SCOTUS Keeps Rewriting Gun History

The Trump administration's excessive Christian nationalist rhetoric is only building as we move

“toward the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Those most caught in the cross-vier”

are federal workers. Specifically, a multi-faith group of federal employees who have filed a new lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture for violating the separation of church and state and the religious freedom promised in our Constitution. Our friends at Americans United for separation of church and state received emails from multiple USDA employees. A handful of employees reached out to say that the proselytizing Easter emails sent by Secretary of Agriculture

Brooke L. Rollins to more than 100,000 USDA employees is an abusive power that violates the separation of church and state promised in the first amendment. They're absolutely right. I just have to remind you, as we continue to think about the nation's 250th anniversary that the whole question of religious freedom is not solely about religious pluralism, about different religious sex being able to flourish in the United States. It is also a hedge against tyranny. The idea

that religion provides alternative sources of values and allegiances that, in view, the individual with the capacity to be skeptical when the government comes peddling its own orthodoxies.

So, when you think about this, it's not just about letting a million flowers bloom. It's literally

about keeping limited government in place. And the hits just keep coming from this administration. And Americans United is doing their level best to keep up the fight against Christian nationalism.

“And if you want to help head over to AU.org/cricket to learn more about their work and how you can get involved.”

It's no joke, but when I argue, man argues against a beautiful lady's life, there's going to have the last word. She's small, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity, she said, "I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet all far next." Hello, and welcome back to Strixhurtney, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture

that surrounds it. Where you're hosts, I'm Melissa Murray. I'm Leo Littman, and I'm K-Chall. And we are in the home stretch of this Supreme Court term with opinions and argued cases coming fast and furious. So we're going to spend today's episode mostly breaking those opinions down for you. There will be even more opinions released the day this episode drops. That's Monday.

“So who knows? We might be in your earholes again soon. And either way it's going to be a busy”

and probably terrible week for all of us. So buckle up. Awesome, Kate. What a way to start. Alright, so last week we got 10 opinions from the court. And nine were in argued cases. On Thursday we did a same day emergency episode covering two immigration decisions. So we're briefly discuss those here, but we'll spend more time covering the decisions we didn't talk about in that

emergency episode. The first decision that we covered in the emergency episode was Mullen versus Joe,

which is a decision from the court, six three decision that allows the president to cancel temporary protected status protections for Haitian and Syrian nationals. There were two questions in this case. One was a statutory question whether the administration had complied with the required statutory procedures for rescinding temporary protected status or TPS. And the second question, which was a constitutional question, whether the administration had acted with unconstitutional

animus in rescinding those statuses. As Justice Alito, who wrote for the majority explained, courts cannot review whether the executive branch has complied with the statutory procedures that Congress imposed for the decision of those protected statuses. And with regard to the constitutional question of racial animus, our favorite woke warrior Samuel Alito reminded us all that the only way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to ignore discrimination on the basis of race.

And instead allow the administration to engage in rank xenophobia. Actually, the court specifically said that the cancellation of TPS for Haitian nationals was not racist, despite the president's many, many racist and targeted remarks about Haiti and its people. Wolk Lido, so many takes. When we covered the TPS cases in our emergency episode, we had just digested them since taping the episode. We have some additional thoughts which we wanted to highlight.

First, we should discuss the practical implications of the decision, which will likely

bring about the largest de-legalization of immigrants in our history. It will affect more than 300,000 Haitian nationals and 6,000 Syrian nationals. And the de-legalization isn't going

well. Not really majority white countries, but when Trump took office in 2025, there were over a

“million people with TPS and many TPS holders have been in this country for decades. I think it's”

easy for American citizens to think this won't affect them, but it's going to many people who work in the healthcare industry, whether it's physicians, nurses, orderlies, EMTs, are immigrants who are TPS holders, many child care workers, and others in care industries are TPS holders.

People who work in construction trade, basically every industry. This will be massive and we

will all be impacted in ways both profound and banal. And this is to say nothing about the law enforcement practices that the administration might undertake to affectuate these mass removals and deportations which are likely to sweep in citizens as part of racial profiling and more. And if the administration actually does kick that mass deportation into high gear and returns TPS holders to their home countries, they will face horrific conditions. The conditions in Haiti

are particularly egregious. A fact that Justice Barrett is likely acutely aware of given the two

“of her children were adopted from Haiti. Okay, should we play a clip from the administration's reaction”

to this decision? Let's play a clip of Steven Miller. I don't know if fucking Deputy Chief of Staffs, that would be as anyway. Let's play a quick white wing chief of staff. I don't know. Again, I'm so fucking angry already. I apologize to our listeners. Yeah, no, especially on TPS, I feel like I've been that my rage level has been increasing

basically by the hour since the opinion came down Thursday. Okay, anyway, yeah, so so this is Miller's

reaction to the opinion. In the first Trump administration, President Trump ended TPS for Haitian illegal, and was frozen by the courts. The Biden administration came in. They flew Haitians right over the border by airplane dumped them into American towns all over the country, particularly in Springfield, Ohio, destroying these tightening communities. I gave them all again this TPS temporary protective status, which gives them unfettered access to welfare and other benefits in the United States.

Trump ended that benefit again here in the second term, even though the statute says that it is judicially unreviewable. I mean, Congress said the courts can't review it. A rogue radical judge is stymied that for the last 16 months, and again, now here we are because of the Supreme

Court, and we can finally remove these Haitian illegal migrants from the United States.

I'm going to say something incredibly pessimistic that you probably don't want to hear, and it is this. We were feeling kind of optimistic about where things were headed in the birthright citizenship case after the oral arguments. I'm not so sure anymore. I haven't seen thought. So can I tell you something else along those lines? As we talked about, when we talked about these cases, the dissents said respectfully, all of the dissents have said respectfully. What

are they saving? They're not respectfully for. There was a way to, I mean, there was no remotely recent way to decide this case, but you could have said judicial review exists and somehow that they did enough, they consulted by asking, and that's like a ridiculous statutory argument, but like they did something they being, you know, the administration to satisfy the statutory criteria. The decision to find that there is literally no judicial review of these determinations,

except maybe for some future Democratic presidents, TPS decisions, that is the maximalist disposition of this case. And I'm Melissa had the same thought. The tenor of these cases is so scary on an immigration question. I still think that most likely the birthright order goes down but I would say I'm far from 100%. Certain. Yeah. Again, I just feel like whether it's absentee ballots or birthright, there's got to be that case that they are, it would be birthright, right? Yeah,

and it's just nauseating. But there was a second immigration case that we covered on Arthur's Day episode, and that was Mullen versus Alberto Lotto, where in another six to three opinion, author by Samuel Lito, the Republican Supermajority allowed the administration to circumvent all of the required procedures and protections for asylum seekers arriving in the United States. So long as a U.S. border official manages to stop the asylum seeker at the border and prevent

“their entry across the border. So on both of these cases, if you want to hear more about how”

the court has enabled the Trump administration's aggressive and inhumane immigration policies, including policies designed to exclude or expel black and brown immigrants, listen to that emergency episode from last week. Also, if you want to read more, I and also friend of the show, Alora Mukherjee have pieces in the times on various aspects of the first case, the TPS one, and Leah has a piece in the Atlantic touching on TPS, and other cases and also one in the

contrarian on the TPS and asylum cases. Yeah, so we played a clip of Miller on the TPS cases,

which you can hear here. I think the most important point is that this administration

on the asylum point is we implemented international agreements all over the world

“to take an or a asylum secret. So America's doors are closed, fully to asylum seekers.”

And I guess what I wanted to flag about this is he seems to be saying there's just no asylum period and in Alotro Lotto, just as Alito basically dismisses the discussions about how this ruling might generate extreme egregious callous takes on asylum policy as just hypotheticals that weren't worth his two precious time. Much like the Chief Justice's immunity opinion dismissed the fears of the Democratic dissenters as fear-mongering and far-fetched when many of them have come

to pass. And within the same day of Justice Alito's opinion in the asylum case, Steven Miller is already maxing it to its most white nationalist extent. Excellent work John Roberts, assigning that opinion to Sam Alito joining it in full. I mean it felt like Thursday was Alito Day at the court, which we will get into, which is the worst kind of day. The worst kind of day. In a timeline. Okay, before we move on to the other opinions we wanted to discuss, I just wanted

to quickly correct something we said in our emergency episode. So we were talking about Alito issuing from the bench a rebuttal to such a myorist bench statement and we thought that we speculated that that might have been unprecedented, but commentators have now identified a

“couple of other examples of that. So Mark Walsh noted that actually I didn't remember this,”

but in 2015 in the lethal injection case, glass of versus gross, Justice Scalia responded from the bench to Justice Breyer's bench statement. That was his dissent. And then also really, really, sort of dialing the clock back. In the archive. In the archive. I'm noted that in 1961, there was an exchange between Warren and Frankfurter about a criminal justice case. So anyway, Alito was conduct though Pivish and very much on brand was actually not unprecedented, but it was definitely

unusual. We don't typically see that sort of thing with the court. But obviously this is not your typical court. I appreciate your commitment to Erata, but I seriously, 2015. Okay, that's reasonable, but like 19 times. She's crying. Come on. Anyway, doesn't happen a lot. It sure doesn't. Starts here at News brought to you by Zbiotics, living in a big city means that your life revolves around dinners, birthdays, rooftop parties, rins and repeat on and on again.

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helped you in your skin care journey. So listeners, I don't know how else to tell you this. We are in the thick of bad decisions season, which means that we now have to focus on the other decisions that were handed down last week. Although, we've got lots to say about these TPS cases, and they may continue to filter through our discussion of these cases, but we're going to focus on these

“other cases, because that's what they suck to. All right. First up was a second amendment case,”

Wolford versus Lopez. And this was a six to three opinion authored by, you guessed it, Samuel Alito, in which the court invalidated a Hawaii law that created a default presumption for a hibiting guns on private property that is otherwise open to the public unless the private owner consents to the carrying of guns on the property. Writing for the conservative supermajority, Justice Alito concluded that the challenge law violated the second amendment,

because it, quote, "hobbles what the second amendment protects." The right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives. And at this point, you should insert the meme of Arthur the Ardfark clenching his vis. Now, if that seems a little overstated to you, because the law does little more than require the private property owners consent before allowing firearm possession on the private property. I'm just here to tell you that this case

probably created a real conundrum for the court's homosexuals, because it pits the history and tradition of bearing arms against the equally long history and tradition of protecting

private property rights on something that conservatives have always been really into.

But now they seem less into it, because the real property interests that this court seems willing to protect is the property interest in a glock. So, there we are. William Blackstone, paraphrased. Duns are the true private property. Black lock. Black anchor. Black anchor. No, what exactly? Black lock. Black oozy. This, I have to say, I just found it to be a kind of weird take to think that the founders would have said property owners can't keep dangerous stuff off

their property, or at least that the state couldn't require you to ask a property owner and get there affirmative explicit consent before bringing something dangerous on to their property. But

always appreciate San Alito's historical fiction. So, making Black AR 15 happened exactly.

And, you know, because he's so great at history, this was unsurprisingly an application of the Supreme Court's legal test from NYSARPER versus Bruin, the second amendment decision, which said court should determine whether a gun control measure is constitutional by asking if it fits within the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. As an added bonus, however, Alito provided some additional gloss on the Bruin test, injected more squishiness, more discretion,

more opportunities for subjectivity, like the vibes weren't viving enough for him. So, he had to

just draw a stick. And these factors, I wish I could say I really understood them, but there's like I gather, you're not supposed to just ask whether there were historical analogs, but now, how many, which we sort of knew, but also whether any analogous historical laws were well accepted.

“And so, I think that's new, and also sounds super objective and determined it. We're making”

second amendment a popularity contest. So, that's gonna go super well. Sure. Why not? It did

feel like, for an originalist opinion, they definitely had some original takes on history. So, again, as Leah said, under the Bruin test, to comply with the second amendment, the challenge gun safety law has to fit within the history and tradition of firearm regulation in the United States. Like, that is what Bruin says, and now there's been all of this overlay, a topic. So, here, Justice Alito basically made clear how the test is now going to work,

at least for the kind of ammo sexually inclined. Why defended its law by pointing to a common law tradition in defense of private property rights, rights to exclude people for whatever reason the property owners dreamed up? Well, although that sounds like the sort of and randian kind of fantasy that you'd think Alita would be drawn to, actually no, um, prolytary Alito! I'm kind of pulled that one out in a while. Was that from the first NYSERPA case? Or was it from

Bruin? I don't remember. Yeah, any of it. So, the opinion begins with a declaration of quote, overwhelming evidence of, quote, an enduring American tradition permitting a public carry. He sometimes seems to be dealing with this trade phase that there was a common law rule about access to private property, carrying gun. When it's not even clear what like private property opened to the publicament of the founding, given the here we were talking about, like, uninclosed

“or unimproved lands? Like what did he do? Are they carrying around muskets on private rights?”

Just don't understand. None of this makes any sense. Yeah. Oh, I invoked the anti-poaching laws from early US and English history that prevented carrying guns on to private property, Justice Alito dismissed these historical analogs saying, well, that was to prevent unauthorized hunting and poaching, hunting with guns? No, no, no, no, no, no, guns don't kill animals hunting does. I think that that was his, he was killing animals. He just said that was simply too different

from Hawaii's law, because they did not affect the second amendment's central objective of protecting self-defense. It just feels like the court's analysis of historical analogs is perpetual cycle of Lucy Charlie Brown and the football. Like, I'm sure, right, you'll be able to

get at some time. It just turns out the history is never quite on point. Speaking of ruin football,

“the court, when doing history and tradition, seems okay with saying that some history counts in”

some history doesn't, and the history that should not be able to count is really dependent on whether the court thinks that history is wait for it racist, right? So this is another segment about the woke court doing woke history. So the Hawaii State government defended its gun control law by analyzing it to a Louisiana law from the 1860s that prevented gun possession on private property without the private property owners consent. Hmm, seems on point. But if ruin requires consistency

with the nation's history and tradition and firearm regulation, that regulation actually has to be

consistent with being anti-racist as this court has always been an anti-racist court as well. So

the problem with this law from the 1860s is that it is basically a law that was passed in Louisiana in the 1860s for the purpose of disarming African Americans. Because the law was intended to disarm newly freed African Americans, Justice Alito has surmised that it is racist and cannot be considered or should not be considered in the history and tradition calculus. So despite the fact that it is completely on point with the modern law that has been challenged, we can't even consider it

as part of the nation's history and tradition of firearm regulation because racism. Just a reminder that at the oral argument in Wolford, Justice Jackson made several pointed remarks about how the conservative Justice says constantly cherry-pick history and cherry-pick whether or not they give a fuck about legalized racism. And in addition to that reminder of Justice Jackson, also a reminder that on the very same day, the Justice Alito issued this decision, decrying consideration

of a 19th century law, because it was irredeemably tainted by racism, he issued, he authored and he read from the bench, another decision in which he maintained that the president's vile smears of Haiti and Haitians were not in fact racist, but merely the rough and tumble of politics, merely stating the nature of affairs on the Caribbean island. I mean, it's not news that these

"Trolito." I want to take a few more beats on cherry-picking history, because we need to note

“that Wolk Warrior Sam Alito, who will not gain to consider a racist law from the 1860s,”

is also the author of Dobs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization, which rescinded the constitutional right to an abortion on the view that in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was ratified, there were laws criminalizing abortion and existence, and notably many of the laws that Justice Alito cited were laws that were animated by wait for it, nativeist/racist fears that native warned white women were using contraception and abortion to limit the number of children that they had

while their black and immigrant sisters were having large families and that this birth disparity would inevitably shift the demographic character of the country, making the United States less white and less waspy, all to say that Justice Alito seems to be someone who doesn't mind, taking account of laws tainted by racism when the ultimate goal is to rescind a woman's right to choose an abortion. "No, but Melissa, he already told us races. It's xenophobia, not racism.

"That's great. It is just fine." "Well, it also, I vaguely recall something in Dobs about him saying, "Well, we, the court, don't like to question legislatures motives and ignore laws based on conclusions that the legislatures motives were improper, both and and- "Burn of it, too. Yeah, he's definitely, yeah, so on and so forth. You will speak of Louisiana versus Calet, despite Sam Alito being very triggered by considering the relevance of racist laws to

constitutional analysis in Woolford, I will remind him that he wrote the decision in Louisiana versus Calet, nullifying section two of the Voting Rights Act, the law that literally made the country a multiracial democracy, such that any laws passed before the Voting Rights Act, particularly in

“the South, would be products of Jim Crow segregation, so should we be ignoring all of them?”

"I just am so curious." "How do I do the history, sir?" "Exactly, tell me." "Exactly." This is just like drunk history, is the way he is doing it, drunk an opportunistic history, and, you know, we've sort of be labored this, but maybe just another example, um, is that the conservative supermajority brushes away, in addition to the other kinds of evidence that Hawaii marshals, evidence from before Hawaii actually became a state that limited the caring of deadly weapons.

Now, I don't know that it's clear on Bruins' own terms, like what the actual weight of that evidence should be, but it is definitely meaningful and problematic that Alito doesn't really engage with how to weigh a state's pre-statehood, legal history instead insisting in what felt to me like a pretty disorderly, even content, contentious kind of way. This idea that the spirit of Aloha could somehow justify gun regulations, he says, "The spirit of Aloha cannot shrink the

rights guaranteed by the second amendment." "You are making a t-shirt. I am the spirit of

Aloha. Spirit of Aloha. This, Sam Alito." "Would wear?" "Yeah." Unsurprisingly, Justice Jackson sharpened her pen in descent to once again take aim at Bruin and how stupid and misguided the tests, and maybe even her colleagues are. She also had this to say, quote, "With this decision, the court has now manipulated Bruin into a free-for-all that lets the judiciary thwart the will of legislatures by pillaging access to firearms above all else. Today's decision

makes one thing clear. The court's objective is protecting guns, not consistently preserving any principle of law. Shorter KBJ. This dumbass test is just another vehicle for my awful colleagues to continue aggrandizing power to themselves and the National Rifle Association. KBJ out.

“And I think she was pointedly on to something which is the court is just all over the map on how Bruin”

works, and Wolford seems to gerrymander the test in ways that are designed to strike down gun control regulation, and just view gun control regulation is just not a legitimate part of governance. So, for example, in Bruin, the court had suggested in order to show a historical analog you really need to focus on enacted laws, where he said, "No, that's not the test. Now, Wolford comes back and actually says, "Well, the best evidence of historical tradition is

enacted historical analogs. It also defines the arms that are protected under the second amendment somewhat more capaciously than some lower courts have. It's just all over the place." I just want to say briefly, like a word or two about Justice Barrett's concurrence, which did feel to me like her gloves have kind of come off. I'm thinking particularly

of her actions. The gloves were always velvet. Well, there are no gloves at all at this point,

test as we have just been suggesting, but actually it's like, "Why and Justice Jackson in dissent?"

“So, she, like, three, I think, or maybe four times, like, calls out the principal dissent,”

which is Jackson's dissent by name, accuses the Jackson dissent of erroneously claiming that

is that Bruin leaves judges free to insert any meaning they desire into the text of the second

amendment, and she basically says, "No, that's not true." You basically, you're asking us, you dissent and Hawaii, to smuggle additional limits drawn from a regulatory tradition into the plain text stage of the inquiry. So, they're sort of fighting about both stage one and stage two of the Bruin test, such as they are, which I don't even really understand at this point, but one other Barrett point, she draws an analogy to a law that set the default that religious

garb could not be worn on private property without the express consent of the owner, and she's like, "Ah, you wouldn't like that," and so you shouldn't like this default. And I do think that the kind of the trolley quality to that example suggests that she is learning from her woke

“warrior colleagues, and I just all I can say in response, not that it matters to these goals,”

is that in any sane world, the fact that hijabs are not instruments of injury and death, would make a difference in assessing a state's regulatory interest in those two things, but, alas, that is not Amy Coney Barrett's world, and it is not ours. So, I thought her concurrence was super interesting for all of the reasons you suggest Kate, but also because she seems to be contesting the grounds of the debate. So, one of the things that

Justice Jackson did was to call out the majority for a decision that is not just inconsistent with

the history of firearm regulation, but a history in which conservatives and the law have always

prioritized private property rights. And Barrett seems to be suggesting that this case isn't about private property rights at all. It is first and foremost about gun rights, and therefore there is no inconsistency or lack of principle. And she explains, everyone knows that private property owners have the right to exclude people in guns from their property, but in this case she writes, quote, "the second amendment doesn't apply to private parties. It does apply to the states.

And when a state enacts a property law that regulates arms bearing conduct, that law implicates the second amendment." So, basically, she's saying if you're going to plausibly limit gun possession on private property, the prohibition cannot come from a state enacted law. It has to be an individual prohibition from each private property owner, which is obviously untenable as a policy matter for gun safety. But this seems to be

the future of second amendment jurisprudence. Anything that the government does to regulate guns is going to be presumptively unconstitutional. Everything would have to happen through private ordering. This episode is presented by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. If you listen to strict scrutiny, you already know. This administration, this Congress, and these courts have spent the last few years making it harder to get health care in this

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an extra $50 off for strict scrutiny listeners. Support strict scrutiny and let Lisa know that we sent you for a good night's sleep after checkout. That's Lisa.com promo code strict. Now for the other decisions. So one decision from last Tuesday was Blanche vs. Lau. So this case concerns legal protections for lawful permanent residents and in the hierarchy of immigrants lawful permanent residents, green card holders are supposed to have the most rights, including the

right to lead the country and return to the country. Federal immigration law carefully restricts when lawful permanent residents are not allowed to return to the United States with their immigration status. It allows immigration officials to refuse to allow a lawful permanent resident to return to the United States that is to be denied admission to the United States with their legal status

“as a lawful permanent resident. If there is clear and convincing evidence, that the lawful”

permanent resident committed a crime of moral territory. And in this case, the Supreme Court said "Fuck laws" and decided that immigration officers can refuse to admit green card holders, even if the government doesn't have clear and convincing evidence that the green card holder committed a crime of moral territory, which kind of takes the whole, I don't know, lawful permanent and resident elements out of lawful permanent resident. The court made

federal immigration law more of a suggestion than a rule. And I vaguely recall how this court really hates it when previous courts had quote unquote "made laws" rather than interpreting them and how they railed about how only Congress can change the meaning of statutes and their terms. Yeah. All right. Let's turn to Pung versus Isabella County. This case involves the problem of

“tax foreclosures side note for you listeners. Later this summer, we have on deck for you a”

terrific conversation with the University of Southern California's professor Bernadette Attuahene about her recent book, "Plundered," which considers tax foreclosures in Detroit and is very much on point with this case. So please stay tuned for that. In any event, in most tax foreclosures homes are often sold below their fair market value in order to satisfy existing tax leans on the property and in this case, the plaintiff's home was foreclosed and auctioned to recover about $2,200

and unpaid property taxes. The wrinkle, though, was that the home was assessed at $194,000, but sold at auction for just $76,000. The owner, Pung, received the difference between the sale price and the amount of taxes, but he sued claiming that the state also owed him the difference between the assessed value and the sale price. Specifically, he argued that the failure to pay the difference amounted to an unconstitutional taking and violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition

on excessive fines. Predictably, in a six to three opinion, authored by Hulls, Justice Alito, the court foreclosed on Pung's argument by doing some history and tradition interleavened with

some personal responsibility mocking. Basically, the foreclosure method, Justice Alito Hull,

is consistent with the history and tradition of foreclosing on homes and Pung should have refinanced and paid his property taxes like a responsible homeowner would. As for the Eighth Amendment's excessive fines claim, well, history and tradition rules that out to. On to Lander versus Louisiana Department of Corrections, and this is a big one. So, you know, the Roberts Court has a huge Jones for religion and religious practice. Sure, do. You think you do, and yet that was not

on display, strangely, in this religious liberty case, leaving the strong impression that said Jones is only for white Christians and religions that they recognize. Yeah, that's fair. So, maybe we learned that. And we may also have learned that this Jones in general plays,

or maybe just in a case like this, plays second fiddle to the right-wing project of

clipping Congress's wings and attacking public benefits programs and the social safety net. Lander involves a Rosafarian prisoner whose dreadlocks were cut off by prison officials, in violation of his religious convictions and religious practices. It's worth noting that when he was transferred from one facility to another, he was afraid that he would have his locks cut, so he provided prison officials with a printed document that explained that they could

not cut his hair because free exercise. And what did they do? They threw that printed judicial opinion in the garbage and held him down and forcibly cut his hair, shaved his head. Because Kate, who cares about free exercise? Unless you're a trade wife or a trade dad.

is not a straight-up free exercise claim. Instead, the prisoner, Lander, sued the prison officials for damages under the religious land use and institutionalized persons act, or, also known as Rulupa. Rulupa was enacted to ensure that prisons and other state institutions protected the religious practices of those who are in their charge. And the statute was enacted under Congress's authority under the spending clause, and its terms apply to any local prison

that accepts federal funding. Those terms from the statute require state prisons to protect inmates' religious liberty and explicitly permits prisoners to sue for, quote-unquote, "appropriate relief when their rights under Rulupa have been violated." Yet, despite these very clear provisions, the prison officials that Mr. Lander sued argued that they could not be sued in their individual capacities under Rulupa. And the Supreme Court agreed. Again, because laws, at least spending

clause laws, those aren't real. They're just guidelines, not actual laws. They're more law-ish. So, in a decision authored by Neil Mild Gummy, Gorsuch, a 63-majority held that Rulupa itself is

basically a mild gummy and does not authorize lawsuits seeking damages from prison officials in their

individual capacity. The court bifurcated the idea of obligations on one hand from liability on the other and said, "Well, the spending clause can impose an obligation but no liability, unless they specifically consent." So, Justice Gorsuch explained, "Pedantically, quote, Congress's power to spend money does not include the power to regulate. Spending clause statues can bind only those who voluntarily and knowingly undertake obligations by agreement with the federal

government." Here, the individual prison officials didn't agree to be bound by our Lulupa's terms, so they can't be sued for violating them. Even though the court maintained, they are still subject to and bound by them. It's just... So, Justice Jackson issued a vigorous dissent here and

the sent-basically boiled down to this. This is entirely batshit crazy and effectively renders

all spending clause statutes as unenforceable against individual officers who are charged with carrying out the terms of the statute. And that is to say, that's a lot of statutes. In the last 30 years, as this court has foreclosed Congress's authority to pass legislation under the commerce clause and Section 5 of the 14th Amendment really narrowing those heads of congressional authority,

“it is the spending clause that's merged as a crucial means by which Congress can continue to”

enact legislation for at least could continue to enact legislation. This is not to say that Congress can't do that under the spending clause, but now it seems like whatever they do under the spending clause is really more legislation-ish, a suggestion, not necessarily binding law. I'm not even totally sure, so back to the immigration cases for a moment, like with the TPS case, I mean, an administration willing to completely defy the law is going to be hard for Congress

to respond to. But Congress could legislate and explicitly extend protections to individuals who are current TPS recipients, and they're legislated responses that are possible. It's not even totally clear to me what Congress is supposed to do here if it's acting under the spending clause that would produce a different result. I mean, maybe create some mechanism by which like individual state and local prison officials, like consent to the terms of federal

“monies, but I honestly don't even know how that would work, and the kind of breadth of this opinion,”

and also like it's foreclosing of kind of democratic avenues for response, it's like really pretty stunning. Okay, on that note, on to the next case, Exxon Mobile Corp versus Corp Racion C-Mex. Let me get a little bit of background before we're delving into what's an issue in this case. So, after the Cuban Revolution, Castro's government seized a lot of property, including property owned by American businesses. Then in the mid 1990s, to afford what this statute called

victims of quote Castro's wrongful seizures, a quote judicial remedy in the courts of the United States, Congress passed a law, the Helmsburton Act, which created a private right of action for US nationals, including US corporations, whose property had been unlawfully confiscated by the Cuban government. Well, you might be thinking, and light of the conversation we just wrapped, didn't our Lupa also create a private right of action for prisoners whose religious liberty was

violated. Well, you'd be right, but one critical difference, I mean, there are others, but this

“is one important one is that prisoners aren't real companies. When the party's seeking to enforce”

a right is a wealthy US corporation, the analysis and the outcome is of course different. Anyway, said wealthy corporation, Exxon brought this suit began C-Mex, a company that is controlled in part by the Cuban government. Again, this case is kind of a right-wing fever dream in some ways. It involves oil corporations and a communist country that America has determined to starve into supplication. But, notably, it wasn't all smooth sailing for Exxon and enforcing its judicial

what is known as foreign sovereign immunity, which means that foreign sovereigns, like Cuba,

are presumptively immune from suits in United States courts. The principle of foreign sovereign immunity is codified in the foreign sovereign immunity act, which says that foreign sovereigns can't be sued in the United States courts unless one of the acts statutory exceptions is satisfied. Accordingly, the question for the court here is whether the homes burden act, abrogates foreign sovereign immunity, or whether plaintiffs like Exxon satisfy one of those

statutory exceptions in the foreign sovereign immunity act that allows it to abrogate foreign sovereign immunity. Here, in a 63 opinion authored by Coach Kavanaugh, the court held that the Helms Burton Act abrogates the Cuban government's sovereign immunity, meaning that plaintiffs who rely on the Helms Burton act to sue the Cuban government, or its instrumentalities, are not required to satisfy an exception to before-in-sauven immunity act as Coach Kavanaugh wrote, quote, "stacking an FSA requirement

on top of the Helms Burton Act with thwart congress's design and directly contravening the president's foreign policy judgments," and quote, "sounds like textualism to me."

A few things to note about this decision, first for itself identified textualist Brett Kavanaugh

had to engage in some pretty tortured statutory interpretation to arrive at this outcome, because, in conveniently, the Helms Burton Act doesn't say that it abrogates sovereign immunity. Obviously, the lack of an explicit text, abrogating Cuban sovereign immunity, was not going to pose an obstacle to this court having a good time, so TLDR, Exxon wins Cuba loses it's 63. This is a ruling that will likely accrue to the benefit of Marco Rubio,

and any oil companies who want to sue Cuba for appropriating and expropriating the oil. It seems that foreign sovereign immunity, like story to sizes, is also for suckers."

“I just want to chime in here to say that I think this decision benefits more than just Exxon”

and Marco Rubio, and I think Coach K tips his hand a bit when he says that requiring compliance with the FSA would quote directly contravene the president's foreign policy judgments. It seems to me that Coach Kavanaugh is trying hard to make Curtis Wright happen again, and Curtis Wright versus United States is a 1936 decision written by Justice George Sutherland. That is widely credited with advancing the view that the president enjoys wide, even plenary

authority in the conduct of foreign affairs, and although the decision hasn't been entirely discredited, many commentators have rightly noted that it is somehow a historical in its account of how the president came to be the primary mover in the field of foreign affairs, and that it substantially discounts Congress's own congressional power in the arena of foreign affairs.

And can we say Chief Justice Roberts in his Ivitowski opinion basically says that, so it's not

even just like, once upon a time, Roberts kind of agreed that Curtis Wright should not be overred in exactly the way it's, you're, you're, you're suggesting Kavanaugh seems eager to do,

“sorry to jump in this. No, no, no, no, that's exactly right. I think so you should read this”

ex-on opinion in tandem with Kavanaugh's 63-page dissent in the tariffs case where he seems to be aggrandizing the president's authority in foreign affairs, policy making, and shrinking the judiciary's ability to review and check that authority. So it's not even that Curtis Wright limits the authority that Congress might have. Now, Kavanaugh is also trying to limit the authority that the courts might have to check the president in this area, and he's basically

advocating for the executive to be a monarch in foreign affairs. At a time when, I think it's increasingly difficult to draw the boundary between what is domestic and what is foreign affairs. And the tariffs case are a perfect example of that, like the majority in the tariffs case, treat the question of the tariffs as though they are a domestic affairs question and they apply the major questions doctrine, but Kavanaugh in dissent talks about this as a foreign policy kind of

“question. And you know, I think they're both right. It is a foreign policy question that obviously”

has domestic implications and a domestic question that has foreign policy implications because we live and increasingly globalized economy and society where foreign affairs and domestic affairs are often inextricably intertwined. And I just think this is a really dangerous take and he's making it happen. Totally. We also got the decision in Cisco systems versus Doe, which considered corporate liability for human rights abuses. Here, the plaintiffs following Gong practitioners

alleged that the Chinese government persecuted them for their religious beliefs and that Cisco enabled the persecution by developing surveillance technology that the Chinese government used to identify and apprehend them. At issues, whether the plaintiffs could bring lawsuits against Cisco to hold the company liable under the alien tort statute. There is also a secondary question as to whether two of Cisco's executives could be liable under the torture victim protection act.

to file suit for violations of international norms under the alien tort statute. The court reason that Congress rather than courts is in the best position to weigh the implications and policy tradeoffs of creating liability under the statute. The TLDR is at this court, won't allow plaintiffs to sue for human rights abuses that in recent years have come to be understood as violations of international law. The ATS, like spending clause statutes and some parts of

federal immigration law, is evidently more of a vibe than hard law. And we should say this was not

the first time the court considered this issue of private causes of action under these statutes

and specifically the ATS. For years, then Chief Justice Rankwist and Justice Thomas and Scalia had a B in their collective bonnet about this question. So they had a lot of kind of righteous indignation over court created causes of action, but one thing they did not have was a majority. So back in 2004, in a case called Sosa, a majority of the court actually held the courts could recognize international law violations under the ATS. But when you have six, they let you do what

you want, no matter what five justices said previously. So starting to slice this, respect for precedent and international human rights list as long all for suckers. So Kate and I did a same day rapid reaction video on YouTube when Low, Lander, Sisco, and Exxon came down, not gonna repeat everything here, including the profanities I directed at Neil Gorsuch over Landor. But you can check it out if you'd like. Did however want to underscore

“or just highlight a few themes that emerge from that set of cases in particular?”

One is that it's pretty good to be a corporation. We are in the re-gilded age. Think about the combined effect of these decisions. Corporations can sue foreign governments or at least Cuba and Cuban government entities for expropriation of oil, but corporations can't be sued for assisting foreign governments in human rights abuses. Beneficiaries of public benefits programs and victims of human rights abuses can't sue because some statutes don't say explicitly they have

a cause of action, but corporations can sue a foreign government, Cuba under a statute that says nothing about foreign sovereign immunity, kind of like how Trump can't be sued, but can sue

media companies, pollsters, and his own IRS. This is as always known as the rule of law. And these

decisions also render legal protections for the less powerful, unenforceable, basically, basically parchment promises for victims of human rights abuses, lawful permanent residents, and the incarcerated. These cases are also in attack on the government's capacity just to do government and specifically Congress's ability to legislate. When Congress exercises its spending power and allocates funds to government entities, it often makes

receipt of those funds contingent on compliance with other laws or certain laws or other conditions. And now the court is saying that those conditions, unspending can only be enforced against individual

“state officers if they first consented to be bound by those conditions, spoiler alert, who would do that?”

In a similar vein, when Congress and Act statutes like those creating protections for

particular groups, like lawful permanent residents, the court is basically stepping in and saying that

those protections aren't binding when they're being executed at the border. It's kind of a big giant fuck you to Congress, and its ability to create protections for certain groups and, you know, side note question, wasn't there a book, Leah, that you recommended, that argued that all of the courts BS was really just a secret plot to empower Congress to step up. I didn't read it because I don't read science books. Is that a book I recommended or was it an op-ed that maybe is kind of recited

in some form in a book, maybe both and, but I'm just waiting for that, I don't know, punch line or moment when the court finally reveals itself, and does that, oh yeah, Congress gets to be empowered final act. I've been a private this this weekly, I'm sure it's going to happen today, or

“I think it's yeah, it's coming. It's coming, cannot wait. I can feel it. The Apotheosis of Congress”

is imminent, the rapture. Okay, so bottom line from that group of cases, this is a six-three court, it will decide, and it's infinite wisdom, benevolence, discretion, when it wants to be a full blown, six-three, right-wing, ideologically captured court, occasionally will deviate from that. Apparently, the justice is decided to lean fully into it on Tuesday, June 23rd, when that group of opinions was released, and I think doubled down in many ways on Thursday the 25th. But across

last week, they really seemed to want to fulfill some long running goals of the right-wing legal movement, and they did, basically all the Republican appointees got on board with Justice Thomas's, I would go further, mantra, and some kind of real right-wing legal movement maxing of the law

It was an unusual case in which the court displayed real empathy for the environmental protection

“agency, but only because doing so allowed the court to rule for a huge corporation, one for which”

Justice Thomas worked from 1977 to 1979, while also sticking it to cancer victims, not Justice Thomas, but the court. In any event, the case concerned a federal law, Fifra, the federal insecticide, fungicide, and rotenticide act, I love seeing that, which authorizes the EPA to regulate the sale, use distribution and labeling of pesticides. The statute contains a uniformity requirement that prohibits states from imposing any requirement for product labeling that differs from the requirements

that are imposed by the federal government. For decades, there has been debate and litigation over the safety of glyphosite, a very popular herbicide that is the main active ingredient in

Monsanto's round-up weed killer. Concerns about safety accelerated in 2015 when an arm of the

World Health Organization issued a report classifying the herbicide as probably a carcinogenic to humans.

“The report led to tens of thousands of lawsuits at the state level against Monsanto over the labeling”

round-up products, and specifically the company's failure to warn about the potential harm. Monsanto argues that Fifra, this federal law, pre-empts state-level failure to warn claims. It also argues that if these lawsuits are not preempted by Fifra, the future of the domestic agricultural industry is imperiled. So the justices were obviously great friends of the American farmer, or more accurately of big ag. Took this case, and on Thursday issued a seven-two opinion

authored by Coach Cavanaugh, holding the Fifra expressly preamps these state-level failure to warn claims, and people who argue that they have had or have cancer because of their exposure to round-up products and Monsanto's failure to warn of the potential harms cannot sue in state court. As Coach Cavanaugh explains in this opinion, the EPA undertakes an extensive review of pesticides and the proposed labeling and

determines whether the proposed label includes all of the warnings necessary and adequate to protect human health and the environment. Once the pesticide is registered, the company is required to use the approved label until it receives EPA approval for a labeling change or the EPA orders a change to the label, and since the EPA here has consistently studied classified and has not determined it to be a cancer risk and has not required Monsanto to change its label,

Monsanto is therefore under no obligation to provide additional warnings and any state-level claims regarding failure to warn are expressly preempted by the statute, because they would effectively violate the statute's uniformity requirement. Now, it wouldn't be an episode of strict scrutiny if we didn't feature our evergreen segment. We need to talk about Justice Thomas. In our live show in New York, we mentioned that I mentioned that Justice Thomas might be judging for a commerce

clause freakoff because he's been going through a dry spell. Seems he really has a hankering for some commerce clause kink because in a concurrence in Monsanto, which per usual, no one joined, Justice Thomas identified what he called Fifra's quote underlying constitutional informities. Chief among them was that Fifra quote likely exceeds Congress's authority under the commerce clause, because why agriculture and manufacturing are entirely separate from commerce? I just want to note

here that this is exactly the kind of formalistic reasoning and argument that the gilded age court used to invalidate parts of the Sherman Act and other economic regulations that were enacted under the commerce clause in the late 19th and early 20th century. Literally, there are no new ideas at all. It's just make the lawcna court sure for them. It's great again, like entirely. He is followed with that project. Yes. So it actually also those seems as though Justice Thomas may not

just be down for commerce clause kink but also non-delegation doctrine kink because he argues that Fifra also quote raises questions about commerce's ability to delegate core legislative power to the EBA. Once again, make lockna era jurisprudence great again. He is very concerned that Fifra and the modern administrative state presents important separation of power's questions, which is to say, all in good time young Jedi's, we will get to all of this and bring down this whole government

thing in the process. But then finally reveal that we are empowering Congress!

Genuine question, why didn't Neil Gorsuch join parts of this opinion? This is part of his villain

“origin story. I think it's you can't protect big ag without something of a shell of an EPA that”

has some delegated authority. So you may want to be able to keep it around just for these moments. Thomas just cried it like has a courage of his conviction. He's like, "All right, I will be okay to throw monsanto to the wolves and I don't know if they all are." Well, is he actually throwing

pass this law that preempts these state-level claims, then yeah, I mean, I think the bit the kind

of like the core liability. Yeah, okay. Yeah, they're cross-presured, but yeah. But for him, I do think the kind of deconstructing all of it is the major preference that he's willing to subordinate

“all minor preferences to. You know who I think really love this decision? So I mean, farmer Scott”

Bessant. That's one for him, this one's for him. All right. Finally, the court also issued a for curiam opinion in a case that was not argued. This was McCarthy versus Hernandez. This was a GVR grant, fake hate, and remand in a case that involved the individual who'd been convicted of the murder of six-year-old Etan Patts, who disappeared on his way to school in New York City in 1979. Many years later, Hernandez confessed to the murder, but only after hours of police

interrogation without a Miranda warning. He was ultimately convicted by a jury, but the second circuit later granted his habeas petition on the ground, the jury had been incorrectly instructed about the confession and the court ordered a new trial. The Supreme Court here said that the

second circuit was wrong, since they think habeas should basically never be granted and they re-instated

“the conviction. Strix Newton is brought to you by Sloberne. Sloberne, the award-winning narrative”

series from Slate, is back with a new season, and it feels like one that was literally manifested by the ladies of Strix scrutiny. Becoming Justice Gorsuch. That's right. In this season, host and Slate executive producer Susan Matthews traces Neil Gorsuch's formative years from his mother's rocky tenure in the Reagan administration to his coming of age as a young conservative in the 1980s. She'll lead you through his legal philosophies and his controversial

nomination to a stolen seat on the high court, and she'll shed light on a man who many Americans can't even identify in a lineup, but who has nonetheless played a major role in ending affirmative action, limiting abortion access, and upending voting rights. Featured in this season are friends of our podcast, Dalia Lithwick, and Mark Joseph Stern, the host of Amicus, Slate's podcast about

“the courts. They break down how Gorsuch fits into the current court where he's going next and why,”

he never took his job on the court's cafeteria committee very seriously. As you all know,

the Supreme Court's end of term is upon us, and this is the perfect podcast to learn why Justice Gorsuch is such an unpredictable vote, and to round out your understanding of this Supreme Court. Listen to the entire season of Slopeurne, becoming Justice Gorsuch now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. All right, we are going to briefly take through some legal news before we go. The first one involves voting roles. Okay, so listeners, as we've discussed,

the president is on one about the upcoming midterm elections. It is almost like he's worried that his party might lose control of Congress, and he might be impeached again. There might be oversight who knows. All of this may explain why he seems determined to fuck around with the upcoming elections. There is obviously the state of mid-cycle redistricting that he requested and largely received thanks to Texas and the Supreme Court, but the administration is not done there because

they've also been demanding that states turn over voter roles to the federal government so that the feds ostensibly can compile some kind of nationwide voter registration database to ensure the integrity of future elections. Obviously, that is just the claim. We're not suggesting that is the true motivation, and we also can't help but wonder whether anyone has told them that the Constitution commits election administration to the states. So those requests were made and the federal government

has now sued around 30 states to compel them to turn over voter roles, which often contains sensitive voter information. And last week, a Trump appointed federal judge in Maryland dismissed a DOJ lawsuit against Maryland, seeking access to that state's voter records. In that opinion, the court wrote that its decision accords with "every court to have addressed this issue in concluding that the unredacted voter registration filed is "not a record or paper that the state must

produce to the United States." Just to be clear, that district court dismissal brings the DOJ to a zero-to-nine record in lawsuits in which they have tried to compel the states to turn over this kind of data, which includes dates of birth, addresses, driver's licensees, numbers, and partial social security numbers. So very sensitive information that I guess could be used to verify eligibility to vote, but also could be used to do other things like maybe

round-up people you think shouldn't be in this country. I don't know. Just riffing here. Spitballing. So a part of this streak was that on Wednesday, a panel of the six-circuit rejected DOJ's efforts to force Michigan to turn over its voter roles, including sensitive voter

up in in that. Last Monday, in a different lawsuit, a federal judge in the district of the

“district of Columbia ruled that the DHS program known as SAVE, which aims to verify citizenship”

and eligibility for voting, violated federal privacy laws and was wrongly identifying eligible voters as non-citizens, and she ruled that the system could no longer be used. So despite this unbroken losing streak, the administration continues to pursue its efforts to get this kind of data. According to reporting from multiple outlets, the U.S. Postal Service has been instructed not to deliver mail-in ballots in states that refuse to provide this voter information to the federal

government. And if that stands, it will have obvious implications in states like Oregon where mailed ballots are the default way to vote. Some other related voting news, some of you may have heard that in a rare case of bipartisanship, both houses of Congress managed to pass an affordable housing bill. This is likely because soaring housing costs and the increasing inaccessibility of home

“ownership is a major problem for legislators on both sides of the aisle, but is perhaps a particular”

problem for the GOP, which in 2024, campaigned on an affordability platform. While folks, again, sometimes it be your own people. Just hours before the public signing ceremony was to take place at the White House, the president announced via a truth social where else that he would not be signing, the affordable housing bill into law. Unless the Senate moved to enact the SAVE Act, which is the voter ID bill that experts argue will likely result in the disenfranchisement of millions of

eligible voters, including those Americans who are not in possession of their birth certificate, or do not have a passport, as well as married women whose married names are not reflected on their identity documents. So several of you have written in to ask what happens if the president refuses to sign a bill into law. The Constitution provides a few avenues. One is that if the

“president ignores the bill for 10 days, excluding Sundays while Congress is actively in session,”

then the bill will automatically become law even without the president's signature.

A second option is a formal presidential veto, which is the president returns the bill to Congress

with the statement of objections within 10 days. Congress can either override the veto if both the House and the Senate vote to pass the bill again with the Supermajority. If the override succeeds, the bill becomes law if not it fails. This typically is a procedure if the president has substantive objections to the bill, which doesn't really seem to be the case here. Here the president just seems to be holding affordable housing hostage to disenfranchising the electorate. And I guess that brings

us to the third option, which is the pocket veto. So if before the 10-day period expires, Congress adjourns and the president takes no action, then the bill dies. And that can't be overwritten by Congress via the Supermajority. So that option puts the ball in the hands of the party and control

of Congress to call for an adjournment to facilitate the president's tantrum. This is not the first time

the president has held legislation hostage to his whims earlier this year. The president derailed a bipartisan deal on intelligence and surveillance legislation while pressing lawmakers to adopt that controversial voting bill known as the SAVE Act. Now he's using a housing package that many lawmakers expected to be signed into law today as a new point of leverage. The art of the deal. The art of the steel. In addition, there are other things going on in the executive

branch that we should make note of. The Office of Legal Council recently released an opinion detailing its take on obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act as interpreted by the Supreme Court's 1999 decision in Olmsted versus Zering. Olmsted is a hugely significant case for disability rights because it restricts the unnecessary institutionalization of those with disabilities. Olmsted held that, quote, "unjustified institutional isolation of

persons with disabilities is a form of discrimination that is prohibited under Title II of the ADA." And the prohibition on unjustified institutionalization you would think would require entities to move toward the institutionalization and the integration of individuals who are living with disabilities. But the executive branch has said you would be wrong to think that. The Trump DOJ seems to want institutionalized more people that is to take them out of homes and communities

where they can receive at home care and put them into institutions. So it is basically trying to do

to umstead what segregationists did with Brown. Say that while the decisions might prohibit discrimination, they don't actually require integration. Think about that for one second. Olmsted's opinion says

where you might have heard similar logic before." Well, you know what Kate? All Congress has to do

“as past a lot making clear that when they enacted the ADA, they meant to emphasize integration.”

I know Congress is definitely going to do that. Well, Congress is obviously going to do that and then the court will surely give it full expression. This is a court that's about empowering Congress. That's real. Yep. Okay. So the opinion right unsurprisingly raises significant concerns, given that it effectively says people with disabilities don't have a right to live in their communities. It is a recipe for institutionalization of persons with disabilities when states and the federal

government refuse to offer services and support and accommodations. And who do you think might have had a hand in pushing for this legal slash policy change? P. We German that would be correct. So Bloomberg reports that quote, White House adviser Stephen Miller was a driving force behind

“the Justice Department's recent memo authorizing states to institutionalize people with disabilities”

rather than fund community-based care. Absolute goals. There is no bright note to end the substantive portion of the show on. It is bleak. It's pretty bleak. It's a menace. And we have eight more cases for them to hand down this week. Okay. Should we do favorite things? Yes. I'll start. I went to an MS now, America 250 event in Philadelphia. And I met a number of stricties there. It was really great to see you all. Also, really great to be in community there.

One of the speakers Sheryl and I full noted front of the pod. Absolutely fantastic. Mention that, you know, it's really good to be in community with people who support the same things that you support. Not to be in an echo chamber necessarily, but in these moments where things look bleak, we really need each other. And this was an enormous auditorium, a beautiful opera house literally filled with people who cheered every time a photo of Barack Obama

was displayed. And, you know, I didn't realize how much I needed that, but I kind of did need that.

My second favorite thing, this week comes from Jordan Thomas, aka Jordan, the intern. Our Jordan

was invited to deliver the commencement address at his alma mater, the University High School in New York, New Jersey. And he delivered a banger of an address to those graduates in the class of 2026. It was inspiring, it was sweet, it was thoughtful, classic Jordan. And he urged all of these students to really engage with this whole question of the American Experiment and Government. And Jordan is not just brilliant and wonderful and a great intern.

He's incredibly generous. He went and bought each of these graduates, a copy of my book, the Constitution, and he gave one to each of them. So thank you for supporting the Constitution, my book, Jordan. And thank you for being such an inspiring figure to these young people. I know they got so much out of this graduation speech. And once again, we're just really lucky to have Jordan. I don't know how we got so lucky. I don't know. Turin is the best. Okay, so my favorite things

are kind of social media stuff. One is Kate Uran, Hassan Manage doesn't know. For people who might

not realize, I run the podcast social media accounts. So basically, anytime there's a collab request

and whatnot, I get to see them. I just Michael did the YouTube collab request. Yes, that's true.

“I think that's true. Lea does almost everything. Yes. Sorry. I'm going to give you a heads up about”

all those work. No, no, no, no. I enjoy receiving them, but yeah, I had fun with those. And then second is another thing on social media, which is J.D. Evans just let us whole fucking ass. Hang out, making explicit something. We have kind of joked about before, was implicit, but you can hear him here. I'm actually fascinated by Nixon as a character in history. I think that his historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, but I think deservedly so. As I joked with Robert

backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy. And by the way, if you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it's not all that different from what the same groups

of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.

There is a parallel. I also just at a personal level, you know, a young senator, vice president,

yeah, I've always liked, I've always liked Richard Nixon. He's just straight up saying they want to

make Tricky Dick great again. Yes. Which means I really thought you're going to talk about the knee slap heard around the world. Oh, okay. So for people who didn't hear the knee slap, so

“oh, go on. Second lady, Ushavans, I learned this week. Why does everybody need a goddamn podcast?”

So she apparently has a podcast where she like has people read books to kids? Okay, that's all she does. The people with a podcast ask you why the podcast is everyone on you to podcast? No, everybody has a podcast. One, four, seven years. Or longer, they're interested. I mean, look, fine. You're welcome to say the same thing about us, but I really do think that the second, I'm not quite sure what value. The second lady is reading books to people podcast is adding,

but I guess she has guests. I mean, I learned about the podcast because she had her husband on,

and anyway, so wait, tell the news, that was just the context, Melissa. Now, what was the news lab? She introduces him as her guest, and I think in what is supposed to be a moment of conjugal familiarity, he reaches over to say hello to where by slapping her on the knee and so embarrassed. I mean, if my husband greeted me like this in front of people, he would be a

“husband. Not a husband. Whatever the opposite of chemistry is, that's what appeared on display in”

that knee slot. It was really visible to all of this. I mean, who knows? Like the only people know would happen in a marriage or the two people in it, but I was like, this is a visual medium. Jim might want to make it look a little more convincing. Yes. Anyway, but after I became aware, after the knee slap, it sort of turned me on to the existence of this podcast. I saw somebody put together a bunch of clips of her opening remarks

for each of the five or six or seven episodes, I guess. And I'm not sure she's a natural of the medium. It's not quite working, not just in the knee slap exchange, but kind of more broadly. But okay, so it's not really one thing. And there was definitely, I definitely meant it's somewhat

self-aware to the not everyone needs a podcast. But yes, anyway, obviously, second lady. There's no

scarcity. Everyone is welcome to join the podcasting world in any event. Okay, last favorite thing, busy end of terms, so I haven't like been really reading fiction or anything like that, but I did want to just mention a district court opinion that I don't think we've had a chance to mention yet on the pod, which is one by the chief judge, the district of Minnesota, judge Shiltz, quashing the subpoenas, the federal government issue, to state and local officials,

including Governor Tim Waltz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and a bunch of other Minnesota officials. This order was so unsparing and so blistering. I just want to quote a couple of lines from it. The dominant purpose of the challenge subpoenas is to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration law, to harass and retaliate against them for feeling to do so. The judge calls it a blatantly unlawful and unethical use

of the grand jury process. And it just was really satisfying to see yet another district court, like Pantheon administration, it's ass. And in the kind of midst of the Supreme Court doing everything, it can to shore up the administration. It's just like an important reminder, the district courts remain valuable work against the worst accesses and lawlessness. And also, unless you're as note, I will say, I've really loved how often the word "quashal," like I'm engaging in

"quashal," I guess. I don't even really know how to use it properly, but when district courts quash things, the thing they are issuing, I guess, is "quashal," and so I've heard that more

“than ever before in just the last few months. So can I add a quashal to the things?”

We should be in the quashal section. Okay, the southern district of New York's quashal of the Justice Department's effort to seek or obtain invasive patient information about transminers who receive gender affirming medical care in New York City in the bench ruling the judge indicated that the request shocked the conscience. And so, yeah, that's in my favorites. All right, well, that was our effort at ending on a high note. We tried.

All right, I guess we will see and talk to all of you probably a bunch of times the next days, so once again, I promise to be in a better mood, but no promise isn't going to do those, yeah. Stricts scrutiny is a crooked media production, our show is produced by Malay Raoul and Michael Boltzmann. Jordan Pamis is our intern. Our team include Matt Degrope, Ben Hethko, Joe Hannah case, Kenny Mothett, Eric Shoot, and our music is by Eddie Cooper. Our production staff is probably

unionized with the writer's guild of America East.