interfere. But the anti-command hearing principle of the 10th Amendment, which provides strong rights for states and the 10th Amendment basically says that all powers that are not delegated to the United States government or prohibited from the states from are provided to the states or the people. And that is where this anti-command hearing principle exists, where it says that the federal government can enforce federal law but they can't force states to do their job for them. They can't commandeer them, can script them, draft them into service force them to do the federal government's job for it. So that is essentially what is met by sanctuary or jurisdiction or my words pro public safety pro community trust but the word sanctuary unfortunately has taken on a very different meaning in the world. Some people very very wrongly think it means it's a safe haven for criminals absolutely not true. Our position in California has been we will focus on crime and we won't be have our critical resources diverted for civil immigration enforcement and we will investigate crime, arrest for crime, prosecute for crime, regardless of your immigration status. So a lock it's lost in translation unfortunately but that's what it means to be a quote unquote sanctuary jurisdiction or a pro public safety pro community trust jurisdiction. So practically speaking that sounds like that means that of course federal agents can come in and enforce the federal law but you know your local police agency doesn't have to really lift a finger to aid that if they don't wish to is all right. Right and there are actually in most cases prohibited from participating in civil immigration enforcement. You know tackling crime another story we're enjoying task forces all over the place when it comes to tackling fentanyl and human trafficking and organized retail crime and gun violence gun trafficking folks involved in murders we're working with the federal government all the time but when it comes to civil immigration enforcement SB 54 prohibits that except with some exceptions for serious and violent crimes and detainers where there's a request from ice to pick up someone who's being released from a jail or a police department and they have a qualifying serious or violent crime they can under those limited circumstances be there can be cooperation with the federal government. Yeah so let me go back from a moment you know this idea the tenth amendment means is the Supreme Court's interpreted that you know the federal government can't you said the word conscript and force the states to do the federal government's bidding and so there's a pretty clear line in the constitutional sand about what states aren't supposed to be told what to do right. But I think the question that folks have is well on the one hand you know you've said that states don't have to help an immigration enforcement but the Justice Department has also said that you look if state or local officials interfere with federal immigration enforcement they could be charged with obstruction so where do you see that line between states legally declining to help but also and maybe not interfering with immigration enforcement? Legally declining to help legally and you know constitutionally declining to focus critical state resources on public safety on crime is nowhere near the line and so being a quote unquote sanctuary jurisdiction is nowhere near the line of obstruction or or interference. I know that the federal government likes to be very aggressive and it's interpretation of what constitutes obstruction and interference they seek to suggest or even explicitly say that just being a quote sanctuary jurisdiction somehow crosses that line into obstruction and interference and they're just dead wrong on it. Like they are on many things like when Trump said that you know he wasn't sure if they do process a clause of the United States Constitution applied to people as opposed to citizens he didn't know and you know he had to he had to contempt for the law he recently said that the federal government well he said the Republicans shouldn't nationalize elections where the elections clause in the United States Constitution says that elections are paramountly a area for states to determine the time-place and manner of of those elections so they do try to use the law as a cuddle with very robust expansive incorrect interpretations but being a sanctuary jurisdiction a quote unquote sanctuary jurisdiction is nowhere near the line and don't just take my word from it for the nightstruck it already decided this issue you know it's done and dusted decided already back in Trump 1.0 when the nightstruck it said that SB 54 is upheld and fully within California's 10th Amendment Constitutional rights you know something like physically obstructing you know assaulting a immigration officer in the lawful execution of official duties of immigration enforcement you know that's something that crosses the line that's an obstruction is interference is but not a state executing its Constitutional rights under the 10th Amendment to be a pro public safety pro public community trust jurisdiction all right and what about the reverse scenario you know after ICE agents fatally shot Renee Good and Alex Pretty and Minneapolis you know Minnesota officials said that the federal government was actually preventing them from conducting their own state and local criminal investigations doing basic things like preserving evidence so how should that kind of how should we understand that kind of state and federal conflict and you know how is the state of California preparing for that potential scenario I'll first say that we are in some unprecedented uncharted territory unfortunately there's long been a spirit of cooperation between the federal government and state and local governments when it comes to for example a crime that occurs in a state and there could be concurrent over lapping jurisdiction there's been sharing of of the evidence sharing of access to the crime scene the ability for each jurisdiction to fulfill their roles but the federal government has changed in its position and shown a unwillingness to cooperate after the murder excuse me the killing and maybe murder TBD of Renee Good the federal government immediately said it would not investigate and the tradition has been for the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division to investigate at least luck gather the facts pull them together maybe you conclude that there is no reason to take any additional steps but you won't even look you don't even care about the facts you're just going to decide it seems so purely political and I think the whole country saw that and then keeping evidence and access to the crime scene from local prosecutors from state prosecutors it was unprecedented and inappropriate we recently issued some guidance here in California in the wake of these positions being taken by the federal government these unprecedented positions these very problematic positions these positions that are contrary to law and we had seen statements made by people like vice president JD van saying that federal immigration officials enjoy absolute immunity and people like United States deputy attorney general Todd Blant saying to us in a letter to me and the governor that to attempt to investigate or prosecute federal officials including immigration enforcement officials for committing crime in California is his words illegal and futile and that's just not true if a federal agent including a federal immigration enforcement agent commits a crime on California soil against the California can a California law enforcement entity investigate and prosecute 1,000 percent yes so we know what our rights are we know what the law provides our north star is the law and the facts that's what we follow and we know that if we had something like occurred in Minnesota happening in California I hope it doesn't it was terrible it was tragic it was disgusting and unacceptable we know what our rights are so even in Trump's first term California another democratically led states were threatened with the loss of millions of dollars in federal funding if they did not cooperate with immigration enforcement and we're seeing these same threats again in Trump's second term and you know it is typical for the federal government to attach conditions to money so it gives the states but could you explain why these threats to young federal funds particularly violate states rights and what kind of funding threats has California faced yeah the Trump administration from as you mentioned from Trump 1.0 to Trump 2.0 has used a common I call it a move an approach to try to unlawfully force states mostly blue states democratic states that's that's be clear about it to change their policies consistent with what the federal government wants and they have used coercive funding approaches basically threatened to withhold literally billions of dollars worth of funding funding for transportation funding to provide cybersecurity or fund counter terrorism or to even support victims of crime that that they would pull that funding that by the way the branch of government the legislative branch congress in article 1 has already appropriated they have the power of the first and they already said that funding should flow but over there on the you know article 2 executive branch the president saying you're not getting the funding that you've already been appropriated if you don't engage in immigration enforcement the way we want you to and you know trying to change our the policies that that we have in California and in other states the so-called sanctuary policies and there is an ability to encourage or incent certain behavior the federal government can can do that with its funding but it can't coerce or compel when pressure turns into compulsion then it violates the rules of federalism and violates the tenth amendment and the spending clause and there's a set of cases that the that the U.S. Supreme Court decided where a modest incentive for example in South Dakota there was a federal government said you know you're not going to get 5% of the state federal highway funding that we would normally give you unless you raise the drinking age to 21 because that'll make the highways more safe that was allowed it was 5% it was probably you know less than one half of 1% of South Dakota's overall budget and then later when there was a policy from the federal government to withhold all of a state's Medicaid funding if it opted out of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion that was found to be coerced so if it was essentially a gun to the head and it left no real option but to do the bidding of the federal government and that under the tenth amendment and the spending clause rules could not occur so here we have beat the Trump administration four times in the last year on this move on the Trump administration trying to condition funding California is owed on a requirement that we engage in immigration enforcement the way he wants us to we beat them when it came to the Department of Transportation Funding Department of Homeland Security Funding and he just backed down and threw in the towel when it came to victims of crime act focused off funding so I think I'll try again February 1st he was supposed to try to withhold funding from sanctuary jurisdictions again February 1st has come in past but we remain vigilant and on high alert to see what he might do because this is something he did in from 1.0 we did it again at 2.0 we think he'll do it again but we are on very solid constitutional ground and we have one every time he's tried to do this and we believe we will win again if he tries again. Yeah I just want to step back for a moment and just tie these things together you know you've mentioned that the federal government can't come in dear we're forced the states to do things so that's the reason of the Supreme Court's interpretation of the tenth amendment Congress can certainly offer funds to the states and incentivize them but at some point if it's too much it's too coercive it actually violates a tenth amendment principle so there's a lot of robust principles in the Constitution about saying states have certain prerogatives and rights that the federal government can't touch so there's a whole set of cases here as you mentioned that that make that clear now one thing of interest is right after Renee Good was killed the state of Minnesota filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Trump administration arguing that the administration was violating the state's tenth amendment rights and your office filed an amicus or a friend of the court brief and the whole lawsuit is premised on the idea that this is a big tenth amendment problem and I wonder if you had any thoughts about like what exactly is that issue there why why is the surgeon in Minneapolis and in other cities and Minnesota why was that violating the Constitution? Yeah Minnesota and Illinois both brought cases of this nature asserting tenth amendment claims against the federal government and the cases we had we have talked about already involved sort of the coercive use of funding attacking conditions to the funding and trying and attempts to withhold huge amounts building the dollars with the funding and that becomes coercive at some point and becomes compulsion there's other ways you can coercer compel you can you know you can it could be a command to control where you order or mandate or it can be a militarized occupation of your state until you give in and say I'll no longer be a sanctuary state and you know the chaos the Constitution rights violations the deaths the killings of American citizens and the U.S. Attorney General Pambani wrote a letter that said some of this in it and sent it to Minnesota and said you know we can withdraw and deescalate if you do these things that you're already beating us on court on that we tried to do in other ways but it was coercion of another type not necessarily financial but imposing a unprecedented militarized occupation in the form of operation metro surge until the sanctuary policies were withdrawn and also there was also a equal sovereignty claim and equal sovereignty is the idea that all states are on equal footing in the eyes of the federal government that they should all be treated the same trump doesn't treat all states the same he targets and focuses on an attacks democratic states blue states he I mean he says it's it's it's not a conclusion or an inference it's what he says explicitly he will do so those arguments were advanced in the Minnesota case and in the Illinois case that the Northern District of Illinois has not yet issued any opinions in the Minnesota case the at the preliminary injunction states Minnesota's arguments were not accepted by the court at this point so we'll see what happens next there's more the case to occur and more stages in it left but we think these are important positions to stake out by the states who are being coerced in different ways by the trump administration and we're in unprecedented territory the trump administration is doing things we haven't seen before trying to coerce trying to compel using different tactics and different levers this is kind of what trump does he likes to use leverage she sees money as leverage he also sees forces leverage he sees military occupation as leverage see LA in June of this year when the national guard was unlawfully federalized and deployed and the Marines were sent in as well and then he did that in another blue city portland in another blue city watch it in DC and another blue city chicago while be rating them about their alleged public safety issues and complaining about their policies of you know sanctuary which they have every right to adopt. I wonder if we could turn to another place of constitutional conflict for the states and specifically the abortion context you know after the Supreme Court overturned the constitution protected right to an abortion in 2022 states were free to do whatever they wanted so some states of course severely restricted or even banned abortion and others provided protections for access to legal abortion. So for instance Texas has banned nearly all abortions so a medical provider cannot provide a legal abortion inside the state of Texas but of course the availability of abortion medications and telemedicine means that a doctor in New York or California can provide medication to a patient who is living in Texas without ever having set foot in Texas. Now some states including Texas have decided to go after some of these doctors who have helped women obtain abortions within their states even though the doctors have never entered Texas or Louisiana and of course there is another aspect of the constitution that's the full faith and credit clause of article four and the general idea here of course is that every state should keep their own courts open to the laws and judgments of the other states and California does provide access to reproductive health and legal abortion. So what is the state doing here to balance protecting these rights within the state but then also not crossing the line in terms of constitutional requirements that state should respect each other's laws and proceedings? Well in that regard we are asserting ourselves in California with respect to our states rights to decide that abortion is safe and legal. We've even enshrined it in our state constitution here. The people of our state decided that there is a constitutional right to an abortion in contraception. We've created laws that provide the ability for patients to seek and receive and providers to provide safe and legal abortions in California and also prevented attempts from other states to sort of engage in long arm civil and criminal liability actions trying to reach into California and because something that we find completely legal and that is safe in California but they disagree in their state that there's liability in that other state. So we've put up a number of different guardrails and protections and legal safe havens in California and we think that is all within our rights to do so and that our decisions here, the courts decisions here, deserve full faith and credit and should be honored by other states. So we don't see any constitutional problems with our robust lawful commitment to safe and legal abortion in California. And that includes things like sort of refusing to hand over information about doctors who might have provided such information to and help to patients within states that have severely restricted or banned abortion and is that right? Yeah, there are some prohibitions on, for example, a corporation like let's say Apple or Google getting a subpoena from an out of state entity about a medical procedure abortion that is completely legal in California. It's a legal and private medical procedure and there's no appropriate basis for that information to be sought by an out of state entity and so there are protections in place for that. Basically we are protecting anything in California that is lawful in California from any type of exposure to civil or criminal liability from someone outside of the state who sees it differently. Many of the lawsuits that your office has been involved with against Trump are part of this multi state coalitions of democratic attorneys general, apart from just reacting to actions from the administration like, have you been in planning mode? How do you coordinate? How do you talk to each other? What it would this, you know, new fraternity of people, fraternity, sorority, collection of people have, you know, is really on new ground and how are you working together in a way that's that's different? It's a coalition of co-equals. We are all independent executive in our sovereign states. We know when's the boss of anybody else? We're all each other's peers. We work together by choice deliberately and intentionally because we believe that we together can create something that's greater and stronger and more powerful than some of our parts when we come together as a whole. And we have been planning and talking and strategizing and preparing since before Trump was elected. Knowing that we couldn't guarantee he wouldn't be and also knowing that we owed our constituents readiness preparedness that we could not be caught flatfooted that we couldn't, you know, Trump got elected. Say, hey, we were all hoping to come along and get elected and now we don't know what to do. We had to know. And so we listened to everything he said on the campaign trail, his promises, even if it might be bluff or it might be bluster, we took him at his word and assumed he was going to do it. And he handed to us a written document that told us what he would do. Project 2025 and we reviewed that and looked at all of the plans there in and assumed he was going to engage in trying to manifest those plans. And my team and our collective teams were tasked with being ready for all of the above. Be ready for the Interaction Act. Be ready for the Comstock Act. Be ready for all of these sort of fringe theory approaches to teasing power that's not theirs in the, you know, quote unquote unitary executive and attacking our states and our progress and our policies and our people and our values. So, you know, there are some things that haven't had to come to pass yet. We've been ready to address for months. We don't want them to come to pass but if they do, all we have to do is dot the eyes, cross the T's, press print and file our complaint and we believe we'll win because we've thought about it and we've prepared. And among our, there are 24 Democratic attorney's general when Trump was inaugurated. There were 23, the Virginia AG flipped from red to blue in the election in November of last year. And we communicate every week. We meet often. We pick up the phones regularly. Our staffs are in regularly set meetings to communicate, plan, prepare. We are flagging issues that we see in our states, asking the other states if they're experiencing the same things. And deciding where we file a lawsuit, what claims we file on, what our injury is, and how we protect our people in our states from these unlawful actions. So, there has been consistent contact communication, strategizing, planning, preparing since before Trump was elected until today. And now, we're 55 lawsuits in California and a really strong record of success. And we're ready for whatever comes. Got a full tank of gas, full of energy, ready to roll. I hope that this president might decide, hey, maybe it's a good idea to follow my oath and comply with the constitution and not trample on it and not look over longingly at Congress and say, hey, I'd love to have the power of the person I'm just going to start using it or looking over at our courts and saying, they can't review my actions or looking down at the states and saying, they don't have any sovereign rights, they need to do what I say, and that he'll comply with the constitution. But that's probably a lost hope. And in the meantime, we stay ready and we stay prepared. What are you, what are you most worried about that might happen in the coming year from the administration? This is an election year. So, I think the integrity of our elections is critical. They're safe. They're secure. They're accurate. They're reliable in California. And across the country, Trump has attacked them time and time again. He's tried to use his bully pulpit and the fact that he has the biggest mega horn on the planet to try to erode trust in our elections. But even to this day, claiming that he won the 2020 election after people heard his own voice asked the Secretary of State of Georgia to find him 11,000 plus votes to find them. You don't find votes. The votes are cast. You count votes. And he recently sent law enforcement into Georgia to try to support this conspiracy theory that is a figment of his imagination. And that's a dangerous mental state for the president of the United States to be in. The fact that he seems to think that if he wins the election, it was fair and reliable and if he loses the election, it was rigged. And he's even maintained that he's won the election multiple times in Minnesota. And there's there's been court cases and other tribunals that have determined that this is there's no basis to any of this. And the polls show that he's going to get beat in the midterms. And that the house will flip. So his conspiracy theories on elections plus his increased desperation caused by reflected in the polls and how people in America are thinking about him and are unfavorable towards his policies and approach and are going to be supporting Democrats in the next election and his willingness to militarize Americans' cities. Those are dangerous combination. And so I worry about the possibility of federalized national guard at or near polling stations. I worry about the Marines at or near polling stations. I worry about attempts to use the U.S. Postal Service a federal part of the federal government to interfere with, but by mail and ballots that are cast. I worry about the people's voice not being heard and being stepped on by an unlawful president who's violating their rights. And so that just fuels me more to fight harder. I'm also concerned we haven't seen sort of the other shoe drop if you will on a tax on abortion. We were prepared for a weaponization of the Comstock Act to try to stop the mailing of medication abortion. I haven't seen that yet, but we're prepared and ready if it happens. And those are some of the things that are top of mind. We haven't seen the insurrection act be invoked and hope we never will. But he has bandated about and sort of dangle it out there and suggested he might use it multiple times. And we have closed the door on his ability to use 10 U.S. C. 12406. That's the federal statute that he relied on to deploy national guard, federalized national guard to LA to Portland and to Chicago. And with the U.S. Supreme Court case and their recent decision, I believe that door is shut pretty firmly. And so I don't think he will stop in his efforts to use the military as his private roving national army and police force. And we'll just find other ways and the insurrection act might be that way. Could you talk about the insurrection act a little bit? Why is this a weapon that he's threatening to brandish? The thing that makes the insurrection act different than the other statute that he used 10 U.S. C. 12406 and some other statutes is that it's a exception to the Posse Comitatis Act. So if he invokes the insurrection act and deploys military in American cities, the Posse Comitatis Act, which generally prohibits the military from engaging in civilian law enforcement, it doesn't apply. The military can engage in civilian law enforcement if the insurrection act is invoked. And the President and those around him have a very robust that's a euphemism. I think it's a lawful, unconstitutional view of federal power when it comes to the military. I think that they think that they can invoke the insurrection act for any reason, or no reason at all, and they can't be questioned. And courts can't stop them and that it's not reviewable by any judge. Even if there's nothing close to an insurrection and let to be clear, there is nothing close to an insurrection anywhere in the United States of America. There's no basis, not even close to lawfully invoke the insurrection act. But the President wants the power. That's what he seeks. And if he says there's an insurrection, he likes the power that comes with it. And the exception to the Posse Comitatis Act and the ability to move the military into blue cities. And that's why the threshold is so high that there has to be an actual insurrection. Pretend you a C12406 or had to be an invasion or a rebellion or an inability to execute the laws with the, they call it the regular forces in that statute. High thresholds, and these are emergency powers, exigent powers, powers to rarely, are there facts on the ground that justify them? But there's a saying that emergency powers begin emergencies and that the executive branch sees an emergency everywhere they look. Not because there's actually an emergency, but because they like the power if there were an emergency. So that's why Steven Miller is saying everything is an invasion. Everything is a rebellion. Everything is an emergency. Not because it is. It's not. Common sense people can see it's not. They just want the power. Well, Attorney General Rob Bonta, thank you so much for taking time with us and we really enjoyed our conversation. This wonderful talk to you. My pleasure. Thanks, Roman. Thanks Elizabeth. Joining us next month for Article 5, which lays out the process to amend the constitution. The 99% invisible breakdown of the constitution is produced by Isabel Angel, edited by committee. Music by Swanry All, mixed by Martine Gonzalez. podcast family. Now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building. In beautiful. Uptown. Oakland, California. You can find the show on all the usual social media sites as well as our own discord server where we have fun discussions about constitutional love and architecture about movies, music, all kinds of good stuff. You can find a link to the discord server as well as every past episode of 99 P.I. at 99 P.I. dot org. Why have I asked my age back guy? I found on Angie.com to change my grandpa's trachea tube because I was so amazed by how quickly he replaced our air ducts. I knew I could trust him to change poppups too while I was on vacation. Make it quick, young man. Ah, see? Poppup trust you. Uh, I think we should call it doctor. Connecting homeowners with skill pros for over 30 years. Angie, the one you trust to find them when she trust. Find pros for all your home projects at Angie.com. Hi, neighbor. Welcome to Birch Lane, your home for classic furniture and decor. Make the most of every special moment this spring with new beds and dressers, home renovations and more. 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