CLAY: We are joined now by the current attorney general of Missouri, Eric Schmitt. Tough loss, by the way, last night for Mizzou against Army, last-second field goal. Were you watching, Eric?

A.G. SCHMITT: I was. It was a tough loss. It’s been kind of an up and down season. Drinkwitz, though, I think has got the program headed in the right direction, but you would have liked to have won that game last night. That’s for sure.

CLAY: Yeah, it was a heck of a game. All right. I want to thank you. You are helping to fight battles out there for a lot of people out there like me. I’m obviously from the state of Tennessee. Back in August I went and talked at my local school board before, Attorney General Schmitt, we knew that everybody who talked at their school board against masks was a domestic terrorist. I guess I am a domestic terrorist. Went and spoke out against it. What are you seeing on the ground level in Missouri as it pertains to masking in schools, as it pertains to what I believe is the unconstitutional vaccine mandate overall? What is the situation in Missouri?

A.G. SCHMITT: Yeah. And, first of all, thanks for what you do, Clay, honestly. I’m a big fan, and I think the stands that you’ve taken on this are very important, and I think we have to fight back on all fronts. This is covid tyranny. I’ve been pretty outspoken about this. You know, we’re fighting on behalf of parents. Let’s just talk about the local issues with mask mandates. We have taken on, St. Louis County, for example, is the biggest county in the state. We sued them when they, you know, had a mask mandate in place and won and liberated a million people so don’t have to, you know, be forced to wear masks all day long.

But these petty tyrants are embedded in some, you know, school districts and local governments, and we’re taking ’em all on. So, you know, I just fundamentally don’t believe in the forced masking of our kids. And as you know that’s not backed up by data or science in the first place. Second of all, that has never been about that. It’s about power and control. And they’re never gonna let it go. And so some of the stuff we were talking about whether it’s it was earlier this year, the summer, about, you know, they’re just not gonna let this thing go. They’re not gonna do. They’re finding new reasons to continue their efforts to control people’s lives. And we’ve gotta push back.

So we sent cease-and-desist letters to 50 school districts. Many of them have now backed down but, you know, come the beginning of the year we’re gonna take them to court. These kids and parents should be able to make these decisions, not government bureaucrats and I think we’ve gotta fight it on every front. On the vaccine mandates, Clay, there’s, those cases are now moving. There’s late breaking news last night. And Missouri led the charge on this so Missouri’s the lead plaintiff on these cases, certainly the CMS health care worker vaccine mandate, those are gonna be heard in front of the Supreme Court now on January 7th. So this stuff is coming to a head. And I think these are big, important cases about what is the role of the administrative state but more broadly than that, America’s been the freest country in the historical of the world.

Are we gonna remain that or are we gonna descend to some dystopian biomedical security state? Which, by the way, they’re not gonna stop there, either, Clay. You’ve already started to hear Joe Biden talk about the climate crisis and we’re at a tipping point. And they’re gonna use these emergency powers to dictate what people can drive and when they can drive and watch. There will be a midterm variant. You know, these people are playing for keeps, and that’s why we have to fight back at every turn.

CLAY: We’re talking to Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt. You mentioned the Supreme Court and the hearings that they’re gonna have on January 7th. I opened up the show sort of putting on my lawyer hat and analyzing that. I took it as a very good sign that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear these cases based on what’s happened in the Fifth Circuit and also in the Sixth Circuit. Are you cautiously optimistic as well based on their decision to hear this case, these cases on January 7th?

A.G. SCHMITT: I am. I think it’s always dangerous to be counting votes, but, you know, we in the Eighth Circuit, if you notice when these were filed they were filed in number of things differently circuits the Eighth Circuit Missouri is the biggest state in the Eighth Circuit you’ve got the fifth and the sixth the OSHA mandates were all consolidated. The Eighth Circuit we won on the health care worker mandate and then the DOJ took it directly to the Supreme Court. So they are going to hear both of those at the same time.

Now, the federal contractor case is still out there. The Supreme Court hasn’t heard that one. But I think you’re gonna get a very good signal of where these are all headed on January 7th. Now, technically there are motions for stay, right? So we’ve stayed this meaning it’s been halted on the health care worker. The Sixth Circuit said now we’re lifting that stay on the nationwide injunction that was like out there. So all this stuff’s coming to a head in the next couple weeks ’cause those deadlines are looming. But here’s the thing. And you know this as a lawyer. The truth of the matter is, there’s, no constitutional authority or stature authority anywhere to force the vaccination of tens of millions of Americans. The federal government doesn’t have those kinds of general police powers. They don’t.

The federal government is a government of limited power that the states agreed to. And, by the way, securing the border happens to be one of those. But certainly forcing the vaccination of, you know, a hundred million Americans isn’t one of them. And OSHA, by the way, on the private, or in the private employer side of this, OSHA’s in charge of making sure forklifts beep when they backup, you know, not this. This is breathtaking overreach. So it’s about the vaccine mandate, but it’s also about a larger issue. Our founders were very astute historians and students of human nature. They knew that tyrants and dictators try to accumulate power, right? That’s sown into human nature so what they did was divide the government to spread that out it dispersed it, right?

You have separation of powers and checks and balances. No one branch, no one person ever gets too powerful. And the reason for that is they were trying to protect individual liberty so that people can live their lives, they can pursue happiness, which is a very American concept. That’s what this is all about. And that’s why we have to fight so hard.

CLAY: And honestly, and we’re talking to attorney general Eric Schmitt from Missouri, honestly the Constitution matters more in times of crisis, difficulty, when there are great passions aroused than it does in times of great peace and tranquility. So if you’re going to stand up for, as you said, separation of powers, I think it’s significant that the Senate voted against Joe Biden’s unconstitutional, in my opinion, vaccine mandate. This is the time when you would be standing up and need the Constitution and the people who defend it to speak the loudest, right?

A.G. SCHMITT: Exactly because it’s, what’s so unique about our system and why it’s celebrated, and we should celebrate it, right? — is that it’s a structural safeguard. It is a wall to protect what, you know, somebody wants to do like Joe Biden, right, who wants to just, he thinks people should have to go do this. Well, there’s a process by which, even if that’s what you wanted to do, Congress ought to be voting on this stuff. And so beyond just the vaccine mandates, I think these cases can stand for a larger proposition, right, which is, you know, as I talk to farmers and ranchers in southeast Missouri or northwest Missouri, one of them told me, look. I never voted for the deputy undersecretary of the EPA, right? But the fact is, whoever that person is, and most people have no idea who that is, if they issue a rule or some sort of guidance, it affects that person’s livelihood.

We have to pull away from this idea that these unelected, folks, who are not accountable to voters, right, because We the People are the sovereign. They’re not accountable, we gotta pull away from that and put more power back in the Article I branches, which is what the founders always intended. And again, that’s why these cases are so important. They’re important because people shouldn’t be forced to do this by the government and people should be able to make their own decisions, but it’s also about this breathtaking scope of power that they want OSHA to have or CMS or pick your alphabet soup agency. So there’s much larger issues at play here.

And, by the way, we’re fighting that kind of federal overreach but also at the local level. I mean, we’re pushing back, we’re suing Springfield Public School District because they’re failing to disclose CRT materials. You have to have people who are willing to go and fight for this stuff because I really believe that our republic is at stake. And I don’t mean this hyperbole. You look at what’s happening in Congress, the Democrats want to pack the Supreme Court, they want to add states to the union, they want to federalize elections. What is that all about? It’s about power and control.

What are these mandates about? Power and control. So we have to fight back in a system that’s supposed to broadly spread out that power. So, again, individuals, we are the first country in the history of the world to believe in individual rights, that our rights come from God and government’s role should just be to secure those rights, to protect those rights, not bulldoze those rights.

CLAY: The Supreme Court cases are gonna be heard on January 7th. I believe Joe Biden has pushed back the effective start date of his mandates to early February. When do you think we will have a ruling from the Supreme Court if cases are being heard on January 7th? Do you have any idea or indication of when we might not have resolution on this?

A.G. SCHMITT: It’s a good question because typically these kind of cases you would have a polling, right, or you would have a kind of a pause. Even though, for example, on the OSHA mandate that’s early February, the government can start fining folks January 10th, early January. I think that’s the date. So I would expect that the Supreme Court, after those hearings on the 7th, would rule pretty quickly on whether or not they’re stayed, meaning whether or not they’re halted.

Now, there will be a final ruling on the merits somewhere down the road, but that will give you a very, very good indication of how they feel about this, whether they’re constitutional or not, has there ever been a statutory authorization for OSHA, by the way, to go do this. Now, I think the answer is clearly there isn’t, there hasn’t been. But we’re gonna find out on the 7th.

And I think they’ll rule pretty quickly. All this stuff is coming to a head. We fully expected the Supreme Court ultimately weigh in on this because, number one, these are big issues.

(loss of audio)

CLAY: I think we may have lost him right there at the end. But he’s doing a fantastic job. Want to thank the attorney general of Missouri, Eric Schmitt, for joining us as we get closer and closer to what is going to be a major battle in the Supreme Court on January 7th over whether or not Joe Biden has the power under OSHA to have these unconstitutional vaccine mandates.