S7 Ep21: The Conservative Push to Weaken Our Democracy

Since the nation's founding, the values of religious liberty and pluralism have been central to the American identity.

“These values are now under accelerated attack.”

The government has no authority to pick and choose, which religious beliefs to promote and which to marginalize. Religious freedom for only some is religious freedom for none. The Trump-Fans Administration's Religious Liberty Commission is pursuing a culture of Christian nationalism that seeks to divide and isolate people across our nation. The fatally flawed way this commission was assembled makes clear that the predetermined outcome isn't just on American, it's against the law. The Trump-Fans Administration has failed to uphold our country's proud religious freedom tradition, and we will hold them accountable.

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And the time and the money that I can't be able to invest in there. For all of you in VaxTomb. Now, the test of Shopify.de. They work for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet for my next. Hi listeners, it's Leah. On Saturday morning, I woke up to news that at 3 a.m. Eastern time, the FIFA Peace Prize recipient, President Donald the Dove, himself, had announced that he launched yet another war.

This one with Iran at 1 o'clock in the morning. There's no pretense that these were limited strikes. Saturday morning, he was calling for regime change and saying there might be casualties, which, unfortunately, they're already have been. At the time, we're recording this Sunday morning. The federal government announced that three U.S. service members were killed in action and five wounded. Many Iranians have also been killed in the strikes. And we also know that the supreme leader of Iran was killed in the strikes.

The President announced this war and also seems to be managing it from his dinner club at Mara Logo, because of course. We wanted to include a loss planer, both for the people in the administration who don't seem to get it, but also for all of you, so that we can begin to call for a restoration of some sensible constitutional and international order.

“Chatting law amidst all this lawlessness might seem like rearranging lectures on the Titanic, so we are also going to talk about why it's important to do so.”

And to help me with all of this, because international law is way above my pay grade, is our expert professor Rebecca Beck Ingber of Cardoso Law School. Professor Ingber is a former counselor on international law and the Office of the Legal Advisor at the U.S. Department of State. Beck, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much for having me back on. I just introduced you as God of War now or encourage our listeners to play that as your walk on music, because it seems like there's a pattern here, Beck.

Yeah, I know. I sort of felt backwards into doing more national security as someone who was sort of a bleeding heart. And but I actually think maybe we need more of me in this field. Great. So more of my types, not more of me specifically, but more of a more bleeding heart. Why not? Why not move? So there's much to say about the appalling brazen illegality of what the administration is doing, and we are going to focus on that.

But I don't want that to obscure the insane recklessness and irresponsibility of launching a war to achieve regime change in the Middle East since we know that always goes so well.

That will also have staggering human costs. So Beck, we will focus on the law and laws there in part to prevent the unhinged a moral project of war monitoring. But this sounds insane to even ask and I'm going to do it anyways. Why shouldn't countries with strong military is just go around bombing countries that have leaders they don't like. Yeah, I'm really glad you asked this first.

And to be very clear, right? This is a monstrous regime.

“It's most importantly monstrous to its own people. And many have looked forward to a day when they would fall.”

But when you permits states to go around using force whenever they think it's a good idea without strict objective parameters. Like for example, the ones we have in the international, they've come under attack and are simply repelling that attack. What you get is the putons of the world saying, "Well, hey, my next store neighbor Ukraine is run by a quote unquote Nazi government. And take over," or you have, you know, Pakistan just this week bombing Afghanistan. When you break down the international system that has been created to resolve disputes,

you have states invading one another over resources, over territory, over any dispute.

And even in those circumstances where states have a clear objective, even a legal basis to use force, you still can't control what happens in a right. And so, you know, narrowly cabbing it is important for that reason. Sometimes using force is going to be necessary, sadly. But it is lighting a flame to a haystack. There's so much destruction. People on both sides will die. People will be displaced, perhaps permanently. Terrible mistakes will happen, civilians will be killed, children will be killed.

And when you take out a leader and destabilize a country, especially without a clear plan for what happens next, that is organic from the people themselves,

you can't put the genie back in the bottle, and we cannot know the conflagration that's going to erupt from these acts.

“And so, you know, I mean, just look at the destruction that the U.S. War on Iraq, and 2003, rot on the entire Middle East, right?”

So it's almost the same as a bad guy. He was a terrible guy, and hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the war and the ensuing chaos that followed, which continues to this day. So with that kind of setting the table, let's go to the law and maybe start with the international law angle since you gestured to it. So a refresher about the UN Charter, which we last talked about with you last month when the President launch military strikes against another foreign power. The UN Charter pledged, quote, to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war and quote.

And the Charter, which the United States signed, provides that signatory states must quote refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state end quote. How does that cash out here? It seems pretty straightforward. Yeah, this is actually a good segue from what we were just talking about, right? Because the free for all that I just described is the world that came before. So there's a reason states came together in the early part of the 20th century to try to outlaw war and this culminated in the UN Charter.

And so this rule from the UN Charter that states may not use force against the territorial integrity of other states that is a bedrock rule of the modern international system in my view. And that prohibition on using force is not absolute. It has two very narrow exceptions. So states may use force if there is a UN Security Council resolution authorizing them to do so, obviously not in question here. And if they have been the victim of an armed attack and are acting in self-defense to repel it. And that also includes the collective self-defense of another state that has suffered an armed attack and has requested help.

So there's been some chatter of anonymous officials, maybe we'll get more color by the time this plays. I'm talking about some imminent threat. And so I want to be clear about what imminent means and why it even comes up in this context. So I said states can use force in self-defense that they're the victim of an armed attack. They can use force that is necessary and proportionate to repel that armed attack.

“They can also use it to repel an imminent armed attack. So you don't have to wait until the bombs that have already fallen, right?”

But an armed attack is the focus of the equation. And that sometimes gets lost in this concept of imminent, which people throw around sort of casually. And necessary and proportionate are also key rules. So in 1991, for example, when the US and several states went to war with Iraq, again, or before the 2003 war, on behalf of Kuwait, so Iraq had invaded Kuwait. The US and many states go to war to push Iraq out of Kuwait. The UN Security Council authorized a limited use of force to push Iraq out of Kuwait.

And the coalition did that. And that satisfied both the UN Security Council Resolution and their authority as the collective to act in the sick collective self-defense. And so the US force needed to seize at that point. They couldn't say, "Oh, well, we had self-defense, so everything goes. We can do everything. Now we can bomb that dead or unseat sedan." And so coming back to this, there has been no armed attack here, right? There has been no armed attack that we are responding to with necessary and proportionate force.

There have been attacks in the past, of course, but we are not responding to those of case we're not trying to repel those attacks with these actions.

You know, that was just extremely odd and baseless. And they also argued that somehow superseded the UN charter, or maybe that the charter was binding, but not enforceable against the president.

So at least as of the time, we are recording this update. There doesn't even really seem to be a pretense of the administration gesturing to the UN charter or explaining how the strikes on Iran might be consistent with it.

“Is it better or worse that they're not even trying at this point to pretend it's consistent with the UN charter?”

Yeah, and in that, that the Venezuelan operation, the OLC memorandum that you mentioned, they kind of admitted in the memo itself that they didn't have such a justification.

So this is a question I've been mulling for ages, honestly, and I'm kind of on a few minds on this. So I certainly think it's better for government officials to have some felt need to comply with law.

Yeah, I think that itself is constraining, and we tend to think of the requirement that you provide legal justification and explanation as itself a disciplining mechanism. Certainly, if there's any shame involved, it would work that way. But it is also true that sometimes legal argument, legal ease, can sort of cloud things for the public and for Congress, frankly, who are the people who are supposed to check the president. So often, you know, when the administration says it has some secret legal memo that explains everything, just you wait, everyone sort of focuses on that rather than what is self evident before their eyes.

We know what the administration's view is, we know because they have, you know, we know from the dog that does not bark, we know what they do not have, that they do not have some smoking gun that would give them legal justification. And so sometimes I worry that the provision of some kind of legal mumbo jumbo might be clouding things and allow Congress to say, oh well, they have a theory that they can act without us. So in a world where the president doesn't appear to care at all about law, and perhaps more importantly, when he's surrounded by people who themselves don't seem to know the value of law or even surrounded by people who don't seem to know the value of responsible decision-making processes.

Then I'm not sure that just throwing words on a page is in fact working as a disciplining process, and maybe it's better to just have the mask totally off and let people see exactly what's going on. But that only works if there's a reaction. If the president says, I don't care about law and everyone just shrugs, that's kind of my worst case scenario.

“Yeah, and it seems like we are trending quickly in that direction, since we had the attack on Venezuela, he doesn't experience real consequences for the last bad thing, and then does a worse thing, right?”

And this is also just the lesson of the second Trump administration, like they got away with a lot, no consequences, and so they're back at it even worse.

So since you brought up Congress, let's shift to constitutional war powers, where again, I would remind listeners that the Constitution gives to Congress the power to declare war. Now it's long been understood that of course the president can respond to an immediate or perhaps imminent invasion. His presidents have also argued that power justifies the preemptive uses of force against imminent attack, and still back it light of what Jack Goldsmith has called the permissive promiscuity of past executive branch interpretations of their war powers.

This still feels like an escalation to me beyond those past practices and theories. Is that fair? No, I think it is an escalation beyond those past theories. I think in many respects, the government has sort of been picking from all the different examples of places where past administrations have perhaps stretched things or used interpretation to try to take things just a step further, and they've combined them all at one and throw them at the well to see what sticks.

“Yes, the Constitution gives Congress the power decisions to go to war and also a host of other war-related powers like raising and, you know, armies and funding, regulating, right?”

And the president is just a commander-in-chief, but it was also understood at the founding that the president could repell and attack on the country, and you could think about how hard it was to get Congress to sort of congregate back that, right? Wait, for everyone to rally the horses before you could defend the country. But in the meantime, Congress has given the president a standing army, presidents have used force in more expansive ways, and executive branch lawyers have created a theory for trying to explain this constitutionally.

And this is part of what I'm saying might sort of create a, you know, a cloud thinks for Congress a little bit because they hear that they've got this theory, and so the theory is that the president can use force when it's not war in the constitutional sense.

Our soldiers likely to be injured or killed, that's also going to remain heavily in favor of congressional involvement.

And so even if they haven't, in past context thought, well, maybe the first strike doesn't look like war, if it's going to escalate into war, if it's likely to escalate, then that is also a real factor. And we know all this because all see rights and subnemos, which at some times publishes, and they actually did publish one immediately after the Venezuela operation. And if it's Monday when you're listening to this, I have a piece out on this today on just security. But it's relevant to the Iran operation because it's the only example we have really right now on how this administration lawyers were powers, whether it lawyers were powers.

And I want to be clear, these memos are just the president's lawyers views on presidents powers, right? These are not ratified by courts, which almost never see use of force cases. These are not ratified by Congress. And I will see tends to think of itself, right? Because the courts never see these questions. I will see tends to think of itself and present itself as if it's like the Supreme Court of the Executive Branch. You know, obviously it's not an independent branch, right? These are lawyers working for the president, but there's also very less obvious way that it doesn't operate like the Supreme Court, which is that lawyers don't tend to enshrine the times they say no.

“Right? Courts will say no, you can't do this, and then we know that's a red line, right?”

But, oh, see doesn't tend to write the red lines in more powers into memos. They don't say this is legal, but this isn't legal. Instead, you're going to see we have X, Y and Z factor here, but we don't have A, B and C, and so now it's lawful. And then in our next case, we have A, B and C, but we don't have X, Y and C, right? And so it's lawful. And now we've got in the Venezuelan memo, we've got we've got A, B and C and X, Y and C, but in each of these, you know, we have examples in the past where A, B and C were lawful or when X, Y and C were lawful, we're going to throw it all together.

And so while it's true that I don't see a justification, even under OLC precedent, what Jack Goldsmith has called the promiscuously permissive OLC understanding of article two, I love that line.

I understand what he means when he says that he doesn't think it's effectively constraining and maybe wouldn't be in this context, even though I do think this is radically a radical departure for what's come before. And again, not a theory ratified by courts or Congress, and at odds, in fact, with how Congress itself has explained its view of when the president can use force. Since you brought up the courts, I did want to remind our listeners of this moment from the oral argument in the terrorist case that seemed to preview the administration's views about their war powers and what Congress can or has done.

You can hear it here, just as Gorisich will be asking a question.

“Can you give you a reason to accept, though, that's what I'm struggling and waiting for.”

What's the reason to accept the notion that Congress can hand off the power to declare war to the president? Well, we don't contact that again. Well, you do, you say it's unreviewable, there's no manageable standard, nothing to be done. And since we are a Supreme Court podcast, I did want to note that the court isn't blameless in all of this, even though they don't often get these cases, just to take one concrete example. There was what's called a legislative veto in the War Powers Act, the law that provides a framework for United States uses a force, including by the executive.

When Congress enacted that law, it said Congress could pass a resolution to withdraw troops and strikes if they disagreed with the president's determination that there's an emergency wanted calling for the use of force. The Supreme Court struck down the legislative veto in INS versus Chata, handing more power over to the president and influencing the allocation of authority between Congress and the executive branch.

And if you're interested in this aspect of the separation of powers, our friend Steve Flatic, one first has a great post on this at one first.

And then Josh Heyfitz, a professor at Georgetown, has an article forthcoming the Chata presidency that goes into this more.

“I do want to return to how or why this is an escalation and I think it is an escalation both with respect to the scope of the attacks and also the justifications plural for them.”

So on the scope, when Trump announced the attack on Iran, he described it as a, quote, major combat operations in Iran, you know, not a small operation that wouldn't amount to fall out war in the constitutional sense. He feels like an expansion from past president's preemptive uses of force. Is that fair or somewhere in the specter of possible. Yeah, I mean, there are so many examples of the president and this administration using whatever language feels right to this particular audience that is often entirely at odds with their legal theory to the extent they have one.

So to the extent you can imagine the extent there are lawyers in there who both believe in the president's agenda and law. Imagine they're just sort of pulling their hair out every time it speaks, but you know, just in the western hemisphere, you've got the president claiming Venezuela hasn't vaded us for the purposes of evoking the alien enemies.

And then you've got him saying it's not hostilities so that he can get out of war powers reporting and then when he actually does start a real war on the same basis invading Venezuela capturing its head of state. Then the administration claims, well, no, that's not a war, so then you could do it all without going to Congress under the, oh, I'll see now it's like a Schrodinger's war, it's both war and not war just depends on yeah. The context, right, depending on what you're trying to do and whatever will get you the most power.

So to your point here, yeah, you can't have major combat operations and say that's not a war, nothing to see here Congress. This is exactly the kind of scenario Congress would or at least should. To play a role in determining right and in fact, getting dragged into Vietnam without sufficient information or sufficient ability to weigh in and the resulting carnage was exactly what prompted Congress to come together.

Work across party lines to pass the war powers resolution to try to reset the balance in the first place.

“Yeah, so I also want to talk about the justifications and how I think the purported justifications they've been throwing out are another escalation in addition to the escalation in scope.”

So Trump eight noises about Iran being days away from building a nuclear bomb that could reach the United States and also that he was concerned about the quote freedom of the Iranian people. Now the former claim on Iran's nuclear capabilities just seems to be false and these are of course different justifications. It doesn't even seem like they bother to settle on a rationale. They were saying different things to different outlets on the very same day and on the specific justifications you know on the first in addition to it just being a lie.

They were claiming all of last year they had destroyed Iran's nuclear capabilities. You know Saturday morning they still had up on the White House website.

A post that said quote Iran's nuclear facilities have been obliterated and suggestions otherwise are fake news and quote you know another kind of mark against the unitary executive branch. It seems are unitary executive theory. And on the second theory you know it's unclear if you know successfully removing the supreme leader will bring it to power regime that wouldn't try to continue to develop nuclear weapons and murder protesters and repress the people. I mean, Reuters reported that a CIA analysis suggested more hired liners would ascend to power.

So these are also part of why this struck me as an escalation just like the transparent moving target of the justifications and how not tied or related to this combat operation they seem to be. Right, and none of those are of course the legal justification. But I'll just add that this question if humanitarian intervention right to the extent that's somehow part of the mix they're sort of nodding at that.

This is this long standing question of whether states can use force to stop significant human rights abuses genocide crimes against humanity.

You know, you know, it's a little bit of a lie and extremely fraught question. You'll notice that it wasn't one of the exceptions I mentioned to the provision I'm using force and states have been bending about what to do about this for a long time.

“And as a legal matter, the thing to do about it is to go to the U.N. Security Council and get a get a an unskilled, but of course for important reasons that were built into the system.”

It's extremely, you know, difficult to do that. Even under the most good faith of circumstances, even when states do come together, multilaterally, get a U.N. Security Council resolution, have legal grounds to act, things can go and have gone wildly wrong. Yeah, it's not, it's just not that easy for states to sweep in and make good government happen, even with the best of intentions. And as a policy matter, the most significant argument against crafting and exception for humanitarian intervention is that it can be used pretextually.

So, for example, you know, Putin falsely accused Ukraine of genocide as part of its justification for its attempts at territorial expansion. So there's no question, as I said, that this regime in Iran has been a monstrous one, but I also don't really see a pro human rights agenda as a cornerstone of this administration. And I don't, I just don't believe that ensuring human rights is part of the plans that they have drawn up to the extent they have drawn up any plans, or that it's going to be a component of any plans they have going forward.

“Yeah, so on this justification, moving justification that they are just throwing out, I mean, honestly it seems to me they are like a half new cycle away from just saying, we did it because the Dow, the Dow is at or below 50,000.”

I mean, this is just how ludicrous it all is, because the president also truth out that quote, Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with the United States. So maybe a third justification is election denialism, which just puts layers upon layers of illegality on it, in addition to layers and layers of BS, because I can't even keep track of who supposedly interfered with our elections, Iran, China, Venezuela, the radical left.

What's the point of discussing whether these strikes comply with international law, the Constitution or federal statutes, when it just seems like the administration, and, you know, at least some other countries just don't seem to care.

“Yeah, I mean, this is really important, Jack Gulton have had this piece over the weekend saying, law doesn't matter, right?”

And now to the extent what he was saying was the debate over whether OLC could justify this under its ever expanding legal theories, the stale, and, particularly useful, I don't disagree there.

But to the extent he means that legal debates over war powers are empty, you know, what's his own solution, his solution in his, in that piece is for Congress to step up and do its job and constrain the president. Well, why is it Congress's job? Why do we even say that it's Congress's job, right? Why can Congress constrain the president? It's Congress's job because of the law, and because the Constitution says so. And in the public law space, whether we're talking about international law or the Constitution, there's no overarching decided or there's no cop that shows up at the door and holds off the United States to jail or the president, right?

Look at law is enforced through the reactions of other states on the world stage, and, domestically, it's, it's enforced through the actions of other actors like Congress and the public, which is exactly what he's, he's proposing to happen. So the question, I think, for all of us should be, you know, as a matter of international logic, we want to live in a world where there are neutral rules that govern where states can rely on the promises that they make one another, where states don't accept the use of force as a tool for policy.

“Do we want to revert to that world where states could just use force where they please resolve disputes or grab resources or territory?”

Do we feel safer in that world? Because, you know, like I said, it wasn't that long ago that states came together, you know, the, to ban the use of force as a tool of policy. It's just 80 years old, give or take, these rules require careful, tending, and vigilance, less it all fall down, and on the domestic side without law, without insisting on a rule for Congress and the courts, we've got the entire national security state, the intelligence community, DHS, the FBI, the standing military, unimaginable weaponry, wildly increasing surveillance power.

The FBI got only knows all of this funded by trillion dollar annual budgets from Congress, all of it in the hands of one man, one man, does that make any of us feel safe?

And so I'm more afraid right now of the lack of reactions by Congress, by other states, it's not the violations of the law themselves that are going to ultimately bring the system down.

It's going to have to account for violations and be able to survive those violations. What's going to bring the system down is a failure to respond. And for violations to become expected and commonplace, and so that, I'll just, I'll just send you here, but that is on all of us. There should be no more who cares, you know, he's going to violate the law anyway, so what, right?

“That kind of nihilism is just self-fulfilling. If you want to have a system that is ruled by law and not by one man's wins, then you have to care when it is violated and you have to fight for it every single day.”

So, since you brought up automated weapons, I do just want to kind of take stock about what has happened and what we have seen, because it kind of seems to me like the neocons kind of wanted another war, because Venezuela wasn't enough for them.

They like seeing the strikes on the TV, thought Venezuela war was cool, so they did another.

And this isn't exactly law, but I can't help but pause over just the grotesque specter of everything we have seen and will be seeing. We have a Fox and friends former host and guest running a war from a private club for millionaires, a war that has already killed you as service members, many Iranians and provoked Iranian retaliation in the region that has killed even more people. This is happening on the heels of a fight between the Secretary of Defense/Secretary of War crimes and anthropic and AI company when anthropic wouldn't give the federal government access to their automated war bots to use for strikes.

And Uncle Drunky was so upset he declared anthropic a threat and interrupted their supply chain and then open AI jumped into the fray. And the Wall Street Journal reported that the federal government was indeed using cloth in intelligence assessments, and this is all after we were assured that the Manisfier's opposition to Kamala Harris wasn't about misogyny or misogyny war, but just about how men didn't want to go off in fight reckless wars. And the Manisfier was obsessed with this idea that Kamala Harris would send us into wars and Trump would it, that was part of many people's cover stories.

I mean J.D. Vance had an op-ed in 2023 that said Trump's best foreign policy not starting any wars. And it was transparent bullshit and utter misogyny that got us here, like two in attack that includes an air strike on a girl school that reportedly killed 85 students. Like, that misogyny helped bring to power present who literally launched a military strike against a girl school, and that is one of the images that at least to me will be most associated with these attacks. And the violence and gravity related to and resulting from the misogyny was just very hard for me to miss in the first 24 or so hours of this entire thing.

Yeah, well, he's watching all of it in like a baseball cap for Marlato.

It is grotesque. I mean, you know, I'm just sitting here kind of devastated and fearful. I'm worried about the people of Iran. I'm hoping that they can take control of their country and live without fear of either totalitarian rule or bombs from above. I'm worried about the broader region. I'm worried about the state of the world going forward, and I'm thinking a lot about what we can do. You know, the rules-based order that we've been living under for, you know, just about a century was less than a century was far from perfect, far from perfect.

“But I do want to live in a world that is governed by the rule of law and not by the whims of tyrants or for that matter by AI, right?”

And so, you know, we have to figure out together how to learn from and improve upon what we have done, right? I think it is nihilism to say everything that came before that this is no different. Because states have violated the law before this is no different than that because politicians have sometimes, you know, lied or politicians have sometimes stepped over the rules that this is no different and it's all we can ever expect, right? I think we have to figure out how we have to figure out what we can take from what we had, what was good, what we need to improve upon and just, you know, figure out how to move forward together.

Well, thank you as always back for joining, especially on short notice, we greatly appreciate it as I know our listeners do as well.

Because the parallels to 1980, four have to be heavy handed, the president truths out, quote, "the heavy and pinpoint bombing will continue uninterrupted throughout the week or as long as necessary to achieve our objective of peace." Yep, bombings will continue until there is peace. And now, for our regularly recorded episode. The ex scrutiny is brought to you by Mosh, we're about to head into bad decisions season, which means I really need to be more intentional about the way I live, eat and take care of my body.

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But since I started incorporating pre-alcohol, my glass of wine doesn't disrupt my morning flow.

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Hello and welcome back to strict scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court. And that's lowercase based on a complete lack of respect as the president indicated in a true social post complaining about the Supreme Court. Anyways, this is strict scrutiny, your podcast about the lowercase Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. I'm your host for today's episode, Lea Littman.

For the first part of this episode, I'll be going through legal news with the wonderful Chris Geithner who runs the indispensable outlet law dork that we often reference.

We'll cover different developments in the Insale Frat Boy administration, including allegations of sexual misconduct in the Epstein Piles. Also, be talking to Chris about some of the journalism he's been doing that has brought to light, different aspects of the administration's misdeeds. This episode is kind of going to be a love pod to independent journalism and an FU to the right wing. The prologarchies take over of the media, but I digress. Chris and I are also going to talk bad decision season, then going on at the Supreme Court last week, including oral arguments and opinions.

Then, I'll be joined by Mark Elias, who will talk with me about how all three articles of government have trained their sites on democracy and upcoming elections. But first up, legal news. And as promised, I'm joined today by guest host Chris Geithner, who runs the incredible law dork sub-stack. Welcome back to strict scrutiny, Chris. Hello, Leah.

We were kind of talking before this got started about this wonderful world we are living in. So, thank you for joining me to help me process this last week of that wild wild world. Of course.

Yeah, there is never a dull moment, and I was saying last night Thursday night that it was one of those days that it wasn't even the best laid plans.

I got held a ride. It was literally any laid plans that got taken off the dock. Indeed. I could stand to live in boring or times, but such as it is, we have a lot to cover.

“So, the first chunk of legal news we're going to talk about is basically how I think we are all being governed by some weirdos of the manifest fear.”

And one example is the latest Epstein files, a scandalow. Several outlets reported and then representative Robert Garcia, ranking Democrat on house oversight committee confirmed that the Department of Justice seems to have excised and declined to disclose material in the Epstein files that included an interview with a witness who alleged that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her when she was a minor. Reporting on those admitted documents, initially came from independent journalist Roger Solenberger. And independent media, we heart you. My pan to independent media comes on the heels of news that Paramount is apparently the winning better for Warner Bros.

The company that owns CNN, Paramount is also the entity that took over CBS and facilitated the barrie classification of that one-screen outlet. Paramount is led by Larry Ellison and Larry Ellison's large adult son, some Uber Trumpers, who also now control TikTok. Basically, they're building a right wing media empire that runs the risk of stifling great journalism.

“I'll get back to the Epstein example in a bit. But Chris, what's the role of independent media in this era of manifest fear media?”

And yes, I include Barry Wyson that the woman literally made a prime time show into a whiskey hour and has made an entire career out of telling powerful men what they want to hear.

And ensuring them that everyone else, not them is the problem. Yeah, no, it is alarming and continues to snowball in terms of where the problems are and who they're affecting. And I think that independent media there have been a lot of discussions this week. There will certainly be as this paramountification of the media landscape continues. And I think that the examples that we have seen from independent media is like Roger, who you mentioned.

My work, Marisa Cabas, there are a good number at this point of journalists who are working independent of a large newsroom who can bring out a lot of important work. Do think in there was some discussion that I had on Thursday night online that there are limits to that. And I think that we don't want to lose the fact that like it would be very bad if we don't have big newsrooms that can do big in depth investigations that have deep pockets to protect their reporters both abroad.

I mean, I remember like you know me from back in the Golden Days of Busy.

“I mean, we would literally, the investigations team would would be able to spend time and money on allowing.”

The journalists like Chris Hambi who was great is great to like go off and spend six months working on one story. And obviously I couldn't do that if I go more than two days without publishing.

I feel like my head's going to explode because I'm not giving my my readers the latest news.

And so like independent journalism can do a lot and like, I mean, I was at the Supreme Court this week. I was in front of Judge Lamberth, not in front of sitting in the gallery. Thankfully, I wasn't in front of Judge Lamberth, but I like the day after the Supreme Court was done with its arguments. And in front of Judge Lamberth watching him dress down a Justice Department lawyer and like there was no other journalist there.

I was the only journalist in the courtroom before Judge Lamberth on Thursday.

And like that's because I know that my readers care about and are expecting me to care about what's going on with trans prisoners who might be a doubly unimportant character in some media outlets. Yeah, but back to this story that independent journalists Roger Solenberger broke, you know, the decision of materials implicating the president from the Epstein files released to the public. You know, on its own, that would be bad, but there are other clues about this specific interview and witness that make this even worse.

So the FBI reportedly interviewed this person multiple times. So this wasn't something or someone just immediately dismissed as not credible and written off. I mean, accuser included a similar accusation in a lawsuit filed in 2019 against Epstein.

“So Chris, you know, we have been treated to slash subjected to Epstein and Epstein files now for weeks and months as DOJ has blown the deadline. Why is this latest revelation a bay deal?”

I mean, I think it's a big deal one because it is Trump, right? This is this is actual direct, Trump-related information. It's not a, oh, these are his friends, which, again, is its own damnation. But like, this is an actual Trump accusation, which is similar and is particularly like a, a sexual assault allegation and not even sort of the allegations that have led to significant changes in the careers of people like Kathy Romler. And we're Larry summer. It's hard, right? And like the allegations there were, I mean, with Kathy was more about like advising him and with Brad Carp was essentially about being too close to them.

“And I think that what we're learning is that there is a lot of there there. And as it becomes more difficult for the people who have been saying there's nothing there.”

Correct. To argue that we're actually starting to see consequences because it is it is very clear that this was not something that Epstein was doing off by himself. Right. It was a certain parcel of what those around him knew was going on if they were not actually involved in. And as more evidence comes out, we're seeing. That says no consequences period, but yes, consequences good thing. So the next bit of news is a step removed, but in my mind, still related to the government by the manosphere of the manosphere and for the manosphere vibe of this administration.

And that's the video seen around the world of FBI director Cache Patel for words that should never be strong together living out his fraught bro sports ball fantasy of partying with athletes celebrating the US men's hockey teams called metal on the locker room with the team and during the celebration the protector of women sports himself Donald Trump got on the phone with the men's hockey team via Cache Patel and invited the team to the state of the union address and joked that he'd have to invite the women's team as well.

Or he'd be impeached as you can hear here. Women's team decline the invitation and instead hung out with Stanley Tucci would recommend Chris, what did you say?

But what do you make of this like Cache Patel Donald Trump phone call episode?

“I mean, it works poorly on so many levels that it's hard to know where to dig into.”

I mean, this is the continuation just of the corruption of the administration, the self-dealing, the this is we're governing to get what we want. And then on top of that you do have this like you have this like we're going to kill woke element of this.

And by woke they mean women and other people too.

But yeah, the responses of the women's team have been great the responses from women outside of the team from Abby Wombock from Megan Rappano have been just fantastic. And then on like a final level it is this like the desperation of the administration like yes some of these things and this like fits in with my like broader like we don't realize how good we are doing element of this moment. Like they are desperate like they know they're losing they know what they're doing is on popular and like they literally believed that like the in for them.

“Was coming apart of the men's hockey team winning and like unfortunately for the the men's hockey team they kind of went along with it and I think they they they ruined so much good will as everybody's been.”

And then not even jokingly saying like coming off of heated rivalry like they was this like slowly for hockey that it was the people.

I've been going to hockey more regularly I read all of heated rivalry I watched the entire series and then they're just Friday nights. Like I I wasn't able to go to the capitals.

“I was even aware I Chris Gardner was aware of it and would have been there if I didn't already have I mean it immediately tickets to theater, but that aside.”

I think the universe of hockey in America and Canada and like the the US men's team sort of played along with like even if they weren't a part of and clearly some of more but like even if they weren't a part of they played along with it to be a celebrating this moment and I get it like. Yeah, you you won the gold medal and won the president of the United States to congratulate you like I I get why like instinctually you think like that's fine, but like you know that don't do not exaggeration. Yeah, you know that he's going to use you and he did and tried to and successfully somewhat use them at the state of the union even.

I mean sad but also caveat after at this point if you if you're going along with Trump's shenanigans completely and because there are many fronts to the war on women I wanted to draw attention to a moment from the Senate confirmation hearing. Last week for Trump's nominee for search in general wellness influencer slash maha aficionato Casey means not a licensed doctor never completed a residency, but you'll hear Senator Patty Murray speak first in this clip. Well, the birth control pills I'm going to quote a disrespect of life and you said Americans quote use birth control pills like candy you also claim contrary to establish science that hormonal birth control has quote horrifying health risks for women there are decades decades of evidence showing that every one of these birth control methods is safe and effective so I wanted to ask you help me understand.

Should women trust the FDA which approved all 18 methods of birth control after a very rigorous look at the evidence or should they trust your statement that there are horrifying health risks to birth control which contradicts that evidence. Thank you, Senator Murray for your question. I'm curious if you're aware of what the side effects of hormonal contraception are. I'm curious if you are with the FDA that went through all of these I'm speaking about particular women that can be heard if there is not informed consent about their medical history their lifestyle exposures and their family history.

I'm just saying that is one thing but saying on different shows that birth control pills are a disruptive life is very different.

“I believe I am passionate about women's health and I think it is just saying that people do women's health like candy is very different than what you just said.”

We prescribe a huge amount of hormonal contraceptive and I do not believe most of those conversations have informed consent because of the pressures that doctors are under because of our broken health care system. I want what's best for women as do you. I mean what is there even to say?

“I mean honestly the the best thing that I can say is to say nothing like.”

Like literally meant need to be saying less this week. I mean but obviously it doesn't matter even if it's women right. And it's just it is it is part and parcel of what. Okay junior is doing to the the public health system in America to mean like to research in America to and with that global research. I mean like in addition to sort of the like I mean I obviously still get all of my Ohio news alerts and like there's like.

“It wasn't even the it was truly one of those moments even for me and with how closely I'm paying attention to things that like I saw second measles in like a newsletter this morning and I thought it was case.”

It was second measles outbreak in Ohio this year and I'm like oh yeah that's where right now we're not even like counting by the case for news alerts.

And now we're going to we have a like birth control skeptic who is most likely going to be the surgeon general it's I mean it's it's horrifying it's another example of like the Senate just like. And we're getting it's responsibility to the American people to the structure of government to James Madison's basic beliefs about what this this constitution he was setting up would do but here we are. And where we are we have a few more pieces of legal news before we step back and talk about how we ensure legal news is news and before we get to bad decisions spring training season.

And that is the administration's mass deployment of federal immigration officers people on the ground in Minnesota and independent media and journalists and local media still continue to report a lot of contacts with ice and despite the alleged tone shift. The administration still seems intent on causing as much harm as possible to and terrorizing the people of Minnesota as much as they can the latest in this attack comes from the lips of. So we're announcing today that we have decided to temporary temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligation seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money.

Because J.D. went to Yale can you lost plain to him why this withholding almost a quarter of a billion of dollars in Medicaid funding from the state is wildly illegal.

I mean it's so illegal like they go through no process they go through like this is one of the the most clear well regulated systems for funding outside of social security that we have. And they just like declare at a news conference with with Dr. Oz standing behind him that this is going to end like we don't even get to like I'm not even getting to the the empowerment of it all and outside of that it's so unpopular. You are making lives more difficult overnight for not just for the poor people that you don't care about right but for the other people who go to those hospitals.

You are going to be impacted to the nurses and doctors and even hospital administrators who you love right if you love our immigration enforcement wait until you see our defunding of hospitals and medical care right it's like it's just it it's another example of this like.

Dirty thinking at this point like early on I was thinking that they were putting him out for the unpopular things.

At this point I actually think that he's just so stupid that these are things he's in charge of and he keeps just choosing bad directions to go with them because like it it's just so often like how could you decide that this would be the way to go forward with this attack on Minnesota.

“It's not gonna work it's going to like anything as soon as litigation is there if they actually even go through with it like that's the other thing like how much of this is like a press conference that yes it turns out.”

I don't want to do it right they really want to feel like no boys in front of all yeah like to the extent they actually try to implement it like there's going to be litigation it's going to be stayed they're going to be held up in court yeah okay so with drawing Medicaid funds wildly illegal statute says certain processes have to be followed they didn't follow those right statute doesn't authorize the president. Just to rescind funds or freeze them whatever he wants a separate federal law prohibits him from doing so the empowerment control act and then there's a whole tenth amendment you're not allowed to coerce states right by threatening all their federal funds to do something unrelated anyways.

But I think they are partially emboldened at least to threaten this because the Supreme Court blocked lower court decisions that had halted their efforts to freeze other funds you know through the Department of Education the National Institutes of Health and elsewhere.

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That stamps.com code strict. That stamps.com code strict. There are some other pieces of news I wanted to acknowledge. There are also in my view cases where the courts hands aren't entirely clean.

And the first is the absolutely horrific death of Neural Amiensha Alam, a nearly blind refugee who fled ethnic persecution in Myanmar.

And customs and border patrol dropped the man who didn't speak English, couldn't operate a phone, couldn't communicate.

“And was blind in one eye could see only three feet in front of him out of the other at a closed coffee shop, five miles from his home on a cold winter night.”

And he was found dead several days later. The mayor of Buffalo, where this man, a father, lived, blamed federal immigration officers for his death. But I also don't want people to forget who let the administration continue to deploy. It's crazy excessive and aggressive, roving patrols of immigration officers stopping people based on their apparent race and ethnicity, even if they are refugees who aren't to be removed.

And that of course is the Supreme Court.

And I just wonder if Brett Kavanaugh would call this a brief encounter where a man was promptly released. Yeah, it's horrific and I do think like I've been doing a lot of work on the refugee specific aspect of this and some of the really aggressive ways that they're looking at trying to essentially buy into like it's literally like let's back into Donald Trump doesn't trust Biden says he doesn't trust Biden's vetting of refugees. And so let's back into a policy to like essentially starting the literal policy is starting January 20th, 2021.

Any refugees have to be revetted and like trying to say that they can detain those refugees while they're being revetted that's being litigated in Minnesota because that's where they first tried to implement that. But this is sort of a combination of the Kavanaugh stop of it all with this like not just disregard but like disrespect for the purpose of refugee. Yes, and it's just it's it's lawless and offensive. The second Supreme Court related piece of news is that as we are waiting for the court to issue a decision about the validity of laws banning transgender athletes from participating in sports, Kansas adopted one of the most evil anti trans laws in the country.

This one reports to invalidate driver's licenses and birth certificates of transgender Kansas who changed the gender markers on those documents, although a letter went out suggesting maybe it's not invalidating those documents immediately. But it literally prohibits driving while trans law also bars trans people from using restaurants that align with their gender identity, but I personally can't wait for the court to tell us that there's no history of discrimination against trans people and therefore no reason for courts to look closely at those laws.

Shifting to the topic of legal news generally, I mean the pieces of legal news we just touched on Chris really relate to some issues you've been on the forefront of kind of diving deeper in and so I wanted to talk with you about journalism in this era and the stories that do where don't come to light and how. So at law dork you've been breaking some news that it really hasn't been covered or has been overlooked elsewhere and one thing you alluded to is the case involving medical care for transgender inmates.

Can you share like what law dork was able to report and find it uncover there and where that case stands the January 20th executive order that Trump issued on day one that was known generally as the the like definition of sex executive order.

“Also contained provisions directing the bureau of prisons to essentially act on that and so really starting I believe the first lawsuits were actually filed in January.”

challenging and attempting to stop bureau of prisons efforts to transfer trans inmates to discontinue medical care for trans inmates to discontinue being able to get items from the commissary that would be. in fitting with their gender and they had those cases going forward and they all got assigned to and consolidated before Judge Royce Lamberth who is a regular pointy has been on the bench for nearly 40 years.

And there is one person who has regularly been a witness in submitting declarations for that Grace Pinson and had had been presenting evidence that she was being retaliated against and on February 19th that hearing. And there is a lawyer there basically had no information responding to that retaliation Lamberth was a little upset was like when when the DOJ lawyer said there's no evidence of it he said there actually is there's a declaration it's uncontroverted by you you've not even looked into it and so he issued a protective order saying no more retaliation against witnesses in this litigation.

He started the next day Grace Pinson in a prison in North Carolina started getting further retaliation she had a visual strip search that was very invasive in front of male guards she had her legal papers taken and thrown into another cell that had feces on it. She reported in her declaration that some of her legal papers she had to throw away at that point she was supposed to be moved and that was held off and then the lieutenant at the facility literally told her I don't give a fuck what the judge says I do what I want.

And so the voice members was not into that the lawyers immediately went to court filed a motion for a show cause order for civil contempt to in violation of that February 19th order Lamberth came back within like 12 hours set of hearing on Thursday morning for 230 p.m. Thursday in person hearing. And I went to that hearing and DOJ still didn't have facts Lamberth was not happy he basically said you still don't have facts you can say what you want but I'm looking for facts that argument time went so badly for DOJ that when the ACLU of DC lawyer got back up.

He made an oral motion on the spot for a TRO to protect the inmates to protect concern including I mean he did go aggressively far and said to to immediately move her to a halfway house which is where she's supposed to be moved but then in the alternative for them to make a detailed plan for how they are going to be protecting her against retaliation. And he then went back to chambers he granted the show cause order he asked for the name of the warden which DOJ initially didn't know which offended him further like he was like this particular prison has been at issue it's the issue of the show cause motion and you still don't know the name of the the warden and he so he came back with an order.

“Order for to show cause ordering DOJ naming all of the people including naming the warden that they need to respond by Tuesday and then partially granting the TRO saying they need to have a detailed plan to protect.”

Pinson in her former roommate and then is going to have the show cause hearing next Wednesday and we will await that so that was a great breakdown of where things stand on that case which again is really flown under the radar and you know the other case that had wanted to highlight you know your involvement in is the litigation concerning the administration's new policy about detaining refugees that we had talked about previously on.

And that you alluded to earlier and in that case you know you at Waddark were actually able to break and share you know the new policy you know before other outlets were and you actually.

“Kind of became involved in the litigation by like filing requests for the information that I'm not mistaken.”

Tried we found a motion to intervene in the case for the purpose a habeas cases immigration habeas immigration cases by default under federal rules are not on the public filings aren't on the public docket and you have to like literally get them from the courthouse and only judges orders are on the public docket we thought a motion to get.

And this is the case to being open because the rule the federal rule that says that they're by default not public filings does say unless the judge orders otherwise.

“So we tried to do that but in the course of doing that I became involved in the case and so.”

It lawyers are aware of my interest in the case and I'm able to get the documents more quickly and yeah no I reported that overnight and it is a very aggressive it's a a reading that has not been the reading since the refugee act of 1980 became law that. Basically when you become a refugee eventually you adjust your status to lawful permanent resident and essentially what the the new policy is is that if you've been here for more than a year and don't adjust immediately on day 366.

Yeah, they can design you yeah and you you can't immediately have your status adjusted like the next day so it's basically requiring.

Detention you know for that that period which is part of what makes it so so horrific like you get a year and then you're indefinitely detained.

“They claim that it they're not allowed to indefinitely detained people and yet they also make clear that it's.”

It can be more than 48 hours and so it's a bad argument.

It's under consideration at the district court and I'll be I'll be following it as it moves forward I do think like one of the since this is independent media day one of the like.

Really great things that independent media can do and does do successfully is draw attention to cases that other people aren't paying attention to. Yeah, and like honestly like literally sometimes once it becomes a thing that other people are paying attention to I can move on and I can start to pay attention to other cases but like yeah and so this was a case like all of a sudden I was writing about it.

“Well, I think that was one of the reasons why I didn't have to do this is because I was in post was stealing my work CBS news was stealing my work they might have something in common I don't know what it is.”

But then all of a sudden at the hearing I noticed that there were like nine other right. It is to other media to start covering it. Strict scrutiny is brought to you by Jones Road Beauty. I am not a makeup person. I don't know of that because I don't like the feel of a bunch of stuff on my face or if it's just because I'm kind of lazy with making myself reasonable or because I just kind of object to the heavy get ready routines that are forced on women.

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On Shopify.de/record. So, now let's shift to talking about bad decisions spring training season. So, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week. Not in any big ticket cases, but still going to bring you up to speed on what they did here. And then we'll talk about their decisions. So, last Monday at the court was Cuba Day. And if you, like Melissa, are in your John Slattery season, you could watch dirty dancing Havana Knights to get with the program,

which lacks the abortion backstory. The original, but does feature a young Diego Luna in addition to John Slattery. Anyways, on Cuba Day, the court heard two cases Havana Docs versus Royal Caribbean Cruises about the meaning of the Libertad Act,

and specifically, which United States Nationals are authorized to sue for claims that their property was confiscated by the Cuban regime.

“Can anyone sue a defendant who trafficked in property or does a plaintiff have to show that they'd still hold the property, but for the expropriation?”

In which case, that might bar claims, like the one here, where the plaintiff had a leasehold to a property that has since expired. That same day, the court also heard Exxon Mobile, versus Corp. Rossione Symex, about whether the Helms Burton Act abrogates foreign sovereignty of Cuban instrumentalities, or whether the plaintiff's seeking to sue instead have to satisfy an exception under the foreign sovereign immunities Act. The president for his part participated in Cuba week by, at the end of the week, floating the possibility of...

"Maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba." "We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba." Back to this Supreme Court case, which generated this week's clip without context, something I just started during the terrorist episode, which you can hear here. "I just found right that one." Now, last week, the court also heard Enbridge versus Nessel, which is about the 30-day deadline to remove a case from state court to federal court. If a case is filed in state court, it could have been filed in federal court in many instances.

The defendant has the opportunity to take that case from state to federal court, but they're supposed to do so in 30 days. This case is about whether case can still be removed after the 30 days are up. There's one moment where it seemed like the justice says, "We're a bit bored with this case." "We're asking you to do is declare that the presumption applies that it hasn't been rebutted by the clearest command and to reverse." "I mean, it could be an opinion that's 160 pages less than the terrorist opinion last week."

"Well, if well, that's certainly a goal too." "And for, I felt very left out in the tariffs." "Just so that my art didn't write opinions." "If the people have a chance."

“Chris, how scared should America be that Sam Alito had his feelings hurt?”

"Yeah, I don't think we need to worry about it. It was weird to have such a technical case. It was the only case that day. And I think they were sort of like, they knew they weren't going to go along with this argument. It's not like this was going to be a two and a half hour argument.

Even Sam Alito can make a joke. That was what I thought I was like, "Wow. This is the day that even Sam Alito's making a joke." I don't know if this is like the groundhog being afraid of a shadow or what exactly this is a sign of, but yes, you're right, a rare example.

So staying on theme week, this last week was also apparently Michigan week. The court heard pung versus Isabelle County, Michigan, but how to calculate the value of something. Here a piece of property taken by the government to satisfy an alleged tax debt. So the former homeowner alleges the house taken to offset the debt was sold for way below market value and therefore constitutes a taking of property.

The solicitor general's office, the federal government, are youing on behalf of neither party,

“said court should consider the fairness of the sale process,”

not like the difference in prices. And Michigan is arguing the sale value as the value is the value. I read the justices as pretty skeptical of the homeowner's position, and part because foreclosure sales often go for less than fair market value. On the other hand, the justices are at least some of them.

They feel like something was unfair or wrong here, as you can hear here. I want to echo what Justice Gorsuch said. I mean, it seems like there was some real unfairness to your client. I mean, frankly, reading the briefs, it sounds to me like this tax assessor was like inspectors of air, but it was even worse because John Bell John hadn't stolen the bread.

I mean, you didn't even even know the tax.

One notable moment was the following clip.

Well, in this case, with a tax debt of about 2,200 bucks, it could have been the Peloton bike that was in the house. You think Peloton bike today is worth $2,000? Well, if you go on Facebook market place and you try to sell a Peloton bike today for $2,000, I don't think you're going to be very successful.

“This raised a really important question, Chris, is Justice Lido on Peloton.”

And if so, what would his handle or user name be? It was this weird moment because it was awareness both of Peloton and Facebook Marketplace. Facebook, like there is, yes, discussion. Facebook Marketplace makes more sense. Don't you think like Mark Hannon's saying?

Mark Hannon holds on. That's where she gets her flagmaking material. Exactly. Yeah. Listeners, we invite your ideas for his Peloton handle. I'll just throw out a few Pelotonito.

I don't know. If you wanted that one, or they're going fast. Like we're going in, but we're going fast. Yeah. But again, we welcome suggestions.

So now, we got some opinions last week from the court. Here are two, none of the high profile cases. These be cases that still could be quite consequential. And so, one opinion was enhanced, celestial group versus palm-quist. And they are the Supreme Court unanimously, how that if a party is mistakenly dismissed from a case,

the party's dismissal can't cure the court's lack of jurisdiction.

Basically, federal courts have jurisdiction, power to hear cases,

where there's diversity between the parties. The plaintiffs are citizens of one state, and the defendants are citizens of others. But, in order to hear the case, there has to be what's called complete diversity. I.e. no defendant can be from the same state as a plaintiff. Here, one defendant was, but the district court dismissed,

that plaintiff from the suit, albeit improperly. And the Supreme Court said that doesn't cure or fix the jurisdictional problem, and therefore, the case still has to be dismissed. We also got the opinion in G.O. Group versus medical case.

“I know you've written about Chris, so do you want to tell us what the court decided here?”

Yeah, I mean, this was a case that's been going on since 2014, and the, which in and of itself is sort of the issue, alleging essentially forced labor at the G.O. Group's facility in Colorado. And the lawsuit had been going on when there was originally a class certified G.O. Group appealed, to the 10th Circuit, they lost, they went back,

and then there was this argument that came out of a case from the 40s that they were claiming that they had derivative immunity, and that because of the fact that they were a government contractor, that they have derivative sovereignty and because of that, when they were found to have acted outside of their authority,

and thus illegally and not getting the immunity, that they should be able to appeal it right away as well. And that is the limited area where the government, where anybody, can appeal in the middle of a case, and the inner locatoria appeal. And the case got to the Supreme Court,

the 10th Circuit said, "No, you can't do that. This is a defense, not an immunity." And then it went to the Supreme Court, and Justice Kagan had the opinion for the court, and she said the same thing.

And she said, "Look at this. This is the, an immunity is saying, it doesn't matter if I did it. I don't need to answer for it. Whereas a defense is saying,

And she said that the difference between that does matter for these

“purposes of if you can appeal in the middle of a case,”

because a defense, you should have to, you can go through court, and just go through the full case. And because of that, the people on geogroup side were not just the private prisons.

It was also the Chamber of Commerce who was saying, "No, no, no, all government contractors should be able to invoke that." And essentially what it was was an argument for private contractors to be able to actually the government and avoid accountability, drag out litigation,

and the Supreme Court walkily, Nino said, "No, that's not the case." So two other decisions from the Supreme Court last week, one was in Villarreal versus Texas, where the Supreme Court held that a trial

court's directive that an attorney over an overnight recess,

not discussed the defendant's testimony with the defendant, which was, again, going to span the recess, did not violate the six-thamament guarantee of effective assistance of counsel. The Supreme Court made clear that the defendant wasn't prohibited from talking to his lawyer, or conferring on topics, including sentencing,

Justice Alito and Thomas wrote concurrences, "Cosplaying as an originalist," Alito noted that at the founding defendants weren't even allowed to testify because they weren't viewed as competent, so NPD. And Thomas joined by Gore, such wrote separately, because they didn't like all the guidance that Justice Jackson's opinion for the court supplied.

And then the other case is maybe another potential sleeper, and that's postal service versus Conan. And here, the Supreme Court held that the United States retains its sovereign immunity. The guilty of the kind Chris was explaining just now, but it retains its sovereign immunity

for claims that arise out of the intentional non-delivery of mail, under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the law that allows you to sue the United States sometimes. So the FTCA waves the United States immunity for lots of claims, but not for claims arising out of the loss,

miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters, or postal matters. And the Supreme Court said, "Miscarriage and loss can include intentional non-delivery, and therefore you can't sue over that." This opinion was five to four, just as so to my art wrote,

"The dissent for the three Democratic appointees, plus Neil Gorsuch." Chris, I thought this was kind of a scary ruling to come down before the midterm elections.

“What if Trump's postal service just doesn't deliver ballots?”

How real is that even a concern? Mark Joseph Stern, friend of both of ours, wrote a good piece about this. His point is this takes away a tool that discouraged bad acts. And I think that that's right.

I also think though that litigation about the non-delivery of mail, and that we could have an empty--

It's never going to fix anything that's going wrong.

And so I think it is more-- It's more, I think, a sign of, like, the unfortunate-- like, people were confused about why Gorsuch was descending. I think this fits because you and I both know

that Sotomayor and Gorsuch have come together a lot on moments, sometimes when it's just the two of them, imposing overreaching of government powers. And so this I think was--

“It was actually, I think, great to see Kagan”

with the three of the other three of them in saying, "No, no, no. We don't want to expand sovereign immunity." Yeah, that was great. Also, on that note, about elections,

stay tuned for my conversation with Mark Awayus about how the man is fairest trying to mansplain its way into a talkercy. And listeners stay tuned until the end of the episode to hear Chris and my favorite things. For this segment, I'm delighted to be joined

by Mark Awayus, chair of the Elias Law Group, and founder of Democracy Docket, an independent media outlet in an era where we really need independent media. Welcome to the show, Mark.

Thanks for having me. So today, we are going to be talking about how articles 1, 2 and 3 have their sights set on our democracy. We can go quickly over article 1, Congress, because its Congress isn't doing

that much, besides rolling over, but they are considering the Save Act. The House passed it and the Senate is considering it. Mark briefly, what is the Save Act and what would it do for elections?

Okay, so the Save Act is actually confusingly several different laws. So the one that everyone is talking most about now is the Save America Act, Donald Trump insisted that America be added to the

was not sufficient. So it's like Save Act. You're right.

“So the Save America Act would basically do four things.”

Number one, it would impose a very strict photo ID requirement on every state. So it would tell them both what photo IDs they must use, but also what photo IDs they can't use. So for example, the bill specifically

stands any educational institution IDs from being used. So even if you have the University of Michigan, or the University of North Carolina, or you know, pick your state university, where the IDs are issued by the state itself,

those could not be used period.

So that's the first part of the bill.

The second part of the bill is what they refer to as the proof of citizenship requirement. This requires people to prove that they are citizens in order to register to vote. That may sound like a simple thing.

It's actually quite a complex thing to prove citizenship. Essentially, there are only two documents to prove citizenship. In the United States, one is a US passport, a valid US passport, or current, not expired. And then the other is an original birth certificate

or a birth certificate that has been obtained, certified copy that has been obtained by the state. That is also much harder to get than many people think, because many people don't have their original birth certificates, and ordering them and getting them in a raised seal version

from a state is not simple. Also, I would remind the audience that if anyone thinks Donald Trump is just going to accept any old state's birth certificate for a state of Hawaii, which issued a birth certificate to Barack Obama,

and of course, Donald Trump came to political law. For the state of Minnesota, which he's just attacking left and right, I mean, you know, correct. And so the whole birth or conspiracy was him denying the validity of birth certificates,

as you know, Donald Trump is right now in the Supreme Court trying to say that birth certificates actually don't prove citizenship in the births rights citizenship case.

So that's the second part of the law.

That would also disenfranchise tens of millions of women who've changed their last name when they got married, because their birth certificates wouldn't match the name on their phone ID. Part of the war on women, many different fronts.

Correct. The third provision of this would require the perging, the regular perging of names off the voter rolls. Using a, what has been described by pretty much everyone

as a flawed database at the federal government level, and that would be, you know, yet another set of challenges that voters would face, because of course, if they were moved by a flawed database in Washington, D.C., good luck to get her added back onto the voter rolls.

Yep. Whereas the safe act as Congress is considering it, but Donald Trump actually puts a, put a slightly different gloss on it and a state of the union.

“And Lee, I think that's important because this was in his prepared text.”

So this is not like Donald Trump just kind of like riffing off the top of his head. This is what the White House thought that was in the safe act. They added a couple of things. Number one, proof of citizen to actually vote, which would mean that paperwork not just to register,

but to actually show up each year every time you vote it. And then the last thing which didn't get a lot of attention, but Donald Trump, in the state of the union, also said that the safe act would ban mail-in voting, except for a very narrow class of people who either have disabilities

or sick or in the military. Yeah, unclear if Congress would just roll over and allow the president to declare what's in laws they enacted, but I guess we might be about to find out. It's not actually in the text.

This is the thing that's going to be very confused. It's like text literally in the list. They're going to love this. It's a challenge. Mike Johnson will be like, "Oh, no, it's there. It's just an invisible ink." Exactly, exactly.

Well, now that we've already kind of gone on to Article 2, which is bleeding into Article 1, let's talk more about what Article 2 is doing. So the Department of Justice filed something like 28 anti-voting lawsuits

in the first year of the second Trump administration.

Many of these are fringe on his bunk. You might've expected from Stephen Miller's organization America First, but now it's coming from DOJ. Can you give us an example or examples of that?

“And what it means for DOJ to now be the one filing these?”

Yeah, so you're exactly right. Actually, the Department of Justice has now filed 33 lawsuits. Yeah, the Department of Justice has literally added five more in the middle of the night, like literally late last week. They decided to sue five more states, including four Republican states,

for Republican controlled states, for access to their voter files. So you're right. These are both high volume and also maritalists. So it's the perfect, it's the perfect Trumpian combination. Right, yeah, yeah.

Do a lot of things at once, all of which violate the Constitution. Right, yeah.

to sensitive voter data held by the states.

So every state maintains a list of every person who's ever registered in the state, every person's ever voted in the state. And it's quite detailed information. Like it would say, for example, like where you first registered to vote, whether you moved, whether you voted in an election or skipped the election,

whether you're registered as a Democrat or Republican, it has obviously your address, your name, your social security number, your date of birth. So like the opportunities for identity theft are abound. Yeah. But then it has, you know, like I said, it has partisan information about whether

your Democrat or Republican, it has information whether you're active, Democrat or an active Republican or not.

“Like, for example, do you vote in every primary or just some of them?”

Do you skip mid-term or not, right?

A critical piece of information that if you were trying to target voter suppression,

knowing who's likely a Democrat who votes in mid-term versus a Democrat who doesn't vote in mid-term, super important information. It includes whether you voted in mail or by person, whether you voted early on election day, whether you voted in a precinct or a vote center, right? Whether you've ever had your ballot challenge, whether you've ever cast a

provisional ballot, whether that ballot counted or not, right? There's like a lot of different permeations to this data. Whether you use your social security number or your driver's license to choose as an identifier when you register. It's a wealth of information and it is the foundation of what

states need to ensure that lawful voters can vote and no one else can. And it is also the foundation of what if you wanted to run a massive voter suppression program or a disenfranchisement program or contest the outcome of an election, it is exactly the kind of data that you would need. So that is the bulk of the cases they have filed. Now they have also

strangely enough got involved in a couple of redistricting cases. I know this will shock you. I know this will shock you. But they're big, big fans of the Texas map. Not big fans of the California map. They're going to block the California map.

Yeah. Yeah. No, completely shock. And we'll get to the developments in the Supreme Court and the courts and what they are doing by way of the mid-terms in a bit. But just a little bit more on article two mark if you don't mind. So, you know, we've talked a little bit about how the FBI seized

election materials from Fulton County on this podcast.

“You know, I think a lot of people are worried about this world where”

DOJ, FBI, DHS and ICE are basically acting as extensions of the

Trump campaign during the election. So can you talk a little bit more about what that might look like or if people are concerned what they should be doing? Yeah. People should be very concerned. You know, this is very reminiscent for me, frankly,

from 2020 because in 2020, you know, around March or 2020, I started warning about the problems that we were going to have with people voting absentee in large numbers with the, really, at the beginning of the pandemic. And by the summer, I was pointing out that Donald Trump was saying things

about the elections that were not normal for President to say. And then, of course, in the post, you know, and a lot of people discounted that. They thought it was a promise. They thought that we were like exaggerating it and that you can remember all the commentators who said, "You know, if you lose, we'll try to get you power." Exactly.

Oh, I remember. I remember my friend. He's a little time to process.

“Exactly. He's just working it out. He's using this as therapy,”

election denialism. Exactly. And I feel like in summer specs, we're in, we're living in that same progression now, right, which is that he has gone through the, which is now a permanent feature of his politics,

which is the, let's lie about elections. Let's lie about the outcome. Let's lie about what's going on. And he has now moved into the, what I'll call the litigation phase, right, which is the, like, using the Department of Justice, to try to get access to voter, using the Department of Justice

to get search warrants, right? He's using the courts. And, you know, to some extent, he abides by the outcomes. I mean, you probably have a better, a worse sense of, like, how much he abides by the outcome. But, like, at least continues to look normalish

in that it is things are being litigated out in court. But what I have warned people is that Donald Trump is going to continue to escalate. I mean, he thought that his ticket to maintain power in the midterms was simply gerrymandering. That has not paned out for him, okay?

Then he thought it was going to be the safe act. That is not panning out for him because it's not going to be enacted. Then he thought that it would be these lawsuits that they're filing. Well, so far, the Department of Justice has lost every court case that a federal judge has decided involving these voter filing.

Impressive. Impressive. It's not easy, right? I mean, as I say to folks, like, it's really good for my ego because it runs up our win-loss ratio against the, you know, but yeah, it's not great.

And then now he is though starting to say,

He has said that Republicans need to take over the voting and he has specifically said 15 places. He has said that he wish there wouldn't be midterm elections. Now, there will be midterm elections. But when you start to have the president of the United States

amusing, that there should be midterm elections that Republicans should take them over. Right, fine. That's a red flag, right, of what is going to come. So what I am expecting is, you know,

you're wearing a Minnesota-No ice t-shirt. Soon you'll be able to, as we get closer to the election,

“I think you'll be able to expand the number of states on that t-shirt.”

Because I think what he's going to do is use the federal paramilitary forces available to him. And ice is obviously one of them, although not the only one. And I think that's an under-reported story that, that actually, the shooters, in at least some of these cases,

in radar CBP. Yeah, yeah. Right. So like, it's not just ice. He's got a lot of paramilitary forces available to him. And I think you're going to see them active.

And it doesn't require them to be at the polls with guns. It just means that they need to cause the kind of mayhem that you saw in Minneapolis in the streets. Because, like, honestly, if you have ice official blocking off streets and pulling people over and breaking their windows,

and pulling people out of the streets. Talking them out of the street, yeah. That's going to create the kind of environment that, frankly, U.S. citizens who have nothing to worry about, are going to be like, I don't need this trouble.

I don't need to try to work my way through traffic. I don't need to, you know, wind up in a situation. We're voting rather than taking me half hours. You're going to take me three hours. And it's going to be like going through the gauntlet.

“So I think you're going to see a lot of that.”

And then finally, if that doesn't work,

then we're going to see more ballot seizures and more efforts to just overturn the results. Well, that is uplifting. But, you know, as, you know, your last answer is suggested a lot of what article 2 is doing has been involving the courts.

And because this is the Supreme Court podcast, wanted to end on a lighting round of article 3 and how the courts are doing things that are already influencing and will continue to shape the landscape for the upcoming midterms in future elections.

So Mark, you already kind of alluded to the redistricting and, you know, the Supreme Courts or Federal Courts actions on partisan gerrymandering. How have the courts been shaping this redistricting war? Look, I think that we don't know.

And we don't know. And one of the, we don't know yet. And I'll tell you specifically, but I think that, and this is a lesson frankly, I have learned from you, listening to you over over the years and frankly, in talking to you about this. Like, the Supreme Court, and I don't know whether it's on purpose or not.

I leave that to you and the experts on your podcast. But the Supreme Court seems to have this way of operating, which is they kind of give the pro-democracy forces some win relatively early.

“Then you'd be followed by an avalanche of stopping you, right?”

And like, we were talking about this in past cycles. But like, I was thinking about you recently because, of course, you know, the people were very, very excited by Justice Gorsuch's language at the end of the tariff decision, which is not in of itself a voting decision. But you can read it as like an affirmation that actually Congress is in charge

and the president is in fact not able to do whatever he wants, right? So in that sense, it got read as something that is not just a tariff decision, but kind of a broader democracy decision. Also, just like side note, how much are they breadcrumming us that we have to salivate and celebrate as victories,

the idea that Neil Gorsuch ends in opinion with the suggestion

that the president isn't an all-powerful king.

Anyway, sorry, you were. No, I've got actually glad you mentioned this, because I actually have made this one not quite that directly, but like, number one, it's a concurrence. It's remarkable that he couldn't get a majority of the court for that job. Yeah, right.

And then the second is, it has this feel. And, you know, I don't want to digress too far, but it has this feel like every sovereign Supreme Court justices were like, you know what? I just want to write something that's not really for like the courts or

for lawyers, but like might wind up on a hallmark greeting card. I kind of remember like Justice Kennedy, you know, when occasionally you do this. And it felt like at the end of this opinion, like Justice Gorsuch was like, okay, just one more thing to say,

which is just going to like fit really well on like a placard, or a placard. It's bad. Yeah. They're all aiming for this wolf comes as a wolf line,

and they're never going to get it,

but darn it, they're going to keep trying. Right. So look, the lower courts have been relatively strong in democracy, but there's a lot of cases pending for the Supreme Court. I mean, you know, right now we're waiting on a big Supreme Court case

involving reducing out of Louisiana. Yeah. We are, as we're recording this, we're waiting on the Supreme Court to see whether it's going to grant

We're going to wait and see whether the Supreme Court grants

cert on a voting case out of the third circuit involving

technical errors or technical irregularities that voters make and whether that's just going to qualify their ballots. Like there's a lot of stuff plus the argued cases that we talked about. But if you ask me like sitting here right now, you know, the Supreme Court has basically taken hands off.

It basically said, "I'm not going to, we're not going to stop Texas, and we're not going to stop California." So it basically said, "We're out of the redistricting emergency docket, you know, shadow docket, or at least with respect to those two states." But there's a lot more opportunities in front of us.

Right, stay tuned for Louisiana versus Kelle, you know, the challenge about whether the voting rights act is basically going to restrict state's ability to district, you know, minority voters out of power.

“Like that's why the ones we're waiting for.”

Can I just like take a slight issue in challenge here? Yeah. These actually was not about section two. Like the only who made this case about section two, were the justices on the Supreme Court.

This actually didn't go to the Supreme Court for them to decide, whether the voting rights act still is constitutional. This case went up on a much narrower and different legal theory, and then the court on its own, like literally on its own, just announced, "Oh, actually we want you to argue this other thing,

which is whether section two is constitutional." Yes, I know. And honestly, I'm not sure if they are going to go that route, since they seem to be so interested, or if they're instead going to, like, weasel through the back door

and try to do a just a Toledo burn-a-vitch special,

where they basically rewrite the section two redistricting tests.

So it's almost impossible, you know, for plaintiffs to actually ensure that redistricting is representative. I'm not sure I've really decided which route I think they're going to go, but I do worry we are staring down the barrel of one of those. Yeah.

“I think that I think that, I don't know what the right, you know,”

my generation, we refer to it as shepardizing cases. I don't know if they're clear. Well, it's shepardizing. He's sighting, right? But I think that just the chief and probably some of the others,

don't want there to be a little 'oh', you know, when you used to refer to it. Yes, with a little 'oh', if something was overruled, you don't want that. They want, like, it's like distinguished, right? They want a yellow flag, not a red flag.

Okay, that's the most, now that's the current, right?

And, but it will have the same impact, right?

So I agree, I don't think you're going to overturn section to the voting rights act. What they're going to do is they're going to adopt one of two tests that are going to effectively overrule the voting rights act. They're either going to say, fine, you can draw a, you can draw a district

that gives minorities opportunity to elect, as long as it meets the political consideration of the legislature, which means good luck. You can draw a majority black district as long as it's going to elect a Republican. Right, exactly. As long as all the black voters vote Republican,

right, right, you can draw it. Right, exactly. I can just see the stepmother from Cinderella saying, if, right, I said, if, right, like, you can get that district if, but yeah.

Yeah, and then this other alternative is they'll say, you can draw a section to district if it so happens. You drew a district that just so happens to be section two, but you can't, you can't do it on purpose. And that also will have the same impact.

“So yeah, that's my, I think that that's probably what we're”

staring down the question of timing is really what a lot of people focus on is whether it will be now. I think the court just announced more decisions for next week, more opinion days for next week, or whether it will be the end of June.

Got it. So in addition to Louisiana versus Cala, you know, we are also looking at two other big voting rights cases that are already on the docket. One is something you already argued,

and that's a case of a campaign finance regulation. And another is an argument that has yet to occur, and that is the case about whether states can continue to count ballots that are received after election day. So, Mark, can you just kind of zoom out and talk for us

about the stakes of either of both of these cases? Yeah, so they're both my, they're both my cases, both both, both very, both my former involved in. So I argued the campaign finance case in December. This would allow national parties and state parties

to spend unlimited amounts of money on their candidates and full coordination with their candidates. And a lot of people here this, and they kind of shrunk their shoulders and say, "Well, why is that such a big deal?

"Don't we want strong parties? "Is in the system already broken?" And my answer to you is, Bert Newborn, who was the head of the ACLU in New York, I think, for many years.

One said that Buckley, Viva Leo, which is the seminal campaign finance case from the 1970s, he described Buckley as a dead tree that is being pushed on the left by justices and on the right by justices.

Okay. And therefore it remains standing. And that is true. And so like, yes, it's a dead tree,

And if the conservative justices are able to push that over,

“it doesn't just open the flood of money from parties.”

There is no way to distinguish in the long run. I mean, in this case, there will be a single single ship, but analytically, the Buckley framework will have fallen if the Supreme Court says that a contribution limit is unconstitutional.

Because once you say a contribution limit is unconstitutional, then like everybody gets to say their contribution limit is unconstitutional. I think that'll unravel. So I just want to unpack that for our listeners who aren't immersed in this area

because the specific regulation at issue in that case, limits the amount that a party can give to a candidate and coordinate with the candidate. And if you say that contribution limit is illegal, then you are potentially opening the door

for individual contribution limits to also be unconstitutional. And there was this weird, I mean to my mind, just like hair raising exchange during the argument where Justice Calvin, I was asking Noel Francisco,

an advocate who was challenging the campaign finance regulation. Like, oh, are you sure you want to actually say those other limits are also constitutional wink wink

“because won't you be here challenging those as well?”

So yeah, analytically, right, if this one goes, then other ones potentially go as well, or at least they are inviting challenges to them. Absolutely. And importantly, Francisco refused to rule out. Yep, exactly.

We wouldn't be back challenging those limits. And just to the audience understand, here's why this is like kind of this just becomes inevitable. What the Supreme Court has said is that limiting the amount of money that people can spend on their own independently,

that is subject to strict scrutiny. Like that is like you cannot limit that without really compelling reasons on the Supreme Court to say there are no basic reasons to do that. Contribution limits on the other hand,

they have upheld almost universally because what they've argued is that making a contribution is in and of itself symbolic speech. In other words, you are the speech you are engaged and when you make a contribution is associating yourself

with the candidate that you are approving of. But that, therefore, whether the limit is set, $500 or $5,000 or $50,000 or $500,000 or $500,000, legislatures get to do that. Because they have to be given the ability to set those limits

and it's not really impinging on your first amendment right. Once you say that a contribution limit can be constitutionally held to strict scrutiny, then honestly, all the limits fall

because you're never going to be able to show

quid pro quo corruption for every individual who make a contribution. After all, if you wanted to give rather than give $3,500, you wanted to give $5,000 to Kamal Harris's campaign, you would go to court and be like, "Well, but you know, $5,000,

I'm not corrupting anyone." And that's true. There's no difference between $3,500 and $5,000. So you could just see this is just going to unravel itself and eventually the Supreme Court Conservatives will say,

"Well, isn't this over-inclusive and under-inclusive?" Because it's covering some speech and not other speech and as you know, for strict scrutiny, that wouldn't survive. Right, so let's just blow the whole thing up. So Mark, I guess I would invite you just for any final thoughts

as we are kind of ticking through the different branches of the federal government and how, again, the manifest fear really seems to be trying to man-splane our way into a deeply undemocratic country. Yeah, I'd say two things.

First of all, very quickly, people should pay attention to the Watson case you mentioned. That would be a valid receipt deadline case. That also will have dramatic impacts. The question there is whether if the US Postal Service takes a few extra days

to get your ballot that you mailed before the election and postmarked before the election, whether it gets thrown in the trash or whether it gets counted and so people should pay attention to that. But I wanted to end on your article one versus article two analysis.

Because it's something I'm spending a lot of time on. I'm actually thinking, I'm aligning a book that I may want to write out, and it's very much like in my mind.

“Because I think what I've come to conclude is that”

article one was intended to be the most important.

Like I went back and re-read. I was writing for Democracy Dog at about the state of the Union. And so if you look at article two, the very first thing in article two under the duties of the president is from time to time to report to Congress on the state of the Union.

And to make recommendations to them on things they should take up. And I was reflecting on this that like the state of the Union in the Constitution is an obligation of the president to show up at a time that the Congress wants him to give his recommendations that Congress can then take or leave.

Right. And it has transformed into this Donald Trump shows up treated like a king with pomp and circumstances. People are having their tie autograph, while Congress is there as like the just the door mat of article one.

So I mean, I don't really have-- Well, now Republicans and Congress are asking Trump for permission

Right. So the question I'm asking myself and the question I'm struggling with

“is like, how can you have our system of government?”

If article one is not just not preeminent, actually not even what you say they didn't show up. I loved you. Whatever you're afraid. They're just like, they're not in the game.

Right. So what's the answer? I do not pretend to have an answer to that big question, but I'm glad to hear you're maybe writing a book about it. So we can work out that problem together.

Mark Elias, I'll be Elias Law Group, and Democracy docket, thank you so much for joining us. Again, listeners, independent media celebration. If you're not following Democracy docket, please do so and subscribe. In this era, the commentary and journalism and public information

is more valuable than ever. Thanks so much Mark for taking time out of your very busy schedule to join us. No, thank you for having me. I love your podcast. I always listen.

Thank you. Well, that was something probably something other than uplifting. But on a later note, let's end with our favorite things.

“Kristi, do you want to go first or do you want me to go first on favorite things?”

I'll go first. My favorite things are things that I haven't done yet. Okay. Jonathan Graf is going to be doing as you like it for the Royal Fiat beer, that obviously that I know you're well aware of already.

Next summer, we have Jonathan Bailey and Ariana Grande doing Sunday in the part with George. But more close to now, I am excited to see Sam Pinkleton's Rocky Horror on Broadway. Sam Pinkleton directed Omery.

And this is his next Broadway production. And so I'll be seeing that later this spring. The other is my favorite thing, and I am looking forward to exploration in DC, New York, and over in London. I love it.

Some of my favorite things are also forthcoming things. Yeah, totally works. Yes. So one of my favorite things is our upcoming live shows. Next week, or I guess this week when you're hearing it in California,

I am beyond excited. I'm so excited.

I'm doing something I never do, which is taking it easy.

And giving myself a break for a few days. So I can actually enjoy the California live shows. Yes. Another favorite thing is the article I mentioned on last week's episode, and that I manifested in acceptance for,

also looking to the future of Chris. The pass advice was accepted into George Town Log Journal. I'm super excited about that and to work with the editors. Also favorite things are the friends of the podcast. We've been able to have on the show while we all are traveling,

whether that is Steve Latic who runs one first street. Chris Geidner, Lawdork, Mark Elias, democracy docket, and independent media more generally. And so yeah, that has been a really fun part of this segment. And wanted to highlight just two quick specific independent media thing.

So Steve Latic at one first had this post.

The Supreme Court is not raining in executive power. A necessary rebuttal and corrective to this hogwash piece. Be it for yourself. Also, we at Cricket Media are now going to be on MSNow. So we are going to be airing Saturday nights at 9 p.m.

And it's going to be in a malagamation of different cricket media shows, including us, so be sure to tune in for that. Chris, thank you so much for joining us this week. And for being our independent media icon. Again, listeners if you're not subscribed to Lawdork,

you really should be as we recounted in this episode. Chris is doing really necessary work. And it's so important, more important than ever, to support great independent media. So thanks, Chris.

Thank you, Leah. So much. It was great to join you. Strix Gretney is a cricket media production. Hosted and executive produced by me, Leo Whitman, Melissa Murray and K. Shaw. Our senior producer and editor is Melody Raoul.

Michael Goldsmith is our producer. Jordan Thomas is our intern. Our music is by Eddie Cooper. We get production support from K.Long and Adrian Hill. Matt DeGroat is our head of production.

And thanks to our video team, Ben Hethcode and Johanna Case. Our production staff is proudly unionized with a writer's guild of America East. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to Strix Gretney and your favorite podcast app and on YouTube at StrixGretney.com.

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