Watching The Watchers

Joyce (00:00)
Welcome to this episode of Sisters Sidebar with Joel Weinbanks and me, Joyce Vance. You know, we get so many fantastic questions from our listeners here at the Hashtag Sisters-in-Law podcast that we don’t have enough time to cover all of them in the main show. And on Sisters Sidebar, we can dive deeper into the topics you care about the most. Every Wednesday, we’ll have a new episode with two or more of the sisters, just informal, just us hanging out. So you’ll still be hearing from all of us.

If you have a question for us, we really mean this, so please do, please email us at sistersinlaw@politicon.com or tag us on social media using hashtag SistersInLaw so we can answer your most pressing questions. And you don’t have to just type them out. Your voices are so important that we want to hear them too. So consider emailing us a voice memo using one of your notes apps and we’ll play it live on the show.

Remember, we love seeing you rocking our Hashtag Sisters-in-Law merch, so if you’re going to send us an audio, really get yourself ready for the Hashtag Sisters-in-Law experience and pick up some ⁓ t-shirts or sweatshirts at thepoliticon.com slash merch shop. Now, let’s get started.

Jill (01:16)
Joyce, our first question is an audio question, and I’m really excited that someone knew how to do this. I think I have finally mastered it, and if I can do a voice memo and send it to someone, then so can everyone else. So please, we love hearing your voice, and I’m very excited. Please, I’m encouraging you to get the question that you have to us with your own voice. And today, our first question comes from Jessica.

and she’s from Hillsboro, North Carolina. And here she is, her own voice, asking Joyce a question. Hello, my name is Jessie Telley from Hillsboro, North Carolina. I have a question for you. There is reporting that federal agents are taking pictures of protesters and license plates so that they can create a database. First of all, how legal is that? Second of all,

If I get on that database, how do I get off?

Joyce (02:16)
Hey, Jesse Kelly, thanks for the question. I think that this is something that we’ve all seen, right? There has been in both Minnesota and in Maine, we’ve seen federal agents turning the cameras on protesters. And it’s sort of weird, to be quite honest. There is this one video clip up in Maine where an ICE agent is filming a protester and she says, what are you doing? And he says, I’m taking your picture.

Now you’re in our little database and you’re a terrorist, a domestic terrorist. I find that clip to be absolutely chilling. And so your first question is how legal is this? Look, federal agents are entitled to gather any evidence that they need to assist the jurisdiction of their agency, right? They can gather evidence of crimes or other offenses and it’s all fair game. But what they can’t do

is trample on American civil rights. And so there are some databases where agents collect evidence and that’s perfectly legitimate or at least the law allows it. The no fly list is one example of that. know, a list of domestic terrorists, I would like to see that challenged in court to be honest, but we are, as we’ve said so many times in uncharted territory here. I mean, there may be some parallels from the civil rights era.

and what the FBI did to folks like Martin Luther King and others. And it may be that we’ll have to draw on that law to determine the limits of legality. But ⁓ these are, I think, difficult and troubling questions because this is simply not something that we’ve seen the government engage in for the last few decades, at least not overtly like this in a non-criminal context where people are just exercising their rights and say not participating.

in some form of international terrorism or other criminal conduct. How do you get off the list? I’m quite frankly not sure that there’s a legal mechanism. I think it would be interesting to see people ⁓ start foying the government using FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, to try to get information about their status. But of course, that comes at a cost, putting yourself on the government’s radar screen. I think though that we will see

some sort of an effort to challenge this sort of thing just because the evidence is so pervasive that agents are now doing this. In Minnesota, just in the last couple of days, the agents have been ordered not to engage with protesters. And I’ll be interested to see if that will extend to no longer videotaping or photographing them in addition to assaulting them. ⁓ Lots of moving pieces in this one.

Jill (05:05)
And you know, Joyce, you mentioned the no-fly list. And one of the first things I thought of when they said they’re creating a database of what they call domestic terrorists was you’re going to end up on a no-fly list. And if you’re returning from overseas and have to go through customs, I’m worried and I don’t want to raise the alarm bells too much, but we can’t trust the government. And so when they say they’re doing this database, it is concerning beyond belief.

Joyce (05:35)
Well, and can I just add to that, Jill, because I think this is such an important point. There was a woman posting on social media and look, I don’t know or I don’t know if this was truthful or coincidence or what it was, but she indicated she had been involved in some form of protest activity and then she lost her global reentry status like days later. For those of you who don’t know what global reentry is, you can go to TSA, pay them a bunch of money.

And then you get status that lets you circumvent the long lines going through customs on the way back into the country because you’ve been vetted in advance and you just show them your little card and you sail on through. And she said her status was revoked. know, many people have TSA pre that permits them to avoid long lines in airports and whether or not we’ll see retaliation against people for protesting by losing that status, which of course it’s discretionary with the government to provide that bit.

The thing that I would say to our listeners is, if you believe that steps have been taken to retaliate against you for protest, please reach out to your local ACLU or to other lawyers so that those groups will be able to accumulate statistics if we do start to see this. I don’t want to raise fears just the same way Jill says. I don’t want to get over my skis on this, but I do think it’s a good moment for us to all be aware of potential risks.

Jill (06:58)
Joyce, we have an actual written question from Per Jess at bluesky.social. And he or she, I guess Per is probably he, how do we fight this illusion of normalcy that so many Americans are living under before we wake up one morning to find ourselves in an absolute autocracy? Perfect question for you, Joyce, given your book.

Joyce (07:22)
Yeah, I mean, I sort of wrote a book about this, called Giving Up is Unforgivable, a Manual for Keeping a Democracy. And so I feel duty bound to say that one of the best things that we can do is read books, essays from people who help us understand the present moment. Because I’ll just tell you, just for me, I think it’s this illusion of normalcy is so pervasive. I remember in the first few months of the Trump administration, I had this moment, I was sitting outside, the weather was beautiful.

I was having wine with girlfriends and everything around us was so normal, right? People were walking their dogs and nobody was acting like we were living through a constitutional crisis. And yet we were, it was the early moments where it became clear that the administration had no interest in being a rule of law administration. And I was deeply frightened and everybody around me was like,

you are such a drama queen. And I think that that’s something that we have to fight against. You one of the lessons that I take to heart is the lesson of the civil rights movement and of the foot soldiers in the movement who said that what you had to do was never worry alone. That when something devastating was happening, you needed to surround yourself with people who understood.

who had the vision and the foresight to see what you saw so that you couldn’t be gaslit into believing that you were a crazy neurotic person. ⁓ And something that I do frequently when I feel this way and that I would just suggest is ⁓ my dear friend Ruth Ben-Giott, who’s the author of a wonderful book called Strong Men. She’s a historian at NYU. She studies Mussolini and other dictators. I like to read Ruth’s words because she’s so clear.

about seeing the threat, identifying the threat, talking about how the moment we’re living in compares to other moments in history, like the Hitler era in Germany, where people just ignored the threat because it was too painful to confront it. And folks, we just cannot do that any longer. This is the moment to reclaim a phrase that Trump likes to throw in our faces. This is a moment to stay woke about what’s going on.

Hey, Jill, there’s an audio question for you too. I love these audio questions. I hope you guys will all send them in for us next week. As a local law enforcement officer,

Jill (10:09)
on officer

with county jurisdiction. What legal federal government could, as I supposed to come to the city where I work, could they require our assistance or cooperation in their street sweeps?

Joyce (10:13)
And I was just wondering, the lead, the mandate as far as if I.

I’m

just kind of concerned about that.

Jill (10:34)
Well, I especially like this question from Dakota because she actually also invites us to go with her. She is a law enforcement agent, as she has said. She invites us to join her in Durham, North Carolina on a ride. And so I’m very excited about that. And the answer to this is really pretty interesting. And Illinois has actually taken steps in this direction. States are increasingly implementing sanctuary policies.

Illinois has done that with its trust act. Washington and Colorado have done things. They’re restricting local law enforcement from aiding US immigration and customs enforcement efforts and prohibiting voluntary detention agreements, which mean that they will release anybody in detention directly to ICE, limiting information sharing. My mayor, Daniel Biss, has limited what Evanston can provide, restricting

access to local jails. These are things that can help. so the answer is in part, get your county or your state to start restricting detention agreements, limiting information sharing, protecting sensitive locations like, for example, schools, hospitals, churches, courthouses. A lot of states have said you cannot arrest anyone inside a courthouse. They have a right to be here to vindicate their rights.

⁓ cutting funding, ⁓ but also just restricting police ICE coordination. These are things that can be done. in terms of whether people can get damages, it depends on whether there’s negligence and excessive force, whether legal action is necessary or will be productive, and whether the facts will justify it. But yes, there’s a lot that can be done through state and city action. And I urge you all

to get your states and cities to take on those cases.

Joyce (12:36)
Jill, there’s a question for you from Coal Mine Phoenix, Blue Sky Social, and this is a great question. They ask, what other tools could Congress use besides inherent contempt or impeachment to curb executive power?

Jill (12:51)
That is a great question because it’s one that we all should be asking. What has happened to Congress? The answer is they could use their own power to legislate. They could use their own power to enforce their constitutional rights. So for example, when Donald Trump refuses to spend money, they have appropriated or uses money that they didn’t appropriate or declares war without any congressional input.

Those are their powers and they should demand that they keep their own powers. They aren’t doing that. They have let him take and accrete to his own executive power the powers that rightly belong to Congress. And as long as they sit there and do nothing and let him do it, he’s going to keep getting away with it. They could also refuse to confirm the Senate, this is, could refuse to confirm some of his most unqualified appointments.

That is their right. That is their power. And they aren’t using it. And I, for one, I mean, the Democrats are in a minority, so they can’t do it on their own. It is going to take Republicans willing to stand up. And lately, we have finally seen people saying, this is too much, and I am against certain things. ⁓ People that you wouldn’t have necessarily expected to be weighing in against things that Donald Trump is doing.

But that’s, think, the most powerful thing that Congress could do.

Joyce (14:24)
You know, it seems to me that many folks who were Republicans were even seeing this now in Congress understand that having a president who accumulates so much power in his own hands, that that’s not healthy for democracy, that the founding fathers meant for there to be a balance of power between the three branches of government and that Donald Trump has stood that on his head. And so I think this is the moment to have conversations with your friends who are

not interested in politics or your friends who are independents or even Republicans about voting this fall in ways that restore that balance of power. We need a Congress that will set guardrails that does believe in using its oversight powers because we know these congressional oversight hearings, which sometimes look a little bit hooky and like they’re making sound bites, but they have real meaning. The January 6th, the House Select Committee on January 6th,

did work that changed the way we view January 6th. And Donald Trump, even though he was still re-elected, many people became more concerned following that. ⁓ So having Congress set up as a balance to the overreach of executive power really matters a lot.

Jill (15:38)
I just have to add to that because I go back to when oversight hearings actually resulted in action, when there was bipartisanship and that as a result of it, laws were passed, norms were created, people were punished. And I don’t see that anymore. And it’s really too bad. I mean, if you go back to Watergate, the urban Senate hearings were

joined in by Democrats and Republicans asking questions and taking action based on it. I dream about returning to that era.

Joyce (16:12)
Well, Jill, there’s another question for you. This one comes from Adam in Lexington, Massachusetts. Adam wants to know, speaking of Watergate, since the post-Watergate norms and policies about separation between the White House and DOJ can be ignored by an administration that doesn’t want that separation, is it time for a big structural change to make the DOJ actually separate?

Would this require just a law to be passed or a constitutional amendment?

Jill (16:43)
such a great question and there have been proposals to create a separately elected attorney general. Just as there are in states. In my state, I worked for the attorney general who is separately elected from the governor. And it really does ease the problems of if there’s something going on in the governor’s administration that the attorney general can investigate freely and fairly.

They may be from the same party. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not, but they have independent constituencies. And so that has been proposed. Would it require a separate constitutional amendment? I’m not really sure because obviously in the constitution, there’s an executive branch and it has for our whole history included a Department of Justice. But I’ve seen other cabinet offices in my lifetime, know, recreated or

Well, now we’re seeing many dissolved, ⁓ even though they aren’t technically dissolved. Their names have been changed or their funding has been eliminated or the staffs have been fired. So yes, I think there is a need to legislate the norms and policies about separation. After Watergate, rules were sort of accepted that the attorney general or any of his top people cannot just talk to

White House counsel as was happening during Watergate where information about the investigation was being directly funneled to John Dee. And it was so obvious that that needed to change and so it was. But those rules aren’t being followed anymore. So I think legislation of certain things could happen even if the department weren’t ⁓ separated with a independently elected attorney general.

Thank you for listening to Sisters Sidebar, our new addition to Hashtag Sisters-in-Law. Today, you had me, Jill Winebanks, and Joyce Vance answering your questions. And we’ll do it. Every week, at least two of us will answer your questions. So please keep sending in your great questions for next week’s show. And if you send in a voice memo, we will try to play your question live during our next episode. We love hearing your voice, so please send us voice memos.

Follow Sisters Sidebar and hashtag Sisters in Law wherever you listen and please give us a five star review to help others find our show. That’s how they’ll find it. Don’t forget to pick up Sisters in Law merch and other goodies at politicon.com slash merch and see you every week on Wednesdays and Saturdays for new episodes of hashtag Sisters in Law and Sisters Sidebar.

Joyce (19:44)
There is an opinion where ⁓ Frank Johnson, the great civil rights judge, ⁓ it’s a drug sniffing dog case and he just drops this random footnote and he’s like, well, I feel like Nebuchadnezzar and Badger could have done it just as good. Neb is ⁓ his dog and Badger was my father-in-law’s dog. And it’s just this random footnote in an 11th Circuit case.