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Note: This is an unedited rush transcript. Please check any quotations against the audio recording.

Justin Amash: I think we have a good solid foundation here in the United States. It's not always applied properly. It's not always the case that the members of Congress or the president or anyone in government does the right thing, but I do think if they followed the blueprint that's there, it would work very well.

Nico Perrino: All right, folks, welcome to "So to Speak," the free speech podcast, where every other week we take an uncensored look at the world of free expression through the law, philosophies, and stories that define your right to free speech. I am your host, Nico Perrino. Today we're recording for our listeners that aren't here in the room with us. We're at American University in Washington DC, where we have 200 high schoolers in town from across the country for a week of free speeching at FIRE's second and maybe annual summer camp. We'll see about that. We're calling it this free speech forum.

For those who aren't familiar with my background, I'm FIRE's executive vice president. I joined the organization in 2012, but before I was a full-time staffer at ����ֱ��. I was like many of the students here in the audience today. I became interested in FIRE's programming and FIRE's issues, and attended its summer conference. At that time we just had a summer conference for college students. Now we, of course, have a summer camp for high schoolers. I went to become an intern over time.

And then as I was going through my senior year of college, I got a call from ����ֱ�� president and CEO Greg Lukianoff, who asked me if I'd be interested in applying to become his assistant and a program associate at the organization. And so, I joined the organization in May of 2012, and the rest, as they say, is history. I thought I'd be here for two years maybe and go off and do something else. But 13 years later, I am still here. So, I thank you all again for being here and for taking the interest that you have in free speech issues.

And we thought it might be fun to do a live recording, so to speak. We don't do this often, but when we do, we always get really great questions from the audience. And given that we're here in DC, I thought it would be thematically appropriate to finally get Congressman Justin Amash on the podcast. Congressman Amash was a member of Congress from 2011 to 2021, representing Michigan's 3rd Congressional District. Before that, he served in the Michigan State House of Representatives.

And throughout his career, he's been a strong advocate for civil liberties, including the freedom of speech, writing that the value of free speech comes from encountering views that are unorthodox, uncommon, or unaccepted. Humans learn and grow by engaging with ideas that challenge conventional thinking. Free speech is a barren concept, he said, if people are limited to expressing views already widely held. Congressman Amash joined FIRE's advisory council earlier this year, and we are excited to have him back to DC for the Free Speech Forum. So, join me, please, everyone, in welcoming Congressman Justin Amash. [Applause].

So, we'll have a conversation for about 30 minutes or so, and then we'll open it up to whatever questions you and the audience have. And so, when I open it up to questions from the audience, please come and stand at these two microphones. We'll alternate between the microphones and, and take questions that way. I figured I'd start by just going through your career and life history and starting maybe at the beginning. What was your house like growing up? You were born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Was there anything political about that upbringing?

Justin Amash: It wasn't a super-political household. My parents are both immigrants. My dad's a Palestinian refugee. My mom's an immigrant from Syria. And so, I grew up in a household that was a little bit different from what a lot of my friends in Grand Rapids were growing up in. I went to a Christian school, a small Christian school there, that was largely made up of immigrants many years ago from the Netherlands. We have a big Dutch community, so I was the only one really with a Middle Eastern background in a very –

Nico Perrino: Everyone was taller than you.

Justin Amash: Yeah, everyone was taller. I'm about six foot one and I was the short guy in town. When I was trying out for basketball, I would have to only try out for point guard. There was no way to try out for any other position. But yeah, it was a – it was a community that was different from my own household because I grew up in an immigrant household from the Middle East. And so, I would say that it was an upbringing where my parents really cared about giving us a chance at a new life compared to what they had. Especially my dad, having been so poor and coming here as a refugee.

He worked very hard, and his – what he would tell us every single time that he would have a conversation with us, is what kind of opportunities we have in this country. How you can come to the United States and it doesn't matter what your background is, what your ethnicity is, your religion, who you're connected to in government, none of that matters. Here you have the chance to make it. And I really took that to heart as a kid. That was something that really impacted the way I viewed the United States and thought about the world.

Nico Perrino: And was it a particularly political upbringing though? Did your parents have an interest in politics? Did they anticipate raising a future congressman?

Justin Amash: No, I don't think they had any idea about that. I think like a lot of people in West Michigan, they were probably a little more on the conservative side. It's not like they were staunch conservatives or anything, but they typically voted Republican growing up. So, I got a little bit of that influence as a kid, but that was very much the community I was growing up in.

Nico Perrino: But you also went to University of Michigan Law School.

Justin Amash: Yeah. Go Blue.

Nico Perrino: [Laughter]. What made you decide to go to law school? Raise your hand if you're interested in going to law school.

Justin Amash: Oh, wow.

Nico Perrino: A lot of people. For our listeners, that's maybe two thirds of the audience? Maybe even more?

Justin Amash: Yeah, that's great. Well –

Nico Perrino: Is it though? [Laughter].

Justin Amash: I think it's good. I think it's a great background to have for a lot of things you might do in life, and especially for those of you who might be interested in politics. I know you're here, so maybe it's something you're interested in. I think that that's an excellent background. In fact, as much as we talk about how there's too many lawyers in Congress – this always comes up – there's too many lawyers over there. I think, actually, there aren't enough lawyers there. There are too many people who don't care about the details of the law.

And I'm not saying you have to be a lawyer to care about it, because there are lawyers there who don't care about it, for sure. But I think it does give you a good understanding of what you're doing when you're going over there and how important it's to have a particular comma in a particular spot, how much it can affect people's lives when you don't write laws in a way that is clear and easily understandable.

So, those are the kinds of things that I think law school will help prepare you for. For me, when I thought about going to law school, I probably had politics in mind a little bit. It wasn't like I was sure I was going to go into politics at that time, but by the time I got to high school, I think I was more interested in politics than, say, when I was younger.

Nico Perrino: Did you have an inspiration?

Justin Amash: Well, Ron Paul was an inspiration, but I was much older at that point even. He was a congressman from Texas and he really spoke his mind. And even though I didn't agree with him on every issue, I liked that there was someone so independent. But he was a little bit beyond the time that I was starting to get interested in politics. As a high schooler, I'd started to think about politics a little more. I think I won – in our yearbook they had decided – the class voted on who was most likely to take over the world. I won that one.

I think I won who was most likely to become president of the United States. So, people, I guess, saw me as someone who might be going into politics, but I wasn't fully determined to do so. I just felt that going to law school kept a lot of options open for me. And it was something that I did enjoy very much.

Nico Perrino: Did you have any idea of the type of law you wanted to practice?

Justin Amash: Yeah, I didn't know going into law school what kind of law I wanted to practice. And when you go to law school in your first year, you usually get a first year law school curriculum, which is gonna be all of the main law school courses. They don't let you get out of that one. But in years two and three, you can select other things. So, I was interested in economics. I'd studied economics as an undergrad, so I did focus a lot in law school on things like tax law. But I think there are so many interesting things to study in law school. Criminal law, constitutional law.

And in fact, probably, if I could go back now, I would've spent more time taking some of the constitutional law classes. I took the basics. But I think that is something that I really developed an expertise in by becoming a member of Congress. And when I was in law school, I didn't spend as much time on that issue, even though it was my favorite subject in law school. I didn't take enough courses, I think, on that, compared to what I now would've liked to have done.

Nico Perrino: I think I read in a profile of you in the New York Times from 2011 that you kept the seating chart for your –

Nico Perrino: That's right.

Justin Amash: – constitutional law class?

Nico Perrino: Yeah.

Justin Amash: In your congressional office. Why would you do that?

Nico Perrino: Yeah. So, in my constitutional law class, as I mentioned, it was my favorite class in law school. And we had a professor who was notoriously challenging. Nice guy, but everyone was terrified of this man. And he was a pretty young professor. He is still there. His name's Richard Primus. He's an excellent professor. And he was my favorite professor there at law school. But he was very intimidating. And you'd come into class and he'd sort of stand there and he'd look around and he'd say, "Mr. Amash," and then call on you and ask you something that you just don't know the answer to. And this is how it was day after day.

He really used the Socratic method the way that it was intended to be used. And I ended up loving that style. I liked the fact that he would put us on the spot, that he was willing to challenge us. I feel like I learned a lot in that class, maybe more than in any other class I took in law school, because of the style of that professor. This is another thing that I've talked about before. I did a podcast at one point and I had my professor on as a guest. And he's more to the left. If people were to characterize him, they'd say he's a guy, he's to the left. And people would view me as someone who's to the right.

But I still have my class notes from that class, because I took them electronically. We were the first generation that was using computers, to take class notes, at least. Before that, everyone was handwriting. So, I have my class notes still saved. And I look back on my class notes, and I was trying to think through the things that he taught in that constitutional law class and how he taught them. And I still agree with 90% of what he said in there, even though he was on the left, I'm viewed as being on the right. It shows that we're not necessarily as far apart as people want to make us out to be.

The United States has what I would call a very libertarian culture. We believe in liberty. We believe in freedom. We believe in protecting the rights of the people. Our founding documents are built upon that. And so, whether you're on the left or the right, there's a lot of that ingrained into both sides of the aisle here. And I think sometimes we get very caught up in the minutia or the battles going on in Congress, and we forget that we share a lot of the same values and principles.

Nico Perrino: What was it like to serve in Congress? We've got a lot of high schoolers here. Maybe they've never spoken with someone who's been in Congress. What maybe met your expectations and what really surprised you?

Justin Amash: Well, okay, it's worse than it looks from the outside.

Nico Perrino: So, it's really bad is what you're saying.

Justin Amash: It's really bad. So, if you think that it's dysfunctional on the outside or doesn't work properly, or they don't know what they're doing, it's worse on the inside when you get there. They do even less and they know less. And it doesn't have to be that way. There are people who come to Congress from all sorts of backgrounds. Some of them are quite bright. Not all of them are. They could have a very well-functioning system. Well-functioning doesn't mean that everyone agrees. I think people often mix that up. They think that well-functioning means they're gonna all get along.

I don't mean that at all. If anything, they get along too well on the actual legislation. Then they get in front of the cameras and they argue about nonsense. But when it comes to actual voting, on most of the big issues the two parties agree. They don't disagree. And I wish they would disagree more and be more vocal about it, and speak their minds and debate things. And here we are at a free speech conference and the greatest legislative body in the world, the United States Congress, they don't really debate in the way that you'd hope they debate. So much of it is top down. So, your party leadership tells you this is what you're gonna vote.

You're gonna press yes or you're gonna press no. And if you don't, you're in trouble with the party. They're going to kick you off a committee, take away your fundraising. Because they assist with the fundraising. They're gonna give you a primary opponent. If you wanted to be a chairman of a committee, they might say, "No, there's no chance you'll be a chairman of a committee." So, it's very top down. And this means that even though you could have lots of debates on the House floor – and the same is true largely in the Senate – even though you could have lots of very good debates about these things, people don't debate any of it.

They know they have to press yes or no, or they're in trouble. And when you think about it, when you know that you have to press yes or no or you're in trouble, what kind of environment does that create for reading legislation or understanding what's going on? It creates an environment where there's no point in any of that. Why would my colleagues – I used to read every single bill. I understood what it was, and part of that was 'cause I dedicated to my constituents that I would explain every single vote I took. So, that in a sense put me on the hook.

Since I told them I'm gonna do that, I was on the hook. I'm gonna read these bills and make sure I understand every detail. But for the average member of Congress, what's the point of knowing the details when you know that you just have to press whatever leadership told you? In fact, if anything, they feel more comfortable internally not knowing the details, because if they know that what they're pressing is the wrong button, it will be harder for them to do so. So, many of them are intentionally. ignorant about it. They don't want to know, because if they know, they know they're doing something wrong.

And at least they can have some kind of obliviousness to it. They can just say, "Well, I don't know. Leadership told me this. The summary says this, so that's what I'm gonna tell my constituents it does." And so, that's a really bad part of Congress. And that's actually easy to fix, but it requires a different culture at the top and the Speaker of the House. And in the Senate leadership. If you had a different culture there, where they said, "We're going to make sure that the members of Congress make decisions on their own, and I as the Speaker, I'm hands off; I'm just going to make sure that the rules are operating the right way, that things are functioning properly," people would be forced to figure it out.

They'd be forced to start reading these bills and understanding them on their own. So, this is a choice by people at the top to leave it in this sort of dysfunction. And it doesn't have to be that way. And it's actually relatively easy to fix, but it has to start at the top. As for, I think you'd asked me, what I found surprising maybe in a good way?

Nico Perrino: Yeah, sure.

Justin Amash: Well, I think for me it was the camaraderie I built with my staff as a member of Congress. I had I served as a state representative and so I'd previously had staff working under me. But in a State House seat you only have a couple staff. As a member of Congress, you have about a dozen people in the House of Representatives. You could have as many as 18 or something like that. We tended to have a smaller office.

Nico Perrino: Interns too.

Justin Amash: Yeah. When you add it up, you have interns who come in. We had a lot of students who would come in and serve in the office for a while. And the friendships I built with those staff, that was a surprise to me, that there could be such an enjoyable office environment at a place like Congress. And not every office is like that, but some offices are. And when you get an office like that, it's a wonderful place to be, where the member of Congress doesn't treat you like some underling, but instead treats you as a partner in the work.

The people, when they vote, they vote to elect me. But when I'm working as a representative, I'm working for the team of people who are helping me. And I would say for me, post-Congress – now I'm just a civilian or whatever –

Nico Perrino: Citizen Amash.

Justin Amash: Yeah, Citizen Amash. Post-Congress, I find that probably the most difficult part is not having that team of people who can help me with things, where we can work through the problems. When you see me posting on X, and I'm explaining why something's wrong, unfortunately, these days, a lot of it I'm working on on my own. I don't have that team of people who are out there and who are working as a real unit. And so, I miss that, those staff, because we built good friendships and we had a really good team working.

Nico Perrino: You're famous for explaining each of your votes. How'd you start doing this? Sometimes, if I recall correctly, it was like a five paragraph essay that you'd write up.

Justin Amash: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: In one of the profiles I read, you would type them out on your iPad, whatnot. So, explain your reasoning there. And what would you do with votes where you only had six hours to read 1,000 pages? I don't know if that's actually true, but it's something I read in reporting. You have these bills that are finalized and you've got like three hours to read it and vote on it or something absurd like that.

Justin Amash: Yeah, that's a great question. So, the way it started, explaining my votes, was that I was at the beginning generation of using Facebook. Okay?

Nico Perrino: Now, you're gonna have to explain to them what that is.

Justin Amash: I know. You guys know what Facebook is. I assume.

Nico Perrino: I don't know that young people use Facebook.

Justin Amash: I don't think you use it, but you probably know what it is. So, back in my day – I'm not even that old, but back in my day we had social media just starting out, and Facebook was one of the first big ones. There was MySpace before that, but that kind of –

Nico Perrino: That's where my band put its music.

Justin Amash: Yeah. I don't know, I think maybe there's still a website called MySpace, but I don't think it does the same things. So, Facebook was kind of the big thing right around the time that I was in my twenties, and my mid-twenties or so. I was using Facebook, and when you go, even to the State House, the average member of a legislative body is older than me. Even older than me now. I'm now 15 years removed from when I started in office, and I'm still younger by like 15 years than the average member.

Nico Perrino: Were you the youngest person in Congress?

Justin Amash: I was the second youngest person at the time.

Nico Perrino: What were you, you were 30?

Justin Amash: Yeah, I started when I was 30. So, when I was in the State House, I was even younger than that. So, I'm sitting there in the State House and I'm in my twenties and the other – my colleagues are in their fifties and sixties and seventies. They're not using Facebook. Okay. Now they are, but back then they weren't So, back then, Facebook was a thing that maybe even younger people used and older people were not using it. It's kind of reverse now. But I decided at one point that I should start explaining what's going on in the legislative chamber. Sometimes we had to be there for long stretches of time on the House floor.

I might sit on the House floor for a whole day, where we have to be there. And so, at one point I was like, "Okay, I'm just gonna start – I've got free time. I've got time to kill. I'm gonna start explaining to people at home what's going on here." And I started to do that, and people really loved it. And it was a little bit of a surprise to me. It was accidental.

I didn't realize they would love it so much and they kept encouraging me, "Hey, tell us what's going on." And so, then I was like, "Okay, why don't I just explain every single vote using Facebook?" So, I just started explaining. And back then the explanations were fairly brief. You don't have the room either to explain things.

Nico Perrino: I remember those days.

Justin Amash: They had character limits. But I would explain the votes we were taking and it really caught on. And when I ran for Congress, I said, "Okay, I'm gonna" – I promised people I'm gonna explain every vote in Congress. So, I'm gonna take that to Congress and do it. It can get difficult. I think the most challenging thing that I did in Congress, is explaining every vote, because it's a tremendous amount of work. It probably added double the workload that a member of Congress has on top of the workload I already had. So, it was a lot of work to go through each vote and explain it.

And remember, when you put it on the record, that's there forever, so you'd better know what you're talking about. You can't write something on there and not know what you're talking about. That's gonna be a permanent record. So, we were very careful as an office and as a team. I would actually type them. I would go to the House floor often and just type it right there, right after the votes. Eventually I was like, "Okay, this is too much. I'm gonna wait till I get back to my office. Then I'll type an explanation of what I just did on the floor." But it was very important to do. It was the most rewarding thing.

If I ever get back into office, I'm gonna do it again, maybe in a different way, on a different format or platform or something. But I will explain my votes again, 'cause I think it is that important and that rewarding. And so useful to the public. It was probably the most useful service a member of Congress could do. Just letting people at home know what's going on, which doesn't happen. There would be these votes where – you mentioned, what if you didn't have enough time? There would be these votes where it's thousands of pages and they only give you an hour to read it. Okay, well, then it's pretty simple.

You explain that you didn't have enough time to read this. You weren't given enough time. Then you don't vote yes, because you never vote yes on something you didn't read. I think it's practically criminal to vote yes on something you didn't read. And nobody would do that in their personal lives. If someone put a contract in front of you, or if you owned a business and someone came to you with an agreement, nobody in their right mind would look at thousands of pages, and then they're told, "Oh, you've got half an hour to look at it, or an hour," and they'd say, "Oh, no problem, we'll just sign right here."

People do not do that. And yet members of Congress, because it's not affecting them personally – it's affecting the public at large – they're perfectly happy to do that. They will sign away for the protection of your rights. They'll sign that away just in an instant, because they are told by leadership, "This is what you do." And so I would just vote no. Sometimes I'd vote present and explain, "Look, I'm voting present. Sounds good, but if I can't read it, I can't vote yes." That's how I handled those, and I think people came to appreciate that.

Nico Perrino: But you entered Congress as a Republican.

Nico Perrino: Yep.

Justin Amash: And then you changed your affiliation to independent, and then during the end of your tenure changed it to libertarian. Tell us about that evolution.

Justin Amash: So, I've always been what I would call a small L libertarian, small R Republican, right? I believe in libertarianism as a philosophy. I think it's very much the philosophy that leads to prosperity for humans, as individuals. I believe in a republican system of government, meaning our constitutional republic. I'll defend that. I think that if you want to have a country of this size with this level of diversity, you have to have a republican form of government, a system like we have, where we have a constitution that protects people's rights, where you have divided powers.

So, I've always had both libertarian and republican, I guess, as part of my identity, of what I believe in. And a lot of that maybe comes from my parents coming from places in the world where you don't have freedom and don't have the kind of government that protects people's rights. And I'm not saying that our government always does. It does a lot of bad things.

But I'm saying the foundation of our system is good. I think we have a good solid foundation here in the United States. It's not always applied properly. It's not always the case that the members of Congress or the president or anyone in government does the right thing. But I do think if they followed the blueprint that's there, it would work very well.

And so, for me, I felt the Republican Party in my last years in Congress was really straying very far from the principles it claimed to believe in. And that includes a constitutional republic, a system of checks and balances, and separation of powers. It became very much wrapped up in the identity of one person, the president of the United States. And I think that's very dangerous for any party, for any system, to get totally absorbed into the identity of just one person, essentially a cult personality. If I could have served in Congress all those years as an in an independent, I probably would've done so.

In the state of Michigan, it's very hard to win if you're not in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. But I know also, I understood in my last year there in Congress, that the Libertarian Party, which is the third largest party in the country, had never had a member of Congress. And so, I felt strongly that before I left Congress, I was going to make sure that the Libertarian Party for the first time had someone who had served Congress. And I know I didn't get elected as a Libertarian. I got elected as a Republican.

But I do believe it opened a door for people in the future, for someone else to come in later on and potentially run as a Libertarian or maybe as some other party; that we should have that kind of diversity in our government; that we should have people from different backgrounds, different parties, different ideas, duking it out there on the House floor or the Senate floor. And so, I felt good about that, letting the Libertarian Party have their place there in our system.

I tried to get them to change all of their information systems, 'cause they would always still list me as an independent, as an I. But they claimed that their system could only list as R, D, or I, and anything else would blow up their system or something. They told me it was gonna cost $50,000 just to add an L by my name.

Nico Perrino: The Y2K for [inaudible] [00:30:36].

Justin Amash: Yeah, so I don't. It's like a 1950s system or something. I couldn't get them to change it to L by my name in the internal systems. But I did serve as the first Libertarian in Congress and I'm happy about that.

Nico Perrino: You told the New York Times that you, quote, "follow a set of principles. I follow the Constitution, and that's what I base my votes on. Limited government, economic freedom, and individual liberty." The principles that you were just talking about. How does free speech fit into that set of principles?

Justin Amash: I think it's probably the most important right that we possess, because if people's speech is silenced, if people can't speak their minds, then all the other things we talk about just go away. If you are prohibited from saying what you think, we don't really progress as a society. It is hard to defend any of our other rights.

So, I think it's, if not the most critical, it's up there as among the most critical liberties that we have as human beings. And so, I am very much a free speech absolutist. I take it further than most people do in terms of what I believe should be allowed. I think even a lot of free speech organizations, I'm not saying ����ֱ��, but I think even a lot of free speech organizations might not agree with all of my views on speech. I certainly take it farther than even the Supreme Court would. I think that we really need to protect people's rights to say what they believe, even if it is insulting to people, hurts people's feelings.

As long as you are not actually endorsing a direct act of violence, an immediate act of violence against someone, I think most things should be allowed. There are obvious exceptions that we've talked about, and free speech organizations will talk about, and the Supreme Court will talk about. But I basically think there are very few situations where you shouldn't be able to speak your mind.

Nico Perrino: All right, let's just do the audience questions. I don't know if I can speak over you guys. They're a very eager group here.

HS Student 1: Hi, my name is Luca. So, you were in Congress during 2016 to 2020, the first Trump administration, and you were a Republican at the time, but you were still witness to all of the craziness that happened, all the impeachment hearings, really everything. Could you tell us some kind of story that emulates that time in your life and then how you feel going forward, as standing from the outside in Trump 2 in 2024?

Justin Amash: Do you mean a story about the craziness that was going on at that time?

HS Student 1: Just the story of – 'cause all of us were on the outside. We were sitting, watching CNN, reading the Times. But what was it like to be in the room where you see things happen and you have a vote to try to do something?

Justin Amash: Well, I think on the inside, what ends up happening is most people just go to their corners, right? Like the Republicans defend the Republican and the Democrats go after the Republican. And that's probably the hardest thing when you're a member of Congress. You are very independent-minded like I was – it's a very difficult thing to deal with that. Because many of your friends are not interested in having a conversation about the actual issue. So, what was hard for me was like the Mueller Report coming out. Unfortunately, it comes out on my birthday, of all times.

And then I told my constituents back home, I'm gonna read the whole thing and then I'll tell you what I think. Week passes. I get people like, "What do you think?" I'm like, "Well, I'm still working through it. I wanna make sure I understand every bit of it." After a month, I had an idea of – I'd read through the whole thing a couple times and I had a very good understanding of the Mueller Report. So, now I'm gonna come out and criticize Donald Trump. The problem is, my Republican colleagues, just like my Democratic colleagues, haven't read the Mueller Report. They haven't read it.

The ones on the left who are criticizing Donald Trump didn't read it. They just don't like Donald Trump. The ones on the right who are defending Donald Trump, they didn't read it. They just wanna defend him. So, I'm in this place where I'm talking about the details of a report. And no one else has read it. And so, you can't really even have conversations with them. That's very difficult. And people have expectations too of you. What ends up happening, I think another thing that was difficult for me – and I'll try to speed this up. I know there's lots of people waiting.

Nico Perrino: We do have a lot of questions.

Justin Amash: One of the difficult things is, people assume things about you. So, since that time, I've had at various times, especially during those moments, where people on the left assumed I must be with them on everything. Oh, he's against Trump, so he's one of us now. He agrees with us on all these things. And then when I don't agree with them, and I criticize Democrats for a bunch of things, or maybe criticize them for some of the same things that I criticize Donald Trump for, they're confused and they're angry.

And I'm like, "Well, I'm just consistent. I'm being the same, whether it's Donald Trump or a Democratic president or a Democratic leader." That's probably the most challenging thing, just dealing with that dynamic.

HS Student 1: Thank you.

Nico Perrino: Ru?

HS Student 2: Hi, I'm Ru, and I noticed towards the beginning that you mentioned that your parents had told you that this was a free country, where there are equal opportunities for everyone, regardless of things like race, ethnicity, orientation, different things like that. So, both from a historical context in which the Declaration of Independence itself calls indigenous people merciless Indian savages, and in a world right now where masked agents are able to kidnap brown people, even citizens, off the streets and take them to camps – basically, do you still believe that this is truly a free country where everyone has equal opportunities, regardless of all of those things?

Justin Amash: Well, first, I didn't say everyone had equal opportunities. I said that we're supposed to have equality before the law in this country. Everyone in this country deserves to be treated equally before the law. It's not that we all have equal opportunities, 'cause we're all from different backgrounds. We're not gonna have the same opportunities. I might have different opportunities than someone else because I just grew up in a different neighborhood, had different parents, whatever the situation. And nobody can guarantee equal opportunities for everyone. That's not possible.

We can have a law that treats everyone the same way. I don't agree with a lot of the stuff that goes on in government, so nobody's saying, and I'm certainly not suggesting, that our government does the right thing all the time, and it certainly doesn't do that under Donald Trump, and it didn't do it under Joe Biden and a number of other presidents.

I do think that our founding documents, and I agree with you and understand your concerns about some of the language in the Declaration, when you go down into the gripes that they had with the King – that they did not use language that we would accept today, or the way they might have thought about Native peoples at the time is not the way we would think about them today. But the principles they enshrined in the Constitution are principles that if understood and accepted according to the actual principles in the text, and even the words in the Declaration, about all men – and they meant all human beings – being created equal.

If we understand all those, and having inalienable rights, if we understand those things, then we have to look at those principles and think about those principles and how they apply. And I think those principles are good. So, we have people, we're human beings, we make mistakes. We do the wrong things. Some people do evil things, and sometimes they do it even in the name of the Constitution or the Declaration or whatever. But that doesn't change the underlying principles. And so, I think we had deeply flawed founders. But we have quite extraordinary documents for liberty.

And so, I will defend the Constitution of the United States as an example against any constitution that's ever been created in human history as being the greatest constitution, greatest document in support of liberty that you're gonna find for any government in human history. And if we started out today with a new constitution, I believe you couldn't even imagine creating a constitution as good. It would not be possible. And this is why I've told people in other venues that I think our constitution is a miracle. It's literally a miracle that could not happen.

If you tried it a million more times, you would not get a constitution like that. And so, I would encourage people not to take it for granted, despite the history of the country. I would add that in countries around the world, there's this kind of history, if you go back. So, I wouldn't say it's unique to the United States. It happens all around the world.

HS Student 2 I was talking also about current things, not just history, but yes.

Nico Perrino: Frederick Douglass talks about these founding documents being promissory notes. Those promises are always lived up to, but they're things that can be called upon when rights are violated. Yes. Maverick?

HS Student 3: Mm-hmm. First of all, thank you for coming here and being able to talk to us. Jesus. So, you mentioned how you explained every single vote through Facebook to promote understanding amongst your constituents. Recently I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to interview the Deputy Director of Korean Language for Los Angeles, June Kim. Because of this, I've become aware of the lack of language accessibility within the cities of California and beyond. What new ways do you think we can combat these issues through social media and beyond to continue promoting political efficacy among my generation and others?

Justin Amash: I think that's a good question and I think the simplest answer is that artificial intelligence will benefit us in a tremendous way when it comes to things like language. So, even now when I'm on X – I'm dealing with social media – I can read posts in any language. Basically, if someone – we're dealing with right now this Iran-Israel conflict. You can read what the leaders of these countries are saying by just hitting the translate post. And that's something new. And I think that will become more available and hopefully will make government and politics more accessible to more people over time.

HS Student 3: Thank you. Do you think that will lay ground for any ethical issues in the future?

Justin Amash: Whether the translations are accurate? Or we could go into a whole conversation. We have two people in line, but we can go into a whole conversation about the problems that we'll face with AI. I'm not trying to say AI is guaranteed to present good outcomes. AI may actually be a disaster for humankind, but it will have, at least in the short run, some benefits. Maybe it wipes us all out, but in the meantime, we'll be able to read Korean and English, and so there are advantages.

HS Student 3: Thank you so much.

Nico Perrino: Next question.

HS Student 4: Hi, my name is Julius. I have a question. So, first off, thank you for doing your job and actually reading those bills as opposed to some of your constituents. Just wanna say that. With that, with your voting style, how much pushback did you get and from – or how much pushback did you get from, actually, from your votes? And what did that look like?

Justin Amash: How much pushback did I get?

HS Student 4: How much pushback did you get from your votes, from your constituents, and what did that look like?

Justin Amash: Pushback?

HS Student 4: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: What were those town halls like?

Justin Amash: So, in addition to explaining all my votes, I was famous for holding more town halls than anyone. As I said, I'm a big believer in free speech. I think we should speak our minds. As a member of Congress I did that. I made sure to speak my mind, explain every vote. But I also held town halls and also believed that everyone should be able to speak their minds at these town halls. So, my town halls were completely different from anyone else's town halls. You're not gonna see any town halls like this anywhere. Basically, I would tell you that I'm holding a town hall somewhere.

If you show up, you can come in. If you raise your hand, I'll call on you. I'm not screening questions. If you want to yell at me for a couple minutes, you can yell at me. That's happened. There's videos of it. If you wanna disagree with me, go ahead and disagree with me. So many town halls these days, to the extent that they hold town halls at all, members of Congress, they're completely manufactured. Right? You write your question on a note card or sign up for the town hall and give us all your information. And then we may send you a link to tell you where it is, at the last minute.

Which doesn't even functionally work, because these districts are big. So, you can't tell people at the last minute there's gonna be a town hall that's two hours from their house. It just doesn't work. So, my view was, let people come in, let them ask their questions, say whatever they want. I got a lot of pushback that way, but it was beneficial to me and it was beneficial to my constituents. It was beneficial to me because I learned lots of things. We as human beings, no matter how smart we are, we don't know everything.

We don't know every situation that's going on. I want to hear from people about what they think and what's going on in their community. I might disagree with them about something, but let's hear it. But just as important, a lot of times people at home are not clear about what their elected official is doing. Why is this person voting this way? Why did they do the thing they do? And it was, I think, beneficial to me as a representative to be able to say to people, this is why I did it, and to talk through it with them.

As I said before, what I found was that in this country we share a lot more principles and values than people give us credit for. And that if you talk through an issue with people in a town hall, they might be completely opposed to you at the beginning, and then you find that actually when you walk them through it – what was your mindset when you voted this way? – they will agree with you. So, I think it was beneficial both ways and it was a great experience. And if I ever get back in office, I'd like to do more of that.

HS Student 4: Thank you.

HS Student 5: Hi. Maurizio. First of all, I wanna say thank you for representing your constituents, and also thank you for coming out here and giving this opportunity for us to ask you questions. I know you lightly covered this, but seeing the whole issue with older congressional representatives becoming the incumbent, do you think that it prevents new representatives from running? And do you believe that term limits for members in Congress should exist?

Justin Amash: Yeah, I think that the issue with older representatives and older senators is that they tend to take a lot more – I don't know if I want to use the word “effective” – but they take some of the spots on committees where they have more power. These days, frankly, the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader have so much power that the committee spots don't even matter as much as they used to. Nonetheless, it is hard for some of the newer, younger members to come in, and even if they're highly qualified and deserving of having a higher position, there are older members who say, "Well, I've been here for 30 years, so you can't take my spot."

So, it would be good to have more of a rotation. I don't think it will solve every problem, but I do think that it would be good to have term limits of 12 years in the House, 12 years in the Senate. You'd have to have a constitutional amendment. So, the way I'd do it is I would change the House terms to be four year terms instead of two year terms, and give each House member three four year terms at maximum. And then senators have two six year terms. I think that would be beneficial and allow more people to cycle through the system while also not being so short that everyone's inexperienced.

You want some people there who have some experience. You don't want everyone to be a newbie, right? You want someone who's been there for 10 years. But I think that would create a good balance. And if you're lucky enough that you can get elected to both the House and Senate, you might serve for 24 years, but that would be pretty rare.

HS Student 5: Good evening. Thank you for coming out to speak with us. My question is, what would you change about Congress and how it operates if you had the chance to?

Justin Amash: I believe you need to change the way the Speaker of the House functions. I'll speak about the House because I served in the House. The Senate has its own problems, and some are the same, including the way some aspects of leadership work. But to speak about the House of Representatives, right now the Speaker serves strangely as the de facto party leader, right? When you look at the leadership on the House side, there's a Speaker of the House. Then there's oddly someone called majority leader, which you think, well, why is there a majority leader if the Speaker is the leader of the House, of the party?

It's because the leader – the Speaker was never intended to be the leader of the party. The Speaker is supposed to be the person who is the leader of the entire body. And so, what I would like to see is a system where the Speaker comes in, ensures that the rules are followed, that people have their say, that people can speak their minds, that amendments can be offered, that it functions in a reasonable fashion, where you feel like there's actual public debate on things and people can get things out of their system and express themselves; and then let the majority leader of the majority party be the leader of that party, not the Speaker of the House.

I think this would make a huge impact, much bigger than people realize, in changing the way the House works. It is a conflict of interest to have the person who decides the rules, essentially decides the rules of the body and ensures that it's functioning, also be the guy who's picking winners and losers on the legislation and deciding, "I really want this legislation to go through." That person should be essentially neutral on the legislation and just running the body.

HS Student 5: Thank you.

Nico Perrino: Layla?

HS Student 6: Hi, my name is Layla. Thank you for coming to speak with us today. But I was just wondering, you had mentioned earlier how within the House of Representatives there's this sort of pressure from higher up legislators to vote a certain way. So, I was wondering how you balanced that pressure with your personal need to create autonomous decisions in Congress.

Justin Amash: So, there is a lot of pressure on you. For me, it was having a strong family unit back home who was supportive of me, my wife and kids and my siblings, my parents, people who were supportive of me and saying, "Keep doing the right thing." Having a strong team in your office of people who are supportive of you and saying, "Yes, do the right thing." There were times when I had to take votes and I knew that if I took this vote, I was gonna get a primary opponent. I was gonna anger everyone. It was gonna be all for – essentially for no reason. If I had voted the wrong way, no one would've even noticed.

But by voting the right way, what I thought was the right way, I was going to get attacked. And I still had my colleagues in my office, my staff, saying, "Yes, do the right thing. You have to go there and you have to vote on principle." And that meant I had a lot of difficult primaries, where people were throwing all sorts of money to try to defeat me. But you have to have that kind of background. You have to have confidence in yourself. You have to have the right work ethic. For a lot of members of Congress, they couldn't do what I'm doing because they don't wanna work that hard.

If you go it on your own, you're gonna be responsible for your own fundraising. You're gonna be on your own when you explain to constituents why you did what you did, so you better really understand it. Because the party's not gonna back you up. So, for most of them, they're not interested in that. The average member of Congress is, oddly enough, not that ambitious. They just want to be called Your Honor or Honorable so and so when they enter a room, and have people applaud for them, and go to a bunch of dinners where people shake their hands. And that's it.

That's what they're happy to get. And so, for the average member of Congress, they're not interested in the work. And so, if you're gonna go it on your own, you have to do a lot of work. And I was willing to do that. But I think the support was the most important thing, having that support group.

HS Student 6: Thank you.

HS Student 7: My name is Cole, and I was wondering that you said a few minutes ago that you weren't keen on either major political party. But since the start of 1900, only 10 declared independents have served terms in the House of Representatives, which is less than 0.05% of all current terms. There are four current independents or declared independents within the Senate, but all of them do have ties to major caucuses or a tie to a major party. Do you think that within the current climate it is possible to be elected as a true independent, which means no ties to other parties or caucuses? Just for a term, any term?

Justin Amash: Yeah, I call those independents in name only. The independents in Congress are not really very independent, the ones who are serving there now. I would love to see true independents. I do think it's possible to do it, but again, it takes a lot of willpower that most of them are not willing to – they don't have that willpower in them, to go and do it. It requires an incredible amount of determination and willingness to buck the system. And frankly, they like having the cover. A lot of them, in fact, use “independent” as a cover. They're not even that independent, but “independent” gives them some other cover.

Like, "Oh, well, yeah, I caucus with the Democrats, but I'm actually independent." When I became an independent in the House, I resigned from the Republican conference. I told them, "I'm not conferencing with you anymore. I'm gonna be an independent, a true independent from the party." Because once you're in that conference, there's expectations that come with it. Or you might call it a caucus on the Democratic side.

So, I think yes, it's possible. Not in the state of Michigan, probably, 'cause it depends on election laws. But there are states where I think you could pull it off, and some states in the Northeast, maybe in New York State – there are some states where it might be possible to pull it off.

HS Student 7: Thank you.

Nico Perrino: We've got about 10 minutes left. Five questions. So, maybe two minutes a question.

HS Student 8: Hi, my name is Soli. I just want to say thank you so much for coming here and giving us this experience. So, I want to ask a question that might be applicable to a lot of high schoolers in this room. So, for those of us in this young generation who are interested in politics or just positions with high exposure, but also experience the negative side of societal constructs, such as issues with race or gender, how can we still work towards these ambitions, despite these innate barriers?

Justin Amash: So, not sure I totally got the question. I think that the most important thing is to go out there, work hard, and get involved. So, if you're a young person and you want to go get some experience in government, apply for an internship. You have to come to understand that – I think it's important. I'm not saying that you don't understand this or that anyone in this room doesn't, but you need to go in understanding that the world is a very diverse place. You're gonna run into lots of people you disagree with. You're gonna run into people who can't stand your ideas and strongly oppose you and what you believe in.

And there's others that are gonna be strongly agreeing with you. And you have to have a thick skin to get through it, right? If there's anything that I worry about a little bit with some of the younger generation, it's maybe they are not as thick skinned as some of my generation, Gen X. Maybe they're a little more sensitive about things, and if someone insults them or says something about an idea that's different from their idea, they take it very personally.

I think as long as you can get past all that, you'll be okay. But just go out, work hard, get involved, and remember that even when you're with people who you think are like-minded, you're gonna find a lot of different viewpoints out there.

HS Student 8: Thank you.

HS Student 9: Hi, I'm Nate. I'd like to ask you – I know that a lot of news and media leans a lot into certain narratives on every side. How do you go about navigating that? And do you think it can continue in a democratic society?

Justin Amash: Well, I think that the important thing is that you think for yourself. When I was in Congress, I'd sometimes – we'd have an office and we'd have one TV that showed CNN, another one had Fox News on, and it was like they were looking at different worlds. The discussions on each TV were so different that you couldn't believe this was the same world even. And I would experience this at town halls too. If I'd been watching too much Fox News that week, I might go to a town hall and then there's a bunch of Democrats there, they'd bring up something that I hadn't heard about.

Why? Because it was playing nonstop on MSNBC or something. But I hadn't heard about it that week. I was busy and maybe I had Fox News on a little bit, and vice versa. I might have CNN on and everyone else is watching Fox News. And then I'm taken by surprise by what they're talking about. The other thing is, almost nothing that you'd see on there about politics was accurate. It was consistently wrong, whether it was on Fox News or CNN or MSNBC. They were consistently wrong about what was going on in the House.

It was like one of those – it made me much more skeptical of the media generally, because now when I look at anything, any topic, not just politics, I'm wondering, "Is this true or is it not true?" Because in my area of expertise, politics, these people were wildly wrong. So, now when I look at any other subject, I'm not sure if they're accurately representing the subject or the topic. So, all I would say to you is not that you should be cynical about everything in the world. I think you should be skeptical. I think you should think carefully about things. I don't think you should parrot things.

I don't think you should jump to conclusions about things. Use your own mind to decipher things and look at a lot of different sources. Look at what's coming from the right, what's coming from the left, what's coming from newspapers, what's coming from social media. Try to absorb enough where you think you have an understanding of the landscape and don't just jump to conclusions. There's a lot of people who just jump to conclusions. And to the extent you can, go to original sources. Instead of using someone else's interpretation of something, go see the original source.

HS Student 9: Thank you.

HS Student 10: Hi, I'm Lola. Thank you for coming. Do you think the USA is slowly losing the First Amendment with its recent actions?

Justin Amash: Well, this is a tough question. As I said before, you can lose what we have very quickly. We have a free society, we have a prosperous society, and it's all relative. It's always relative to what you see in other parts of the world, for example. That can be lost very quickly. I would say that on balance, free speech protections are better today than they were 100 years ago or 100 years before that. I think that things have gotten gradually better in terms of protecting people's right to speak their minds in this country. But that doesn't mean that it's inevitable that it keeps going in that direction.

Things can go backwards. And so, yes, I do worry about that. I worry about the government coming in and policing speech, telling people what they can think and what they can't think. This comes up a lot too, and it came up with COVID as an example. But it comes up in other areas too, like what misinformation and disinformation, and should that be allowed? My view is that all of that should be allowed. You should be allowed to say something. If it's wrong, it's wrong. Someone else can correct you. But we cannot have the government coming in and telling people what is right or wrong.

You may, in this particular instance, think, well, I want the government to come in and say that these people are lying about this. You may, in the particular instance, think that's a good thing, but the next time it'll be used against you. You'll be speaking your mind about something and then someone who doesn't like your opinion or your viewpoint is gonna say, "Oh, well that person's lying. They're spreading misinformation." And so, we have to shut that down.

I don't think that's the road to freedom or prosperity. So, I would just make sure, to all these young people, all these students, protect the right to speak your minds, even if it's wrong. If it's wrong, let someone correct you. Don't prohibit people from having the wrong views.

HS Student 10: Thank you.

Nico Perrino: The last question.

HS Student 11: I have just two questions. Why did you not run for a third term in Congress? And what do you hope to achieve now that you are not in Congress?

Justin Amash: So, first, I served five terms in Congress already.

HS Student 11: Sorry.

Justin Amash: So, I didn't run for my sixth term. For me, when I entered Congress at 30 years old, I had decided at that time that I only wanted to serve five or six terms. I didn't plan to be there forever. Before my last term, I had already made the decision and had told family and friends that I was not going to run again after this term. People often make the assumption that I didn't run because I had a lot of conflicts with Donald Trump and therefore I decided not to run again. But actually, that decision had already been made and the other stuff is sort of an aside. I had been intending to run for president that term, after that term.

So, I'd intended to stop running for Congress and to run for president in 2020. But then so many things altered that trajectory and altered that plan. This is the way life is. And it's what I'd say to all of you. There are so many things beyond your control. You can have all the best plans in the world, but you can't control the world around you and what happens. So, all the impeachment stuff came up with Trump. I read the stuff. I believed he should be impeached. I then understood that if I announced for president at that same time that I'm dealing with impeachment, people assume that I'm just running as the impeachment guy.

And I never wanted to run as the impeachment guy. I wanted to run as the libertarian guy, the guy who's bringing new ideas to people, which are very old American ideas. So, I put it off for a while. I said, "Okay, I don't want to be known as the impeachment guy." Then COVID hit. And so, now I'm like, "Well, I can't be the guy who just like COVID hits and then I'm like, 'I'm running for president now.'" So, I was like, "I gotta wait to see how this goes." So, I waited a couple more months, until I felt like a little bit more comfortable that, okay, it's not gonna be in the news 24/7, even though it did stay largely in the news and became an even bigger deal as time went on.

But I wanted to let the initial shock of it at least pass before I said, "I'm just gonna jump in as president." Otherwise, I'm weirdly like the impeachment guy running during COVID. There's too much going on. Plus, it's hard to run as an upstart when the big news is just one particular story. It's very hard, 'cause you have to present new ideas, and everyone's talking about this one story. So, it was very difficult. I eventually decided, "Okay, I'm not running for" – I knew I wasn't running for Congress again. So, "Okay, I will test the waters. I'll run an exploratory committee for president."

I announced that, I think, maybe in April of 2020, that I was gonna do an exploratory committee. And while I would call it moderately successful, I was able to raise a lot of money pretty quickly, I knew that it wasn't gonna get the traction I needed to make enough of an impact. Did I think I could get the highest vote total that a Libertarian candidate has ever received? I did think that. Did I think it was going to be enough to change the political landscape and make people really think about libertarianism? I did not think that was gonna happen.

It was not even like a particularly strong time for libertarianism, 'cause COVID is going on and people are, if anything, they're anti-libertarian at that very moment. A lot of that stuff didn't work out for me. That's okay. That kind of stuff happens in life. I walked away from politics feeling like I had done a lot of good in the years that I served there. If nothing else, I explained a bunch of votes and got people involved. And the people in my community, I can feel good that when I walk around, go anywhere – especially Costco, for some reason – people will come up to me and tell me how much they appreciated my service in Congress.

And oftentimes they will not be Republicans. They'll be Democrats as well, who say, "I really appreciated your time in Congress." That makes me feel like it was time well spent. I did try to run for Senate again, US Senate, in 2024. It did not work out. Donald Trump obviously did not endorse me. It is still Trump's party, but I did feel that it was a dynamic where if I could get through the primary somehow, I felt very strongly I would win the general election. So, it was a gamble. Can I somehow break through on the primary? It didn't work out. That's okay.

And that's what, I guess, I may leave all of you with that, that you'll try things, sometimes you'll fail. It's okay to fail at things. You get back up and try again. And maybe this is a big part of what free speech is about too. We speak our minds, we test out different arguments. They're not always gonna be right. But we learn from people by testing these arguments.

So, will I run again someday? Someday I'll run again. For now, I'm content speaking in my mind. I'm on X sharing my thoughts on all sorts of things, but especially politics. And I'll continue to do that. And if there's another opportunity in the future where I think I can make a difference in politics, then I'll go for it.

HS Student 12: Thank you. I appreciate you speaking with us. [Applause].

Nico Perrino: Just gonna read a brief outro for the show for our listeners who are listening in. This was Congressman Justin Amash. I am Nico Perrino, and this podcast is recorded and edited by a rotating roster of my ����ֱ�� colleagues, including Sam Li, Chris Maltby, and we also have Ronald and Bruce here helping us out on the production side today. Producer Sam's over there, if anyone wants to talk to him. If you're interested in podcasting, he has a wealth of knowledge.

If you're interested in learning more about "So to Speak," please subscribe to us on any of the podcast platforms. We also post videos of these conversations on YouTube and Substack, and we are on X and Instagram. Right, Sam? Any other social media platforms I'm missing? Substack. Yeah, Substack. And you can find us by searching for "So to Speak," the free speech podcast, or on X by searching for Free Speech Talk.

If you have any questions for us, please reach out, sotopeak@thefire.org. Again, sotospeak@thefire.org is our email address. We appreciate all listener feedback. And if you enjoyed this episode, or if you're here in person in this conversation, please consider leaving a review on the major podcast platforms. Until next time, I thank you all again for listening. [Applause].

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Duration: 70 minutes