Tom Butler: 0:04

This is the Cycling Over 60 podcast, season three, episode 33. Can we still lobby for bikes? And I'm your host, tom Butler? Thank you for listening to the podcast this week. Knowing that you're listening really does keep me going, and I still love seeing what rides people are doing in the Cycling Over 60 Strava Club. If you aren't part of the club, consider joining us, of course. I especially like seeing the ride photos.

Tom Butler: 0:39

Last week I talked about the electrolyte and feeding strategy that I was planning to try out on the 60-mile ride with Kelly. I miscalculated how many calories I needed to consume on the bike a little bit because I forgot that we were going to take a snack break at the 20-mile mark. So I ended up consuming fewer dates than I had planned while riding and instead had a few oranges. And my lunch was huge Way too much food. We ate at a place called Cafe Neo in Arlington, washington. I ordered a Neo Power Bowl. It was definitely too big for one meal, but I grew up in a eat everything on your plate kind of family, so I tend to feel bad about wasting food. Since we didn't have a way to carry food. I ate way too much. One thing about it the food at Cafe Neo was excellent. I suggested that next time we do the ride, kelly and I should share the bowl. She shut down that idea because the veggie gyro she had was really, really good.

Tom Butler: 1:39

I paid a price for overeating, with a bit of discomfort for the last 20 miles. It was hot that day and I did press the pace as much as I could For the last 10 miles or so. The heat was elevating my heart rate so I couldn't push as hard as I actually would have liked to. So it was really hot, I was sweating a lot, I was really pushing it, but I had absolutely no cramping after the ride, and that is an unusual outcome for me. So I think my electrolyte strategy did pay off and I look forward to testing it more. I do have cramping after rides enough that it would make a huge difference to find a way to eliminate them, and that is especially a problem for the night after the first day of the STP, because it interferes with me getting a good night's sleep. One strange outcome was that I had a bunch of broken blood vessels in my right eye. That happened toward the end of the ride. I found out that the medical term for this is subconjectural hemorrhage. After doing a bunch of reading it doesn't seem like very often it's something to worry about. While I don't believe there's a link, I would like to eliminate that it's related to the electrolytes that I took in. Because of the positive impact and cramping, I'm still going to use the electrolyte mix that I came up with for this ride on other rides and we'll just have to see what happens.

Tom Butler: 2:59

I expected to do much better on this attempt than when I first did the ride two and a half years ago, and my results showed again that you can certainly improve your cycling later in life. I set 41 personal bests on the ride Pretty much every segment that was there two years ago. I bested that effort and I did a 13.9 mile per hour average, which was much better as well. I wish I could see and compare the average on just the last 20 miles. For that section of the ride. I was trying to get to 14 miles per hour average. Before the end of the ride we had been at a 14 mile per hour average until our slow ride to the lunch stop. That little bit took us down to 13.5. So for the last 20 miles I was trying to get that back up.

Tom Butler: 3:47

Really, the most important thing is that Kelly had a really good time. As I mentioned, we were testing her battery, so she took it easy and used a lot of pedal assist. The battery power indicator ended up at about half after 60 miles. That is excellent news because I think when we ride together we will likely not go further than a metric century, so there's plenty of flexibility as far as her battery is concerned. Even if we get into a ride where there's a lot of climbing, we're really curious just how far it will go. It's hard to imagine that she could do like 120 miles on a full charge. We're going to do some more rides before charging the battery to see if that will help us determine just how far she could go on one charge, but it's hard to know how much power it's losing when it's just sitting. One more thing before we get to the interview.

Tom Butler: 4:35

I've ramped up the organization of the September 14th Cycling Over 60 event. There's one aspect of the event that I need to make a decision on. I would like there to be a time to socialize. My thought is to find a venue where we can eat and have the space to get to know each other. I also want to have a guest speaker that will give a brief talk on something interesting that's cycling related. My question is when to have such a gathering.

Tom Butler: 4:58

I originally planned to have it the night before the ride. My thought was that the vast majority of people doing the ride will be local, so I felt that it wouldn't be difficult for people to come both Saturday evening and then ride the next day. In fact, I thought it might be kind of fun to potentially meet some people that you would ride with the next day. Someone from outside the area shared that they thought it would be asking a lot of people to come Saturday night. There is an option of doing the social event after the ride on Sunday, but I don't know if people will want to hang around that long. For people doing the 30 mile ride, they would get finished hours before the event would get started. Another factor is for people outside the area is how late they could stay on Sunday before needing to travel home. They might want to get started right after the ride is over. I'm having a really hard time figuring out what is best, so it would be awesome if you would help me out, if you could take just a few moments, go to the event description and hit the. Send me a text link. I would love for you to tell me if you think a Saturday night event works or if it should be an after-ride party. Thank you for taking the time to do that for me.

Tom Butler: 6:14

In the spring, I participated in the Washington Bikes Lobbying Day in Olympia. I'm so glad that I did, and now I wish I had been involved in advocacy work sooner. So many people complain about what the government does or doesn't do, but I find that relatively few of us are engaged in the process of sharing our opinions directly with legislators. While I'm as committed as ever to working to get safe biking infrastructure, I have to be honest that it seems like a strange time for activism at the national level. It actually seems dangerous to express opposition to White House policy, but I think federal transportation spending is an important source of funding for safe infrastructure.

Tom Butler: 6:54

I wanted to find someone who was an experienced cyclist who could also talk about how the massive political change could impact my ability to help influence policy. I'm thrilled because I found the perfect person. John DePippa is an avid cyclist, but he is also Dean Emeritus of the William H Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas, little Rock. He formerly taught for 40 years and is a distinguished professor of law and public policy. Here's our conversation. I feel incredibly fortunate today to be joined by John DePippa. Thank you, john, for coming on the podcast.

John DiPippa: 7:29

Oh well, thank you for asking me. It's going to be fun and a real honor.

Tom Butler: 7:33

Well, cool and it's an honor to have you here and you're the perfect guest. We'll kind of get into that a little bit more about some questions I have for you, but first can you talk about your earliest memories of the bicycle?

John DiPippa: 7:47

You know, my earliest memories are actually of someone else riding a bicycle and it was my aunt. Her name was Carmilla at the time she went into the convent and became Sister Bethestina, but my earliest memory is that she didn't learn to drive. She rode a bike everywhere and she was really well known for that. She was also my favorite aunt ever and I think I was her favorite nephew. But besides that, that's my earliest memory of somebody who used a bike actively in a way that you know was transportation, but it also was part of an identity. Now, eventually she did learn to drive and became the chauffeur for all the nuns, but she didn't learn to drive until she went to the convent. So that's really my earliest memory of a bicycle. And then of course, I thought that was cool to have a bicycle, and growing up in the 60s everybody had bicycles, all the kids did, and so that's you know pretty much how we hung out. We'd ride around town and come back before it got dark.

Tom Butler: 9:00

Now, somebody that's relying on a bicycle rather than a car sounds like something that would happen in Europe. Was your aunt here?

John DiPippa: 9:09

Oh yeah, this was in the United States. I grew up in a small town so it wasn't that large, you know. I mean, obviously it was the universe to me. She could get around town pretty much. I remember she had a basket on it and so she could carry things to and from wherever she was going.

Tom Butler: 9:53

I'm wondering about. As you got into adulthood, you know for many of us it gets hard, with so many responsibilities, to keep going cycling. How did you find it? Did you stay with cycling as an adult?

John DiPippa: 10:08

It's interesting, you know. I mean obviously didn't stay with cycling forever, but about 40 years ago, when I first started my job teaching law in Little Rock, I didn't live that far from the law school and we had children four children in one car and I thought, well, this isn't a bad way to get around, I'm just going to, you know, ride to the law school. So I got a second hand bike and I started riding it to and from the law school, and at the time I was a runner. So that was my. Running, was primarily my exercise, but the bicycle was actually, you know, transportation, but the bicycle was actually, you know, transportation. Eventually I started having a lot of running injuries and so, probably 35 years ago, I started riding the bike more and more for exercise and less and less for commuting, and probably the mid 90s I just switched over to bicycling and that became my primary form of exercise.

Tom Butler: 11:10

So when you were running and then cycling for exercise, what was moving you to be healthy? It sounds like you liked being active, that form of challenging your body or whatever.

John DiPippa: 11:34

I'm wondering if there was something that was going on that was causing you to want to be active. Yeah, I mean, I come from a family history of pretty significant heart disease on both sides of my family. Most of my male relatives on my mother's side died early, some in their forties, some in their 60s, from heart attacks, and then my father had a heart attack at 58. And this was probably in the late 70s and I thought, oh my gosh, you know the dice are kind of loaded against me. And so I resolved to become healthy and my first goal was really to live past 60, since so many of my male relatives died at 60. And that's how I took up running and then eventually cycling. So that was my primary motivation, you know, basically to stay alive and stay healthy. Cycling, as you know, sort of not only grows on you but becomes part of your identity, just like my aunt. And so now you know, I still do it to stay healthy, but I also do it because I love it and it's part of who I am now.

Tom Butler: 12:34

Would you say that when you look at being active, that you feel like it has kept you healthy. It has helped you avoid the maybe the problems that genetically you were predisposed to.

John DiPippa: 12:48

Absolutely. It's interesting. Sadly, my wife and I've had several experiences being in the hospital in the last several years for cycling injuries and you know we're giving information to the doctors and the nurses and they say, so, what medications are you on? And we say, well, none. And they say, really, we say yes and they say, well, no. I mean, like, what medications do you take every day? And we say we don't take any every day. Well, how do you stay healthy? And then you know, ironically, we stay healthy by the thing that brought us to the hospital for our injury. But it's a conversation we have every single time and you know people just say, well, how do you stay healthy? Why aren't you taking medicine? Well, I know why I'm not taking medicine. I know I am healthy.

Tom Butler: 13:41

Well, I have moved into this point where I'm talking about the bicycle as a medical device. I feel like if you buy into the statement that exercise is medicine, then the bicycle is a medical device. When people ask well, what medicine do you take, you know, maybe you can start saying I take almost daily bicycling.

John DiPippa: 14:03

Yes, I think that's a good answer and you know, a lot of physicians are now prescribing exercise as part of their prescription and I think for a lot of people they kind of need that direction from somebody with authority to get them off the couch and moving.

Tom Butler: 14:21

Yeah, for sure. And you mentioned your wife, Karen.

John DiPippa: 14:25

Yes.

Tom Butler: 14:26

And she's a special cyclist.

John DiPippa: 14:28

Oh yes.

Tom Butler: 14:29

I wonder if you could talk a bit about her. I hope to someday bring her on the podcast. I don't know if you've approached that subject with her, but hopefully I can talk her into that. But can you talk about it? Yeah Well.

John DiPippa: 14:42

I'll tell you what. After this I'll send you her email address so you can talk to her directly. But her story has to go back to high school and college. In high school she was a really really good track athlete. She went to school in London, england, because her father was in the military, and so she had some track experience. She came back to the United States and went to the college where we met and it was known for physical education, so that was her major. At the time they did not have a women's track team.

John DiPippa: 15:13

Now this was 1970, before Title IX, which created opportunities for women in college sports, and so, you know, she was trying to do this on her own and at one point the male, the men's track team, said why don't you come and work out with us? She said, well, I would, but could I compete? They said, well, no, you can't really compete, you can just come and hang out with us. And she thought, well, that's kind of weird. And so that experience kind of led her to become a health major and a bunch of other things.

John DiPippa: 15:50

And so in the 80s, when I took up running, she said you know, I might run too. I said OK, so we both entered a 5K and I'm running and I'm really suffering and I feel this tap on my shoulder and she runs by me and says come on. And from that point on I've never been able to keep up with her. So she became a very good age group runner in the state and I would say at one point she was probably in the top 10 of female runners in the state. But then injuries took over and so she kept trying to ride a run and finally she said you know, maybe I could ride your bike to just recover from these injuries. I said okay, and so she started doing that, said you know, I'd like to ride a little more, but I'm worried about falling. I said oh, don't worry, I've been riding for like 10 years and I've never fallen.

John DiPippa: 16:46

Well, she's had seven accidents in the last 25 years um, but we're still married, um, so so she's going on she. So she really ended up challenging herself on the bicycle because she's such a great athlete and so late in life. We ended up going to the Senior Olympics in 2022 and then 2023. And she picked up three medals in those events. She's still in contact with some of her competitors. Unfortunately, she can't go this year, but she's got her sights set on two years from now in Tulsa.

Tom Butler: 17:25

Well, that's fantastic, and I do hope that she comes on, because I'd love to get more of her story.

John DiPippa: 17:32

I think it'd be great. Our cycling group calls her the mountain goat because she beats everybody up the hills.

Tom Butler: 17:40

That's fantastic. I love that. Now, do you have some bike experiences that are really special to you, if you think about different things you've done?

John DiPippa: 17:49

Yeah, we started taking bicycle vacations. We use a company. We've gone to Europe, especially Italy, so we've been there 10 times. We've been to Croatia once we should be in Mallorca right now, but we can't because of her injury. Should be in Mallorca right now, but we can't because of her injury. But probably the most special cycling event really was in 2009. And we took our kids and their significant others. So we have four boys and they were all adults at the time and we went to the part of Italy where my grandparents came from. So you know that was special because cycling is wonderful. That part of Italy is beautiful and it's not well-traveled or well-touristed, but, of course, having our kids there with us was just really special. So, of all the trips we've taken, that's probably the most significant we've ever done.

Tom Butler: 18:51

Well, it does sound special, and I think there is, you know that time spent together, you know on the bike, as a family. That sounds just wonderful.

John DiPippa: 19:03

Yeah, and I think this is not an answer to your question, but it makes me realize that one of the nice things about cycling is that Karen and I can do this together, and even though she's faster than me, you know we're relatively well matched, although let's just say that I usually she usually gets back to the car before I do, so it's something that especially people our age can do together, and with e-bikes, the slower partner can still keep up. So if you're into cycling, there's no reason not to do it with your partner at this age, because it's a great partner experience.

Tom Butler: 19:45

Well, I know that we could talk bikes the whole time here, but I wanted to bring you on for a specific reason. You had mentioned the law school at University of Arkansas, little Rock, the Bowen School, right, and you started teaching there, I think in 1983. Correct and you are a Dean Emeritus and a Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy. I think you left the school formally in 2012. Did I get that right?

John DiPippa: 20:16

2021.

Tom Butler: 20:18

I retired in 2021. Wow, yeah, okay. So 40 years, yeah you mentioned that. So there must have been something that kept you there. What was it about that experience that kept you so long?

John DiPippa: 20:34

Well, it's funny you mention that, because when we moved to Arkansas and I took this job, we thought we'd just be here for a few years. Really, two things happened. One, the law school was a special place. Two things happen. One, the law school was a special place. It's relatively small, and so you get to know the faculty and you have to know the students. And while Little Rock is the capital city, it's not a huge city, and so you become embedded in the city. So you have an.

John DiPippa: 21:03

I had an opportunity to do a lot of things outside of the classroom that I probably wouldn't have had anywhere else, you know, testifying before legislative committees, writing memoranda. I did a lot of media work in the 90s, especially during the Bill Clinton presidency, you know, with local and national news, and so it was an opportunity that was unique, that couldn't have been replicated anywhere else. But in addition there's a real I guess I would say both gratitude and special relationship with the students. I mean, it's exciting to sort of see the lights go on and then to watch them in their careers and to see the lights stay on, and so, again, because it's not a large place, you get to know them in a way that's unique. And so those things, those two things, the opportunity to do something in the community that I couldn't do anywhere else, and the relationship you have with your students or I did really kept me here.

John DiPippa: 22:11

Well, that's fantastic, and I am enrolling as a student with you today, so I'm here to learn a bit, so hopefully I'll use it well, I'll use it well, but I should also add, before we get to that, that when Bill Clinton opened his library, he also started a school for public service in Little Rock, and I was one of the inaugural professors with that school, and so, from 2005 to 2021, I was both teaching at the law school and teaching in this graduate program, and so that's another unique thing that I couldn't have done anywhere else, and the experiences of meeting students from all over the world, having an opportunity to take law but translate it into public service was also special.

Tom Butler: 23:08

Well, and that makes you absolutely perfect, I think, for what I'm curious about. So recently, I got involved in advocating with our state legislature about cycling infrastructure and so, at 62 years old, I got involved in that process for the first time, that process of lawmaking and rulemaking and everything. I don't know why it took so long and I really don't have a good excuse for that, but I think I'll continue to do it. This conversation I want to have with you comes out of that desire to continue with advocacy work. I'm convinced that lobbying for better bike infrastructure is an important part of encouraging people to start and stay cycling, which is a big part of what I'm doing now, but also I'm really concerned and I'm feeling like some of the changes that we're seeing could really threaten kind of being able to advocate.

Tom Butler: 24:17

I think that federal spending is really important when it comes to bike infrastructure, and so you know, I'm hoping that there's still reason to believe that there's a role for individuals like me to get involved and try to impact policy. First, I guess I'd ask is our right to impact decision-making something that you believe is vital?

John DiPippa: 24:45

Oh, absolutely. One of my areas when I taught law was the First Amendment, and the First Amendment has five guarantees. One of them is basically a guarantee that says we have the right to contact our government to ask for changes, to ask for something. So that's baked in to the Constitution, and so I absolutely believe it's vital. It's also vital because, if you think of our system of government, which is really a democratic republic, not a pure democracy, the fuel for that system of government has to come from the people, because, unlike a pure democracy, where everybody gets together and they make a decision, we elect representatives to make those choices for us. Well, they don't know what to do unless you let them know what you want, and so it's really important.

John DiPippa: 25:46

I mean, that's the fuel for our system of government, and unless that fuel gets into the system, things don't happen. And if people think that you can't affect them, it's not true. Surely there are some people who will never listen to you, but every office will tell you, every congressional office, state officials will tell you that they tally up the comments they get from constituents and they'll know exactly how many people are saying yes and how many people are saying no to certain things. So it's really important, especially now that we get our numbers into that tally. It's not going to, it changes and happen overnight, but it is a kind of gradual iceberg, that sort of melts, if you keep that fuel in the system.

Tom Butler: 26:47

And I want to believe that. You know, I want to continue to have hope in that process. There's a couple foundational things that are part of this here that I'd like to hear from you on these things, and first is what is the law, and first is what is the law. I mean, that's a pretty big question, but how do you answer that in a way that doesn't require a law degree to understand?

John DiPippa: 27:16

That's a great question. It's also the first question you ask in a jurisprudence course, so I'm not going to give you that answer. But here's the answer I think I would give. Imagine every rule and regulation the government has for our way of life Everything Traffic rules, housing codes, city zoning rules. You just go up and up and up. That's the law, all that together plus court interpretations of that. So it's a huge sort of sprawling thing, but you can boil it down to every rule that the government wants us to live by. That's the law um writ large. Now there's lots of pieces to that right, so you have to sort of pull out some of the pieces when you talk about law with a small l right. What's the zoning law? What's the traffic law? What's the law about granting money for people to, for local jurisdictions to spend on biking infrastructure?

Tom Butler: 28:31

so lots of little law within the big piece that makes sense yeah, and I really see these two different areas kind of this construction of things. So bike infrastructure, there's like construction and money allocated towards construction, and then there's things like slowing down traffic and setting laws as far as speed is concerned. So I see that there's, you know, like when you're talking about making cycling safer, there's a lot of different aspects of that thing that you call this big category of law.

Tom Butler: 29:12

And then there's another related thing, and you know, I'm really curious to hear you talk about this, but how then does law relate to the Constitution?

John DiPippa: 29:23

Sure here. Think of a pyramid. Okay, at the bottom of the pyramid are all the local laws, all the things that are basically the day-to-day stuff that cities use, and then there's a bunch of state law that gets overlaid on top of that. At the top of this pyramid you keep going up you have laws passed by Congress. The very top of the pyramid is the Constitution. Everything underneath it has to be consistent with what the Constitution allows or prohibits or prohibits.

John DiPippa: 30:13

So the classic sort of formulation of that is essentially, congress can pass laws, but the Constitution only gives them power to pass certain kinds of law. So Congress doesn't have the power, for example, to pass a national divorce law because the Constitution doesn't give Congress that power. It gives them other powers they can regulate commerce, they can spend money, they can make rules for the Army and Navy, they can coin coins, things like that. So Congress can only pass laws that the Constitution allows them to pass. In addition, congress and everybody else has to follow the rules the Constitution puts down. That says there are certain things governments can't do. So governments can't discriminate people against people on the basis of race, for example. It's the 14th Amendment. No government can impose an ex post facto law punishing people today for something they did before. So all those limitations also apply all the way down that pyramid to everybody else.

Tom Butler: 31:27

Here in Washington State I feel like we have a fairly bike-friendly group of leadership. Governor Inslee, who recently left office, is a huge advocate for cycling, so I kind of miss him, but at the same time it's a pretty friendly place. I think people recognize pretty important to bicycle infrastructure. But how does the law come into play when it comes to how money is spent in Washington?

John DiPippa: 32:12

Okay. So the constitution says that Congress can spend money. All right, and Congress can choose to spend it in one of two ways or both ways. They can spend it directly. So if Congress wanted to set up a federal agency that spent money directly on biking infrastructure, they could do that and there are some federal projects where that's part of it.

John DiPippa: 32:41

But the most prominent way that Congress spends money that affects biking infrastructure is Congress can send money to the states and say here's money you can spend on these things. They can attach some conditions. That's called conditional spending. The biking infrastructure federal money comes that way, usually through the federal highway laws, and they say you know, you can spend this highway money on all these things, including bike infrastructure. So at the state level they get this money and they can choose how to spend it within that category of things. Typically Congress doesn't require bicycle spending. Again, there may be some special projects where they do, but it's a general proposition. They give the money to the state and they say you can spend it on biking infrastructure. Most states will spend about 2% of their money, their transportation money on bike infrastructure. That's the average. So you can kind of get a report card on your state by how much of that transportation money is going to biking infrastructure. Arkansas, for example, does not spend 2% of its money on biking projects. Some other states I suspect Washington probably spends more than 2%.

Tom Butler: 34:17

I like this concept that money comes from the federal level with already a stamp on it and I think that's awesome. But it feels like there's like this ship going on right now at the federal level and let's say that a president decided that it was vital that we spend like a half a trillion dollars putting an American flag on Mars like a half a trillion dollars putting an American flag on Mars. Are there rules that are meant to prevent that spending, if most people would rather spend money on, like active transportation infrastructure investment program, which exists and just real quick, that was $45 million in fiscal year 2023. So you could fund a lot of years at $45 million, a lot of $45 million chunks, and still not reach a half a trillion dollars.

John DiPippa: 35:14

That's right. Let me address that. First I would say that the question isn't, sadly, whether most people want money to be spent a certain way. The question has to be whether Congress wants money to be spent a certain way. So the connection to the people would come whether we can convince Congress that we ought to spend money on biking infrastructure. And the rules are supposed to operate this way Congress appropriates the money, the president, as the executive, carries out congressional will. So Congress says here, president, here's money we're going to spend on biking infrastructure, give it out to the states or spend it directly. It's supposed to work that way.

John DiPippa: 36:04

I think the danger right now is that we have people advising the president who think that the president has unilateral power to say no, I don't want to spend money that way, I want to spend it some other way. And there's two parts of that right. The first one is can the president just refuse to spend money that Congress has lawfully appropriated? And most people are going to say well, no, it's not the president's job. Congress says here's the money, spend it. That exact question.

John DiPippa: 36:48

Over the years presidents have argued that they have this power to impound money. Right, just say I'm not going to spend it. In the 70s Richard Nixon tried to do that and he kind of got slapped back about that. The court said you know, when Congress appropriates money, you can only spend it the way Congress wants you to spend it. But they never said well, you can't impound it.

John DiPippa: 37:11

And so the current administration is arguing they have the right to just say we're not going to spend money we don't want to spend. And then the second part is we're going to spend it on something else. And this relates to a lot of what I see are the very dangerous things coming out of this administration, particularly in using presidential power to declare emergencies. So the president has been saying look, there are all these emergencies all over the place. I get to decide how to deal with them. And that's a real danger because the rules are not. The Constitution is not supposed to work that way. Constitution is supposed to work Congress decides the power of the purse that's their power and the president carries out the laws Congress passes. We're in a very, very dangerous spot, not just for biking infrastructure, because that's under the gun, but lots of other things that the president is arguing. I'm just not going to spend this money. Right, it's not what I want to do, and so I'm not going to do it.

Tom Butler: 38:21

I think the Nixon example is really interesting to me, because there's a decision made. I mean, I don't know anything about it, so you know there was somewhere. A decision was like this direction that the White House is going, that the president is going is counter to the intention of the Constitution, that has to be questioned by someone in some way. And so here, if we have this thing where it's like Congress has allocated this and it's earmarked for a specific place, where does the law come in, as far as how that gets challenged?

John DiPippa: 39:08

Well, I mean the law comes in in that people who are affected by, say, the president not spending money will bring a lawsuit saying hey, you're injuring me by not spending this money. You can't do that, stop it. That's the technical term for an injunction, right, stop it. Essentially and there are a lot of those going on because the current administration is refusing to spend certain money or they're cutting contracts and things like that A lot of litigation in the lower courts that are working their way up to the Supreme Court and so when they get there, the questions I raised about does the Constitution allow the president not to spend money that the Congress appropriated, those questions are going to be decided. It just takes a while for these things to work their way through the courts. But notice, it comes from a person who brings the lawsuit Right. Again, it's the citizens and the fuel to our democracy going into it.

John DiPippa: 40:30

One decision the Supreme Court made this winter actually, that seems to be providing an insight into their thinking, and this was when the Trump administration canceled $2 billion of payment under contracts for the work when the work had already been performed work when the work had already been performed and the plaintiffs in those cases said wait a minute, right, you can't just refuse to pay us.

John DiPippa: 40:55

It's one thing to say, well, we're not going to spend the money. It's another to say you just can't pay us for work we've already done. And the Supreme Court, in what's called an emergency, said you know, you really ought to pay them. They refused the Trump administration's request to stay a lower court order that said you got to pay these people. So they sent it back to the lower courts. Now that's, they're still fighting about that, but at least we know that this Supreme Court, or at least five of the justices, think that the president can't refuse to pay people who've already done work for the government. The scary thing is that four justices dissented and said hey, wait, we can't tell the president what to do here, we can't force him to spend money. And that's a very worrying sign to me that four out of nine of them think sure president can just not pay people if he doesn't like them.

Tom Butler: 42:01

It just seems like there's some tests going on with the way our democracy functions, that it's never been tested this way before. Is that fair?

John DiPippa: 42:12

Oh, I think you're spot on and you know we heard a lot about Project 2025 in the campaign, but one of the real fundamental theoretical pieces really goes back in legal thinking to the 80s and it's called the unitary executive theory and the idea is from these theorists that the Constitution only created one president and gives the president lots of power executive power, power to faithfully execute the laws, things like that and so, under this thinking, congress has very little power to limit the president and the courts have very little power because the president again, in this way of thinking, sort of sits at the top of the pyramid. They say, well, the president's the only federal official for whom the entire nation votes, so he represents the kind of voice of the nation and there's only one of them, and some of the framers thought we needed a very robust chief executive, and that played a role last year when the Supreme Court said that the president cannot be criminally prosecuted for acts taken in his official capacity. So you take that and what you see is the Project 2025 people really pushing the limit on any limitations on the presidency, right, so they're trying to fire people that Congress said you can only fire for cause it's like members of the National Labor Relations Board, for example. And the Trump administration says, no, they work for me, they're in the executive branch, they work for the president. I get to fire whomever I want whenever I want, for whatever reason. Supreme Court seems to be siding with him there, so you sort of take that all the way down. The unitary executive gets to decide how he executes the laws. So he doesn't like spending, doesn't want to spend it, doesn't have to. So there's lots of things that this administration are doing that are pushing the Constitution to extreme. The other thing they're doing is they're pushing the existing powers of the president to their extreme. Pushing the existing powers of the president to their extreme.

John DiPippa: 44:49

So the Constitution gives the president the power to pardon. The Supreme Court has always said that's unreviewable. The president can do that. The whole point of pardon is for the executive not to be limited by other people. Well, this president has taken it so that he is pardoning people not because they were treated unfairly. He says they were, but they weren't. He's pardoning people because he likes their politics, or they like him, or they were campaign donors or for any number of other reasons don't relate at all to the justice behind their conviction. We pardoned all of the January 6th rioters, for example. There's no reason to do that. They committed crimes, they had due process, they were represented by lawyers, they went to trial, they appealed their convictions. Nothing wrong with what happened. He just didn't like that his supporters were being held accountable. So he's pushing the existing powers. He's doing it with tariffs as well, and he's also pushing the theory that essentially, he wants to say I can do what I want while I'm president and no one can stop me.

Tom Butler: 46:06

It seems like there were guardrails in place that were like a concept of decency. Yeah, and then what we are finding out is that if you don't have decency there to guard things, there's an awful lot of things that you can do that aren't there. It's not like baked into the law keeping someone from doing it.

John DiPippa: 46:32

Yeah, there are a couple of things there. I think you're absolutely right A lot of the powers the president has, for example with tariffs. Congress has the power to impose tariffs, but over the years they said you know, we really shouldn't be doing this. They delegated that power to the president to impose tariffs in certain situations. Now I think everybody assumed that presidents would act in good faith, that they would follow the procedures and they'd only use this power when they really needed to. Well, that's not true. I don't think you can say this president is acting in good faith, using this power, and so the assumption from Congress is that you'd have a decent person with integrity, acting in good faith, exercising this discretionary power. That just got blown up completely.

John DiPippa: 47:27

I think the other thing goes back to my point about fuel. In the system we have a sense that everything is sort of well. There's the idea of the fair and just world fallacy and people seem to think and this is fairly well proven that the world will act and operate in a just manner, and so democracy essentially assumes that the people we elect will act in a fair and just manner and will act for the common good. Well, it's never been true. You know it's naive to think, for example, that the legislators in the 19th century, prior to the end of slavery or before Civil War, were acting in any kind of morally meaningful, just way by continuing to imprison Africans who they stole from their countries. Right, I mean?

John DiPippa: 48:28

The story we tell ourselves is that somehow all these people were the framers, for example were wonderful people. Well, they were slave owners. They protected slavery in the Constitution. And so the naive way of thinking about our situation now is to think this is somehow so different that it's unprecedented. It's if men he used the word men were angels, we wouldn't need governments. And because men are not angels, we need to limit the government's power because we can't trust fallible human beings to actually always get it right. And that was his argument for the way he set up the Constitution. It didn't always work, but it does sort of illustrate that we can't be naive about the people we elect and hope that they do the right thing and hope that they do the right thing.

Tom Butler: 49:46

I think there was an interesting moment where Josh Hawley, senator, showed a chart that had the number of injunctions against President Trump. Imagine you saw that that there's some force that is treating Trump unfairly, rather than this is a president that is further outside the bounds than most presidents have been. To me, that's a very interesting dynamic to present it. Like look how poorly we're treating this president you're poorly retreating this president.

John DiPippa: 50:31

Yes, and again, that's really scary because the data show that people who are least informed about current events tended to vote for Trump in the last election. When I say least informed, they're the people who got no news whatsoever overwhelmingly voted for Trump. So people like Josh Hawley, who's smart he's not a dumb guy knows he can prey on people's lack of information, and so what he really? He knew the answer, which was Trump is doing more things that get challenged than other people, but what he wanted was the idea to seep into the low information voters that Trump is being treated differently, who don't have the wherewithal to sort of work through it. All you know.

John DiPippa: 51:18

The truth is, we've never had a president who tried to overturn the election in Congress. We've never had a president who encouraged the election in Congress. We've never had a president who encouraged people to riot. We've never had a president, as far as we know, who tried to get a foreign leader to smear his political opponent in exchange for money. He basically said to President Zelensky I'm not going to give you any money unless you smear Biden. We've never had a president act like that. And so, yeah, he's unique, but he's unique in a bad way.

Tom Butler: 51:58

Again, he's unique in a way where he's testing guardrails. To me it's somewhat of a scary way and again, from this perspective of I want to be able to see our country move forward not just the state of Washington but our country move forward as far as active transportation measures are concerned.

Tom Butler: 52:20

You know I have representatives. If I do a bunch of work and I find people who I think are great leaders and they also understand the importance of active transportation and I work and we send that person to Washington. If they're part of a body that just rubber stamps everything that the president does, it seems like I've lost that representation.

John DiPippa: 52:48

Yes and no. So yeah, you still have your representation formally, but it's frustrating when the policy that comes out doesn't reflect your interests at all. So I guess there are a couple of things I'd say there. One at the federal level it's not just who you elect to represent yourself, it's who other people in other and get to Washington and figure out how they can mesh those together. That's not happening right now because at least one political party acts in lockstep. So the first answer is we have to elect more people. In this case it would be Democrats wasn't always, but this case it is so that the Democrats can, in their policies and platforms, advance things. That's how we have the current biking funding. We've got Basically Democratic Congresses who put that into the bills in the last 15, 20 years and those have stayed. So it's not just you, it's who other people elect. The second thing I'd say is the most effective advocacy is going to be on a local level and so, no matter what happens in Congress, there are things that we can get done on a local level if we stay active. And, as a friend of mine said today, I asked my cycling group what I should say and one of them said be a pain in the ass, and you can be a real pain in the ass on local levels. And so I think that's really important too, not to get too hung up about the slow progress in Washington there will be but to also make sure that we can get done on a local level what we can do.

John DiPippa: 54:58

Cities can adopt the Safe Streets program, for example, and some of it depends on money. But cities have their own money and not all of it are big kind of expenses, you know. So part of the Safe Streets program is when a city resurfaces a road, they add a bike lane. That's not very expensive, right, but that happens on a local level. It doesn't depend on what Congress is doing at all. You can advocate for better traffic enforcement, for slower speed limits in well-trafficked areas, so there are lots of things you can do at a local level that don't depend on whatever craziness is going on in Congress.

Tom Butler: 55:58

Well, you say that, john, but here's something that I would propose. Sure that again we're in a weird time that becomes his talking point that we need to eliminate bike lanes just because cars need to get through, for the economy, for safety, for national security, whatever.

John DiPippa: 56:33

It seems like there's some levers he's pulling, where he's threatening to withhold dollars from states that don't go along with that, and so again, where does the law come into play there? I think that's a very real concern. But you talked about getting into the legislature and advocating for positions, and the cliche is you don't want to know how laws are made, because it's like watching sausage being made, right and so. But here's where we have to actually embrace the sausage making to some degree, because lots of things happen, and a lot of things happen below the surface, and sometimes they happen in a way that benefits people. So let me give you a current example. The president has argued that he doesn't want to extend these electric vehicle subsidies and some other green energy subsidies that were part of the Biden's Infrastructure Act. We're noticing that a lot of red state representatives are saying wait a minute, that's taking jobs from the people that represent me, and it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of those stay in the final package. Now, that came about because local people, including businesses, for example, were saying to their representatives wait a minute, if you cut out these projects, we're going to have to lay off people in your district. They're not going to like that. So the sausage making might and I think will keep that.

John DiPippa: 58:01

I think the same thing you see with bicycle infrastructure. To some degree it's become a partisan issue. The most extreme conservatives are arguing, for example, that it's a communist thing. Well, that's crazy. But there are also a lot of conservatives who actually like cycling and like cycling infrastructure. The husband of our current governor is really big into mountain biking. Husband of our current governor is really big into mountain biking and so our state's enjoying this renaissance for mountain biking because he likes it. Well, if you're a local lobbyist, you're going to exploit that all you can. You've really got to make sure that you invite him to all the openings to all the cycling events, the whole thing, and really make sure he knows what's going on. So that's part of the sausage making.

John DiPippa: 58:55

Our member of Congress, who's a Republican who tends to vote with the Republicans, is a cyclist. He doesn't make a big deal about keeping cycling infrastructure in these bills, but they stay in there and he's got some influence. So again, we just currently opened a section of a trail that's going to run for about 70 miles from Little Rock to a city called Hot Springs. We opened a section of the trail. He was there right. Make sure he knows how much you appreciate whatever it is he can do for cycling. And so you've got to embrace the sausage making. You know, and sometimes you're going to get what you need maybe ugly, maybe in a watered down version, but you're going to get it if you stay with it. Now that's too Pollyannish and I know we're facing real problems, but again, the fuel for this democracy is for us to be pains in the ass and keep making noise and keep making points and keep letting our representatives at every level know we care about these things.

Tom Butler: 1:00:09

Well, I like the sausage making, you know, I think, when you had people like.

Tom Butler: 1:00:16

McCain and Biden that were behind the scenes getting things done. That was a better way, you know, for things to happen. You know, right now I feel kind of like you mentioned, you know, this concept and the Project 2025 concept of the really strong executive. But if you have, like, all this power, then it seems like you have one man, you know, making the decision. Maybe what that means is that cyclists need to all come together and buy a whole bunch of Trump's cryptocurrency and have some influence over Trump. It's like how do you affect change if the sausage making goes out and it's just this one person that gets to make decisions?

John DiPippa: 1:01:08

I don't know much about cryptocurrency, although it's possible. Something that I was very active in student movement in college and something that a professor said to me at one point was be ubiquitous be everywhere, everywhere, all the time, and I think that's the answer. Again, change doesn't happen overnight, but if we can be ubiquitous. On the president thing, I'm very worried, as you may know from some of my posts, about the president turning himself into a legal dictator and pushing all the limits and getting all this power, and I'm very worried about that. But I think the key is what happens in the midterm elections next year, because that's the way to put a brake on all of this. He'll still push, but there are a lot of things.

John DiPippa: 1:02:04

If we can flip at least the House to Democrats and don't know about the Senate, that's a hard one but at least the House to Democrats and you don't know about the Senate, that's a hard one, but at least the House stops the worst things from happening and you get the Senate and the House, I think it's possible to flip both in the 2026 election. Then you've got the sort of quote Jack Nicholson from Mars Attacks Two out of three branches of government. Ain't bad, you know. So that's what I hold out hope for. In the meantime, we have to keep making as much noise as we can about the issues we care about and put as much sand in the gears as is possible. It's not going to be pretty and may not always win. If 2026 does not turn out the way I hope it does, then I would be very, very worried about our system of government.

Tom Butler: 1:03:07

So a couple of things right now. Our constitution does not make room for a dictator, but you're talking about a legal dictator. So what do you mean by that?

John DiPippa: 1:03:20

I've written about this and what I'm arguing is that what Trump is trying to do is create this unitary executive by amassing unilateral powers that he already has right. So, again, as a as the president, he's a dictator of pardons, gets to decide those congress has given him a lot of essentially one man rule authority over terrorists and he's pushing those to his limits. He's also using the courts to challenge some other limitations on him. So what he wants to do, he wants to get the Supreme Court to essentially say yeah, you're right, you know, you're the only president. You get to fire anybody you want. You get to decide not to spend money, because it's up to Congress to do that. You get to do all these things you're pushing.

John DiPippa: 1:04:17

That's what I mean by a legal dictator. He's trying to create a structure that would allow him to be a dictator in lots of areas, and you have to worry because essentially that's what Viktor Orban has done in Hungary. Viktor Orban has taken over essentially the government and he got the Congress largely his party to give him what are mostly dictatorial powers over the courts, over the universities, for all sorts of places, and so there's a playbook for becoming a legal dictator, a dictator that the law essentially empowers. We have to also remember that Adolf Hitler started out as a legal dictator because, after the Reichstag fire, he got the Reichstag to say, yeah, you know, we're really in a bad shape, here's all this power you can use, and adopted laws that gave him that authority. So that's what I mean by a legal dictator a one man rule, a one-man rule empowered by all the legal rules that he both exploits and gets.

Tom Butler: 1:05:52

You talk about Republicans and Democrats, and I think that's breaking the rules versus a belief that the rules that we have can be used effectively. Have majority of people and I think there's plenty of Republicans that would say you know, we're really outside of the boundaries here as far as the way the government is supposed to work. But if we have a majority of people that are saying what we need is a rule breaker, what we need is someone that's going to break the system because the system doesn't work, then it feels like it's a much more difficult process.

John DiPippa: 1:06:30

Well, I agree with you that a large portion of our population I don't know how many, whether it's a majority or not, but certainly a majority of the voters voted for Trump really want to see somebody act like a bull in a china shop and break things and get things done. That's how things operate in the tech world, for example, which is why Elon Musk is so popular and I put it in democratic and liberal terms because only the Republicans have tapped into that sense. Only the Republicans have tapped into let's go break things. You can hear it in their rhetoric and that's why, as long as they keep getting elected, they're going to keep allowing people to break things. The Democrats on the other side have never figured out how to tap into that. I mean, they had some people I think Bernie Sanders is a good example who ran. He didn't quite say it, but I think a lot of his message was hey, things are wrong, things are broken, we got to fix. But the Democrats keep running people who think, if we just act normally I think that was Joe Biden's presidency we just act normally, people are going to come back to us, and so you know, think about, just compare Biden and Trump, not just on their personalities, but in the way they govern.

John DiPippa: 1:07:59

Biden was an institutionalist. He wasn't going to fool with the Justice Department. He appointed people who were kind of sober and mindful and respectful of the tradition. He followed the sort of rules and passed legislation that, in his experience, people would say, oh yeah, that's a normal thing to do. Thank God we have you as president. But he never broke anything. He didn't try to break the institutions, and so I think you're right. A lot of people want to see things broken, and it's only the Republicans have figured out how to tap into that. I think the next election cycle and this is way beyond biking, but the next election cycle is going to be about how can the Democrats signal that they're reformers too? They want to fix the system in a way that actually cuts into a lot of that support that Trump and the Republicans get. That make sense.

Tom Butler: 1:09:05

Yeah, I think it does and, you know, in some ways, coming through this, it seems like it has identified some areas where there needs to be a different kind of accountability in order to keep things from going too far off the rails.

John DiPippa: 1:09:26

Yeah, and that's also a big question, because accountability comes from elections. I mean, that's the basic form of accountability If you don't like what your representative is doing and enough people agree, you vote in somebody else, and that's the sort of civics high school civics version, right. But there are lots of other things that are making it very difficult to have that kind of accountability, and so gerrymandering, for instance. Most seats in Congress are safe. Those are both Democratic and Republican seats. Well, if people never have to compete for any votes, then how can you hold them accountable when they don't really like what they do? If they don't have to respond to other people within their district, you might have different ideas. You never get any different ideas and so both Democrats and Republicans have exploited that, although again, the Republicans have been better.

John DiPippa: 1:10:29

So that's one form of accountability. I think the other form is with the courts, and you're seeing some of that right now. Despite what it seems, the courts have been entering injunctions against the president in his most extreme forms, invoking the Alien Enemies Act and some of the tariffs. So there is that form of accountability too, and again that's going to be messy. I think some of that's going to hold, but I want to go back to elections. We just have to elect people and hold them accountable for when they don't follow through, and that requires the hard work of organizing on a local level and constantly letting people know. This isn't right. Let's do something about it.

Tom Butler: 1:11:22

It seems like a cyclist again or anybody that's interested in active transportation, or anybody that's interested in active transportation in safe streets, in these different ways to promote something besides cars on our roadways. There is this local action, and then there's also this process of weaving together all of this local action into a federal process and it seems like, you know, maybe there's room for more organizing different local efforts into a more unified front from a cycling infrastructure perspective.

John DiPippa: 1:12:08

I think that's a great point. You know, think about all the cycling clubs in your area. Well, they all go out and cycle, but they all have a common interest cycling infrastructure, safe cycling. So I absolutely agree. I think we need a cycling coalition in every locality that includes all kinds of cyclists with all sorts of ideas. You know, I often say all cyclists matter, but not all cyclists are the same. You've got to get all those people and I think the place to start would be cycling clubs and others together often to talk about their cycling concerns. That creates an agenda and allows the whole cycling community to finally act in some common way, you know, but I absolutely agree. And then it's got to move up mean every locality has one. You have a state structure that takes from all those coalitions now we do have league of american bicyclists.

Tom Butler: 1:13:21

it would be interesting to see their leadership and I am connected a bit with some leadership there and to be talking more about how do they plan to weave together local advocacy into a unified voice?

John DiPippa: 1:13:35

Yep, you know, I think that's right. It also shows that this is bi-directional right. I mean, localities can move up and try to aggregate at a state level or a national level, but these national organizations need to come down locally and start showing up and saying hey, wouldn't it be a good idea for all of us to get together? I mean, that could work too.

Tom Butler: 1:13:59

Yeah Well, I'm ready for a large party, nationwide party to happen, an organizing party.

John DiPippa: 1:14:08

It's a bicycle party. I like it.

Tom Butler: 1:14:11

Well, this has been the exact conversation that I wanted to have, and I thank you so much for bringing all of your experience, your knowledge, to this. I want to leave with this question, and that is if we turn back to cycling, what do you have coming up as far as cycling adventures are concerned? It sounds like you had one interrupted because of an entry that's right okay, so what's going?

John DiPippa: 1:14:34

on. So, yeah, we had that interrupted. So we're planning for next year and may not be mallorca, could be somewhere else. For me I've got sort of two big adventures. One I'm planning to ride our big local ride called the Big Dam Bridge Ride. It's a ride that takes place, that crosses this bridge that went over a dam on the Arkansas River. That is the longest pedestrian bike bridge in the country, built just for that purpose. So it's pretty impressive and they have a 105 105 mile ride in September. It's the biggest cycling event in the state and so I've got a particular goal in mind. It's a pretty challenging ride, has about 5,000 or so feet of climbing, and most of that comes late in the ride. So you know you're not ready. So I've got some plans and I'm really, really trying to do that. My other sort of big cycling thing would be, in a couple of months, to hope that my wife can back, get back on the bike, we can start riding together again and and ease her way back into cycling.

Tom Butler: 1:15:43

Well, I'm hoping all the best for that. You know, like you're talking about, it's so fun when you can cycle together with your spouse, and so I'm really hoping that all of that healing happens and everything gets stitched back together perfectly and again, thank you so much for joining me today and helping to throw some light on this.

John DiPippa: 1:16:06

Well, you're welcome, tom, it's been a pleasure.

Tom Butler: 1:16:09

Cool. Well, maybe someday I'll make it down to Arkansas and all the other adventures that I want to do.

John DiPippa: 1:16:18

Come and do the big damn bridge in September.

Tom Butler: 1:16:21

I don't know that I could do 5,000 feet of elevation. That would be a challenge.

John DiPippa: 1:16:26

You can do shorter rides.

Tom Butler: 1:16:27

Yeah, maybe, maybe. Yeah, all right, you can do shorter rides. Yeah, maybe, maybe. Yeah, all right, thanks again, take care, you're welcome. Bye, bye.

Tom Butler: 1:16:35

Now there was an interesting development after my conversation with John. I had planned to attend a Tacoma Washington Bicycle Club meeting in the evening. Conversation with John, I had planned to attend a Tacoma Washington Bicycle Club meeting in the evening. At that meeting they were talking about needing someone to be the government and community relations director. I felt moved to volunteer to do that, so now I'm in a position to take John's advice and apply it with my local bike club.

Tom Butler: 1:17:04

Here are a couple of key things that I'm taking away from the conversation. First is to be ubiquitous. There are a bunch of opportunities locally to just show up as a cyclist, so I will be looking to do that as often as I can. Of course, showing up takes time, but other than that it is pretty easy. The other point is the concept of linking together all the local advocacy that is going on. The other point is the concept of linking together all the local advocacy that is going on. I think being the government and community relations director here locally gives me a reason to reach out to the League of American Bicyclists and ask about their efforts to maximize impact by linking local efforts together nationally. I do believe this is going to be one of the more interesting activities I've ever been involved with. Regardless of whether you ride in an urban environment or on rural roads, I hope you are finding routes that feel safe and remember age is just a gear change.