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Why the Supreme Court Will Never Stand Up to Trump with Elie Mystal | The Nation Podcast · The Nation Podcasts

0:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Nation Podcast, where we take you behind the scenes of our biggest stories with the journalists who wrote them.
0:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Dee Dee Guttenblan, Special Correspondent for the Nation.
0:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be tempting to look away from the Supreme Court.
0:23
[SPEAKER_00]: The cases are complicated, the traditions are chaotic, and these days the decisions are almost always devastating, and the reasoning often perverse.
0:33
[SPEAKER_00]: But alas the court is too important to ignore, particularly as John Roberts and his five ultra-conservative colleagues have churned it into a rubber stamp for Donald Trump.
0:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Luckily, we at the nation are blessed to have perhaps the only person in America who can make following the Supreme Court not only bearable but entertaining, or an imitable justice correspondent, Ellie Mastal.
0:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Ellie's annual roundup of the court's biggest upcoming cases is the cover story on November issue, and I'm delighted that he's with us today to talk about what fresh hell the court has in store.
1:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Ellie welcome back to the nation podcast.
1:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for having me done.
1:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I make it entertaining and the kind of gallows humor kind of way Well, gallows humor is the only kind of humor for some of us
1:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's the thing, Ellie.
1:28
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll get down to cases in a minute, but I was discussing this conversation with my daughter, who's a paid-up member of the Ellie Mistal fan club and a very faithful reader of yours.
1:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And she said, well, hasn't Ellie said some of this before?
1:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So I said yes, but there's a reason why he needs to keep saying it.
1:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So the part of this that will be familiar to some listeners, but perhaps not to others and for those who haven't heard this before, you really need to listen up.
2:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is this Supreme Court not going to save us?
2:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it's actually, that's a great way to start because I do say a lot of these things often.
2:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I do sometimes feel like I am, I am just putting the emphasis on a different syllable every every time I take to the keyboard.
2:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's particularly important to say it now because the Supreme Court has been,
2:24
[SPEAKER_01]: marketed as our last line of defense, the last institution that's holding and that is just not true if you've been paying attention to these people, not just over the past 18 months since Trump, you know, started his reelection.
2:42
[SPEAKER_01]: toward a force.
2:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But over the past 25 years, this is the 20th year that John Roberts is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
2:51
[SPEAKER_01]: If you've been paying attention to the Roberts Court over the past 20 to years, you already know what they're going to do.
2:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And what they're going to do is everything in their power to crush democracy to make sure that rights are taken away from vulnerable people and yes to rubber snap the Trump administration that's why they're there that's what they were picked for and so this idea that Supreme Court is some kind of somehow going to come in from on high.
3:18
[SPEAKER_01]: and save us from, and I hate to point this out to people, but a democratically elected president who has control of the House and the Senate, and you think that the unelected unaccountable justices are going to come in and stop a man who they agree with on policy.
3:37
[SPEAKER_01]: who they agree with more often than not.
3:42
[SPEAKER_01]: If you think they're gonna stop in, you're just out to lunch, man.
3:45
[SPEAKER_01]: You just haven't been paying attention to what these people are all about and why they were picked for their jobs.
3:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I want to take you up on a little bit of the end of that, where you said, are they going to stop a democratically elected president who has control of Congress and who they agree with on policy?
4:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are three different pillars, as it were, in the Supreme Court's inaction.
4:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And we can certainly remember the Robert's court stopping a democratically elected president
4:22
[SPEAKER_00]: from putting into practice his policy ideas.
4:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that what 100%, right, the Supreme Court is why we don't have student debt relief.
4:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, and why we didn't get the big Biden, you know, the infrastructure bill.
4:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that's because, but that's because they didn't agree with Biden on policy.
4:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And the idea that the court is operating at some kind of level, a political level above the fray, that's not true with this court.
4:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that that's ever been true with any court, but it's certainly not true with this court.
4:53
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't agree with the policy.
4:54
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't agree with the outcomes.
4:55
[SPEAKER_01]: This is an outcome determinative.
4:57
[SPEAKER_01]: court.
4:58
[SPEAKER_01]: They figure out what they want the policy to be and work backwards to figure out how to make that policy legal.
5:06
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the process.
5:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It is not the process that we were taught in school, that we were taught to believe in, that
5:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Barack Obama believed in that the court kind of sits in deep deliberation about the law and comes to apolitical conclusions about this or that, that's not how this court operates.
5:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's certainly not how Robert's operates or Lito or Thomas or Gorsuch or Kevin or Amy County Barrett.
5:30
[SPEAKER_01]: They come up with the policies they agree with, they like, and then they figure out how to make it work on the back end.
5:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the deliberation is not
5:40
[SPEAKER_01]: the deliberation is how do we make this work?
5:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not what should or should not work.
5:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
5:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, I think for some of us growing up in civics classes where the court is the deliberative sort of last bulwark of the constitution or even for some of us who are old enough to remember the war in court where it seemed like the court was saving the country and pushing it in a more equitable direction.
6:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are hard habits to break.
6:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, what is the
6:10
[SPEAKER_00]: when should the when should the penny have dropped when should we have went what's the what's the decision that you think nakedly revealed this as a political court in a way that only somebody who's really obtuse or writing for the New Yorker could ignore.
6:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Bush v. Gore.
6:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I always go back to Bush v. Gore.
6:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I entered to to to pull back the court carton a little bit as you said in your opening.
6:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I was in law school during Bush v. Gore.
6:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I was literally a one-out in law school during that fight.
6:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I was, you know, first being imprinted with the awesome tagline thinking like a lawyer, I had this shining obvious high new story example that it was all bullshit.
6:56
[SPEAKER_01]: right?
6:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That everything that we were learning in class was bull crap compared to how the court was actually operating because if you looked at the judicial philosophies of the justices at the time, people like Anton and Scalia, people like Anthony Kennedy, if you looked at what those people had said in previous opinions, there is no way they should have stopped the recount
7:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
7:21
[SPEAKER_01]: If you go back to Bush v. Gore, what's actually an issue?
7:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a recount that is being authorized under state power.
7:29
[SPEAKER_01]: As Republicans love to say, states rights was at play in Bush v. Gore, Florida, had its electoral process, and it was following that process.
7:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Supreme Court came in from
7:42
[SPEAKER_01]: from a federal level and stopped the state of Florida for doing what the state of Florida thought best.
7:49
[SPEAKER_01]: That was in opposition to everything those Republicans had said up to that point.
7:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason why they went back on their entire judicial philosophy is that they've wanted George W. Bush to be president.
8:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Sancter Day O'Connor, who was part of the majority in Bush v. Gore, basically said so.
8:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically said Ash could the Al Gore, I don't like that guy.
8:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, was part of her reasoning for voting the way she did in Bush feek or so when you see that, when the Supreme Court picks the president, picks the president over and above what their own judicial philosophies are, that's when everybody should have gotten the memo, that this court was made of different stuff.
8:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so it's been a quarter of a century since then, and some of us have been reluctant to come to York to your view.
8:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I call those people Democrats, but.
8:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just saying, I used to be one of them, but luckily, you know, my years at the nation have eventually forced me into it in a more enlightened position.
8:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But for the dead enders who still have some faith,
8:56
[SPEAKER_00]: that the Supreme Court is gonna finally come to its senses and stop Donald Trump.
9:03
[SPEAKER_00]: The last line that these people retreat through are that Trump doesn't always win.
9:08
[SPEAKER_00]: That he's lost a few cases in the last year at the Supreme Court.
9:13
[SPEAKER_00]: There was the removal of federal officials case where they said he couldn't remove a copyright official.
9:20
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the foreign aid case.
9:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So how do those, how do Trump's defeats?
9:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a philosophy major in college and we were taught that it only takes one counter example.
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So how do you explain the counter examples?
9:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, first of all, I have two ways of explaining them.
9:37
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, he doesn't lose on anything important.
9:41
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't lose on anything that he really desperately wants, so we can get in a little bit more as to why I think a little bit later.
9:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But he doesn't lose when he's trying to run for president again.
9:51
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't lose when he's convicted of 34 on 34 felony counts.
9:55
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't lose on anything that he actually cares about.
9:58
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't lose when he wants the ban mussels.
9:59
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't lose when he wants to take away abortion rights.
10:01
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't lose on anything important, right?
10:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's number one.
10:06
[SPEAKER_01]: on the knucklehead stuff, on the few, as you put it, counter-factuals that the Supreme Court will occasionally throw out there.
10:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to understand, every one of Trump's arguments is ridiculously bad.
10:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Like every single one of his legal arguments is beyond the pale of stupidity.
10:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And I do think that there are a couple of times with this Supreme Court simply like they can't swallow the vegetables, right?
10:36
[SPEAKER_01]: They're so raw and undercooked.
10:39
[SPEAKER_01]: They just can't choke it down.
10:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And even when he loses, what you'll see is that the way he loses is very rarely Trump.
10:49
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you just can't stop.
10:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Stop, that's never how he loses.
10:54
[SPEAKER_01]: He always loses in a way that's like, all right,
10:57
[SPEAKER_01]: idiot man.
10:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what you want to do.
11:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's how you can do what you want to do.
11:04
[SPEAKER_01]: They will put in the decision the exact process that Trump needs to follow to get what he wants, right?
11:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Do it that way, as opposed to the ass backwards stupid way that you've been trying to do it up to that point.
11:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Think about how he won the Muslim ban, right?
11:22
[SPEAKER_01]: He lost the first Muslim ban and the second Muslim ban, but the court kept giving him second and third and fourth bites of the apple to eventually get the Muslim ban right?
11:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's been his entire history with this court.
11:36
[SPEAKER_01]: The only time,
11:37
[SPEAKER_01]: the only time this man has actually lost has actually lost something important that he wanted and the court didn't give him a second third fourth way out is when he tried to steal an election that he lost right the 61 lawsuits that he threw up trying to recount the 2020 election.
11:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I can explain that because he was on his way out the door.
12:03
[SPEAKER_01]: The court didn't have to fear him anymore when he was losing the after he lost the election.
12:09
[SPEAKER_01]: They just needed to get him out the door until it was easy for them in that point.
12:12
[SPEAKER_01]: When Trump is functionally no longer president, to just be like, all right, no, we've given you everything you needed.
12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: We've given you everything you want it.
12:21
[SPEAKER_01]: You lost!
12:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You lost and we're not going to like up and the entire structure of the country to allow you to do a coup.
12:28
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to give you the legal imprimator of coup at this point, right?
12:33
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why he lost those cases because he had already lost the election.
12:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Fast forward to 2024 when he looks like he might win another election.
12:42
[SPEAKER_01]: All of a sudden he starts winning again.
12:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I was going to say that for some of us, the important words in that last explanation, which I found very persuasive and also delightful, colorful, was at that point.
13:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, you know, there have been stories in the last week, Steve Bannon was quoting us saying Trump has a plan to run again in 2028.
13:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we'll see where we get to at that point.
13:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think the one other factor that we should at least touch on, because it's probably worth bearing in mind as we get down to cases, is the court's concern for its own legitimacy.
13:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And how that colors how they rule.
13:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I want to answer that question in a couple of different ways.
13:31
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, we need to understand what the court's actual power is, right?
13:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And Don, you've heard me make this analogy before, but, you know, in Alexander Hamilton, in Federal 78, he says that the Supreme Court should be the least dangerous branch of government, because it has neither the purse nor the sword.
13:50
[SPEAKER_01]: the purse being the power of the tax, the power of the taxes, the power of the destroy, that's Congress, right?
13:55
[SPEAKER_01]: The sword being the army, that's the commander in chief, that's the president.
14:01
[SPEAKER_01]: The Supreme Court has neither of those things, right?
14:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't have the ability to independently enforce its orders.
14:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It has to rely on the other branch of governments to do its bidding.
14:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why Hamilton theorized that the court can never get too far out over its skis over above what the elected branch is launching, right?
14:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if it did, Congress wouldn't authorize the money of the Supreme Court wanted to be paid or...
14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: The president wouldn't enforce the orders as is as the executive branch of the country, right?
14:29
[SPEAKER_01]: The next time Hamilton would be as wrong.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: He'd be shooting his gun up into the air in New Jersey.
14:35
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the level of mistake that Hamilton made about the Supreme Court.
14:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's because of its.
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: view of its own legitimacy.
14:44
[SPEAKER_01]: The Supreme Court has power because we all agree should have power.
14:49
[SPEAKER_01]: The Supreme Court's orders are enforced because Congress decides to enforce those orders, because the president decides to enforce those orders, right?
14:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you're John Roberts, if you're a Sam Alito, if you're Neil Worsidge, if you've got this generational supermajority that's going to allow you to remake the country in whatever way you see fit.
15:11
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the one thing you're afraid of?
15:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You're afraid of a president who won't enforce your orders.
15:17
[SPEAKER_01]: You're afraid of a president that will expose you as the beckless thugs in robes that you are.
15:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Now who's going to do that?
15:27
[SPEAKER_01]: not a Democrat, all right?
15:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I promise you, Brett Kavanaugh is not sitting in his house worried about what the next Democratic president is going to do should the wheel ever come around.
15:38
[SPEAKER_01]: The Democrats have already proven they have neither the strength nor the will to stand up to the Supreme Court.
15:44
[SPEAKER_01]: You know who does, Donald Trump, Donald Trump is the person.
15:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Donald Trump is that guy who will look at us as Supreme Court order and tell them to go jump in a lake like that is in his DNA.
16:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you're Roberts, the one thing that can happen to ruin your power is for Donald Trump to ignore one of your orders.
16:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Because once that happens once again, the whole, like the facade falls away, right?
16:13
[SPEAKER_01]: The, the house of cards comes crumbling down.
16:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So how do you prevent that if you're John Roberts?
16:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you never give Trump an order that he's going to want to refuse, which means you always give Trump what he wants, right?
16:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You always do the thing that Trump wants you to do.
16:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It looks to the outside eye to the to the casual observer like the Supreme Court is giving away its power to Trump.
16:40
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's protecting its power from Trump by always giving Trump what he wants.
16:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So he'll never have an opportunity to ignore their orders, right?
16:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And they know that if they can just get through this bit, if they can just get through the Trump era, they will emerge as the most powerful branch in government.
17:01
[SPEAKER_01]: They will emerge with their power and their legitimacy still intact, because again, we know the Democrats are never going to do anything to them.
17:09
[SPEAKER_01]: and the Supreme Court knows that they will outlive Trump.
17:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump is 80 and, you know, always one cheeseburger away from slipping this mortal coil.
17:19
[SPEAKER_01]: John Roberts is 70.
17:21
[SPEAKER_01]: John Roberts has every intention of outliving Trump.
17:24
[SPEAKER_01]: He was here before Trump got here.
17:26
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to be here after Trump is gone.
17:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump might run again in 2028.
17:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't matter.
17:30
[SPEAKER_01]: John Roberts can outlive that too.
17:32
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not worried about getting through the Trump era with their power intact because they know they have a generational power that Trump can only dream about.
17:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that raises some questions which I want us to get to before we finish, particularly about whether when it comes down to it in 2028, giving Trump what he wants, which is blessing a third run, is actually
18:04
[SPEAKER_00]: in your review likely.
18:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's keep that in suspense for the end of the segment.
18:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Because right now there's some decisions we know they're going to have to make.
18:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first one you flag up is little VHECKOK.
18:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So tell us what that one is and why it matters.
18:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so this is a consolidated case.
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about trans women athletes, right?
18:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is an issue where the Democratic Party has decided to abandon the trans community to the slings and arrows about redists just how to row culture, right?
18:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Democrat consultants keep telling us, just abandon trans people, just leave them, leave them to be crushed by the Republican cultural machine.
18:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what this case is.
18:47
[SPEAKER_01]: This case involves a ban on trans women from participating in women's sports in Idaho, both at the high school and collegiate level.
18:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a flat ban against their participation.
19:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
19:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It's their, I think, uh,
19:03
[SPEAKER_01]: 10, 15 states that have similar bands on Idaho was one of the first, so Idaho is the one that got to the court.
19:11
[SPEAKER_01]: First, there was a trans woman at Boise State who wanted to run track, and Idaho said no.
19:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the other kind of wrinkle for this law is that it's not just the case about whether or not they can compete.
19:23
[SPEAKER_01]: This law also says that if you are trans, if you are a woman athlete,
19:30
[SPEAKER_01]: and your gender is questioned by a rival, any rival, who's not sure you're a girl.
19:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you, the person who is accused, has to submit yourself to a gynecological exam to determine your gender at birth.
19:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that rule does not apply to the boys.
19:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So to me, it is a straight up equal protection problem.
19:55
[SPEAKER_01]: When you have a rule that says a girl must be forced to drop her pants at the say so of a bitter rival, but not a boy, but not a man.
20:09
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't do that to the boys.
20:10
[SPEAKER_01]: We only do that to the girls.
20:12
[SPEAKER_01]: That is a straight up equal protection problem in the main.
20:15
[SPEAKER_01]: and it gets to the larger issue with trans athletes, right?
20:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Where you have a lot of people who seem, for reasons that I don't fully understand, confused or unsure, it's a basic equal protection thing.
20:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a basic civil rights thing.
20:33
[SPEAKER_01]: If we're going to have a rule for one gender, we have to have the same rule for the other gender.
20:39
[SPEAKER_01]: That's simple, right, so like wherever you stand culturally on trans people, I don't understand people who accept discrimination against trans people when it's so clearly relative of every principle of fairness and equality we have in this country.
20:57
[SPEAKER_00]: But what is the democratic devil?
21:01
[SPEAKER_00]: argue that what you've just said while I'm in a reasonable and morally sound takes a long time, whereas protecting women and girl athletes, which is the Republican line for what they're doing with these laws, is much simpler.
21:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you have a complicated argument versus a simple one, you always lose politically.
21:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I wrong?
21:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You're making a political argument about why Democrats have abandoned this community.
21:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that the simplest political argument is that we're for fairness and equality.
21:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Full stop!
21:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Period end of sentence, right?
21:37
[SPEAKER_01]: But!
21:38
[SPEAKER_01]: even if I take your devil's advocate point, even if I seed the devil's advocate point that my position is somehow more complicated to explain.
21:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think it is, but sure.
21:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say for a certain kind of person, my position is more complicated.
21:52
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why we have laws, that's why we have laws that we don't have to take every issue of civil rights and basic fairness and equality into the political arena where it can be fought over in Budweiser ads to the end of time, right?
22:08
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a law.
22:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called the 14th Amendment.
22:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It says right there equal protection for all.
22:14
[SPEAKER_01]: This law treats women differently than men.
22:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It treats girls differently in them boys.
22:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It treats trans people differently for every other person.
22:24
[SPEAKER_01]: That should be unconstitutional in the 14th Amendment, and then we don't even have to debate it politically, then it doesn't even become a cultural issue.
22:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's one of my biggest complaints or criticisms about this Supreme Court is that they make things cultural issues that need not to be cultural issues that could just be legal issues, right?
22:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I talk about this all the time with gun rights where people are always telling me, though the gun culture in certain places and not like, I don't care.
22:53
[SPEAKER_01]: The second amendment says, well, regulate it, unless you're right in the text.
22:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's just solve this as a legal proposition and let the culture sort itself up.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: But this Supreme Court, these cultural warriors and robes on the Supreme Court, they never let it happen that way.
23:10
[SPEAKER_01]: They never just use the law.
23:13
[SPEAKER_01]: They always want to inject culture war bull crap into their decisions.
23:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's one of the reasons why the country is like the way it is.
23:22
[SPEAKER_00]: But isn't it, I agree with all of that, and I'm glad I pushed you into saying it so clearly and with such forensic force, but I think the culture of point is important to bear in mind even when it doesn't appear to be relevant, because it's
23:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, your view may vary and you are not only the legal expert here, but the only person in this conversation with the law degree.
23:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But reading your article, it struck me that the next case you discussed, Louisiana versus KLA, is probably the most important case the court is going to consider this year.
24:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't appear to have a cultural component, but of course,
24:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, once you look at it for more than 30 seconds, it clearly does.
24:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So talk about Louisiana Count versus KLA, if you might.
24:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the cultural component of Louisiana versus KLA is the whole like white people don't have slaves anymore, and some of them still are pissed about that.
24:23
[SPEAKER_01]: right?
24:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Louisiana Calais is a voting rights case.
24:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It involves Louisiana's congressional maps, Louisiana has six congressional districts.
24:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Louisiana is 30 percent black.
24:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It is only 56 percent white buys.
24:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, simple math.
24:40
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to be Isaac Newton to work this out.
24:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't need a TI 87 calculator to work this out.
24:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Simple math tells you how
24:48
[SPEAKER_01]: A third of the population is black probably a third of the congressional districts should be majority minority.
24:53
[SPEAKER_01]: That's that's just a simple math.
24:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what the voting rights act required.
24:57
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the Voting Rights Act operated section two of the Voting Rights Act.
25:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Louisiana was sue because its initial map was a five one majority white to majority minority.
25:07
[SPEAKER_01]: The Voting Rights Act said no, you need to draw a second map to make it forward too.
25:11
[SPEAKER_01]: right to give black people a third of the representation in their own state that made sense, but of course then white folk sued white people sued Louisiana's second majority minority district saying that it violated their constitutional rights to be overrepresented.
25:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
25:31
[SPEAKER_01]: To why people in Louisiana are literally arguing that they should have more representation than their population demands.
25:39
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the crux of their argument and that is the case that went up to the Supreme Court this year for the second time.
25:46
[SPEAKER_01]: This case was hard last year by the Supreme Court couldn't reach a decision on it which is rare and they scheduled it for re-argument this term and that I don't want to get too much into the legal weeds about the procedural issues
25:59
[SPEAKER_01]: But there is a precedent from the Supreme Court just from 2023, where the court did, in fact, force Al-Mama to draw a second majority minority district, right?
26:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that is a, that is not a, a warm, president, president, that is not a, all over window homes, president, that is a John Roberts 2023 precedent that the Supreme Court is about to overturn in this case.
26:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's what I'm wondering about is, you know, your description of this is persuasive except that unlike 2023 they're going to come to the opposite conclusion.
26:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So how are they going to get there, Ali?
26:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And what does it going to mean for the country?
26:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think the second part is more important, but I want to know the first part first.
26:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So the key operation here of Section 2 over the other right side is that it looks at the outcomes as opposed to the intent.
26:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the key kind of mental shift here, right?
27:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you draw a map that ends up discriminating against black folks.
27:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to prove why they did it, right?
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Louisiana can say, I don't have a Reese's bone in my body, right?
27:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I have tons of black friends, doesn't that?
27:14
[SPEAKER_01]: If the outcome is racist, then the voting rights act is allowed to operate.
27:19
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how it worked in Alabama and the previous in the 2023 case, then I'm talking about.
27:26
[SPEAKER_01]: What they're going to see in this case is that the intense is actually the important factor, right?
27:32
[SPEAKER_01]: That the black people cannot prove that Louisiana drew its map with racist intent.
27:39
[SPEAKER_01]: because don't, and I don't think I'm speaking on a school here, racist rarely admit to what they're doing.
27:47
[SPEAKER_01]: They rarely say, like we're doing this to do some racism today, like that's not, that's not how white people roll in 2020, you five, right?
27:55
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, back in the debt, you know, the Louisiana is the home state of David.
28:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, they're trying to roll it back.
28:02
[SPEAKER_00]: If they're going to,
28:03
[SPEAKER_00]: If they're going to say it anywhere, they're going to say it in Louisiana, but I take a trying to bring it back.
28:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But as Janaine Nelson said, who argued the case for the NAACP, the Voting Rights Act requires neither a confession nor an admission.
28:17
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just allowed to look at the outcome of a Jerry-Mander situation.
28:22
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have to prove intent, and that is the flip from Roberts and Cavanod.
28:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That they're going to say, actually you do,
28:29
[SPEAKER_01]: have to prove intent or because intent cannot be established the voting rights act is not allowed to operate and when they say that so Robert's a cabinet I focused on them because they are the two votes in 2023 that Flip from Republicans it was a five forward decision with Robertson cabinet joining the liberals Listening to oral arguments a couple of weeks ago looked very clearly that Robertson cabinet were going to flip back to the normal Republican side on this and when they say that when they take when they
28:59
[SPEAKER_01]: force intends into a discussion of the Voting Rights Act, it will effectively neuter section two of the Voting Rights Act.
29:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It will eviscerate it, it will make it almost, excuse me, it will make it almost inoperable.
29:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Because again, the racist are rarely going to draw a congressional map and say, we're doing this for racism.
29:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And we've already seen the effects of that.
29:23
[SPEAKER_01]: This case was argued only a couple of weeks ago, but already we have North Carolina, who wasn't a part of this case, is not technically involved in this case.
29:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Already we have North Carolina rejoining its map, specifically to take away two majority minority districts, one particular black district in North Carolina.
29:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're not saying they're doing it for racism.
29:46
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not saying they're trying to get rid of a black congressman because that would be wrong.
29:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, they're saying that they're doing it just to protect Republican and comments.
29:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is that the fact that argument is allowed to be made that we're not discriminating against black people.
30:02
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just discriminating against Democrats.
30:04
[SPEAKER_01]: The reason why that argument is allowed to be made is because of a 2019 John Roberts decision called Root Show become in cause where John Roberts basically said that as long as you're jaring-mandering, only to discriminate against people based on party affiliation, that's okay.
30:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the time, I wrote much other people wrote, well, that just means that every time the discriminating against black people, they're just going to say they're discriminating against Democrats.
30:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is what's happened and that is what continues to happen and John Roberts is going to make that even easier in this case.
30:37
[SPEAKER_01]: If the case comes out the way that I believe that it will and most other people believe that it will as well.
30:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Not only does it flip the one seat in Louisiana, which, remember, we are a razor thin.
30:48
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a the rebel comber against have a razor thin majority in Congress heading up to the 2026 midterms.
30:55
[SPEAKER_01]: You flipping one seat could be the difference for all anybody knows.
30:59
[SPEAKER_01]: But if the spring court rules the way it does, some analysts have said that it could flip as many as 19 seats from black to white, which functionally means from Democrat to Republican.
31:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, this is a, this is a now practice, yes, this is evil Republicans doing evil things and we can talk about that until the cows come home, but this is also the Democrats kind of not protecting running rights when they have the chance, not strengthening the voting rights act when they have the chance, not protecting the black vote when they have the chance.
31:32
[SPEAKER_01]: The Democrats are always sure that the white working class, they're right around the corner.
31:38
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to come back to those Reagan Democrats.
31:40
[SPEAKER_01]: They're still coming back one election away.
31:43
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't do the work of protecting the actual base of the Democratic Party, which is black voters.
31:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're about to find out when you don't even have black districts, look how hard it's going to be for you to win Congress with 19 fewer black districts.
32:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Ain't gonna happen.
32:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So in this extreme, we depressing future, which we're about to enter, is there anything that future Democrats, perhaps, was a little more feck than the current crop, could do?
32:16
[SPEAKER_01]: About the Supreme Court, about the voting rights act, I mean, like they're...
32:20
[SPEAKER_00]: About the voting rights act, about protecting majority minority districts, about protecting the party's actual base.
32:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so you basically have to restore the voting rights act, right?
32:32
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to, I don't want to say it rewrite it.
32:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's the John, right?
32:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's the John Lewis bill that didn't happen.
32:38
[SPEAKER_01]: The John Lewis bill that didn't happen exactly.
32:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you, you already had an attempt to do that.
32:42
[SPEAKER_01]: The mansion in cinema for reasons passing understanding decided that that wasn't cool at the time.
32:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, Democrats are ever allowed to hold power again.
32:49
[SPEAKER_01]: and I don't know that they will be, but if they ever are allowed to hold power, the job number one, two and three, is to restore the Voting Rights Act and make it so that you have to literally go in and buy congressional legislation over turn.
33:05
[SPEAKER_01]: on Roberts's decisions, not just in this case, not just in Shelby County, which is the case from 2013 that eviscerated Section 4's and 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
33:17
[SPEAKER_01]: You really have to do something about Rucho, this idea that discrimination based on party is constitutional and okay.
33:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to literally write a lot.
33:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It says actually no, it's not, right?
33:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw on a billmark, don't worry, I don't watch billmark.
33:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I was on a show and the clip was paid for me from billmark.
33:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Where aren't Schwarzenegger, the governor, it was one of his big plans was to have independent redistricting commissions, like an independent party that would come in and draw state maps in a fair way that didn't prefer in some one party or another.
33:57
[SPEAKER_01]: That's great as long as every state does it, right?
34:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if every state doesn't do it, then you have the situation that we kind of have right now where Democrats and states like New York kind of unilaterally disarmed themselves for jerrymandering while Republicans and states like Texas and Florida did not.
34:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Jerry Mandarin is kind of erased at the bottom.
34:22
[SPEAKER_01]: If you allow one state to do it, then it's political malpractice, if every state doesn't do it.
34:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You end up gerrymandering as much as possible if even one state is allowed to gerrymandor as much as possible.
34:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So the way to fix that is you need literally all 50 states to be on the same page, and that means you need to impose federal rules around a congressional redistricting, but that is difficult with this Supreme Court, which is going to say that the election's clause empowers the state.
34:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not the federal government to control how districts are made.
34:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So to really pull it all back, to really fix this problem, you don't just need new legislation, you need a new court.
35:09
[SPEAKER_01]: You need a court that's going to allow you to impose federal rules and regulations on how districts are drawn.
35:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're never going to get that as long as they're six Republicans in control of the court.
35:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, since we're a little fresh for time, it will spend five minutes on three cases and then we'll get back to fixing the court.
35:29
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, lightning round.
35:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Lightning round, Charles V. Salazar.
35:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so this is the conversion therapy case.
35:35
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the case about whether or not it is legal to practice what I consider a form of child abuse as a licensed medical professional.
35:45
[SPEAKER_01]: A licensed medical professional that phrase has meaning, right?
35:48
[SPEAKER_01]: When we're talking about so the case involves a Colorado band on conversion therapy, right?
35:53
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not a band conversion therapy conversion therapy being for readers who've been out to lunch for a while There's a therapy is when you tell a gay kid that they're not actually gay and that God doesn't want them to be gay And they just pray really hard and clap three times Tinkerbell will live and you'll want to have sex with her like that's that's conversion therapy
36:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a form of child abuse that has been shown to increase suicide rates and depression, amongst LGBTQ teens, especially, it's bad.
36:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So Colorado, and I think like 20 other states, have banned conversion therapy, right?
36:29
[SPEAKER_01]: But not for everybody, right?
36:30
[SPEAKER_01]: If you were...
36:31
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're a priest, you can tell whoever shows up at Sunday's school to just pray at a light, right?
36:37
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're a regular citizen, you want to strap a sandwich board to yourself and go out on the corner and preach the gospel of not being gay.
36:45
[SPEAKER_01]: You're free to do so.
36:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Colorado and other states ban it for licensed medical professionals, right?
36:52
[SPEAKER_01]: and that should mean something right um we have licensing for we we licensing restrictions on all sorts of therapies and treatments and thoughts and whatnot right there's there's that's how we ban snake oil right that's how we should be banning RFK junior that's how we
37:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
37:12
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how we keep our horse medication and bleach out of the mouths of people suffering from COVID.
37:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
37:17
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a medical state medical board that imposes, you know, universal standards on what their professionals can and cannot do in terms of treatment.
37:28
[SPEAKER_01]: This religious, uh, licensed medical professional, licensed psychiatrists in Colorado says, Oh, my God, it's against my religion if to have these standards.
37:37
[SPEAKER_01]: and says that she has a free speech and a free exercise right to practice conversion therapy that is the case that went up to the spring court.
37:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you know anything about this spring court, whenever Christians say they have a right to do something, Christians always win.
37:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Christians always win at this Supreme Court regardless of what the law says or should say.
37:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think that's, you know, what's interesting about this case is if you look at the centrist coverage, it's all about free speech, but, you know, it sounds like you think that it's going to be the free exercise of religion clause, which is the Trump pardon the expression card for this court.
38:14
[SPEAKER_01]: That is, that is one hundred percent right.
38:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And to be clear, Dawn, I think she has a good straight up free speech argument, right?
38:21
[SPEAKER_01]: She's a talk therapist.
38:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You, I can make a really good case that talk therapist should have the right to talk about whatever they want to talk about, like that's kind of in the job subscription.
38:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I think she has a great free speech argument.
38:36
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem is that we restrict people's
38:38
[SPEAKER_01]: speech and exercise of religion once they accept the medical license right once you accept the imprimator of expertise from the state you agree to follow a certain set of rules which means keeping your Jesus thoughts to yourself in certain situations including this one.
39:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, a national Republican Senatorial Committee versus FEC.
39:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is just Republicans want to steal more money and corrupt elections further on the Supreme Court is totally going to agree with that, because the Supreme Court is also a cabal of corrupt Republicans who like getting trips and vacations and RVs from big money donors.
39:18
[SPEAKER_01]: The legal weeds of it.
39:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I am almost uninterested in the legal weeds of it, right?
39:24
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, you know, how much control a candidate can have over the dark money packs that you've heard this story before, but the top line, the top line is that JD Manz wanted to have more control over the money Peter Teele was giving to him when he was running for Senate.
39:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he sued the FEC, the Federal Elections Commission, to have more control over Peter Teele's money
39:50
[SPEAKER_01]: procedural back and forth over a number of years.
39:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that case is up for the Supreme Court, and this corrupt Supreme Court is certainly going to side with JD pants and rich Republican donors and the corruption of politics.
40:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
40:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Note that down, listeners.
40:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if, if Ali's wrong on this one, it's going to be a big deal, but sadly I'm almost certain he's right.
40:15
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the case that I have the highest confidence in that I am right.
40:19
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
40:20
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it's the case sadly that I have the highest confidence in that you're right, too.
40:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, and then this, this last one is a terrible case.
40:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, once again grounds for optimism are pretty much non-existent, and that's Euryas Oryana versus Bondi.
40:36
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a man who was marked for death by a hitman by an actual professional hitman and they'll salvage or who vowed to kill his entire family.
40:46
[SPEAKER_01]: The hitman's name is Wolf Raido and Wolf Raido has a bone to pick with this man and his entire family and he's always roughed up his brothers and so after the guy saw some of the hitman's like Goons casing his joint he fled.
41:01
[SPEAKER_01]: He and his wife and his children fled to the United States
41:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, they didn't come through the normal or facial way.
41:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And so obviously our government wants to send them back, right?
41:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he's arguing that he has a refugee right to stay here under the convention against torture because he's going to be a man.
41:23
[SPEAKER_01]: If he goes back to El Salvador, the first circuit, the one that sits up in New England, said no.
41:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But the legal
41:32
[SPEAKER_01]: issue here is whether or not the ruling of an immigration judge is final, whether or not that ruling can is final or whether it can be reviewed by courts and what the Trump administration wants.
41:47
[SPEAKER_01]: The reason why this case is here because remember,
41:49
[SPEAKER_01]: This man has technically already lost in New England.
41:52
[SPEAKER_01]: This man is going back to El Salvador, back to Welfaredo, and back to El Salvador, and back to El Salvador.
41:58
[SPEAKER_01]: He's already lost this case.
42:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is the Trump administration bringing this up on appeal at all?
42:04
[SPEAKER_01]: When they...
42:04
[SPEAKER_01]: functionally already won.
42:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's because they want the Supreme Court to say that immigration judges' rulings cannot be reviewed and you can link that up.
42:13
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're a listener, it's remember to story earlier this year where the Trump administration was trying to bring in Jack court officers, military judges as immigration judges because they don't have enough immigration judges or at least they don't have enough immigration judges that do what Trump wants them to do.
42:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you have to link these two stories up.
42:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump is bringing in immigration judges that he thinks are going to do exactly what he wants.
42:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the Trump administration is trying to get the Supreme Court to say that those rulings cannot be reviewed by a court of, you know, actual judges.
42:46
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the legal grist of it of it here.
42:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But I also just want to point out that
42:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when we talk about immigration, the Republicans would always have us believe it's bad people, it's criminals, it's hate men who are coming to this country illegally.
43:03
[SPEAKER_01]: No, bro, no, well, Frado, the El Salvadorian hitman is doing just fine in El Salvador.
43:11
[SPEAKER_01]: He don't need to go nowhere.
43:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It is, or, or we ought to.
43:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's the one who needs to flee?
43:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the victim of these criminals and bad people, or the ones who need to flee and come to this country.
43:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet those are the people that we're treating as if they're the criminals.
43:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
43:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we leave, I feel like, you know, yet again, we have exposed why this is a terrible situation and why even more terrible things are about to happen.
43:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But we like to end on, at least a potentially constructive note here at the nation podcast.
43:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So...
43:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Burn it down.
43:50
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my constructive note.
43:52
[SPEAKER_01]: The construction of fire.
43:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, going.
43:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And since we are the nation, we are allowed to draw on the entire rhetorical wealth of the left.
44:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So let me ask you Lenin's question.
44:04
[SPEAKER_00]: What is to be done, Ellie?
44:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so what is to be done is clearly to expand the Supreme Court.
44:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Like again, I've said, I think since I started at the nation,
44:12
[SPEAKER_01]: in 2020.
44:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Since I started freelancing for the nation in 2019, the liberal agenda, the left agenda cannot survive generational control of the Supreme Court by Republicans.
44:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Democracy cannot survive generational control of the Supreme Court by Republicans.
44:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Women's rights, LGBTQ rights, black voting rights, none of this survives this court if you allow it to continue
44:40
[SPEAKER_01]: ad infinitum for the rest of the natural lives of the current conservative majority nothing works they won't let anything work so your only real solution is to expand the court is to put bring you know it's it's the Chicago way you're the they pull a knife you pull a gun
44:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
44:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's what you have to do.
45:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to bring more of your people to the party than their people.
45:05
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the only way you're going to win any of these cases and protect anything that you value.
45:11
[SPEAKER_01]: You mainly an issue that you care about, whether it's guns, whether it's rights, whether it's the environment.
45:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And I will tell you, that issue cannot survive Republican control of the Supreme Court.
45:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So how does this, how does this prescription translate when we are considering whether or not to vote for one democratic candidate or another?
45:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
45:36
[SPEAKER_00]: What's your, what's your view of what we should ask?
45:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
45:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So you, the first question that I, I'm basically a single issue voter on this at this point, Don, and my first question is what's your plan for reforming the court?
45:47
[SPEAKER_01]: because I don't have one is no longer an acceptable answer.
45:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I would have argued that it wasn't an acceptable answer in 2020 either, but it's certainly not an acceptable answer in 2020.
45:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's what's your plan?
45:58
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Biden, Harris, ran around talking to, we're gonna restore Roe via legislation.
46:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Really, that's nice.
46:06
[SPEAKER_01]: When John Roberts vetoes that legislation before breakfast, what's your plan then?
46:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, to use the intouchables.
46:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, what are you prepared to do?
46:15
[SPEAKER_01]: right?
46:15
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't have a plan to reform the Supreme Court, you're not serious about being present.
46:21
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not serious about having power.
46:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You just want the band, right?
46:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You just want the fancy house.
46:29
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't have a plan to reform the Supreme Court, you're not serious about actually taking power in this country because right now the power is at the Supreme Court and
46:41
[SPEAKER_01]: right?
46:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Power is a zero sum game.
46:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody has it.
46:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody else doesn't have it.
46:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now, the Supreme Court hasn't.
46:49
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want it, you gotta go take it.
46:51
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your plan for taking it, Democrats?
46:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And too many of them have no answer for that.
46:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Have no plan for that.
46:57
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't like my Cortex Mansion plan, then fine.
47:00
[SPEAKER_01]: What's yours?
47:01
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your plan, Gavin?
47:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
47:04
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your plan, then if you don't want to expand the court?
47:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Because let me tell you, turn limit saying it.
47:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Turn limit sinkin' to get you where you wanna go.
47:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Turn 18 year turn limit.
47:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You think we're gonna survive?
47:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there 18 years with these people?
47:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think so, right?
47:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So like you need to have a plan for court reform.
47:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I also am a huge proponent of ethics reform.
47:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like the Democrats during the Biden administration were handed the biggest Supreme Court scandal and American history when pro-public that came out with its report about Harlem Crow and Clarence Thomas.
47:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Democrats did nothing with that other
47:40
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not that's not that's not fair done.
47:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They're a multiple angry letters that they wrote in fairness right?
47:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's what that's what they did.
47:48
[SPEAKER_01]: This was this was the moment to get real ethics reform independent third party ethics reform with teeth forcing these judges to refuse themselves when they are compromised or biased to the litigants in their courtroom.
48:03
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't do that right?
48:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I always tell
48:10
[SPEAKER_01]: The Supreme Court is established by a constitutional edict in Article 3.
48:15
[SPEAKER_01]: The funding is still controlled by Congress.
48:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, I already mentioned Alexander Hamilton.
48:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Congress controls the power of the purse.
48:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The Constitution says that there should be a Supreme Court.
48:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't say they get a fancy courthouse, though.
48:27
[SPEAKER_01]: They can have their hearings out on the mall if there's no funding from Congress as far as I'm concerned, right?
48:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So you start hitting these guys in the wall.
48:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You start hitting these guys with legislation.
48:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you start hitting these guys with constitutional amendments.
48:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that's the things that I'm talking about.
48:46
[SPEAKER_01]: The constitutional amendment is the least politically possible thing.
48:49
[SPEAKER_01]: But you gotta at least threaten that.
48:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It goes back to what I said earlier, Don.
48:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is John Roberts afraid of right now?
48:58
[SPEAKER_01]: having been basically the best operative for the Republican Party for 20 years.
49:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is John Roberts afraid of?
49:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is San Melito afraid of when he's pulling up the flag on his house, right?
49:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is Clarence Thomas afraid of?
49:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And the answer to those questions is never a Democrat.
49:21
[SPEAKER_01]: is never what the opposition party will do to them should the opposition party ever take their reins again.
49:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is why everything is football.
49:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You have partisan Republicans operating with a lifetime appointment with impunity knowing that there's nothing the people that they are crushing will ever do to stop them.
49:48
[SPEAKER_01]: They're only afraid of other Republicans, right?
49:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's at that point where like the apex predator, the only thing that they're afraid of is another apex predator, right?
49:58
[SPEAKER_01]: The only thing a lion is afraid of is another lion.
50:01
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where the Supreme Court is right now.
50:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And until the Democrats change that,
50:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
50:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And until the Democrats are just like, well, you know, I got to pack a hyenas.
50:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's see how that rolls.
50:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Mr. Big, big, scary line.
50:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
50:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Until the Democrats changed the calculus in the heads of the Supreme Court justices.
50:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing changes.
50:22
[SPEAKER_01]: This just keeps going on and on and on until there is nothing left of our constitutional rights.
50:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, on that cheerful note, wait, wait, so I can do something positive.
50:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I will, I know something positive, because do you think the positive thing that's happening right now is that we are in a period of Supreme Court overreach, right?
50:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're seeing that with a president as well, overreach alerts the people to the fact that there might be a problem.
50:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I do think, you know, just pull like this over the course, I was saying, I've been talking about this at the nation since 2019, over the course of those six years, I've seen more and more people start to get the message, start to get the memo, start to understand how important the Supreme Court is and how desperately we need reform to do something about it.
51:16
[SPEAKER_01]: That is my hope as the Supreme Court continues to overreach every time they overreach, more and more people realize that something must be done to stop.
51:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
51:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let's hope that in our own small way we've contributed to that donning realization.
51:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Ellie, it's always a delight to talk to you.
51:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for coming to the nation podcast.
51:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for having me.