MAJOR BREAKING NEWS! FEDERAL COURT SEIZES TRUMP'S MILITARY AUTHORITY!

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Major breaking news as a three judge federal court panel has decided apparently to take over the United States Army and the military. That's right. They don't trust Donald Trump to make decisions about personnel or Pete Hexith. And guess what? They've just decided to strike down major aspects of personnel policy for the United States Department of the Defense. Crazy stuff going on in federal court and it's not going to stand. But in context of this, I'm going to teach you how to analyze textbased second amendment rights versus, let's say, uninumerated rights.

[00:00:32]We're going to break all this down when we come right back.

[00:00:37]Hey folks, I'm Mark Smith, host of the four box of donor, proud American gun owner, constitutional attorney, member of the United States Supreme Court Bar, and I'm proud to say the top voice of the Second Amendment in America. Thank you. 2025 and 2026 gun use awards. All right, folks. This is a very good case for us to learn from to be the best possible second amendment advocates in America to make you the smartest person in the room. That is this case that was just decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit entitled Nicholas Talbot versus the United States. This was a challenge to Donald Trump, the president, the commander-in-chief under article two of the constitution. Article two of the constitution as you know creates the presidency. creates the president and it labels the president the commander-in-chief of our nation's armed forces. That's what article two of the constitution says. And of course, Pete Hexith has been named and is the head of the Department of War, formerly known as the Department of Defense. So, when President Trump was elected and sworn in, he basically issued a policy that said that transgender individuals are not allowed to be in the military. They can't be recruited. Uh they can't join.

[00:01:45]uh they're not allowed to serve all these sorts of things. So a lawsuit was brought claiming a constitutional right and this is going to be very important for you to understand this a constitutional right in various ways for um basically transgender individuals or individuals suffering from gender dysphoria meaning you don't know what sex you are um from being able to serve in the military. So, there was this lawsuit brought in DC saying that Donald Trump's policy of excluding transgenders and people suffering from the mental illness of gender dysphoria um that that law or that policy of Pete Hexiths and Donald Trump's was unconstitutional because it violated the constitutional rights in various ways of transgender individuals. Now, to make a long story short, the DC Court of Appeals, in an appeal from a lower court decision that ruled in favor of the transgenders, uh the DC Court of Appeals in a 2 to1 decision said indeed that Donald Trump, President Trump's policies of excluding transgenders uh from the military and not allowing them to serve, that this was unconstitutional and illegal. Now, that is the bottom line, what the court said in a 2 to1 decision.

[00:02:57]Now, we're going to use this to explain why this is a crazy result and to make you the smartest traverse in the room.

[00:03:04]We're going to illustrate why to be the best possible second amendment advocates, you need to understand different areas of law and how it all comes together. Remember the metaphor I always sort of teach you is that the law is like one very large spiderweb. If you or I walk up to a spiderweb and we grab a single strand, one little strand on this big spiderweb and we pull one little strand, the entire spiderweb moves. And that's why great lawyers understand that before you pull on that one strand of the spiderweb, you you look down the chessboard to see when you pull on that strand, where is the entire spiderweb going to move? Which is why we talk about certain cases we want to be advancing in the Second Amendment context. and other cases and issues we really want to bury for the moment until a better day in the future for example.

[00:03:55]Okay. So with that said this court said two to1 decision that transgender individuals that people suffering from gender trans dysphoria have a right a constitutional right to serve in the military essentially and that the government meaning the president doesn't have the opportunity or the authority to kick them out or prevent them from serving. Now let's talk about the two big areas that this raises questions.

[00:04:15]The first is separation of powers and the second is what is an individual right. Let's just start with separation of powers. Again, there's something we we often talk about the bill of rights.

[00:04:25]We talk about the second amendment, the right to free uh right to bear arms, the first amendment right to free speech, the bill of rights. But the reality is in many respects what's much more important for protecting our liberties as Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia uh pointed out was the structural constitution the structure the checks and balances the the presidency fighting the congress fighting the courts and all the stuff pushing back and forth. And it is this structural constitution that protects our various fundamental rights and liberties. Now under the constitution it creates three branches of government. As you know, article one of the constitution creates the congress, the legislative branch.

[00:05:02]Article two of the constitution creates the presidency, the commander-in-chief, in this case, President Donald Trump, right? And article three creates the court system. Now, universally, since the beginning of our country, the commanderin-chief oversees America's military. It oversees the armed forces.

[00:05:19]And as a consequence, when it comes to decisions involving the armed forces, the court system really stays out of it.

[00:05:27]It's really a question of Congress allocating money, making decisions about weapon systems and and and about money they're willing to spend on defense. And it's about the commander-in-chief, the president making decisions about how to deploy and how to use and how to protect our country against foreign threats using the military. So in this case here of Tabet versus the United States where you have two of the three judges on the DC circuit literally saying that we the federal judges under article 3 of the Constitution have the power have the legal authority to tell President Donald Trump as the commander-in-chief how to run the military, how to make personnel decisions is simply absurd. And the reason why it's absurd is because it violates long-standing understandings of separation of powers. So think about that concept for a moment. What is a separation of powers? It's that the courts have the power to adjudicate cases and controversies. The president has certain powers including to run the executive branch and to oversee the military. And Congress has certain powers such as to pass laws and to allocate money. These different powers are separate from each other and they're not allowed to, you know, the president can't take over the role of Congress.

[00:06:35]The Congress can't take over the role of the president. The president can't take over the role of the judges. The judges can't take over the role of the president. You see, it's a separates of powers and that is what helps keep us free. But here in this case of Tabid where the judges say, "Mr. Trump, the president, commander-in-chief, you have to listen to we the judges tell you how to run your military, who is allowed into the military, who's not allowed in the military. We the judges are going to tell you, the commander-in-chief, what's going to go down." This clearly in my view is a violation of the separation of powers where these judges are overstepping the line into the authority of the presidency and that's not going to fly. And there's a critical disscent here by a Trump appointed judge, Judge Justin Walker, who does a very nice job kind of explaining this point. And we're going to go through this point. I want to read this part of the descent and then we're going to break go and talk about how does one create a right to join the military and how does that compare in contrast with the right to keep in arms. But let's take a look at this descent by Judge Justin uh Walker explaining why the majority opinion saying there is a right to be in the military if you're transgender is really verbotton and the court has overstepped its bounds. Uh and let's see what he has to say. Check it out. Judge Steven Williams, one of the most distinguished jurists ever to serve on the DC Court of Appeals, wrote seven years ago that in the military there is no constitutional right, there is no constitutional right for, say, biological males who identify as female to live, sleep, shower, and train with biological females. Whether allowing such flexibility in military service is a good idea or not is of no concern to the courts. That is a question for the people acting through their elected representatives. Now as then, transgender plaintiffs object to a policy that excludes them from the military. Now as then, the district court has enjoined the policy's operation. And now as then, the government has appealed. Once we abstract away from the political charge subject matter, as we must, this is really a straightforward legal case. We have neither the expertise as courts nor the authority to decide whether the military can exclude the plaintiffs from its ranks. The Constitution assigns, listen carefully, folks, the Constitution assigns that authority to Congress and the commander-in-chief.

[00:08:48]That's powerful stuff and it's clearly true. And again, to be the smartest person in the room, you got to understand that a big part of what we talk about in constitutional law involving protecting our rights includes this notion of separation of powers. And there's no more basic fundamental distinction that the president with the help of Congress oversees the military.

[00:09:06]And courts are basically responsible for budding out because they're not equipped to decide military affairs, nor should they want to. But here you have judges doing exactly that, stepping and saying that we the judges get to make decisions that someone has a constitutional right to be in the military and how they get to serve in the military. And that really is who and inconsistent with American law. But now let's move on to the second part of this question and this is extremely important to understand this distinction uh in the context of the second amendment and that is how do you deal with someone who claims that there is a constitutional right that is not found in the text of the constitution and this gives rise to the role of history and how it's used in the second amendment context where you have the right to keep and bear arms which is laid out in the text of the constitution in the form of the second amendment and then you compare In contrast that to constitutional rights that are not actually mentioned in the text of the constitution such as the right to marriage. You'll see no reference to the right to marriage anywhere in the constitution and yet we all have a constitutional right to get married. But where does that come from?

[00:10:13]And the answer is history. So this gets gives rise to the question of how do we as constitutional scholars, as constitutional advocates, as second amendment supporters, how do we think about the role of history in determining constitutional fights over our rights?

[00:10:29]And it really turns initially on whether or not the right you're defending appears in the text of the constitution or if it does not. So let's start with the second amendment and things that are found in the text. We already know if you read the text of the constitution, if you read uh the first amendment, which is the right to free speech, among other things, the second amendment, which is the right to keep and bear arms, they're literally expressly mentioned in the text. But here's the thing, folks. How many of you out there have said that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms codifies a preexisting right? You all have said that because it's true. The Second Amendment did not create something new.

[00:11:06]It cautified a pre-existing right. So let me ask you this.

[00:11:12]How do we know what exactly was that right that the second amendment codified? How do we know the confines, the delimiting, the scope of the right that was codified? The answer is we look to history. And what we do is we know that the text of the second amendment, the right of the people to keep shall not be infringed declares the right.

[00:11:33]That is a textbased right found in the text of the constitution. So what are the role of history? history. If you look at long-standing history, as the Supreme Court said in Heler and then Bruin, Hiller, Heler and Breuan, and the history allows us to delimit the scope of the right to identify the outer contours of the right and find exceptions. So, in the context of dealing with a textbased right like the second amendment, we use history to see if there's any exceptions. And that gives rise to that question presented in brewin. Is there a long-standing tradition of firearms regulation that is permissible and consistent with the Second Amendment? In other words, the presumption is that you have a full-blown right to keep and bear arms in all respects. And to the extent there's exceptions or some sort of narrowing of that right in some respect, for example, you can't use arms to commit murder. How do we know that? It doesn't literally say in the Constitution that you cannot commit murder with a gun, for example. But how do we know that? And the answer is we look to long-standing American history and we realize that there's never been a right to commit murder with or without an arm. And therefore, a law that says yes, you have the right to keep, but you cannot use that gun to commit murder.

[00:12:42]That is correct. That is a narrowing of the scope of the right. But that is based in history. Now, let's contrast that with this case involving uh transgenders in the military. And this will help understand the role of history in constitutional rights and to compare it with the second amendment fights with other fights. So for example, there is no right in the constitution to get married. There is no right to an abortion in the text of the constitution. There's no right actually to engage in intimate sexual conduct or any of these things or to be transgender. So the question is if someone comes to court and says that I have a constitutional right to get an abortion, I have a constitutional right to engage in buggery or sodomy or some sort of intimate sexual conduct or I have the right to be transgender or I have the right to get married or I have the right to have children or I have the right to visit my grandchildren. People who come to court with these kinds of claims looked at the constitution and everything I just identified is not found in the text of the constitution.

[00:13:50]None of these can be found in the text.

[00:13:53]So does that mean that the rights claimment that's claiming the right to see grandchildren, the right to have kids, the right to engage in sodomy, buggery or other sort of sexual activity, the right to get married, the right to be transgender, whatever this is. Does that mean they automatically lose? The answer is no, they don't. But what exactly do they need to do? Well, here's the critical thing to understand.

[00:14:15]In the context of textbased rights like the Second Amendment, where the Second Amendment's text actually says you have a right to keep and bear arms, history is used to draw exceptions or to show exceptions or some narrowing of the right. That's the role of history there. But in contrast, if you're trying to argue for the existence of a right that's not found in the text of the Constitution, like the right to get married, for example, you use history affirmatively to try to demonstrate that since the start of our country, that particular activity is uh has always been there and it's always recognized as fundamental to the nation's history and tradition. And basically that it's implicit in American liberty. It's implicit in the ordered liberty. Uh it's implicit in in liberty and the justice that we've always experienced and enjoyed in the United States. Do you see the difference? So in the context of the second amendment, the use of history is to see if there's exceptions that allow modern day gun control laws to stand consistent with the Second Amendment, but we talking about these other things that are not based in the text of the Constitution. The right to marry is not in the Constitution. The right to an abortion is not in the Constitution. The right to engage in sexual activity is not is not in the context. it does not appear in the text of the constitution.

[00:15:31]Uh the the right to be a transgender is not in the text of the constitution. The right to see your grandchildren is not in the text of the constitution. The right to have kids is not in the constitution. And yet some of those but not all those are viewed as part of the constitution that you have a constitutional right to do that because the use of history identifies these things to be just so understandable or so relatable or so consistent with American law. something what Americans have always done as part of being a free American citizen. So again, understand that in the context of identifying for example whether or not I have an individual constitutional right to serve in the military, if I have gender dysphoria and or if I am a transgender individual, when you look to the text of the constitution, there is obviously no right to be a transgender individual and serve in the military. So then you have to turn to history because you're dealing with a non-extbased alleged right. When you look at history, you then say at the time of the founding or even at the 14th amendment, whenever it was, is there any long-standing historical tradition in American life where you can be a transgender and you have a right to be in the military or any of these things or have the right to get married or any of these things. And the answer is, of course, historically you have the right to certain things like the right to get married, the right to have kids. Um, these are long-standing uh traditions that without which it would make no sense to be an American citizen. It's deeply rooted in the nation's history and traditions. Uh, in contrast, other things like I'm transgender and I've trans and I have gender dysphoria and I want to serve in the military. Well, that has not ever been recognized as a right. It's not deeply rooted in American history or tradition. And as a consequence, the court should likely say, you don't have a right as a transgender individual to serve in the military. In fact, no one has a right to serve in the military because that's ultimately up to the commander-in-chief. And we the courts are not in a position to double uh to second guessess those decisions by the commander-in-chief where the constitution gives the president and the congress essentially the control over the armed services. So hopefully this video helps you understand that the separation of powers doctrine where the different branches are not supposed to step into the shoes of other branches like the courts cannot become the commander-in-chief which is basically what happened here in the Talbot case in the DC circuit. And likewise, when you're dealing with individual rights that are not found in the text of the constitution, you have to use history to demonstrate that that right a exists and to the extent it does exist, what is the scope of it. And that analysis is the use of history to demonstrate the existence of a right, which is in contrast when you're dealing with the first amendment right to free speech or the second right to bear arms where you use history to look to see if there's exceptions to the textbased description of the right. And that's why history is used differently depending on whether or not you start with a textbased constitutional right or you don't. And by the way, the person using history always bears the burden to show what they're trying to prove. So in the context of the Second Amendment, the government must show historically and the burden is on them to show historically there is an exception to the textualbased Second Amendment. In contrast, the burden is on the individual arguing that I have an individual right that's not found in the text of the Constitution, but I still have that individual right. So I would have the burden to use history to demonstrate that transgenders have a right to serve in the military. The burden would be on that person because that right is not found in the text of the constitution and that therefore whoever is using history either to find an exception to the text of the constitution or the person using history to create a right that's not found in the constitution. They bear the burden of proof to use history to prove their point. Uh so that's why it's very good that the founders wrote into the second amendment, wrote into the constitution the right of the people to keep environments because it means the burden is on the government to use history to show that there's an exception which is not that easy to do as we've talked about before. All right, folks. Hope this wasn't too geeky and I hope it was interesting. I appreciate your time here. Make sure you follow me over there on X4box of Dire. Don't forget to subscribe to YouTube and Rumble and I'll talk to you again real soon here at the Forbox of D.

[00:19:19]>> Orders up. Table 2 A.