How Bad Is Trump's Attorney General Pick?

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Hello and welcome back to strict scrutiny. Your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. I am your loan regular host today, K-CHA, but fear not while Leah and Melissa are, of course, irreplaceable. I do have some great

gas line up to join me today. First, I will be joined by Friend of the Show, Katy Fang,

independent journalist, trial lawyer, and host of the Katy Fang channel on YouTube. You can also find Katy on [email protected]. Next, I'm going to talk to Amanda Lipman, founder of the indispensable organization run for something. She's been identifying and helping young leaders run for state and local and federal office for almost a decade. And we're going to talk about how courts end the court figure in her

work these days. And finally, I will bring you a conversation I recently had about a critically

“important election happening much sooner than the midterms. And that is an effort to fundamentally”

change the Kansas Supreme Court in response to that court's protection of individual rights, including the right to abortion. The fight to preserve that court's current character through the vote no campaign is underway right now. And I talked to two people working on the ground on it who can explain what is driving it and why it is just so important. Up first is legal news

with guest host Katy Fang. Katy, welcome back to strict scrutiny. It is always so great to have you

with us. I feel like I'm cheating on Leah though. So I'm just letting you know. I love all of your equally. But I feel like I'm cheating on my Leah right now. Because you have been, I guess, so it's really a couple of times now. First time the two of us, but hopefully not the first time. Mom times just letting you know. Awesome. Well, so happy to have you. And especially happy that you're willing to do this from abroad. You're in France. I am deep in the woods of Upstate New York.

Actually, battling right now this insane haze from the Canadian wildfires. Yeah, but I know the news gods, though, stop for no one. And I'm really happy to have you here for this conversation because it was very much not a sleepy summer week on the legal news front. And so we have a couple of really big topics to cover. And I want to start with last week's opinion out of a Miami federal court

in the case. I know you're very familiar with involving Trump's request for 10 billion with a B

dollars from the federal government, a lawsuit that he leveraged into a quote unquote settlement that produced both the $1.776 billion slush fund and the grant of tax immunity. So Katie, I'm going to ask you to talk us through the opinion, but let me just remind everyone of a little bit of the background first. So the suit was filed back in January. It was ostensibly filed in Trump's personal capacity. And it grows out of this IRS contractors disclosure of Trump's tax documents

has already been sentenced to prison, but this federal civil suit filed by Trump six years later, when he just happened to be back in the Oval Office, maintained that the IRS's failure to properly protect this confidential tax information injured him and to kind of address that

injury he demanded once again. The IRS, he controls $10 billion. To be clear, the case should never

have been in federal court. Federal courts are only supposed to resolve cases and controversies between adverse parties, like parties that disagree about something. And the oddity of Trump being on both sides of the V in this case is something that was not lost on Donald Trump himself. So let's play a super cut of him talking about that oddity. I'm sort of suing myself. I don't know what he has said of the lawsuit. I'll say give me $X dollars, right? And it's awfully strange to make

“a decision where I'm paying myself. In other words, you have to have one of those cases where you have to decide”

how much you're paying yourself in damages? First, we want the Marlago break-in suit. And I have to work out some kind of a settlement. I'm supposed to work out a settlement with myself. Marlago break-in suit. What is the Marlago break-in suit? I know you got indicted, buddy, for a classified documents retention and espionage act violations, but I was a familiar with the quote, Marlago break-in suit. Evidently, he's rewriting the history of all of these episodes,

including of that. Sure. So as to the IRS case, right? Like, obviously, he just kind of as ever says the quiet part loud. Like, he was on both sides of the case. He was dictating the terms of a settlement. And it's pretty clear that he decided to pursue this in federal court to frame this shakedown effort as a lawsuit to give this kind of shakedown the patina of legality. Okay, so the judge actually picked up on those kind of dynamics from the start and asked for briefing

about whether the case should be recorded all. And lo and behold, before those briefs came in, Trump and the federal government announced they had settled the case. Trump would be withdrawing it. Okay, so Katie, can you before we get to the opinion from last week? Can you remind us of the terms of that quote-unquote settlement? Well, I kind of evolved, right? Because the first iteration,

“and I love that you say quote-unquote, because I do the same, but I put it in the air quotes, right?”

Instead of an air guitar, we got air quotes here. So that quote-unquote settlement, the kind of first iteration of it, was multi-page. It was an actual document. And the just of it was the creation of this quote, anti-weaponization fund for the 1.776 billion dollars. But it also had some familiar particularly, you know, regular language that deals with the resolution of a conflict or dispute between parties, which interestingly included mutual releases, right? Which is what people get.

But the problem in this instance, though, is it had additional provisions that were not normal.

And it kind of had defined terms that were never defined. So in legal documents, as we know,

sometimes you'll refer to something and then you'll put it either in quotes or you'll put it in capital letters or you'll capitalize the first letter of some of the terms. And then we call it a defined term. And yet in the settlement agreement, we didn't know what the lawsuit was that was being referred to by Donald Trump in this instance. And there was also the inclusion of people that ended up being beneficiaries under the terms of the settlement agreement that were never

contemplated because they were never parties to the settlement agreement. And so that was just out of the blue, it was like a theta springing from the head of Zeus, except not that beautifully elegant ever because it's Donald Trump. There was this settlement agreement that came out of a

non-controversy in front of this judge. Absolutely. And I think that is so critical. They're just never

was what is supposed to exist for any lawsuit, at least in federal court, as an actual controversy. So okay. So this, you know, multi-page document creates or reports of create this slush fund benefiting not just the plaintiffs in the suit, but all of these other non-parties, right victims of democratic administration overreach and law fair, like terms never defined in the agreement. And then subsequent to that initial announcement, blanch, I think exclusively blanch

signs. And remember, this is the attorney general nominee, former personal lawyer to Donald Trump, signs as additional order granting the president and members of his family and their businesses. This wide-ranging and unprecedented immunity from tax inquiries, including those that were pending at the time of this settlement. So right, like all of that, I think is encompassed within this kind of quote unquote settlement. And upon that announcement, the, you know,

Trump and his personal lawyers announced they are moving to dismiss the case. We've settled it, like no longer any need to proceed. And the judge granted that request initially. And people might

“remember, like this announcement actually led to kind of name on Capitol Hill. This I think is the”

only thing other than Epstein that actually in the last year and a half has led to genuine

just how bad this looked. And they were in the process of maybe taking steps to override

“it legislatively or at least like making noises about doing that. And only when Todd Blanch”

shut it down by going before Congress and saying, basically, this fund is dead. We're not going forward with it. Did those efforts at legislative override get sort of put to rest? Now, he wouldn't put in writing that this fund wasn't going forward. He did not make any representation about the IRS immunity agreement, not going forward. But he did say repeatedly that this fund was dead. Okay. So then Katie, how does this case kind of spring back to life? Well, just just a couple of

additional things, though, Kate won. Yeah. Um, there was separate litigation that was brought

vis-a-vis that quote anti-weaponization fund. I just call it the $1.8 billion slush fund that's

tantamount to theft of American taxpayer dollars. And there was an order from a judge in that litigation for Blanch would word and others that had the authority and approval as representatives of the Department of Justice to actually do sworn declarations that they were not going to move forward with the slush fund. And they refused to do so, citing to congressional testimony and even public media appearances as if to be tantamount to something that is legally recognized and

a court, which is not. And putting aside the defiance of a court order, that's a whole other thing.

“And I think the other thing too is what you just noted was important. There was never a notice”

of appearance entered on behalf of the Treasury Department or the IRS from the inception of this lawsuit. And the fact that there was no lawyers appearing on behalf of the defendants, and yet suddenly there was a mutual quote again, settlement agreement reached. You know, even the judge said in her, it's like you could only say, and I know the judge, Kathleen Williams, well, it's like you could only see what she begrudgingly entered the order, you know, the order granting this voluntary

dismissal, but here's the thing. That voluntary dismissal was so defensive. It pretty much told this

judge, don't even try to think you have jurisdiction over this anymore because we found this notice of voluntary dismissal. And so it was another kind of lay down the gauntlet move by these people that was incredibly disrespectful. And she made sure that she added in that language. Look, you may think you did this notice of voluntary dismissal. Let me let you guys understand, I've never seen a settlement. I've never approved a settlement, and I don't even know what the hell you're talking about,

because you guys never filed the required legal memorandum that would prove and corroborate that there was a controversy. So all that being said, there were these brilliant moves by, and here, maybe this is where reasonable minds history. I call them a meat sheet. I don't know what you call them.

“Okay, you know, I'm an, I'm an, I'm an a making unit. I think it's, I think, either one works”

just fine. I feel like I'm wondering the court we can create. Friends of the court, the yummy cheat. But you're, yeah, you're in Europe right now. So go with a meat sheet. I'll, on the side of the

plant. I'll, I'll stay with the meat. But yes, these friends of the, so you have these incredible

group of 35 former federal and state judges that are of a bipartisan nature. They were in both Republican and Democratic administrations. And they filed this friends of the court motion that pretty much was instructive and provided a road map for judge Williams to be able to make an inquiry into whether or not fraud had been perpetrated upon the court and that it told judge Williams, which she already knew, but it was great to see it laid out so cleanly that she had the

ability and inherent authority to be able to continue to question whether this was a legit deal or not or whether it was elusive of nature, which it seemed to be because it looked like Trump was controlling both ends of the litigation. And once that motion was filed, Judge Williams said, thank you very much. I'm now ordering the parties to be able to answer whether or not there is this case in controversy and to pretty much tell me whether or not I can move forward with reopening this,

pulling the final judgment out and reopening it to be able to make an inquiry into this perpetration of fraud. Yeah, so it is basically right this friend of the court brief that allows her to kind of reopen the case to consider this a kind of narrow question, right, of whether there's been fraught on the court under both rule 11 of the federal rules of civil procedure and also the inherent authority of any federal court to sanction lawyers who engage in misconduct in her court. And this

was a 50 plus page opinion, I don't think we've said how long it was and it really is quite a read. If you're looking for some like beach reading this summer, it is just like the kind of distillation of like righteous outrage at the abuse of the courts and the legal process that the sequence of events that we have just been describing represents like just jumps off the page. It really is quite a read. So as a bottom line matter, the opinion concludes what we have just been

The president controls the executive branch slaughter, the case that we've already talked about in

“the show a bunch of times, the one that gives the president complete authority over the heads”

even of independent agencies, slaughter resolves any doubts that might have lingered about the president's control over the executive branch. And since he controls the executive branch, the defendant, and he certainly is the plaintiff. In this case, there is no possible way he could be adverse to himself. And just to read a couple of quotes from the Williams opinion, you know, she says, the nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the parties and counsel make plain

this was an attempt to use the court to provide some legitimacy, to an agreement, to confer immunity, to people and entities affiliated with the president. That's the tax immunity piece of it. But also with respect to kind of making this fund, the issue before the court is weather, the lawyers, ignored ethical norms, court rules, and legal authority to manipulate the judicial process to guilt their efforts to gain unprecedented access to the public fisc with the patina of legitimacy.

So you couldn't, again, this is like legal kind of sounding language, but the rage is there, like absolutely. So, you know, there is this finding, right, that clearly this was an effort to use the court. And it's not just kind of an abstract condemnation of the lawsuit,

“she kind of names names. So like, what did she say about the conduct of the government defendants?”

And we're going to talk about the Blanche confirmation hearing in a couple of minutes. But sort of what did she say and what did she do with respect to the specific lawyers involved in this case? Yes. So like you said, she names names. There were bodies left after that order. And it was

amazing because she not only made referrals for these lawyers to their respective bars. But for

example, this lawyer and it's so amazing, the stable of lawyers that kind of step up to do this work. And I call them the enablers, right? It's like with a capital E. And there's a solar practitioner do that is now showing up on a lot of these filings. And he had a pending pro cap VHA to be able to enter to do work in that jurisdiction of the Southern District of Florida. And judge Williams is like buddy, you are not allowed to practice in this jurisdiction for at least a year or until further order

of his court. And then she specifically identified Todd Blanche and Stanley Woodward because they were signatories to these different quote settlement agreements. And she made sure that they knew that that order was being sent by the clerk of the courts to the respective bars. And these were referrals

“for disciplinary proceedings. And I think at a minimum that is what was to happen, she also reserved”

for fees, for legal fees to be able to be covered for some of the other Amiki Amichi. You know, in this case for having brought their friends of the court pleadings, I just think what's amazing is judge Williams's order is the best kind of summer read you could have. But she covered the waterfront hate. I was so pleasantly surprised to see the citations to slaughter repeatedly. The fact that she took a Supreme Court decision that had just been entered a week before and used it

to do what I call a bench slap was incredible. And this order really was as I called it as well, she opened a can of judicial work. Because it is a disgusting maneuver to take a judge, her court, and her jurisdiction to be able to perpetrate fraud on the American people. It wasn't just the judge. It was just the vehicle by which they were able to perpetrate that fraud. Absolutely. And you know, I just kind of repeat what she says. It's sort of bottom line in terms of

she refers both lawyers, Donald Trump's personal lawyers and well, Donald Trump's government in the same

to their respective bars, which is basically like the point here is that like that was always just one

team. But and that's improper. Like it is wildly improper to bring a lawsuit that you absolutely know has no change of not only like resulting in a victory, but even proceeding to any kind of resolution because it is just completely improper. It is not only mirrorless. Like it is frivolous from the perspective of even invoking the court's jurisdiction, and that that's sanctionable. Lawyers have obligations to their oath to the Constitution, to the norms, and ethical

expectations of the profession. And it seems like there were breaches of those norms on both sides of this lawsuit, again, which is just really one side of this lawsuit, and to stay on blanch for a minute. She talks specifically about the testimony he gave to the Senate in May when he talked about the decision to walk away from this fund. And basically said that the

settlement agreement was never submitted to the court because the case had been dismissed,

and thus there was no mechanism for reviewing the agreement. And she is like that answer. Let me just quote from this here, her opinion here. She says that answer is at best misleading, and it was disingenuous. The court was available to review any pleading by any party at any time

calls bullshit on that, right? She says like, no, the court was here. That's wrong. And again,

“this is the pending nominee to be the attorney general. She's describing giving testimony”

before the Senate that was again at the very least misleading, and maybe more accurately disingenuous. And then one of the things I thought was really interesting about so she went she talks about blanch announcing we're not going forward with this fund. She says blanch had this apparent capacity to speak for both the plaintiffs and the defendants when he both signed this settlement agreement and then said, oh, we're not doing anything. This is purportedly an agreement that has two

parties to it. So his ability to unilaterally go before the Senate and say, no, we're not going to do this anymore. Makes crystal clear. There was only one party who's interest were being represented

throughout this case. And that party was Donald Trump. And again, that's not how any of this is supposed

to work. So in terms of the bar referrals, right, we talked about those, and those are, you know, meaningful social and reputational sanctions in our profession, typically. And then she also does impose this consequence of sorts, which is that Trump and his family are supposed to be prohibited from calling the audit protections part of this agreement, a settlement in any official proceeding, and then again, there's what you mentioned, the possibility of having to pay monetary penalties

in the form of the lawyers fees for the friends of the court. And I think that means both the 35 judges that you mentioned, and also there were other front of the court briefs, so potentially

“paying those legal fees. So again, a banger of an opinion, just really, really, I think important”

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to the blanch confirmation hearings. Again, you're a broad, different time zone. I presume you found a way anyway to move to different types of sidewalks. Yeah, I watched some of that. We're massive as Katie. What can I say? So I want to play just a couple of clips and maybe we can talk about them. And I thought this first one in some ways kind of captured the whole thing. So let's start here. Are you on President Trump for him? I'm his lawyer, was his lawyer, and now I'm the deputy

attorney general. Well, first of all, it's I call him fog horn leg horn. John Kennedy, fog horn leg. Yeah. I mean, it's like he set him up. It's like he did him dirty. Kennedy did him dirty by asking him that question, right? The way he did Kennedy is the sneaky. Kennedy is very, very good. At this part of the job, right? Like he can kind of pin,

“when this is down, I actually don't know if he meant to do that here. Blanch, I think, did”

it to himself, but that was really a wild moment. I am his lawyer. Pause. I was his lawyer. That's kind of the judge Williams opinion in a TLDR, like you are his lawyer. You were his lawyer,

you are his lawyer. Anyway, so I think that that illustrates what Blanch has not, has never been

able to do, and maybe has never tried to do, and maybe Trump doesn't want him to do, which is divorces prior representation of Trump as a criminal defense lawyer from the job that he currently holds, both deputy and acting attorney general, and obviously the job to, he aspires permanent, not permanent, forever hopefully, but actual Senate confirmed attorney general. So, yeah, I mean, I guess did Blanch from kind of that clip and throughout the hearing did Blanch do anything to

suggest this kind of ability to or interest in distinguishing his personal relationship with and representation of Donald Trump from the job of heading the justice department? No, in fact,

“on other questioning, Blanch made it clear that there is no independence of the DOJ. I think Blanch”

took this unitary executive theory and said, "Oh, hey, it doesn't just live, you know, in this, you know, scholarly kind of academic way in Scottish opinions, it's happening in real time at the Department of Justice." And the common denominator theme throughout the two days of the Senate confirmation proceeding with him has been, I am here to implement and execute what Donald Trump wants me to do. And it is the first time, even when we haven't had qualified nominees for that

job, I know it's the first time that I have ever heard a nominee for the attorney general of the United States, at least maybe the other ones just paid it lip service, but at least they pretended to say that there was an independence to the Department of Justice. In this instance, Blanch brazenly and very casually and smuggly said, "No, right? I don't have to." And it didn't even matter what the topic was. It could be mythopristone, right? And it wasn't a conversation about,

you know, whether there's independence on the DOJ, it's I know that this is an important thing for Beemo's pro-life president and the history of our country. And I'm like, buddy, you have a different

“job, like you have a job other than just being as attorney. But John Cornan, I think surprised”

me out of everybody because he tied it all together when it came to the settlement agreement and the slush fund and the tax issue because he did ask Todd Blanch, who signed a written amendment or some type of revision in writing to the settlement agreement and Blanch is like, "We don't have one." And Cornan said, "Well, then what's going to happen to this term, this material term of this contract of the settlement agreement?" And Blanch had to admit that

Donald Trump could sue for breach of contract because of the slush fund not happening. And other senators also noted that Todd Blanch is the one who was negotiating all of this and just like

Judge Williams, he had never entered a notice of appearance because nobody from DOJ had ever entered

a notice of appearance. And so that just gourds this idea, right, or undergoes this idea, that there's all of this like shenanigans going on and every going on at the DOJ, and they're just so open about it now, they don't even pretend to hide it anymore. Yeah, I thought that Cornan exchange was fast, right? Before, let's come back to it, but I actually to what you were saying a minute ago about the kind of abandoning of all pretense of independence,

I thought there were a couple of really revealing exchanges on that score. So let's play two, one was Senator Herono, one was Senator Coons, and then actually there's a third Coons exchange that where you sort of have Blanch kind of trying to say like, "Maybe I have this threat of

independence, but I'll never have to use it anyway." So let's roll those clips now.

of his perceived enemies? Yes, or no? I can't answer that, yes, or no. That wasn't the question, and my answer was that as the president of the United States under Article 2, he's in charge of the Department of Justice, and so my answer reflects that idea.

“Is the Department of Justice that you were running independent from the White House?”

The Department of Justice, like every single department in the executive, is part of the executive. I mean, Article 2 of the Constitution gives the power of the executive to President Trump. If you're confirmed and you're asked to take an action, you believed to be illegal or an ethical

would you resign? That will never happen, but yes, if it were to happen, I'm not going to violate my

oath to the Constitution. I mean, yeah, the first you just confirm what you were saying in a minute ago, Katie, but that last minute I wanted to play it because it's like keep her forms a serious lawyer in a way that like superficially you could imagine thinking, oh, maybe this guy's not a clown, like many people in this cabinet, and then you're like, oh, that will never happen. Donald Trump will never do or direct anything illegal or unethical, and it's just like, oh, everything you say could

be alive because like no one believes that that will never happen. It happens like five times before breakfast every day, that's something illegal or unethical has happened. Happens or is direct, but I guess Donald also forgot that his relationship, the I love you man, relationship with Donald Trump started because he was his criminal defense attorney. He didn't represent him in a purchase agreement for property, didn't represent him in a pre-nup with Melania, represented him when he was being

prosecuted in multiple cases on a state and federal level. So Blanch, not ever thinking that his client could be capable of breaking the law or doing something unethical, is a farce, truly. I kind of couldn't believe he said it, but it was almost like whether he's completely convinced himself that all those earlier representations were about Donald Trump being the target of these unfairly politicized, you know, kind of like witch campaigns or whether he just like has sort of lost

“touch entirely with like truth and falsehood. I don't know which it was, but I was honestly like even though”

it wasn't like the biggest, most dramatic mode of the hearing kind of stunned by that. Corne and Furman, I really did think that was Corne and equated himself well, like that was an effective cross-examination in which we were talking about the fact that it was just testimony before

Congress in which Blanch said never mind with the fund and Corne and was, I thought very

effective in pressing him, but you have a written agreement about a fund. So usually in the law, like some statement doesn't supersede a written agreement if you don't formally modify it, and Blanch did have to say, "Well, yeah, I guess if Trump wanted to go to court to enforce it, we'd have a problem. We have a situation. He could do that." And I wish Corne had followed up further on that and he did not, but it also to my mind kind of highlighted how I thought ineffective a lot

of the democratic senators sort of like, thank you, or some sort of, yeah, I mean, I'm sorry, but yes, I agree with you, 100%, on this, but also I thought on various Epstein matters. And so I want to talk about Epstein in a minute and in particular, the litigation that you've initiated regarding some of the Epstein documents, but maybe just to stay for another minute on the hearing because you mentioned Mr. Preston and this is something that we in this podcast

have talked about at her ideal. I thought it was really striking that some of the senators on the Republican side of the aisle took the opportunity to focus on using Blanch to shore up the president's credentials as this pro-life crusader and also to raise the question of the future of the approval of the medication abortion drug, Mr. Preston. Let's play one of those clips here. Can you commit to me today that this administration and DOJ will prioritize taking

meaningful and thoughtful action to address the dangers that occurred in the current status quo to women all over this country? Absolutely, and President Trump is the most pro-life president in history. Katie Britt and Josh Hawley, they were like, I sleep at the foot of the cross because all they wanted to do is just tee up, like you said, opportunities for top-lash to do laps about how pro-life Donald Trump is. And I'm like pro-life, but when you're an

immigrant driving to work, you're not pro-life, right? I mean, let's just be very clear about that.

“But yeah, yeah, that's a little bit, you know what's interesting, though?”

Hawley and Blanch did a little bit of a dance though on the question and answering on the Miffa Preston issue because Blanch was trying to hide behind the fact that he didn't want to talk about active litigation and that he was relying upon what the briefs had asserted because

the reality is they really don't want medication abortion to be an issue at the midterms.

They want to hide behind this quote, unquote bullshit FDA review of the efficacy and

is a not good issue for Republicans and it's seeing how the economy is bad. We're not a legal

“war or the Epstein files, you name it. And I think Blanch was trying to hide behind it, but even”

Hawley kept on pressing Blanch on whether or not they were going to be consistent with this agenda from Trump which is the elimination of access to medication abortion. Absolutely, yeah, I think you see a little bit of a distance between like the Hawley's of the party who do want, you know, kind of the administration to move as quickly as possible, maybe to yank the approval and the administration, which I think you're totally right,

understands that it is a losing electoral issue for them and they don't want to touch it before November, but I think there's every reason to expect that they might try something really dramatic in November or in December, but after, of course, people have cast their votes in the midterm. Okay, so in terms of the questioning in particular from the Democratic side of the aisle about Epstein, was there enough pressure brought to bear on Blanch regarding the administrations,

compliance with the federal law directing the release of the Epstein files with Blanch's own personal involvement in his visit to and proper to Gillian Maxwell in the transfer to what Biola counts is a far-cushier federal prison. Did he get pressed on that stuff? He did a little, but there was an embarrassment of riches for Senate Democrats on judiciary to be able to really ding him and hard when it comes to Epstein files. Pam Bondi made it clear that Todd was in charge

of the day-to-day that he was the one and then I didn't hear enough about the situation room reporting from Maggie Haber, Miven, Jonathan Swan. The fact that Todd was the one with all of those incredibly high-level people like JD van Susie, Wiles, Cash, Patel, and others, and that Todd someone who was quarterbacking strategy to prevent the release of these Epstein files and even Todd said, I'll go talk to Gillian Maxwell, which then materialize. I just kind of feel like

there was a dischointed approach by Senate judiciary dams when it came to Epstein and then I mean to kind of just live in my own space Kate, I also think they could have really harped on Judge Sullivan's order in the preliminary injunction in my case because all of it made it explicitly

clear that Blanch never defended the allegations that I made that there have been violations

of the law and Sullivan said that Todd Blanch, the acting AG has conceded that he has violated the federal law. I just didn't hear that at all, really, and I was surprised because I feel like you can't put somebody in the quote, permitted AG job who doesn't follow the law. Yeah, and just to give listeners more familiar with it, the context, this is a lawsuit that Katie filed, challenging certain withholdings and reductions in kind of a subset of really

“important subset of the Epstein files and I think late June, right, got a ruling in that case”

from Judge Sullivan granting a preliminary injunction, right ordering that summer actions be removed in these key documents involving email exchanges and like extremely disturbing contents of these materials. And at the moment, both you and Blanch for the justice department, our filing briefs in this show cause order, right, whether the department should be held in contempt or

Blanch should be held in contempt for failure to comply. Am I, do I have that basically, right?

Yeah, you do judge Sullivan granted my motion for preliminary injunction ordered Todd Blanch to produce, I say, put up a shut up, produce or show cause as to why you can't, but there were certain things that Judge Sullivan didn't give him an out on. He didn't give him the option of show cause and Blanch said, I'm not going to do it. And I just think that the general theme of defiance by the DOJ, while headed up by somebody like Todd Blanch, because before he was acting

AG, he was deputy AG, and while Pamageau with the bad hairs running around doing all of her stuff, it was Todd, who was in charge of this and I do think there wasn't enough emphasis on the disrespect for corridors, the disobedience, the contempt, and the general, you know, pooping on the rule of law that happens when Todd Blanch is at the helm of the department of justice. Yeah, and your

“lawsuit is an important and recent distillation of that, but it's also a reflection of something”

that is endemic, right, throughout the department under the leadership of First Bondi and Blanch

and now just Blanch, and from the perspective of the rule of law, it is enormously troubling that someone who could be getting the top job has shown and has headed a department that has shown this kind of contempt for the rule of law and the courts. Okay, we're going to have to leave it there, Katie, thank you so much for taking this time while in France to join me. Can you remind our listeners where people can find you? Sure, I am on YouTube at Katy Fang News. I'm also on Substac and all

other social media platforms at Katy Fang. Well, we'll have to have you back when Melissa is solo in the guest here at some point to complete the trifecta, but in the meantime, thank you so much for being with me today, Katie. Awesome, thanks. We're going to take a quick break, and next up is my

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“which I think we've said before. We should remind everyone. We had Amanda on the show when she published”

her most recent book when we were in charge. And that book is actually out in paperback with some new material in September. So Amanda congrats on the forthcoming paperback and welcome back to Strict's Whitney. Thanks for having me, Kate. Amanda for listeners who don't know is one of the founders of the indispensable organization run for something. And she's been identifying and helping young leaders run for state and local and federal office for nearly a decade. I've been wanting to have her back

on the show for a while, in particular, to talk about recruiting candidates to run for judicial office. And we are going to talk about that. But we are now in the midst of the midterm election season. And we on the show are obsessed with scotus and the importance of making the Supreme Court and the federal courts in general an electoral issue. So we are going to talk about that too. But before we get into all of that, Amanda, for folks who don't know run for something,

can you just tell us a little bit about the organization? Yes, so run for something started in January 2017. It worked for Hillary before this. And right after election, it started hearing from people from high school and she said, "I want to run for office, what do I do?" And at the time, if you were young, if you were newly excited about politics, and you wanted to do more than vote and more than volunteer, there was nowhere you could go. So along with my co-founder,

we launched this organization meant to be the entry point for young people in particular,

who wanted to lead. When we started, we thought we'd get a hundred people in the first year.

We've now had about 275,000 young people raised their hands to say they want to run for office. We have helped elect nearly 1,700 people across 49 states, mostly women and people of color, all millennials and gen Z, to local offices all across the country. And we've now started to see a bunch of them rise, took top. So people like James Talerego, down in Texas, yes, I mean,

House, for Senate, for Governor, for Secretary of State and Colorado, for your attorney general, in Michigan, who have come through our pipeline. So it's been so cool to see that the work is working. Amazing, and those numbers are really just eye-popping. Can you talk a little bit about what sorts of changes you've seen in interest in general in running during Trump 2.0? What

is that look like? You know, the issues have always stayed kind of the same. I would say housing

has almost always been at the top of the list. People are desperate to fix the housing crisis. Child care, transportation, health care. The thing that we heard during Trump 2.0, it was a different than Trump 1.0. Those people explicitly saying, "I'm pissed in my leadership. I'm pissed in my party. I'm tired of being told to wait in line that it's not my turn, that they can't do anything. If they're not going to fight for me, I'm going to fight for me."

And this didn't always mean running against the little members of Congress. They were pissed at,

“but I think it was a sense of this cannot be the Democratic Party as it currently stands.”

This cannot continue. So if I'm going to change it, I'm going to have to run for office to do it myself.

Well, so let's now pivot to what people are talking about as they are running for office now.

And as you said, I think remain focused on this recruiting at the state and local level, but it's a huge testament to how successful the operation has been that you now do have people running for Congress, and you've had run for something alums, run, and both win and lost in primaries for the House and the Senate and are now running in the general elections. So you talked about some of the issues that you are finding candidates talking about, and I presume are really resonating

with voters. How, I guess, have you seen the kind of approach to talking about the Supreme Court of the Courts in general change? I mean, right, historically, there's been this enormous asymmetry, right, the right, and the Republican Party have long been hyper-focused on the courts and scotists

as this key electoral issue, and it has been a very effective mobilizer and galvanizer

for their electorate. I guess over the decade that you've been doing this work, and I guess the federal focus has been more recent, but how have you seen that change and kind of what are your candidates saying and what are you guys as an organization kind of thinking that the messaging should look like around the Supreme Court? You know, most of our candidates are talking about it because they're not running for Congress, but I'll say writ large receiving across the

Democratic Party, and especially our alum who are running for higher office, they come at it from one of two angles. One is the status quo cannot persist. Like this system, this establishment, these institutions, whether it's the Senate or the House or the Supreme Court, are broken. They do not service. They are corrupted. They are politicized even when they shouldn't be politicized. They are explicitly partisan, and they are rigged against us in many ways. And if you as a current

leader do not see that and are not willing to rethink what that should look like, you're not right

“for this moment. So I think that's sort of angle one. angle two is actually pretty explicitly corruption.”

And we're talking a lot about the Trump family's corruption, the Republican Party's corruption, the sense of money and politics, but this also goes to the Supreme Court justices corruption. The sense that like, you know, Clarence Thomas is in billionaires pockets, that they have bought themselves their judges. So depending on the candidate, depending on the approach they're taking, they come out of one of those ways. But both, I think, are really pushing forward. We cannot

pretend that this is a problem we cannot solve. That's great. And I do think that for folks who are not cut, you know, we, because we think and write, you know, podcasts about the Supreme Court, really do focus on the Supreme Court. But I do think that there is real wisdom in the way you're describing this, just connecting the Supreme Court to a larger dialogue about profoundly broken and dysfunctional institutions. It is, but it is not the only such institution, right? That is

also true about the Senate. That is also largely true about this kind of, you know, hypercharge vision of the presidency with no discernible checks that allows that facilitates rampant corruption,

“that has real impacts on all of us. So I think that that that seems like really wise. And then”

I do think that there are ways to talk about individual corruption on the participle court justice, it's not just the institution is broken, but it's the lack of checks and the lack of meaningful ethics rules that have led to the ability to benefit from these billionaire benefactors by justice Thomas. I think most agree justly, but not exclusively. And so, so I think it's interesting to hear that that's something that people are at least talking about and are responding to.

Well, I think it speaks to the sense that this is not fair. This is not just that you are getting screwed over and someone else is benefiting because of it. And I think that that that like really kind of short tight message, I think is equally true about Congress and the president and the Supreme Court. And I do think that what's novel, I think is the kind of Supreme Court piece of

announcement in the fall. So there wasn't one before the end of the Supreme Court term when they

“often but not always come. But I think it's at least possible. I don't know likely, but certainly”

quite possible that depending on how things look approaching November, one or both of Justice Thomas or Justice Alito might announce that they're leaving the court. There'll be a vacancy. It's also, I guess, possible that if the Democrats manage to take the Senate, then there could well be an announcement or two at a confirmation or an effort to confirm in the lame doc. So I wouldn't rule that out. But sort of putting that to one side, if there were an announcement in September or October,

I'm curious if you think that would make a difference in terms of raising the salience of the court and kind of connecting that to some of the other themes on the campaign trail. I absolutely think so. I think it will galvanize people who perhaps were not eager to crawl over a broken glass to vote for the Democratic candidate wherever they are, but understand now that they have to. I think that there is so much evidence now over the last six years of the importance

of the Supreme Court, you know, real estate being maybe the biggest one, but the voting rights act, the tariffs, like student loans over and over and over again, people have seen how these decisions have directly affected their lives in a way that I think maybe even we perhaps knew that was true, but like normal people didn't know that was true before the last couple of years. So I think if there is an opening, especially for these Senate races, like it doesn't even

become a question of, do you like this candidate or not, or are you excited by that or not? Do you want Trump to get his Supreme Court justices or not? Yeah. And that's the question

“at hand. And I do think that's what made some of the knowing that that's about the underlying”

context, as made some of the Democratic primaries and these contests so heightened, because if we lose, he gets the court for a generation. So there we are. Right, because he could replace Thomas and Alito with 35 year old versions of them maybe even further, right, because we have heard Trump say really explicitly that he's been deeply disappointed in the occasional votes

against him that his first three nominees, of course, and Kavanaugh and Barrett have cast,

because they have mostly fallen in line, but have very occasionally broken and voted against him. And I think it's quite clear that he and his advisors are single-mindedly determined to ensure that they do not put on the court anyone, but a good soldier who will vote with no matter what. And so I think that those are the stakes, at least with respect to the Senate. I mean, I do think the House Matters a lot too, because some of the kind of lack of checks

that we were just talking about that have facilitated this kind of unregulated set of opportunities for self-dealing and corruption on the Supreme Court are fixable through legislation. And so if you had a house that was interested in legislating things like Supreme Court ethics, that would obviously be a significant step forward in the short term. Obviously, you need to veto override while Trump is the president to actually get

that stuff passed into law. But at the moment, you don't even have any legislative prospects, and so a Democratic House would, I think, make a difference on that front, too. It's not just

“confirmation. And I think that's why this conversation about fight within the Democratic Party”

has been so important. Like, yes, there are obviously policy things we want to put, like, advance, but you just said it, even if Democrats control the House in the Senate, they're not going to be able to govern in any meaningful way until Trump is no longer in the White House.

So the most important thing they can do is accountability oversight and confirmation hearings in

the Senate. And if they don't show that they have a backbone and the willingness to stand up to Republicans, to Trump, that they are willing to lay it all on the line, create some spectacle, create the perception of being able to punch back even if they can't always win. It's like, what do we do in here? Why even give you the power if you're not going to use it to at least tell us that you're as mad as we are? Yeah, absolutely. So let's shift now. And I want to ask

a couple of questions about something that we touch on from time to time. Although, you know, we should do more about it. And I think that we will, you know, especially as this next year begins. And that is state courts, big states, Supreme courts, I guess in particular, but state courts in general. And, you know, talk about sort of broken institutions, lots of state courts are profoundly broken. And I don't think I realized until pretty recently that run for something doesn't just recruit

candidates for state legislatures and various kind of local elected office, but, you know, in the kind of local executives and things like that. But also does recruit candidates to run for a traditional office. And, you know, in a lot of states and some states judges are appointed in a lot of states, judges run as an initial matter or to retain their seats on the bench.

So, you know, I want to ask some specific questions. But first, can you talk a little bit about

the worker fund for something recruiting judicial candidates? Yes. So we work on all local racist statehouse states in and below. So on the legal judicial level that includes judges, prosecutors,

on-state Supreme Court. So, like, in Michigan, Karabold and Harris, who was appointed to and then

want to see on the Michigan State Supreme Court, came through our pipeline and she was in the statehouse. Now, if you think it's really interesting to know this and some of the numbers and actually didn't realize the scale of this. So, 38 states use elections to choose states Supreme Court justices. There are about 30,000 state judges in the United States versus only about 1700 federal judges, so it gives you a sense of the scale here. There are about 7,000 judicial seats that state,

appellate, county, and local on the ballot across this two-year election cycle. A lot of opportunities here. That doesn't even get into, like, prosecutors and sheriffs, I- and the stat of a sheriff should as me crazy, 60% of sheriffs run on a post. No contestal, 90% of sheriffs are white men. So, the demographics of these offices and how unreflective and on-democratic they are. Now, should we be elected judges? Separate questions. But the fact that we do and gives you

like, there's opportunity here to get people who are really not just pro-democracy, pro-justice, pro-law, but also pro-acquality and equity and bringing that sense of fairness into the work.

“But I think it's really exciting. I just want to point on the sheriffs like that demographic”

data is really stunning. They also, I think people who live in urban areas might not totally realize they have enormous power. And the fact that you said 60% are running on a post is just shocking. And I think the number is lower, but also way higher than it should be when it comes to judicial seats. It's like tons of judicial candidates face no opposition. And when we think about this moment, so to stay on the election topic for a minute, going into both a midterm and then

2028 presidential election cycle, there will be efforts to manipulate elections. I mean, we are sure

of that. And state courts and ultimately state supreme courts actually are a critical

bulwark against election manipulation and a critical guarantor of the right to vote, which actually, you know, the federal constitution doesn't explicitly guarantee, but state constitutions do. And lots of state courts have really developed jurisprudence about the importance of protecting participation rights and democracy at the state level. And we saw state courts really were an important bulwark. You know, when efforts to actually disrupt and overturn

the results of the 2020 election, so we have sort of state courts and kind of democracy and elections. But also, of course, in the post rows or post dobs era, state courts are critical guarantors of individual rights rights to bodily autonomy rights to abortion. And so I think that this is another area where there has been this asymmetry. And that is that folks on the left and progressives just like haven't focused on state courts. I think about like my own cohort. I don't know

a lot of people who have considered seriously or even thrown in for judicial seats. And we should be doing that. And so I will sort of say this in conversation to people all the time and it

will sort of go like, "Ah, it literally never occurred to me." And I just think that that's a kind

of perspective and orientation shift that's really important that folks in kind of legal circles who think about their careers as sometimes may be involving time and government, time and academia, time and private practice. But the time and government peace, it doesn't occur to them that trying to run for judicial office as something they should do. And I'm quite a bit older than you, so I'm probably each out of the run for something demographic. But for younger listeners,

I guess like how just to go to brass tax for a minute, like how do they reach out if they're

“sort of like thinking about this kind of judicial office thing? So you should go to run for what”

that neck. Because there you can look up what office you might be able to run for in the next year or two and you can join the run for something community where we have two different training tracks. One, if you're going to run like in the next year, one, if you're thinking about running a little further down the road. Both of these are options for you, whether you're running for a partisan office or not. And it's worth naming a lot of these judicial races, not all, but like the 30

semad states, they are partisan elections and the remainder ones, they are not. You can participate in these trainings, they are fully free, they're fully accessible to you no matter where you are on your schedule. We know you're probably working hard, maybe you have kids, maybe you're like, this is not going to be your full-time job, at least not yet, but it can be your full-time hobby until it's your full-time job. These offices are not as expensive as you think. You know, yes, they are there

have been the exceptions to the rule, like the Wisconsin State Supporting Court Race, which is

“$150 million because Elon Musk engaged deeply. Again, this is how you know what matters. They are”

willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for them. And most of them are in the 100,000 range. You can raise this money. It is absolutely doable. It is so meaningful. And, you know, for better or for us, the turnout in these elections is often pretty low. It's a bad thing for democracy. Good thing for campaign strategy because you could literally talk to every voter. It is doable and we will give you the skills and the training that you need to know how to do

that in the way that is most efficient and effective. So, if the obstacle or like, I don't

actually, you have the tools to sort of address the first. And the second, it's actually not as

expensive to run for a lot of these races as you might think. So, now, 100,000 dollars is not nothing, but if you reach out to your network and, you know, gets a lot of small dollar contributions, like that can go a long way. And then, if you have the time and kind of mobilize your friends to actually like what do or not can actually just try to talk to people, I had a great conversation last week with the comparative constitutional scholar Kim Lane Shepley, who this is a very different

“context, but I think I've been an applicable lesson was talking about how Peter Majer, who, of course,”

one and beat Victor Orban in the most recent Hungarian election, basically went to every county in Hungary and just talked to people over the course of two years. And the electoral results like are really stark in reflecting just how much support he had in the places where he just went, often driving a pickup truck and just like recited poetry and sang songs and talked to people in town squares. Like, I found it actually like deeply inspiring that in this moment,

or so much of campaign strategy and our lives obviously is online that actually that in person context still makes an enormous difference. And I gather that you guys are continuing to find the same thing. You know, political science research shows that the most effective way, the most scientifically proven way to get so much to show up to vote is creating a personal relationship between candidate and voter. The voter meets the candidate. If they know them, maybe they see them

at the grocery store, maybe they've come to their home, maybe they went to an event. And they feel like, you know, some sense of personal responsibility or accountability to them, then I should look to vote. Everything else that a campaign does is about replicating that intimacy, the TV ads, the social media, the direct mail, it's why making you feel like you know them. In these races where

“the number of voters you need to reach is usually pretty small, you can absolutely talk to every voter.”

You will know every person, have had a conversation with them when they go to the polls. It's so powerful and it's the fundamental building block of democracy in a way that when you talk about it, it could feel really like cheesy or earnest. But note, choose that it's listening and hearing and explaining what the Supreme Court does and how it affects their lives. And why they should want you to win, as opposed to why you want to win, which is because winning is great and losing

sucks, they want you to win because they're going to feel something in your life change. It's so powerful, so so powerful. Well, so you can participate in that in all kinds of ways, talking to people about the various races that are coming up that are, we're going to actually talk later in the show about something happening earlier than the midterm elections and that is a special election in Kansas. So stay tuned for that conversation. But there are lots of ways to do it

short of running for office, but one of the critical ways to run for office, including, again,

two digital office, again, this is, I know, not not this sort of, the main thing you guys do, but I think something really critical to our mind in particular are listeners of. Before we go Amanda, can I ask you to stick around and make a couple of recommendations? So we do this sort of favorite things at the end of our conversation. So anything you want to recommend to our listeners

“to read, to listen to, to watch, I will maybe go first and if you want to take a minute to think”

about it and then, it's like to hear your recommendations. So I am going to shout out road trips. I just got back from two weeks on the road with my kids in the Midwest, like dropping people off at different camps and having a weekend on a farm with some friends. And I took, we have an electric vehicle now which took the CV and the road trip was amazing and my kids and I had so much fun and we put together a mix that we, that is a collective road trip summer mix. So we had a great

summer mix. But I will just say that the infrastructure for EVs, like fully electric vehicles right now in pockets of the country, makes a road trip across country road trip kind of an interesting challenge. It was fine at the end of the day, but I had a couple of like, oh, I'm actually going to just run out of batteries like in the middle of Wisconsin. And anyway, I had to sort of like change my running a bunch. So I guess that's, that's both a road trips are so wonderful. And EV infrastructure,

like, is way behind where it needs to be and that of course is a policy issue as well. And one new artist that I encountered during that kind of collectively assembled Michigan and sort of, we call it the Michigan mix, but it actually we go at the places, but Michigan is where we started, Michigan 2026 road trip mix was the Mexican artist Umay, at UMBE, and it's both like really good and relaxing music to road trip to, but also to right to. So those are the two things,

three things, I guess, that I will shout out Amanda, over to you. I'm doing, I'm going to go

three books, the first, very serious. And it's actually setting up my desk because I just got

chance to talk to him about it. So Ben Whitclurves, the former chair of the Democratic Party, he was a book coming out on Tuesday. It's called, this is the plan, how to end America's meltdown and saved democracy. There's a full chapter on states, primordes, including how they were able to win the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race in the history of my matters. It's great. It makes a lot of princess bride references. There's a lot of dad jokes. It's very fun. Um, I just, I really recommend it.

You also shout out that one for something at town, which is good. Oh, that's great. I haven't had a chance to read yet, but I'm really excited too. So thank you for mentioning it for our listeners.

late to finish reading this the other nights, called Ungodly Rich by Kathryn McGee. Um, she wrote

“the American Royals, which was like, what if America was actually still had a royal family. And”

since the Washington's Ungodly Rich is one if the Greek gods still lived on earth and were billionaires and one of them wanted to fall in love with the mortal. And it's just like fun, rich, so be goodness. Like if you just need to turn your brain off and read something by the pool, 10 out of 10. The other one, and I cannot help myself, Julia Tershin, the cookbook writer, wrote a great romance novel, called Down to Earth. It's about like a farmer upstate who falls for a single mom. It's

makes you go one eat it tomato sandwich. It's just so sweet and so endearing. And she is such a lovely person and writer. Um, so, you know, one serious too for fun. Awesome. Down to earth sounds like something, but Leah and Melody really love romance novels. And if they don't know that one I suspect that they will grab it on your recommendation. So, um, well, those are great and, um, all the information you shared was so awesome. So, I'm Anne Alitman. Thank you so much for joining me today.

“Thanks for having me, Kate. We're going to take another quick break and stay tuned for my conversation”

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Okay, we are coming to you today with a conversation about an attempted court takeover.

And no, it's not code us that takeover happening over there is basically already a fake

accompli. This is a different effort. This one involving the Kansas Supreme Court and it's an effort that has everything to do with dogs. And to help give me and all of you a sense of just what is going on, I am really happy to be joined by two people working very hard on the ground in Kansas. First, Micah Kubik, who's a director of the state chapter of the ACLU and Emily Wales, who is the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains and it's advocacy arm, Planned Parenthood

Great Plains votes, which Great Plains include the Great State of Kansas. So welcome and thanks to both for being here. Thanks so much, Kay. So people might recall that the majority of opinion in Dobbs said it was returning the question of abortion to the people and the Democratic process. A little hard to square that claimed with the courts many other efforts to undermine democracy and the Democratic process, but Kansas was actually really important site of post-Dobbs

developments in the Democratic sphere and in particular, a key ballot initiative. So Emily,

“can you remind us what happened in Kansas, just like I think it was about a month and a half after”

Dobbs came down? So right after the Dobbs decision, we were preparing for a statewide vote on abortion access. In 2019, the state's Supreme Court had recognized the right to bodily autonomy, including abortion in the state constitution. So Kansas still had access to abortion care as of the Dobbs decision. But the legislature, I think not anticipating when Dobbs would come down, had put on a proposal that would have restricted and actually removed that protection

from the state constitution for August 2nd 2022. So by the time Dobbs came down on June 24th,

we were in the heat of the campaign, looking at the country's first statewide vote on abortion

access. And actually what when the people in the Great State of Kansas went to the polls to vote on whether to approve that initiative, which again would strip these constitutional abortion protections out of the state constitution. What did they decide they wanted? Unsurprisingly, it turned out that Kansas didn't want to give up their own rights, and they wanted to continue being able to lead healthy safe lives and make medical decisions without political

interference. And by 59% of the vote, they decided not to take out their own rights from the

It was much, much bigger than that in Kansas. Yeah, so this is almost a 20 point win, which is sort of unheard of, and it's like very closely divided, highly polarized moment. So that was a

really kind of stark first post-Obs development. But the forces in the state of Kansas

hostile to abortion access, including now attorney general Chris Kobach, started working if I

“understand correctly on a different strategy. So Mike, can you tell us about that strategy?”

So as Emily said, we won the ballot initiative in a good ol' fashion tail kicking. Normally, something like that, someone would say, oh, perhaps I should retreat to my corner, do a little bit of introspection, perhaps figure out where I went wrong. Chris Kobach and extremists in our state legislature did not take that tack. Instead, they said, what can we do to find ways to continue to undermine access to abortion, but all of the other things as well? And so what

they landed on was an amendment to change the way our state Supreme Court is selected. Right now,

we have a merit-based system that allows folks to be selected based on the fact that they know

something about the law. They have a judicial temperament, they treat everyone fairly, and they go through this very advanced vetting process, and then still get retained by the voters, the voters say, every so often, yes, we want to keep them, or we want to fire them and send them home. Chris Kobach and the extremists in the legislature don't like that system though, because it does not give them control over the system, and it does not give their billionaire buddies who want to

buy outcomes control over the system. And so, because our current system creates a court that is fair and impartial, they instead want to create a court that is made up of politicians who are bought and paid for by out of state billionaire political donors. And to be clear, the outcomes that

that group of folks want are outcomes that are paid for in advance and that are hostile to values

that canzons themselves say they want. That includes not just access to abortion, but Chris Kobach and his friends, they're still mad that more than 15 years ago, the Kansas State Supreme Court said that public schools in the state should be adequately and equitably funded. It's in our state constitution, the state Supreme Court upheld that. Their mad that the court has from time to time had reservations about certain restrictions on voting rights that the legislature has tried to put

forward. And they're worried that in the future, a fair and impartial court that is not bought and paid for in advance, might just perhaps rule in ways that uphold LGBTQ+ equality and dignity or that uphold the humanity of immigrants or do anything to uphold our democracy period. Rather than risk having a fair and impartial court that would uphold any of those things, they're trying to amend the state constitution now, have voters amend the constitution

to give control of the court over to direct partisan elections, bought and paid for by billionaires.

“I don't like it, people should vote no. Okay, so that's what's going before the voters and it's”

early August. I'm going to write that August 4th is the election date. Okay, so let's say that data a couple of times. That's coming up pretty quickly. And it is on its face about initiative that is just about judicial selection. But obviously, that is kind of a vehicle for a bunch of substantive outcomes that the proponents of this initiative would like to see. And restricting access to abortion, right, may be putting in place justices that are going to overturn this

prior ruling, that the ballot initiative didn't successfully overturn is one objective, but school funding, democracy, LGBTQ rights. These are all things that obviously are at stake in what this court looks like and how it interprets the rights that are in the Kansas Constitution and other provisions in the Constitution. So this would be a switch from this merit selection process to partisan elections. And some of our viewers might be saying, well,

judicial elections actually do work out. Okay, some of the time, like some of us just followed very closely and we're really invested in the Wisconsin statewide Supreme Court elections. Now, those are nominally non-partisan elections, but obviously very ideological. And that court really did change its composition in a way that has been very good for state level democracy in Wisconsin. So I guess what's your response to someone who says, I don't know that

doesn't sound so bad to elect judges statewide. I can understand why folks would think that. I think it's also important to note the context here in Kansas, which is that we used to have a system like this 70 years ago. We used to have direct partisan elections for state Supreme Court, and we changed it on purpose because of a huge massive corruption scandal that consumed the state. And voters said we don't want to open the court up to that kind of politics in the future.

“That's why we changed it in the first place. We shouldn't go back in time. But beyond that, I would just”

say that the reason we are having this discussion now is not because we're having a political

dialogue engage in by good faith actors trying to reconstruct the system of new. The context here

matters a great deal. And the context is that Attorney General Kobak and the extremist who brought us this amendment have said from the beginning that the real purpose of it is to be able to get rid of the protections for abortion to have a total ban on abortion and to get rid of school funding. They have been really quite candid to the world. They've said it out loud over and oh, this isn't something they say behind closed doors. This is something they say out in public.

That the reason they want this is because it is the tool that will allow them to ban abortion and cut public school funding and give control over to billionaire political donors. There might be different systems in different states. That's fine. The context here is that this is not about the optimal method of selecting Supreme Court justices. The stakes here are

really about the issues. And that is why I described this as the single most important thing that has

ever happened. Like people learned how to make fire a long time ago. This is the next most important thing because it touches on absolutely every issue that we face. It is not contained to this granular

“kind of boring issue about the best way of selecting state Supreme Court judges. Okay, so that's a”

great answer and also it just emphasizes the importance of context. So it may be that there are states in which digital elections work really well. Kansas has had history and this kind of decades long effort to get the system in place that people actually say works well. And this court has issued a number of progressive rulings. Not exclusively. Like I think there have been conservative rulings too. But this is a system that is working and the effort to fundamentally change it

is not a good faith pursuit of the optimal kind of method for constructing state level democracy. It's about specific outcome. So Emily, we've said this is not just about abortion access in Kansas, but it is among other things about abortion access in Kansas. So can you talk a little bit about you know both Kansas and how Kansas fits in the larger regional picture because I think it plays a pretty important role. We knew when we were talking to supporters in the spring of 2022,

we were telling folks, this Kansas vote's going to happen in this historic moment. There's a

chance that wrote will fall and we will be one of the first states to vote. So we knew that

political context was there. But also on the care provision side, we operate health centers in Oklahoma and Arkansas and Missouri. We knew that abortion bands were coming in those states. And we had already seen in Oklahoma when Texas passed a six week ban in 2021. We had Texans sleeping in our parking lot the next night trying to get care in Oklahoma. And so we then started doing everything we could for infrastructure in Kansas to build a system that could support out of state patients.

And all of the terrible predictions came true. And fortunately we planned for it. But it's an awful thing to see that we now have more than twice as many abortion patients coming to Kansas as we did before. Something like 7,500 or 8,000 abortions in 2021 is now nearly 20,000 abortions in the state of Kansas. We've opened two new health centers. We now have whole systems to support patients who show up with kids in the car who are crying because they have been driving overnight

trying to balance taking off work, finding childcare, having loved ones who say I would absolutely come with you and support you. But I don't know if what I'm doing is legal. If I get pulled over and you're in a state with an abortion band, can I tell them where I'm going? Because the care is legal in Kansas or can I not? That is what our health center teams have faced every single day.

“And the idea of losing what is now an essential point of access for abortion care for the Midwest”

and the South is just not something we can risk. Kansas have seen what a man-made crisis looks like. They know what it is to have patients from Arkansas who, you know, now appearing in the news with stories about being transferred by ambulance from Northwest Arkansas to Kansas to get care to save their lives because doctors in Arkansas said their hands were tied. And can you just sort of draw a line between so this ballot question gets voted on in early August and, you know, what's the sequence

of events by which, you know, we could end up with, you know, the elimination, either reduction or total elimination of abortion access in Kansas and then in the states in the region that you're just described. Yeah, well, I'm glad you mentioned it's August because to that point, we are seeing the exact same misleading tactics we saw in 22. The legislature put this on the ballot in a time when they expect low turnout of their base in the hopes that most Kansas don't show up,

don't know what's going on. They also have retained the rules for themselves, so I can make some predictions about what would happen if we were unsuccessful in August, which, to Mac is

“going, we're not going to be. It's the most important thing that's ever happened, but if we were”

unsuccessful, the legislature gets to write the rules. We don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but we know that the process will change and that there will be a concerted effort to put anti-abortion justices on the court. And the legislature is ready to go when it comes to abortion

dogs is playing out. This is not about sending the right back to the people. The legislature in Kansas got to hear how Kansas felt. Dogs was supposed to be about sending the decision back to the states. Well, here we are in a state where the majority of Kansas want to protect their rights and the legislature continues to pass additional restrictions forcing us to go to court to enable

patients to continue getting essential services that are constitutionally protected. So I don't know.

I don't know if it's going to be six months, a year, five years, but the court is going to change abortion rights are going to be restricted. And we may be in a situation in the near future where Kansas will be forced to leave their home state fleeing for care that was once protected here. Wow. So Mike, can you talk a little bit about Emily said one really important dynamic here

“is, and this is I think not exclusive to Kansas, legislatures trying to put these really”

important questions first to kind of cloak them in this anodine structural kind of language. This is about judicial selection methodology, but also to do it at a time when they are expecting low voter turnout. We saw the same thing play out in Ohio and we've seen it in other states as well.

So can you talk about what you and the coalition that you're working with are doing to try to get

the word out for this early August election and sort of what folks watching either in Kansas or outside can do if they want help? Yes, so they are absolutely is an attempt to make sure that the turnout is lower than it should be. Our legislature has been hard at work at trying to do that for the last several years. To one of Emily's points, the immediate response from our legislature in 22 and 23 after we won on the Constitutional Amendment was to try and shrink the size of the

electorate to pass new voter restriction laws because they said in a choice between us and the voters,

“we think we know best the voters shouldn't have a say let's try and shrink the electorate to”

something like this doesn't happen again. That is part and parcel of what we have been enduring the last couple of years. And so our coalition is a coalition called Kansas United for impartial court, KUIC. We have been working day in day out to make sure that Kansas know the facts, that Kansas knows the stakes, that Kansas knows their rights and that Kansas vote no on August fourth as a result. We have built a professional campaign that is using all of the tools that

exist in order to communicate directly to voters. Many of us were involved in the campaign to gather in 2022. We got the band back together. It plays good hits so we figured we should try again. And so we are working together as a team to make sure that Kansas knows what this is about. A lot of that is making sure that Kansas know that our courts are in fact fair and impartial today and that voters already get a say. And that the shift here is that it would allow judges to become

politicians bought and paid for by billionaires. We want Kansas to know if you are tired of billionaires being able to buy every ding-dang thing in America. Here is one thing that we can make sure stays fair and impartial and unblocked. And so we are running television ads. We are doing mail. We are have a field program talking to voters directly on their doors. We're doing all of the things. We're pulling out all the stops because this is the fight of a lifetime. And so we definitely need

help from our friends, from strangers, from anyone who cares about abortion access, who cares about school funding, who cares about accountability, who cares about separation of powers, who cares about democracy. We need your help. And that means if you know folks and Kansas, make sure they know about this, that they know how important the stakes are. And if you care about democracy about judicial independence, impartiality, about accountability for those in power,

especially extremist ideologues. I don't know who we could be talking about there. You can guess for yourselves. One way to make it clear that you care about that is to financially support our campaign through our website, k-u-i-c.org. We've got a lot of work to do. We're doing it, but we need all the help we can get. Well, that was rousing. Emily, final word before we wrap this up.

“You know, these are real patience, real people, real lives, who are impacted. And I think that's”

what we've said over and over when we talk to folks about what's happening in August, a lot of times voters are confused, of course, by the language, but also they're like, "I don't hear a lot about the court." And we have to tell people, that's a good thing. When your courts are functioning well, they're making key decisions, but they are not knocking on your doors, trying to raise money, trying to sell themselves to you. The court should be a step back from

the legislature and a check and a balance. And in Kansas, they have heard from the people, they know people want their rights to bodily autonomy, they know they want to make medical decisions without the government telling them what to do. Kansas is in a ratified space right now, in the middle of the country, to have decisions that you can make without politicians in your

doctor's office, and we want to keep it that way. And we can't. This is not the most important

about it all day, every day sounds really nice. That sounds like the kind of state of affairs

that one should hold tight, too, in general, but in particular in the circumstances that you are

“both describing. Okay, so August 4th, it is the vote no campaigns, most important thing since”

the discovery of fire. This takes a really, are really clear, Micah, Cubic, and Emily Whales,

thank you so much for taking the time to talk today. Really glad to shed some light on this

“important issue. Thanks again. Thanks for having me. Thanks so much, Kate.”

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