Ron Rudson
speaker
70 appearances
20 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Jun 2025
Ron Rudson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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It's bulls**t. Plain and simple. When they say affordability, and I've heard this line ever since I first went to a meeting in 1989, what they're meaning is profitability. Affordability to them means being able to close sales, hand the keys, and walk away.
Listen, I saw the association fight for a decade, fall on its sword and twist it over a $200 exhaust fan requirement. They spent thousands of dollars and staff hours You know, just grinding on this issue of a requirement for an exhaust fan.
They don't want those maps updated because all of a sudden a lot of areas that were previously developed are off limits. Or the rates, because of the higher proven risk, go up substantially.
What was its main goal? Advocacy. Look, trade associations exist for one reason, and that is to help facilitate trade. the profit-making ability of their members. And it really doesn't owe an apology for that. What it owes an apology for is for pretending they're something that they're not.
They pretend that they're an advocate for the American homebuyer, and it's all for show because what it's really about is figuring out how you can warehouse the American homebuyer for the least amount of cost and the most amount of profit.
Up First from NPR · DHS job cuts, Travel troubles under Trump, Sudan Civil War latest · 22 Mar 2025
podcast
Good to be with you, Sarah.
We do seem to be walking up to it. The phrase refers to a conflict between constitutional powers that has no clear resolution in the Constitution itself. Now, Trump suggests that a judge cannot contradict him because that judge didn't run for president.
One has to wonder, does Trump understand and accept that the courts are meant to act as a check on the elected branches, the Congress and the presidency? This one deportation case is going to an appeals court next week, but there are more than a dozen court rulings out there against Trump so far. They're being appealed, and at least some of them will probably reach the Supreme Court.
So how far is Trump prepared to go in pursuing his version of reality here? So far, at least, Trump has said he will not defy court orders. He will appeal them and rail against them and call for impeachment of the judge, but he has not yet said he will defy the courts outright.
The DHS is cutting jobs at its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and in the offices of the Ombudsman for Immigration Detention and the Ombudsman for Citizenship and Immigration Services. The DHS spokesman told NPR Friday that these offices, quote, obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS's mission, unquote.
Well, their job was to provide in-house oversight and restraint on this powerful agency and make sure it stays within the law and follows its own mandates. That's what watchdogs do. That's what ombudsmen offices are for. But here, as with the inspectors general, Trump is fired in various agencies. The new administration sees these watchdogs and guardrails as impediments.
And the Trump question is, why should anyone have any authority over these agencies other than the president? People can tell him that this is based in the laws and regulations as written and ultimately in the constitutional separation of powers. But it's not clear he accepts that answer.
That could be the question of the year, Sarah. But let's start with the Institute of Peace. It was created by an act of Congress 40 years ago under President Reagan. Its mission is to prevent or resolve violent conflicts in other countries. The Institute calls itself independent and says its employees are not federal workers.
But the White House says the president considers the Institute to be, quote, one of his agencies, unquote. And it says the Institute employees are rogue bureaucrats. As for the pushback from Congress, well, the Republican Party controls both House and Senate, and it's been very much on board for Trump and so far at least for Elon Musk as well.
The Democrats, meanwhile, are debating how to resist Trump without making bad things happen like a government shutdown and how to resist without doing damage to their own interests and those of their voters.
Thank you, Sarah.
Good to be with you, Scott.
It's been sold that way, like it's Trump siding with his cabinet over Musk. But if you listen to that clip we just heard, it still seems that Musk gets to come along batting clean up and deciding whether the cabinet secretaries and other Senate-confirmed officials have done enough. So who decides what's enough? Is it Musk or is it Trump himself? And do we know whether that's really a difference?
The New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have reported that there have been clashes between Musk and members of the cabinet, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, both of whom were reported to have been scolded by Musk for not cutting enough and for having too many DEI hires still working for their departments.
Yes, that's right. It's not a clear liability yet, at least not for Republicans in Congress, because as we saw on Tuesday night at the State of the Union, Musk is still a hero to Trump fans, both in Congress and beyond. Musk still polls well among Trump supporters. But the Musk stock may have seen its peak, Scott. We will see how the cuts to Veterans Affairs staffing, for example, go down.
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