Advisory Opinions - Not in Oklahoma Anymore

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

The Supreme Court wrapped up its term today with an opinion on what counts as American Indian tribal lands and two related cases about the president’s financial records. In Gorsuch’s majority opinion in McGirt v. Oklahoma, the court found that Congress’ 19th century promise to give large swaths of Eastern Oklahoma to the Muscogee (Creek) tribe still stands. This means roughly half of Oklahoma—and most of Tulsa—is now an Indian reservation, and that tribal members are not subject to Oklahoma criminal law when they are on tribal lands. SCOTUS also released blockbuster opinions about whether the president was required to turn over his financial records to Congress and the New York County district attorney’s grand jury. But as Sarah and David point out, most of the news headlines are misinterpreting the court’s decision. The Court sent both cases back to the district court for further arguments, which means Trump won’t be turning over his financial records anytime soon—if he ever does. Show Notes: -The Supreme Court's Oklahoma ruling, McGirt v. Oklahoma, and its two rulings on the president's financial records, Trump v. Mazars and Trump v. Vance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Sarah. But it felt like it. I just read three opinions in an hour and a half and it was like I'm out of breath. Three hefty opinions in an hour and a half. That was a workout. Yeah. No kidding. OK, so it's kind of a bittersweet feeling, though, I have to say, because this is the end of one of the most momentous Supreme Court terms in a long time. Agreed. I don't think we'll be emergency potting unless maybe something spicy happens tomorrow. Yeah. But we'll see. But yeah, today was a big day.

We're going to get into all of it. And because there were multiple shout outs in the Supreme Court opinions today to Hamilton and Burr, we're going to guess what? And Skyler. Phillip Skyler's in there. Skyler's in there. I must have just glossed over that. We're going to get into Hamilton musical. We both watched it. I've seen it live twice. Once with the original cast? Flex. Flex. Yeah, exactly.

But first, we're going to talk about three really interesting Supreme Court cases. I'm going to say two momentous, one meh. one meh um the first but we're going we're not going to get just a tease sort of like how um in old radio shows you would always sort of save like the the thing that the audience wanted to hear the most for the last because uh you wanted everyone to stay and listen you came for Trump's subpoena analysis, but you're first getting Indian reservation analysis. And what is actually a super fascinating case, Sarah and I might disagree a little bit on the subpoena cases, are we not in the assertion that the case of McGirt versus Oklahoma is actually the most fascinating case of the day? Well, I mentioned this yesterday that I didn't include McGirt in my top 10 because it was only interesting if it turned out one way. Right.

But as we started to get the bingo narrowed down, and I was like losing sleep last night that I had made the prediction that Gorsuch would write McGirt and Roberts would write both finance cases because, you know, it's one of those things that if you're wrong, you're just like so obviously wrong.

You can't spin that. You're just bad at your job. You nailed it. I nailed that. But once I said that, and once it became clear to me that I really believed Gorsuch was writing McGirt, I thought, well, if Gorsuch is writing McGirt, Gorsuch is actually pretty sympathetic to the case that would make it turn out to be kind of crazy, which is that half of Oklahoma turns out not to be Oklahoma. And I got a text from one of my good friends whose parents live in Tulsa. And it just said, do my parents no longer live in Oklahoma?

And I said, yep. Yeah, there's about like a, what is it? About 62 thirds of Tulsa is now a Creek Reservation or turns out has been a Creek reservation since the beginning. And a lot of it's currently living citizens did not know it. That's right. So in short, this was actually a criminal case,

which is important because while it is found that this is a Creek reservation, they don't touch any of the implications, the big implications that come from that. This is one guy's one criminal case where he basically said the state couldn't prosecute him because he committed the crime. He wasn't Native American, a member of the tribe who committed the crime on an Indian reservation, which would put him outside the jurisdiction of the state, would put him inside the jurisdiction of the feds, by the way, but that's beside the point, I suppose. And so the

Creek Indian nation intervened because obviously they were like, oh, wait, I'm sorry. Are you saying we now have half of Oklahoma? We'd like to have some say in this. They agreed that they owned half of Oklahoma. Half of Oklahoma? Yes, please. Yeah. So it was the state of Oklahoma versus this one criminal defendant who nobody wanted to defend it. I mean, his crime was not, it wasn't, he's not the good guy here. And then the Creek nation who completely removes themselves from defending Mr. McGirt and is like, but this is our land. And that's how this all starts. And the punchline is that Gorsuch runs through trail of tears to the present and all of the messiness involved in the treaties that the United States and the United States Congress specifically has signed with various tribes, but specifically the Creek tribe.

And in the end is like, look, this is messy and Congress may have intended to break their promise, but they failed to do so legally. Over time, to read from this, the federal government promised the Creek a reservation in perpetuity. Over time, Congress has diminished that reservation. It is sometimes restricted and other times expanded the tribe's authority, but Congress has never withdrawn the promised reservation. As a result, many of the arguments before us today follow a sadly familiar pattern. Yes, promises were made, but the price of keeping them had just become too great. So now we should just cast a blind eye. We reject that thinking. If Congress wishes to withdraw its promise, it must say so. Unlawful acts performed long enough and with sufficient

vigor are never enough to amend the law. Love that line. I know. I think that line. I know. I think that line will get quoted quite frequently in history. It's a good paragraph, David. It's a phenomenal paragraph. Great minds think alike, Sarah. If you weren't going to read that paragraph, I. It's a phenomenal paragraph. Great minds think alike, Sarah. If you weren't going to read that paragraph, I was going to read that paragraph.

Look, it began with a great line. The Trail of Tears ended with a promise. And essentially what Gorsuch is saying is, look, you promised Congress a Creek Reservation here. You promised it. You never revoked the promise. Therefore, a Creek reservation exists here. And if that's complicated, too bad, so sad. It's on you, Congress. Now, what that does not mean, and I'm going to give a, I should have, we should have like a sound, Caleb, for a malpractice warning.

So right before we launched into the self-defense, the law of self-defense, which is so variable across 50 states, we said, okay, hold on. Do not rely upon what you hear in this podcast before shooting somebody. Whatever the sound is, here is the sound of the malpractice warning. I am not an expert in the extremely complicated field. I mean, extremely complicated field of American Indian law, tribal law, tribal jurisdiction, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm sure somebody listening to this podcast is. So trigger warning to you who is listening to this podcast, who knows everything about it.

who knows everything about it. But this doesn't mean that, for example, two-thirds of the city of Tulsa doesn't have any jurisdiction anymore to prosecute state crimes. They can't prosecute Native Americans on the Creek Reservation. It also doesn't mean that, for instance, my friend's parents don't own their home. Right, exactly. It's not like there was a separate nation created, sovereign nation that's going to now join the UN and form its own military. It just means that there is a reservation and that has profound implications. To use a clunky metaphor that also,

for those who are experts in this, will hate, basically what this says is there's another state there. And so, for instance, you do owe your land, regardless of whether it turns out the border between Texas and Oklahoma might be a little different than we thought it was. They don't take your house away because you now live in Texas. Similarly, that's what happened here. It affects criminal law, though, for instance,

whether you live in Texas or Oklahoma. And so if you committed your crime, and then it turns out you committed it in Texas and not Oklahoma, we have to apply Texas law to that crime. That's a little bit of how this goes, but what's weird is that it only applies to tribal members on tribal land and that state law will still apply to non-tribal members, which is about 85% of the land that the Creek Nation just found out that they still own. So I see your Gorsuch paragraph, and I will now raise you a Roberts,

most of a Roberts paragraph in- In dissent. In dissent. This is, so Gorsuch is the voice of, Gorsuch, I take the, Gorsuch is sort of the magisterial voice of the law. And he is saying, here is what the law says, and you need to deal with the consequences, you political branches of government need to deal with the consequences of that law. Roberts is the voice of the political consequences of that law. And here's how he

laid it out, which I think was pretty vivid. Today, the court holds that Oklahoma lacked jurisdiction to prosecute McGirt on the improbable ground that, unbeknownst to anyone for the past century, a huge swath of Oklahoma is actually a Creek Indian reservation on which the state may not prosecute serious crimes committed by Indians like McGirt. Not only does the court discover a Creek reservation that spans 3 million acres and includes most of the city of Tulsa, but the court's reasoning portends that there are four more such reservations in Oklahoma. The rediscovered reservations encompass the entire eastern half of the state, 19 million acres that are home to 1.8 million people,

only 10 to 15% of whom are Indians. That's what happened here. I mean, I think Roberts is quite accurate to say, okay, what happened here was big. It's true. I think we've yet to see how big it is. Again, because it's more like a state line in that sense.

I will say that some of Roberts' reasoning was pretty persuasive that even the Creeks didn't think this was still reservation land. So it does get messy. And even reading the Gorsuch opinion, he has to explain away a lot of what happens in the early 1900s.

I think that the 19th century stuff actually is pretty clear. For instance, I don't think that a treaty with the Confederacy negates the reservation entirely when there's then in 1866 another law passed by Congress dealing with this that clearly overrides, you know, undoes any harm that would have been done by the treaty with the Confederacy, etc. stuff that we don't need to get into on this podcast but it's all to say this was not actually some super easy opinion where it's so obvious that the creeks still own this land or else of course uh it wouldn't have been unnoticed for a hundred years right right no this was not if if this was easy easy simple simple and all that the and the only concern were the consequences of the law and not the law itself

um it would be 907281 whatever uh it it was a long complicated history and and as you said we we don't need to get into it i consider myself reading both of them i consider myself persuaded by gorsuch and it's an interesting alignment It's Gorsuch with the Democratic nominated for, and Roberts holding down the fort with Alito, Kavanaugh, and Thomas. So we have seen interesting alignments in the court this term. It has not been a festival of 5-4. It is a 5-4 with the conventional five republican nominees for democratic nominees there's been a lot of six interesting six three seven two here an unconventional five four uh now here's the question though did the trump rally take place on the creek reservation i have no idea okay that's a good question.

Maybe a reader or listener can tell us if the Trump rally took place on the Creek Reservation and whether if there's any interesting liabilities that attach related to tribal governance. We'll see how many Oklahoma listeners we have. That's what's about to happen. That's exactly what's about to happen. Before we move to the finance cases, since we're going in order of things our listeners won't find interesting. Yes. Yesterday, when we were talking about Little Sisters of the Poor, I mentioned that Thomas had this line where he basically said, hint, hint, nobody brought non-delegation doctrine up. And I didn't really explain what that meant.

I'm going to take 30 seconds to explain that one. So the point was in the Affordable Care Act, Congress had just told the HRSA to, you know, figure out what preventative care is for women. And HRSA then creates the contraceptive mandate. Thomas's point was, you never raised the problem of can Congress delegate that much authority to an administrative agency? And that's called the non-delegation doctrine. And what that means is it's a principle, an administrative law, that Congress can't delegate legislative powers to the executive branch. And it's had a tortured history, I think is the best way to describe it. You sort of have these cases way back in the day, in the 20s and early 30s,

Schechter Poultry being sort of the famous one, and then we kind of take off 80 years until we get to 1989, Mistretta, and really the only one I'm going to talk about is the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, in which it's a 1998 Supreme Court case. They strike down the Line Item Veto Act, saying that basically, Congress, you can't pass laws and then give the president the power to basically cross out individual portions of the law he doesn't want to enforce. And they found that that was a violation of the presentment clause. But the sort of underlying theory was this long discussion of non-delegation doctrine,

although they declined to specifically address that. So it's just been lingering out there. And Thomas clearly is a little hungry and would like some non-delegation dessert. So if you're an appellate lawyer out there, it's teed up. Go get your non-delegation time because there are plenty of laws that Congress is passing right now that implicate non-delegation theory. It is not a legal podcast until Schechter Poultry comes up. I like saying it. You're right. I do like Schechter poultry comes up. I like saying it. You're right. I do like Schechter poultry. Yeah, it's fantastic.

And I look at the line item veto case as essentially saying, no, the president is not the editor-in-chief in Microsoft Word with track changes. Like that's not what's happening. But what a pain it's been not to have the line item veto also. So, you know, it's actually similar to the McGirt case in that sense.

Like the line item veto had a purpose that would have been convenient, but it violated the Constitution. And so they got rid of it saying, well, figure out another way. Convenience is not our problem here at the court. You know, this is we're really extending our digression, but can you only imagine how subordinate a branch of Congress, a branch of government Congress would be right now

if the line item veto had gone through? I don't think they'd exist. Like, we'd forget about them. They would just go ahead. They would not even meet. They would just go ahead and set up residence

in like the Fox and MSNBC green room to, you know, just go ahead and be pundits full time. We'll add that to the proxy voting also, by the way. A case that is not yet resolved. We will continue to follow it.

It is still meandering its way through the briefing stages, but you don't even have to show up to vote right now. So Sarah, what's less interesting, Mazars or Vance? Have I been mispronouncing Mazars? Is that not right? Whatever. I don't know. With my Texas Mazars accent? Athens. I don't know. Mazars. What's less interesting, Mazars or Vance? I think Mazars

is less interesting. I agree. No question. Vance is the one that we finale with. Yes. Okay. So I say we nailed our prediction of Mazars, which was essentially that it was going to be the Supreme Court punting almost completely with some sort of rudimentary guidance that would essentially be y'all work this out. It was a lot of y'all should have already worked this out. Oh my goodness, yes. And then the, so essentially what happens is the case is remanded back down the line for under the, basically on the grounds that the prior courts did not adequately weigh

the separation of powers implications of their decision to enforce a congressional subpoena against the president. And it was, and then what the court did is it, it granted, it caused there to be a, or it created a test of a sort that should, that the court should apply in deciding the subpoena. But you could tell, I mean, the test is so vague and imprecise. I'm scrolling to the specific part of it. Well, here's how the test ends. Other considerations may be pertinent as well. One case every two centuries does not afford enough experience for an exhaustive list,

Roberts says derisively. Yeah, I mean, here's the first part of the test. First, courts should carefully assess whether the asserted legislative purpose warrants the significant step of involving the president in his papers. Oh, the careful assessment test. Right. What does that even mean, Sarah? Nobody knows what it means, but it's provocative. It gets the people going. I think that, so this was a 7-2 opinion. Both of them were 7-2, and both of them had Thomas and Alito dissenting. Here's what's interesting to me. When you actually go read the majority and the dissents,

I was left thinking these are actually unanimous opinions with very small differences on basically how they would have reached the outcome, which is normally a concurrence, not a dissent. And most of the, uh, it was mostly on like sort of the tone. I would say that dissenters had a different tone in the outcome and the very small difference on whether it's, you know, vacated or remanded vacated and remanded vacated or remanded, et cetera. Um, but the one thing on the congressional one that stands out is if Congress had simply said this is pursuant to our impeachment powers, we are considering impeaching the president

and therefore we want to see his tax returns. That also would have been unanimous. Right. It appears to me. No, I agree with you. I agree with you. And this goes back to our conversation in a previous podcast where Congress left its best argument in the locker room. Yeah, they're winning argument. It's bizarre. I mean, it's malpractice. you know it's like they had it's like they had um it's like they brought a rifle to a nuke fight and it was they clearly they clearly could have won this case uh and and they chose not to but it's of a piece with the complete sort of procedural mess that the house made of the impeachment inquiry and the impeachment process. Um, look, I know they had political imperatives that they were working around and trying to deal with and timing issues regarding a,

uh, timing issues regarding a, a, uh, an election year. Got it. Understand. Nothing excuses. This was then drop the case. That's what they should have done. an election year, got it, understand. Yeah, but nothing excuses,

then drop the case. That's what they should have done because what they've ended up doing is having now a legal precedent that implicated the powers of Congress and the powers of the presidency, the offices of which will exist long after these people are gone.

And they failed to protect that and to advocate for their own branches and that's the part that i find upsetting is they clearly should have again either stopped the case or amended and said actually we are looking at this for impeachment purposes because instead what they argued was this was for a specific legislative need. Right. And why do you need the personal papers of the president if you're going to look at how financial entities should be regulated? It just never stood up to a lot of logic or reason or passed the smell test. lot of logic or reason or pass the smell test and so then the president wanted to have this nixon standard which was the demonstrated specific need they reject that um but then they also come up with this amorphous bundle of sticks standard. The House and the courts below

suggest that these separation of powers concerns are not fully implicated by the particular subpoenas here, but we disagree. We would have to be, quote, blind not to see what all others can see and understand,

that the subpoenas do not represent a run-of-the-mill legislative effort, but rather a clash between rival branches of government over records of intense political interest for all involved. And so that's where, but rather a clash between rival branches of government over records of intense political interest for all involved. And so that's where it's in between. Look, just a simple legislative need, we're not going to defer to that, sorry. We're also not going to have this heightened,

demonstrated, specific need. Instead, we're going to have this separation of powers bundle of sticks that includes other pertinent considerations that they don't know about. And that's where the dissents, and again, I use that term kind of loosely because they're not that dissent-y. Thomas said he would hold that Congress has no power to issue a legislative subpoena for private non-official documents, whether they belong to the president or not. Congress may be able to obtain these documents as part of an investigation of the president, but it must do so under the impeachment power. Okay, so you're saying they do have that power, which the only thing being resolved here is that they have the power, and now we're going to send it back to determine

whether they've met some standard. So you disagree on the standard. Oftentimes that would be a concurrence. Alito said he agrees with the Nixon standard, which he thinks that the test put out by Roberts is actually pretty darn close to the Nixon standard, the demonstrated specific needs standard. But he says, nevertheless, legislative subpoenas for a president's personal documents are inherently suspicious. Such documents are seldom of any special value in considering potential legislation, and subpoenas for such documents can easily be used for improper non-legislative purposes. That one's even more confusing as a dissent because it feels only like a concurrence to me. You know, what seems to have happened here is essentially what the majority did was say, we're sending this y'all work it out. While still preserving this sort of impeachment nuclear weapon in the background that is sort of the ultimate Trump card

that in theory puts Congress as the superior branch of government, not co-equal, because it can fire the chief of the executive branch and can fire members of the judicial branch. But this was, you don't get your best argument, Mr. President. You don't get your best argument, Congress, separate from impeachment. Now, let's see what you're going to do.

And you just see this in this paragraph from Roberts. Congressional subpoenas for the president's personal information implicate weighty concerns regarding the separation of powers. Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice. Neither side, however, identifies an approach that accounts for these concerns. In other words, we're stripping both of your best arguments. For more than two centuries, the political branches have resolved information disputes using the wide variety of means that the Constitution puts at your disposal. Now work it out. I think those three sentences right there sum it all up. This is important. You don't get a Trump card from us.

Work it out. What's interesting, of course, is that there were three parties at arguments. The president made his arguments. Congress made their arguments. And then the Solicitor General's office tried to offer sort of a middle ground on the executive branch. And basically, the court rejected all three. Yes. And Roberts, again, dripping with contempt. Congress and the executive branch have nonetheless managed for over two centuries to resolve such disputes among themselves without the benefit of guidance from us. And there's some note here that basically the reason that the courts get dragged into this where they haven't been at any point in the past, and there's been many times where Congress and the president have fought over documents, starting with George

Washington. The problem here appears to be that because the documents are being held by a third party, Mazars, as I've been calling it. That's why the court had to get involved because they're the custodians, even though it's the president's papers. And Mazars has said that they will abide by whatever the courts say and thus enters the third branch. But you can just, I mean,

Roberts does not want to be here. No, no. And you're exactly right. I 100% endorse your assessment that congress should have dropped this um and they're they were never once they took the impeachment weapon off the table they were not going to get these documents in trump's first term they were not because there was no i just could not see a scenario where based on the weak arguments that they brought to the oral argument that the court was going to go ahead

and have the president dump out all of his personal financial information for some sort of nebulous legislative inquiry. It just wasn't going to happen. It was forecast from that in the oral arguments. We could see it coming from a mile away. So I agree wholeheartedly. Just y'all, if you're going to go to court, bring your best argument. Okay. So on implications of this moving forward, worth noting, Congress could, well, the committees in question could issue subpoenas that are narrower and say, we are looking to potentially bring impeachment charges against the president. Will they do such a thing if he doesn't win reelection between now and election day?

It's hard to sit here right now and think that that's really a good use of their time in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. And by good use of their time, I mean that Pelosi will endorse such a thing. But let's just go down this road for a second. If they did that, I think they would probably prevail if it were a narrower subpoena. Yep. And closely tied to what they wanted to impeach him for. No, I agree with that. But even if they tried prior to the election, it's still going to walk, slow walk its way all the way up through the federal system. And so they're just not getting that stuff until if Trump wins a second term, let's put a pin in late June 2022.

Well, we're going to get to this in Vance. I think that most likely Vance also gets slow walked, but there is a world in which you might get it right before the election in the next case. So I think Sarah and I are going to disagree a little bit on Vance. Again, it's sort of like the dissent versus the concurrence. Like they're not real disagreements.

Right. So in Vance, this involves a grand jury subpoena of Trump's financial records related to the Stormy Daniels incident to determine whether or not a Trump campaign, Trump himself violated state campaign finance laws. So this is a conventional state criminal proceeding. Mazars, whatever was a involved a congressional subpoena this is a conventional state criminal proceeding and um this case came up on basically two to decide two questions one was the president absolutely immune during the course of his presidency from state criminal process. And if he was not absolutely immune, then was he, then was there a heightened standard that applied? And the court said, no, he is not absolutely immune. And no, there's not a heightened standard. So I'm going to go with my paragraph here. I get

first dibs on the paragraph. Okay. All right. This is the end of the main opinion of the court. 200 years ago, a great jurist of our court established that no citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding. We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the president is neither absolutely immune

from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers, nor entitled to a heightened standard of need. The guard furnished to this high officer lies where it always has, in the conduct of a court applying established legal and constitutional principles

to individual subpoenas in a manner that preserves both the independence of the executive and the integrity of the judicial system. And final mini paragraph. The arguments presented here and in the Court of Appeals were limited to absolute immunity and heightened need. The Court of Appeals, however, has directed that the case be returned to the district court where the president may raise further arguments. Okay.

But wait, real quick. The quotes from that paragraph come from the case of Aaron Burr and his treason case from 1807. And there is a long, lengthy discussion of the Burr trial and the papers he tried to get from Jefferson and how that all resolves itself and all of its messy historical fun that is, I mean, would make a great second musical called Burr that follows Burr from the moment that Weehawken, the smoke clears in Weehawken to just the sad, sad conclusion of Burr's public service, criminal trial, and sort of exile into infamy. criminal trial and sort of exile into infamy. Hey, now, yes. Well, yes, thank you. Then that's a nice preview of why we're going to talk about Hamilton here in a bit. But it's great. Like, if you want to just read about the history of Aaron Burr,

go read the beginning of the Vance opinion because it's great. You don't need to care anything about Trump's financial records. You'll just get some real good Burr time. Wait for it. So here's... Wait for it. Oh, I see what you did there. Okay, so here's why I say clean win,

but not prompt win. So clean win is on the issues that Trump went to the Supreme Court on, which was absolute immunity, heightened need. He lost. He lost.

However, that does not mean prompt win, because what the court said is that doesn't mean that you don't have other defenses to producing information in response to a grand jury subpoena. And you have all of the same defenses than any other human being does. defenses than any other human being does. If I'm subpoenaed, I don't just automatically have to produce whatever documents are specified in the subpoena. I can file a motion to quash and state certain kinds of defenses that are available to me under

the rules of procedure or common law, etc. So he can assert defenses like anybody else, but although he doesn't have a heightened standard of a heightened, there's not a heightened standard here. There are some things that he can assert, such as, for example, a supremacy clause, the president can raise subpoena-specific constitutional challenges in either a state or federal forum. He can challenge the subpoena as an attempt to influence the performance of his official duties in violation of the supremacy clause. So he does have some, I can't, I can't go if the Williams, a grand jury in Williamson County, Tennessee subpoenas me, and oh, I hope that never happens,

I cannot go in there and assert podcast supremacy clause defenses. No. I cannot assert that. So that is, in a way, it's sort of, kind of, sort of a heightened standard, but it's not generalized. It's subpoena-specific, and it's a very specific kind of defense that you can raise. And here's another one. He can argue that compliance with a particular subpoena would impede his constitutional duties. That one probably doesn't apply here. But again, I, you know, that that's important to note, let's say, before we get to my disagreement. So he on the issues Trump brought to the Supreme Court of the United States, he lost.

He lost. Maybe. He lost, Sarah. He lost. Eh, maybe. But that he still has some limited president-specific kinds of defenses that he can raise that will have to be dealt with. So there's not going to be, well, in all likelihood, there's not going to be a super

fast process going from here to get his documents in front of the grand jury. But I would say, whereas in the congressional circumstance, if Trump and Congress can't agree and there's no impeachment, I don't think Congress gets those documents. And in the Vance situation, I think Vance gets those documents. So this is where we agree that the end result of both cases we agree on. Congress isn't going to get the documents and Vance is if he continues. if Congress continues for that matter. I'm not at all convinced that either will if he loses the White House, which goes perhaps to why I'm dissenting

from who won each case. But first of all, my disagreement with you pales in my disagreement with the headlines that I'm seeing coming out of this, which are almost universally, Trump has to turn over financial records to New York. Right. No, he doesn't. Why? Why? Every headline, like it wasn't just one who got it wrong. I'm seeing four headlines in my inbox that all have that headline in various forms.

That's wrong. Trump isn't turning over anything anytime soon. And the court did not say he would at any point. It wasn't like they said, he'll have to turn this over eventually, but first, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. In both cases, a district court is going to have to weigh the various interests. And all the court did was basically put their thumb on the scale of those interests. In the congressional case, it was clear that Congress needs to do better. And better in that case would be either using the impeachment power or having a real legislative need, not a fake one. So they're going to lose that because right now the court basically said, this is a fake legislative need. On the Vance case, I agree with you that overall,

this is a fake legislative need. On the Vance case, I agree with you that overall the court is saying that Vance has probably maybe met the burden to at least proceed. But, and this is the Kavanaugh concurrence, which I think is probably where you and I are parting ways. You think that Trump lost because the two issues, uh, does he have absolute immunity? That was unanimous. The court, nobody on the court thinks he had absolute immunity. So we totally agree on that one. Unanimous to, uh, does Vance need to have a heightened showing to issue the subpoena? There's probably unanimous that no, he doesn't need a heightened need to issue the subpoena. However, to enforce the subpoena, I agree with Kavanaugh that you can say that he doesn't have a heightened showing requirement, but in reality, what the court just said was,

yes, he does. And the heightened showing in this case is all the things you just described. So really, we're just arguing over definition. But as Kavanaugh said, I would apply the longstanding Nixon demonstrated specific needs standard to this case. The majority opinion, while not citing Nixon, basically cites Nixon in their test by including the state prosecutor may not issue a subpoena for a president's personal information out of bad faith, malice, or an intent to harass a president, a result of prosecutorial impropriety, to seek information that is not relevant to an investigation, that is overly broad or unduly burdensome, or an attempt to manipulate, influence, or retaliate against the president's official acts or policy decisions, or in a way

that would impede conflict with or interfere with the president's official duties i am not sure that vance is going to be able to meet all of that especially so on the burden issue because they're held by a third party fine i agree this there's no burden here and i think any argument on that is silliness but But to, out of bad faith malice or an intent to harass a president, okay,

he's at least going to have to argue that. I think he probably meets that. Yeah, because there's somebody actually in federal prison right now. That's right. Yeah.

To manipulate, influence, or retaliate against a president's official acts or policy decisions. This was one of the things that was interesting about a state prosecution that various parts of various opinions discussed, particularly Alito, where you could imagine a world in which the state doesn't like something that the president did that implicates the state. Let's take, for instance, his policy

on immigration and the state has sanctuary city laws. And so then the federal government under the president's direction withholds state or federal grant money from the city's law enforcement, something that in fact has happened. Then the state prosecutor's office subpoenas the president's personal records. Is that retaliation against the president's official acts? Almost certainly, yes. The only question is how closely tied does that need to be? Does the subpoena need to say, because you were an asshole, we are subpoenaing your records?

No, probably not. But the statements from the prosecutor's office, from the other officials in the state will probably be relevant. How relevant? Tough to say. I mean, they're not going to want to look into someone's heart and soul at the court level. They tend to frown upon such inquiries. But that's where Kavanaugh is saying this basically is the Nixon standard. Yeah, you're paying all this wonderful lip service to like, he has the same defenses as every citizen. But to your point, David, you and I don't have supremacy clause arguments to make.

Right, right. And Alito goes into why this is going to be a problem down the road. Here's my reading for today. Suppose state officers obtained and sought to execute a search warrant for a sitting president's private quarters in the White House. Suppose a state court authorized surveillance of a telephone that a sitting president was known to use. Suppose that a sitting president was subpoenaed to testify before a state grand jury and, as is generally the rule, no presidential aides, even those carrying the so-called nuclear football, were permitted to enter the grand jury room.

What these examples illustrate is a principle that this court has recognized. Legal proceedings involving a sitting president must take the responsibilities and demands of the office into account. It is not enough to recite sayings like no man is above the law and the public has a right to every man's evidence. These sayings are true and important, but they beg the question, used correctly here by the way, the law applies equally to all persons, including a person who happens for a period of time to occupy the presidency. But there is no question that the nature of the office demands in some instances that the application of laws be adjusted at least until the person's term in office ends. So Alito's dissent says a prosecutor

should be required to provide at least a general description of the possible offenses that are under investigation, to outline how the subpoenaed records relate to those offenses, and to explain why it is important that the records be produced and why it is necessary for production to occur while the president is still in office. Again, I understand that that's a dissent, but they're not totally disagreeing. I'm not sure that those things don't apply in the majority's standard and in Kavanaugh's concurrence and even in Thomas's other dissent where he kind of comes out the same way. So one thing I would say though,

in, in, in real, in real life, um, we're running a real nation. Yeah. In real life,

if you subpoena, uh, if, if I'm a, if I'm a County prosecutor say, subpoena, if I'm a county prosecutor, say, and I have a Walmart employee who has assaulted another Walmart employee, and I do a grand jury subpoena to get the Walton family to disclose a huge amount of personal financial information. Well, you're not only going to have some, or to come down and, you know,

I'm subpoenaing them to disclose a huge amount of information. You are going to have, depending on what I would call some sort of person-specific, position-specific kinds of protections that do apply in the real world to people who are not presidents, who are CEOs, who are governors, who are presidents of universities, people who have who are vulnerable to vexatious subpoenas, who have extremely important job descriptions, there's always been sort of a level of, if not a formal heightened need showing, where the courts are going to come in and say, do you really need this guy's

stuff? Well, and particularly when it comes to the time of the depositions, for instance. And that is certainly applied to presidents when they have been able to work stuff out. And they do run through the long list of federal subpoenas that presidents have been amenable to. And even in those, you don't get to dictate to the president that you need him at 10 a.m. on Monday. He has a cabinet meeting. And that, I think, is pretty similar to private citizens, CEOs, or whatever else, for the most part, that you have some control over that sort of thing, which isn't maybe a heightened need, but it's close to it.

But in this case, I mean, the heightened need is the office of the presidency. So I'm just not at all convinced that Vance obviously wins this. Now, okay, looking forward, I think Vance does win it if he narrows his subpoena and instead of copying word for word, the House subpoena says, okay, what I actually just need are the tax records

because they implicate, you know, X, Y, and Z state law and the grand jury is moving forward on X, Y, and Z investigation. Yeah, no, I agree with that. But that meets the Alito dissent, right? And so Vance would be smart to just say, in that case, and what he gets by doing that, A, I think it moves far more quickly through the courts.

And B, the Supreme Court is not going to issue a stay on something like that. So even though it may get to the Supreme Court, and I don't think it would if he did that, it's very possible that he gets the records before the election, barely, if you work out the timing. He could, if he narrows it. Right. Now, you know, we keep coming back to this concept of how important smart lawyering is. You know, and going back to my, the old Southern lawyer statement I shared yesterday, Sarah. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. If Vance wants, Vance can get fat if he meets all of the clearly expressed reservations, even of the dissent, which justice at that point is going to grant the stay?

And it doesn't cost him much. He still gets the tax returns. Yeah, but if he wants to go into some giant fishing expedition, which makes no sense in a grand jury context anyway, because it's secret. It's not like that it's going to all plop up under the internet or if it did, somebody's in real, real, real trouble. This is where smart lawyering, and I agree with you completely, you revise the subpoena and get back in court post-haste

if you're Vance. Now, so while you were reading one of your paragraphs, Now, so while you were reading one of your paragraphs, I did a fun little fast audit of headlines. Yes. This is going to make me angry. Please continue. So some are better than others. Okay, so here's the top headline in the Washington Post. Supreme Court says New York prosecutor may see Trump's financial records, denies Congress for now. That ain't right, Sarah.

No. Now here's New York Times. Justice's clear way for prosecutors to get Trump's financial records. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe a little bit of...

Leaning hard, but okay. Yeah. Okay, but okay. Yeah. Okay, so here's CNN. Trump loses on financial records, but ruling buys him time. Nope. Yeah, that's, yeah, that one's not good. Here's Fox's top headline. Oh, no.

Durham's dud? Barr's prosecutor, under pressure to wrap up probe, could punt to after election day. Source. Okay. I'm just laughing that that is the top headline.

Just totally not related. Okay. Totally. No, but they do have, scroll down, scroll down, Sarah. Court denies Trump immunity in records case

blocks House dims from tax docs. The first half, that's true. No, they also didn't block the House from getting the documents. That's not what happened. No. No, I wanted to, I want to finish with dredge.

I have high hopes here. High, high hopes. Okay. I'm going to just read the whole, all the red text. Rule of law. True. True.

Rule of law. That's not a headline. Okay. It is. Rule of law. President cannot block release of financial records. Trump rages at Supremes.

Subpoena scare. Gorsuch-Kavanaugh join majority. 7-2 decision rocks political world. Congress denied for now. Okay, some of that's real. It's hard. There's a lot to pick apart there. We should read the president's tweets.

He has had feelings this morning. Yes. The Supreme Court sends back to lower court arguments to continue. That's actually correct. That would have been a better headline than all of the ones you just read in terms of pure accuracy. So kudos to the president's first line in his tweet. Accurate headline. This is all a political prosecution. I won the Mueller witch hunt and others, and now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York.

Not fair to this presidency or administration. Courts in the past have given broad deference, but not me. He continued a few minutes later. We have a totally corrupt previous administration, including a president and vice president who spied on my campaign and got caught, and nothing happens to them.

This crime was taking place even before my election. Everyone knows it, and nothing happens to them. This crime was taking place even before my election. Everyone knows it, and yet all are frozen stiff with fear. No Republican Senate judiciary response, no justice, no FBI, no nothing. Major horror show reports on Comey and McCabe, guilty as hell, nothing happens. Catch Obama and Biden cold, nothing. A three-year, $45 million Mueller hoax failed, investigated everything, won all against the federal government, and the Democrats send everything to politically corrupt New York, which is falling apart with everyone leaving, to give it a second, third, and fourth try. Now the Supreme Court gives a delay ruling that they would have never given

for another president. This is about prosecutorial misconduct. We catch the other side spying on my campaign, the biggest political crime and scandal in US history, and nothing happens. But despite this, I've done more than any president in history in the first three and a half years. That's a long 280 characters. So, right. I'm not sure he liked the court's opinion. It's not clear what he thinks. Not clear. Yeah. I mean, look, Congress, you know, all things considered, he basically won at Congress, I think, because Congress messed up. And all things considered, he basically lost inhattan and i think that's just the

bottom line um and it will be very interesting to see how quickly vance tries to push this um that's that's where we disagree he only lost in new york if vance takes this and acts smartly if vance doesn't then he won in New York also, potentially. Okay. And at the same time, while he... I'll allow it. I'll allow it. While he won the congressional one, if Congress turned around and really wanted to,

they could say, fine, we're looking at impeaching him and we want his tax returns. They could do that and they could get the tax returns. So I just withhold judgment because people could make smart decisions here or people could make dumb decisions here. And I'm not willing to assume that Vance will act smartly and Congress will act stupidly, even though I agree

with you that those are the most likely outcomes. Yeah, I think the safest assumption is Congress acting stupidly. Always. Yes, yes. Vance will see. Vance will see. It's there. The roadmap is there. There is a yellow brick road that is right in front of him if he chooses to take it. He may not. We have consistently seen public officials, in spite of yellow brick roads right in front of them, think, I just need to take off across this countryside. Although one thing that's worth noting is at the oral arguments, the congressional oral arguments did not go well. And the attorney who argued on behalf of Vance was spectacular. So if that's any indication of the type of legal advice that each side is getting, then you will most likely be correct because it appears that Vance is getting pretty good legal counsel. Yes. All right. So are we ready for Hamilton? Am I ever?

Well, with that level of excitement, you have to start. Okay, so on the faithless electors case, Kagan cites Hamilton. We talked about that. I read it. I was pretty pumped about that, but like it's a one-off.

And then I opened this and it's just chock full of Hamilton. All the opinions are chock full of Burr. Quotes from the Federalist Papers that Hamilton wrote on impeachment and on removing a president. it's just chock full of Hamilton. All the opinions are chock full of Burr quotes from the Federalist Papers that Hamilton wrote on impeachment and on removing a president. And then, I mean, it was meant to be when I stumbled across this line, quote, I think the president is a kind of sacred person, quoting Senator Philip Schuyler. Schuyler's theory clearly has no basis in the Constitution, and the view held by Adams and

Ellsworth seem to be grounds for relief from enforcement rather than a basis for absolute immunity from issuance of a subpoena. So the only reason that Schuyler is quoted, this random senator, is to say that he's wrong and it has no basis in the constitution yeah which means there's no reason to quote Skyler at all really except it's an easter egg I definitely an easter egg and it means that they've all been watching the Hamilton musical and there's some supreme court slack channel where people were getting points for getting Hamilton references in these opinions. Has to be.

I'm mostly kidding, by the way, for those listening. I took everything you said as gospel. That has to be what's happening. Definitely a Slack channel. Yeah. So I was very interested. Let's just move to the musical. I was very interested to see

what my reaction would be to the musical four years after I saw it at Broadway. So I saw it. I think I told you this in a previous podcast. We've said so many millions of words in the last couple of weeks that I can't remember what I've said and what I haven't said. And I'm not getting a lot of sleep. So you have to add that in where my memory is pretty much gone and time has no meaning to me. So I saw this in the height of the 2016 mess after I had said no to the Bill Kristol idea about running. I was in a heightened state. Did you sing to yourself, how do I say no to this? I'd never seen it.

I had no idea what to wait, what to expect. But I was in a heightened state of like sort of like feels for the constitution at that point and it really profoundly impacted me uh when i saw it in in uh in broadway i just thought it was magnificent and i was probably the most impacted by the washington character and and look i mean i'm i'm not a fan of the sort of the civil religion of George Washington, you know, that sort of the idolization of George Washington. But by golly, the guy did some pretty darn incredible stuff, including setting a tone and setting a standard for leadership at the beginning of this new republic where he could have had what he wanted. could have had what he wanted like he was he had that much power and he voluntarily laid it down and the quotation uh that i think the part that hit me right between the eyes was when he quoted the book of micah in his farewell and that every man shall sit under his own vine in his own fig tree and no one shall make him afraid in this land that we made.

And it was such a powerful statement of an aspiration that we're still trying to live up to today, that you can come here and you can make a home. And I didn't realize the full historical weight of that phrase to Washington until I realized I was doing some research for Sunday French press I wrote about the wave of anti-Semitism that was hitting New York and New Jersey. And Washington wrote a letter to a Hebrew congregation in Rhode Island where he used that exact phrase. And then I learned that he used it almost 50 times in his correspondence, And then I learned that he used it almost 50 times in his correspondence, which was, in the way I would put it, for all of his flaws, and we know he had flaws, he was a slave owner, he had flaws. This aspiration is sort of the heart of American pluralism.

You, you, Sarah, you, David, you, Hebrew congregation of Rhode Island, you, people coming into Ellis Island, you can have your own vine and fig tree and no one shall make you afraid. That is such an incredibly powerful national aspiration. And the way it came forward in the musical, aside from all of the other aspects of it, man, it hit me straight between the eyes. So that was when I first saw it. When I saw it the second time, when I saw it on TV, the up closeness of it gave me a new appreciation. And it gave me a new appreciation, not so much for the political aspect of it, but the personal. aspect of it but the personal and the this unbelievably powerful moment of forgiveness between eliza and alexander when you saw the anguish of what that philippa sue so unbelievably expressed in burn that song burn when she when alexander betrayed her and then the anguish of the death of her son. Not just betrayed her, by the way.

The betrayal, I think, in the musical, bothers her less than him telling the entire world about it to save his own reputation at her expense. Yes. Which is more true to me of a lot of women that I know and have spoken to that infidelity is a huge betrayal, but it's when that becomes public, you've embarrassed your wife. Right. And it's that that is seen as a second

betrayal that I think is even harder for some marriages to get over. Well, and you saw, I mean, she portrayed the fury and the betrayal so powerfully. And then the agony of the loss of their son in the duel, there was so much hurt there. And then the marvelous moment of forgiveness that was then amplified and magnified by the fact that she then spent the,

as the marvelous finale song goes on talking about telling his story and magnifying his legacy to me, like that personified grace in a way that just, I mean, not to hit me right between the eyes and was made so much more manifest by the intensity of the closeups and the greater experience of the real emotion of the moment compared to when I was sitting in the upper deck in Broadway. So anyway, I'll stop monologuing. That's how it hit me. Okay. What did you make? So Lin-Manuel Miranda tweeted this right before, I believe it was right before it hit, the movie hit on Disney Plus. And he said, I couldn't include the gasp in the original Broadway cast recording.

You just had to see it. And I saw that and I was like, what's he talking about? Because I had memorized the entire original Broadway cast recording. And I assumed he meant when Philip died, she must let out some sort of scream. But then I was like, yeah, but I think we heard that. So I was really confused. And then I watch it and spoiler alert, at the end of the movie, at the very end of Eliza, you know, saying, you know, I lived another 50 years. I'm telling your story. Here's all the things I did. I opened the first orphanage, all of that.

And then she's walking towards the end of the stage, towards the audience. And the last thing is a gasp. Yeah. And the question being debated right now is what that gasp means. David, do you have a theory? Because I do.

I'd have a theory because i do i want i'd have a theory okay um i believe that gasp is her walking into eternity and seeing the breadth the the immensity of this seeing the full story and seeing the full legacy and seeing how everything played out. Um, there's a scripture that says, we know in part, we see through a glass darkly, but once there is a time when we will know as we are known.

And I have interpreted that gasp in that sense, that this is the point where she saw the fruit, the sort of the fruits of all of their labor. And that's how I interpreted it. Mine's very close. Mine is that she is seeing this musical and this audience's reaction to it. And she's breaking the fourth wall and the audience loving the musical

Hamilton about her husband, their struggle, the founding. So it's similar. It's a similar idea. Um, and that she's gasping because it's beyond what she could have imagined that in 2020 or in 2016,

when it was recorded, uh, that, that, um, you know, large portions of the country are embracing the narrative that she left behind and her husband and their family and the pain and the suffering and what it all meant.

For me, when I originally listened to the whole thing and memorized it, everything that I was ranting and raving about was all about the cabinet battles. Yeah. Right? I mean, it's incredible. I mean, cabinet battle number one, I just couldn't believe that someone could write a musical that was so accurate to history, but talking about whether the federal government should assume state's debts in such a fun way. You know. Thomas, that was a real nice declaration. Welcome to the present. We're running a real nation. A civics lesson from a slaver. Hey, neighbor, your debts

are paid because you don't pay for labor. The union gets a new line of credit, a financial diuretic. How do you not get it? If we're aggressive and competitive, the union gets a boost. You'd rather give it a sedative. Can you imagine talking about such a boring topic in your history class? And then all of a sudden you have this and you're like, oh man, if I were a high school history teacher, I'd be like, I've been doing this wrong. It turns out this was much easier than I thought. So then I watched the movie. And as listeners to this podcast will know, it's all about where you are in the moment, for sure. And so I started watching the movie at 3 a.m., feeding a child.

And It's Quiet Uptown just ripped me apart in a way that I had almost... It had had meaning to me in 2016. But frankly, when I listened to the musical all the way through for the you know 27th time that might have been a song that i would even skip because i was so into the historical founding really the first act frankly like the second act is all sort of about their lives and i'm like yeah but the first act is about history in amer. Um, you know, there's moments when you're in so deep, it feels easier to just swim down and you're watching the two of them struggling with something that you really can't imagine. And it says, and learn to live with the unimaginable, like it is unimaginable. And so, I mean, man.

Whew. Yeah. That being said, it was certainly the case that the musical hit me more in 2016 overall than it did watching the movie. And it was interesting to watch people on Twitter have a similar reaction and now criticize it. Either the women characters weren't broad enough,

weren't complicated enough, or it didn't deal with slavery enough. Lin-Manuel Miranda was giving, you know, Americans a pass on slavery in order for them to just, you know, enjoy the sugar high of the fun and the importance of the founding without having to grapple with the hard stuff. I see why four years later that now we can sort of digest it more and have some complaints, but it also struck me as very political. You know, when Obama's in the White House, this was a great musical. When Trump is in the White House, now there's problems with it. Yeah. But that's sort of

a broader problem that we're having overall as a country. We're having trouble separating politics from art, from our everyday lives. And then when you tell people that, they say, well, you have the privilege of being able to enjoy the art without having to think about those things. I take that argument seriously, but it's a sad argument because it means that we can never enjoy art without letting our political differences come between us. And I think one of the wonderful things about great art is it allows us to come together across those divides and experience something together. And what I hear from a lot of people is, no, we can't experience these things together anymore. You know, I think that I think the difference between Obama and the Trump administration

this is an Obama era musical that was broadcast again in the Trump administration in the middle of an enormous amount of racial unrest. And one of the one of the power most powerful things about, and why, I mean, I think Hamilton just took off across so many different American demographics, was the genius casting of every, you know, every one of the founding fathers was black or Hispanic. And the way, one of the ways it was described was this allowed us to own

the founding also, um, was the way I'd heard it described, but it had this really interesting, uh, of the moment feel that could we be turning a corner here with a lot of some of the worst, uh, on some of the worst aspects of American history. And could this musical mark a moment in time when we turn a corner? And there was, you know, I would say there was, for a long time, we had this sort of sense of optimism that this could happen and that doesn't resonate

when cities are, when the smoke is rising from our city streets right and it's it's so it it's if it came out again in a different moment and it's very hard because the hamilton musical has such a sense of optimism about america right now at this moment that's not where people are. I mean, even Republicans who are still loyal to Trump are what's the number like 19% think their nation's going in a positive direction. So this musical was written of a moment of a more universal embrace of the founding at a time of greater optimism landing in a time of racial unrest, in a time of real existential despair in a time of real existential despair

that a lot of people are feeling. So I think it couldn't help but land differently. But I kind of took it as, at the same time, it's also kind of a tonic, if that makes sense, because it does remind us of what we can be.

It does remind us of what we can be. It does remind us of what we can be. And I would say it hit me just as hard in 2020 as it did in 2016, but in a different way. And I agree with you about Quiet Uptown. Here are the lyrics that just, this to me are some of the most profound lyrics about forgiveness that I've ever seen in my life. There are moments the words don't reach.

There is a grace too powerful to name. We push away what we can never understand. We push away the unimaginable. They are standing in the garden, Alexander by Eliza's side. She takes his hand. Man, that is powerful stuff about the power of grace. And it's interesting. I mean, maybe I'm reading way too much biblical imagery into this, but there's biblical imagery in this musical. But it's interesting to me that it's, they're standing in the garden and that, that the

power of grace is that it, what grace ultimately does in the, in the biblical story is it removes the weight of the fall. That's what grace does. It, it re in a way it re returns you to Eden and that I think, you know, maybe I'm totally off. Maybe that's not intended in that imagery, but that's how it hit me. And man, so that's where it hit me more was that in that sort of that personal aspect of it than the political. it's a great musical. It's the, I will echo what Michelle Obama said.

This is, I think the greatest piece of art of our time because it's something that we can all share in. And I understand that there are people who aren't going to like it. I understand there are parts of the country who don't know what Hamilton is and all of that's totally fine. It's okay. And it doesn't mean we need to, you know, tear down either side of like,

well, only the coastal elites enjoyed Hamilton. I don't think that's true. I also think it's okay if you don't like musicals. That's fine too. My husband has never listened to Hamilton. He hasn't seen it. And by God, our marriage is still going. We don't have to like the same stuff.

That's right. You know, we don't have to like the same stuff. I don't think you like Aquaman enough, but that's okay. I was going to say, this is where David and I can really come together and love Hamilton as one. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Anything else? We're going to come back Monday unless there's a reason for a spicy emergency pod. I don't know whether I'm rooting for one or not. I know Caleb isn't. Fridays are a very busy a doubt, based on where we are in this country right now, I'm not rooting for a spicy pod. Yeah. I don't think it would be good for us. But I'm sad that the term has ended, and I'm going to miss talking about the Supreme Court.

So that's where I'm torn. It's very selfish, but I'm sad that today's the last day of the term. It's been a really, one of the most interesting terms of recent memory. Yeah. But listeners, you're in luck because Sarah gets to take off one hat and put on another. Your presidential campaign expertise

just might come in handy. What do you think over the next few months? There's been so many studies and polls and choices that the campaigns have made that we haven't really been able to get into because of the Supreme Court cases coming out now so frequently in the last few weeks. I've been saving it up, so I have a list. Yeah, so stay tuned. This is a podcast that does not go on hiatus between Supreme Court terms because, and also I should note that the law doesn't stop either. There's been a lot of

stuff we've not talked about. The law is nonstop. Yes. I'm just quoting Hamilton throughout this pod today. There's been a lot of interesting stuff at the circuit court that really mattered, level that really matters. We haven't talked about because we've had Supreme Court stuff. So keep on listening and also please keep on rating. We really appreciate that. And Apple podcast, subscribe rate. And also of course,

check out the dispatch.com and become a member to participate in all that we do at the dispatch until Monday. Probably. This has been the advisory opinions podcast with david french and sarah is