Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 07-02-26_THURSDAY_6AM

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

morning news and conversation to start then Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, responds to recent Supreme Court decisions

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klauserdrilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. Welcome to the show. It is Thursday, July 2nd, heading into the long Independence Day weekend. I prefer to call it Independence Day weekend rather than Fourth of July. Do you think that's a big deal?

Because everybody has a Fourth of July. There's a July 4th everywhere, isn't there? Yeah, there's always a July 4th, but there's only one Independence Day for the United States of America. Just one independence day. You know, we don't talk about Christmas as the 25th of December, right? Yeah, that sort of thing. But anyway, that's just me. I don't know if you have an opinion on that one way or another.

I was thinking as we're heading into this weekend, you know that the fireworks are going to be big. Of course, we got red, white, and boom. That final one happening in the Central Point. going to be Saturday. And there's going to be all sorts of displays going. I think I'm Edford Rokes. I'll talk with Mr. Outdoors about that next hour. But yeah, I think they're doing fireworks.

Is it tonight or is it maybe it's Friday or Saturday or Saturday? I don't know. We'll find out. But I know that they've been doing some fireworks displays too, which is a lot of fun. And I was reading here that a Clameth Falls man, this was recently, I think this happened last week that he pled guilty to it. But he's facing 10 years in prison and a quarter of a man. million dollar fine because he was selling unauthorized explosive devices. And of course,

I'm looking at this. Okay, what are these unauthorized explosive devices? Well, they were the old fireworks that we used to have when we were kids. Remember the M80s? Yeah, those are, yeah. A grand jury in Medford, this was more than a year ago, that a grand jury in Medford returned a two-count indictment charging Jason Lowry to distributing explosives. Oh, it's by a non-licensee. So it's not that you can't distribute those, but you have to have the license in the land of the free.

I find that really interesting. But they found over 200 homemade explosive devices at his home and materials for constructing more explosives. And, yeah, I guess he liked to blow things up, apparently. And so he was selling them out of his business, I guess. But they charged him with like violating or selling Class M fireworks. And I was thinking, okay, what is a class or a Class M explosive device? Now I find out a Class M explosive device are the M80s that we all had. We were kids. At least I had them. My gosh, you know, people in our, in our neighborhood. I remember those sort of things.

Now, I know my mother might be listening this morning and going, you had those things. things. Yeah, yeah, we had those things. But yeah, no, we didn't have a lot of them. But, you know, it was not considered all that big of a deal at that time. And yeah, more than one friend of mine, I think more of my friends had them than I did. But, hey, here's a garbage can. Let's put the M80 inside it. Boom, you know, for fun and frivolity. Yes, I know it was dangerous. But, you know, the United States of America was founded by people who did dangerous things. That's why I was talking with Eric yesterday about what are we really independent from these days because everything has been such a hyper safety focus here.

And by the way, I'm not advocating for Jason Lowry's business of selling tons of M80s and unauthorized explosive devices. But I think you kind of connect the dots here. it wasn't that long ago where a lot of the things that are now considered, you know, dangerous and destructive devices were quite commonplace. And somehow the Republic survived those days, I guess. And now, you know, you have to celebrate where, well, can you, can you wave the sparkler around? No, don't.

Or if you do, you should have the battalion of firefighters right there next to you. Now, frankly, you should, you know, be careful with such things, sparklers. But you kind of what I'm getting at it. It's like we always have this little push me, push you, push me, pull you, you know, kind of thing between are we a free people or are we a scared, poopless kind of society that has to have safety above all else. I can see our founding father is going there. Retreat to your safe spaces. Colonists, retreat to your safe spaces. The British are coming.

The British are coming. Paul Revere, right? Retreat to your safe spaces. Yeah, we wouldn't have made that. Oh, well, I guess Lowry, the guy who was distributing the M80s and selling all that stuff, yeah, he could be facing 10 years in prison than a quarter of a million dollars fine. And I'm thinking, gosh, these were things that we played with in the neighborhood, you know, 40, 50 years ago. But yes, I know we were a much more evil society back in those days, I suppose, but we sure felt a lot more free in those days.

That's what I thought, at least. All right. What else do we have going on here? jobless rate in the United States has gone down. I guess it's dropped down to 4.2%. Job creation, though, seems to be cooling. I can't help to think that, well, when you have AI that are starting to replace people, I'm not surprised about this.

Economy added 57,000 jobs in June, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.2%. So 57,000 jobs. A lot of them in health care is what they're talking about. I wonder if we're, you know, I'm going to have to look up some of the history, you know, of these job creation numbers because I remember going back 20 years ago in talk radio and in news when I was doing those sort of things in which people were concerned that jobs weren't being created at 450,000 a month. And so now we talk about 57 or 100,000 or something. I wonder if maybe I'm just remembering the statistics wrong. But I remember for a long time, people were criticizing George W. Bush, if I recall. We're talking way back during 9-1-1 time, that 9-11 time.

And I could swear that at those point in those days they were talking about, yes, the country created 450,000 jobs, and it's down from 475,000. Maybe I'm wrong about it. Maybe I just have a decimal point that I've forgotten. but it sure seems that as time goes on, and this is not a Trump thing, this is just a systemic issue here in the United States of America, that fewer workers and fewer working going on, I guess. Interesting part about Oregon, though,

unemployment rate has been stubbornly high. It's been higher than the national average for a while, and the State Employment Department is reminding everybody now that we have this what they call WorkShare program. Been doing this for a while. And what they do is that they'll pay partial unemployment benefits for employees

that have had their work hours cut. They're hoping to get employers to not lay off workers and maybe keep them on, maybe reduce their hours. And my only experience was that is that my past company did a lot of that during COVID.

Yeah, that's what was going on because, gosh, they were, you know, back in the COVID time, you know, in those days, days. Myself and my boss and a couple of other people were sometimes the only people that were showing up here, you know, for a while.

A lot of people were working from home. You remember those days, right? It was so weird. I would come to work and there was like, nobody out there. But I'd be here. I'd be here, you know, working through things and talking with you and doing all the other good stuff that we normally would. But yeah, they would cut hours overall and then the state unemployment department would

pay the difference. But they're trying to remind people, I guess the state of Oregon is. feeling a little weird about this, hey, we're kind of inching up and getting higher. We're not real happy with that. So that's something which is going on here, too. And a bit of good news here, too. The American flags are back on Main Street in downtown Medford. News Watch 12 was reporting that the other day.

And I thought that was great. They've had those brackets up for years, but they haven't been putting up the American flags. And I guess the Downtown Metford Association, a bunch of people they got together and bought flags along with the city. And they put them up. So in time for the 250th anniversary celebration for this weekend. So there's some good news there too. Let's see. Ashland.

News saying that Ashland's city manager, Sabrina Kata, could be headed to Tigard. She's among the three top finalists. So there we go here. Other news. U.S. military deploys over 900 persons. and old to Venezuela for earthquake response. Boy, I'll tell you, keep those people in your prayers this weekend. We're very fortunate. Yeah, we may have hot temperatures that we're dealing with out there in the

middle and the East Coast and stuff like that. But when you compare life to what Venezuela is going through right now, we don't have any problems. King Charles, the English monarch, has long been the defender of the faith. Remember that? That's what you're supposed to do when you're the kids. he has now redefined the UK as a multi-faith nation. Yikes. Wow, that's kind of a concession to what's going on there.

They let the entire third world in. Everyone that used to be in the empire. Boom, come on in. And now you have a Muslim running London. So a multi-faith nation. I don't know if that's going to work out long-term, Charles, but good luck to you on that one. That's for sure.

It's 22 minutes after 6. KMED is where you are. The Bill Meyer Show. For over 20 years, Oregon Truck and Auto Authority has been Southern Oregon's car, truck, Jeep, and S.E. Let's see. Another headline here this morning. Subway's brand new hot dog sandwiches are creeping people out. What you mean?

What a nonsense headline. I guess as a joke, on April Fool's, they put the hot dog on a subway bun and then people started liking it. I mean, there's nothing more American than a hot dog. I guess it must be the Maha people that are upset about that because, you know, you look at the ingredients of a hot dog. Yeah, I get that. I get that processed meat. But, yeah, you don't want to eat them every day.

It's going to be a national hot dog eating contest going on this weekend. You know how that goes. The funny thing is, is that the Subway hot dog sandwich that everybody is saying, Oh, it's creeping me out to see this. It's nonsense, I think. But it's the way the French actually have hot dog. And when Linda and I were in France, a couple of decades back, and we were in a Paris cafe, and we said they had a hot dog. They said American hot dog on the menu.

So we're thinking, oh, okay, we're going to get an American hot dog. Cool, right? And so what they brought looked like the subway sandwich because it was like a foot and a half long baguette with a really long weaner on it. And they put some cheese on it and they put it under like the broiler. So here's the, here is the American hot dog and it was like no hot dog I ever had. It actually tasted good though.

But yeah, that was it. But it creeps people out on Subway. Okay, once again, the land of the brave home of the free. All right. Hey, Tom, how you doing this morning? I was talking about that guy in Klamath Falls looking at 10 years in prison for selling and distributing the M80s, things like that.

Oh, yeah. Gosh, we had that stuff all the time, didn't we? You were kids? Well, I wanted to talk about my older brother. He had a very busy teenage years. He got into bombs. And his favorite pension, he started out with just blowing up toilets all over the place. You know, he just chuck one down.

Yeah, I knew, guys, there was a guy, one guy in the neighborhood that like to do things like that. Yeah, do that, sure. So blowing up toilets. Okay. And then he graduated, the small town was going to have a practice burned down of an old house. And so they were getting set with, you know, firefighters and so forth. So it was scheduled for the next day. But my brother went inside the night before and blew the place up.

And so the firefighters had a chance to practice a real fire in the middle of the night. Whatever happened to your brother, though? Did he turn super criminal, or did he kind of age out of that kind of behavior? Well, I guess you might say he kind of aged out of it, although he would definitely love to fire his cannon across the canyon, blow out to, you know, to shake the neighbors of windows and so forth. So he sort of grew out of it. He had other sports, too. He loved to steal TV antennas. and then go down to the graveyard where these mausoleums, you know,

little huts above the ground and so forth and strap a TV antenna to the to the mausoleum. People be driving down the room. What the hell? What the heck the TV antenna doing on the mausoleum, right? Who's watching? Another little adventure he did was the city plaza. He took several boxes of soap.

and dumped them into the plaza with a bubbling water. And pretty soon, the bubbles were above the palm trees. You couldn't see the plaza anymore. It was just one. Oh, that's wild. Boy, your brother sounds like quite the character, huh? Well, yeah, he's no longer on the planet, but he was a very busy teenage. Yeah, God had a sense of humor making him, huh?

Well, you know, speaking blowing things up, I remember there was. It was one time that the science teacher, I think, was in the school I was in Southern California back then. And it was showing us how volatile that sodium was, if it gets exposed to air because it was always kept in oil, you know, to keep the oil, to keep the air from getting to it because it would explode. And someone broke into the lab one night and they stole the piece of sodium and they threw it in a toilet and blew one of the urinals out of the wall in the boys' room. You know, there's a side of certain males in our society. Just, you know, if we're not causing a little mayhem somehow, well, I guess these are the people that you have to put into the military, right? That's right. Yeah, where they end up.

Yeah, burn off the end, burn off some of that desire to blow things up. Yeah. Got to love it. Thanks for the story, Tom. That's great. And it sounds like, no, Tom did not do that kind of stuff. Hi, KM&E. Good morning. Who's this? Hi.

Hi. Who's this? Chair Chair. Oh, hey, Chair. Chair. How you doing? Go ahead. Okay, there's a couple of things. You've got to go to the Jacksonville Fair and try the hot dog because they wrap pizza dough around it. And it is fabulous. Oh, that sounds delicious. Pizza dough on a hot dog. That sounds perfect. Yeah. So Shane and Bobby have the best pizza because they've made it.

a science out of it. It's fermented like 100 hours on the dough, and it is so good. It's kind of a thin crust, and they don't put too much stuff on there. But anyway, I have to, I'm calling, I rarely call, but I have to tell you, we were taking a nap, we were completely indisposed or whatever, we get a doorbell ringing, and guess what it is? Pizza? That package, that seven-foot package that I took back. Oh, that package you sent back? They brought it back again? They brought it back again.

The one that you didn't order that has been sent to the wrong thing, and you took it back to UPS and said, hey, send it back because you didn't order it, right? Yes, I took it to the UPS store, here, Harry and David, and they said, oh, sure, we'll take it. and they didn't. And so my hubby, he was kind of not very ecstatic about, you know, telling. That's wild, though. Absolutely wild. You can't get rid of the wrong package.

Even when you bring it back to them, send it back. We didn't order it. Now it's a seven, so it's a car part or something like that. Now, it'd be different if they sent you like a new iPad or something. You know, okay, all right, I'll keep it. Fine. You know? I'm trying to be a good citizen.

And so my hubby says, well, if I get this back again, I'm going to tear it off and throw it the streets. Well, don't do that. But thanks for the update. By the way, a movie you got to watch this weekend, have you watched a citizen vigilante yet since you're into movies? Oh, no. Yeah.

Yeah, citizen vigilante has been banned in certain places, and it's making a lot of noise because, you know, it's about essentially, and you know, I love assassin movies. And I'm going to have to watch that, this movie. And this guy is going after all the, shall we say, the European migrants that don't get punished by the court system there. It's kind of like Death Wish 2026 on steroids is what I'm hearing. Oh, my, or Dexter. Oh, I love that. Okay.

Well, anyway, I'll let you know on Monday how it goes, all right? Thanks, Cherry. Got a roll. Ilya Shapiro joins me, one of the finest legal minds in the country from the Manhattan, and Institute. We'll talk a little bit more, a little more analysis on what's next after the Supreme Court rulings this week on the Bill Meyers show on KMED. The best technology should make the world more. Those of you who didn't get that joke, someone will explain it to you on a way home.

Get tickets now at Britfest.org. News Talk 1063. KMED. You're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. Proud to bring on Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. And, Elia, it's great to have you back on now. Is it Shapiro's Gaville? Isn't that your substack, Eulia? It is. It is.

Yeah, I subscribe to it, love it, and always enjoy what you're doing there. And we've had a lot of talk on the Supreme Court decisions this week, and I'll bet you've been on a slew of shows, no doubt about this. You know, at least the best thing we can say about this week maybe is that at least biology does seem to win sometimes. So even if they're not biologists over at the Supreme Court? Truth seems to win, yes. Justice Thomas's opinion makes clear that, I mean, you call a spade a spade. We don't live in a world of abstractions. Sex is real, if not some social construct. Now, what I'm curious about here, and maybe you can help us understand the way the Supreme Court works here, here we're on the West Coast. And you know what's going on out here on the West Coast. We do absolutely everything possible to grab a kid and start. school and say, oh, so you have gender dysphoria, okay, let's get you all sliced up and

diced up. You know, that's kind of the way the state of Oregon goes. Same with California, same with Washington, et cetera. Why did not the Supreme Court way more deeply that the entire concept of states not protecting female sports ended up getting a hearing rather than that states are allowed to protect female sports? Could you explain why that? that works one way. And so it's a little bit, in other words, Oregon is not going to change with this ruling, at least I don't think it will. Can you help us understand that? Well, the court decides cases that are brought to it. It doesn't issue advisory opinions. It doesn't decide cases that are not in front of it. So this case was a challenge by two

transgender athletes to restrictions in West Virginia and Idaho, and that's what the court decided. The next case could very well be challenging Oregon, you know, an athlete who has to compete against a biological male in a women's category who wants to challenge that Oregon rule. That would be the next case. Okay. Now, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Election Commission, the federal election, the FEC, on campaign finance. So is this just really expanding the concept of speech as money or money is sort? speech, you know, from Citizens United? Is that really what this is all about? Well, it's, you know, it's this weird rule that had been in place for a long time that had been upheld by a narrow

five to four Supreme Court vote in 2001, limiting the coordination of campaign spending between candidates and parties, which sounds silly. What kind of corruption is it if candidates and parties coordinate, you know, they're supposed to be rowing in the right direction? And the argument was, well, you know, donors can, they're limited in how much they can donate to anyone candidate, but they can donate a lot to parties, and they can say, oh, well, you know, I want Bob Smith to win, and so I'll give, you know, that $200,000 to the Republican Party instead of, you know, just the $5,000 or $7,000 or whatever I'm limited to to Bob Smith. And there are a lot of problems with that argument, even though the court upheld that 26 years ago now,

including that there are disclosure rules, there are anti-earmarking rules, the party has to disclose, you know, who it's doing things for, who's donating to it, all those sorts of things. And there have been other developments as well, plus the experience in different states, about half of which have these anti-coordination rules, half of which don't. And there's no difference in the level of corruption. So anyway, the court finally threw out that rule and vindicated Justice Thomas, who is the in dissent in that 2001 campaign. case, I think he was the last justice who was on the court back in 2001. And, you know, now the parties and the candidates can basically pool their funds. It applies equally to all parties.

Apparently, at present, the Republicans have more money in their parties. This is not talking anything about independent spending by groups or anything like that. But, you know, who knows how it will ultimately affect things beyond this cycle, people are saying the Republican Party seems to have more money. but who knows. Were there any decisions this week, and other than Trump v. Barbara, we'll talk about that here in just a minute, but are there any surprises, I mean, real surprises in which you thought, boy, I wasn't expecting this at all. Not really. I mean, I was surprised in Barbara that they went the constitutional route rather than Kavanaugh's kind of middle of the road. It's not legal under federal law, but Congress could change that or something like that.

But what people really have to understand is the court is not a political court. It's not a partisan court. It's not a Trumpy court. The court has gotten so much, so many attacks from all different sides, like whiplash the last week. Every day, the side switch on who gets attacked for what. And especially Justice Barrett has been the target of some very ugly attacks of all sorts of things. Well, I have to agree that I haven't been real happy with some of those, but I guess that it doesn't matter if I'm unhappy with some of those rulings. But she and Roberts seem to have been a major part of Trump v. Barbara of that win.

Wasn't that the case? Absolutely. You can pick out cases you like, pick out cases you don't. But, you know, she especially is not some sort of squish middle vote or, you know, moving left in office or, you know, moving left in office or or anything like that. After all, you think about the major conservative legal victories of the last decade, affirmative action, guns, overturning Rovi Wade, Chevron, the list goes on and on, or Trump-specific ones, giving him immunity, not allowing him to be kicked off the ballot, immigration ruling from last week. She was on the right side of all of those. So it's just

picking and choosing and, you know, whatever, recency bias and what have you. But This is a solid and independent court. They are not result-oriented. Some people attacking from the right want the justices to be just as kind of predictable and result-oriented as those on the left. And I don't think that would be good for the rule of law. All right. Now, let's focus a bit on birthright citizenship, be Trump v. Barbara. I'm not surprised that it came out this way because I don't think there was one legal person I talked to who thought that President Trump was.

going to win on the merits of the case or on the executive order. And I guess the question is, though, is that the court did really, as you say, come out and say the 14th Amendment meant what it said. Is that kind of what I'm hearing, or was it more that the executive order was wrong? The question is, what does the 14th Amendment mean? Yeah. Because subject to the jurisdiction thereof is the question. What is being subject to the jurisdiction mean?

and there's a dispute between the majority and the dissent about whether it means just being subject to the laws of the U.S. or does it mean domicile, which is a legal concept about intent to reside somewhere? Is it allegiance in terms of political allegiance to a sovereign? And who determines that? Is it the different sovereign? Is it the person's state of mind again? These are tough questions and not answerable through typical originalist means of trying to understand what the public meaning of the 14th, Amendment, that provision, the Citizenship Clause meant in 1868 when it was ratified at a time when

neither birth tourism nor illegal immigration were a thing. So it's a legitimately difficult case. Anyone on either side of the question who tries to say that this was not a close issue just doesn't understand it. And ultimately, that's why the constitutional issue came down five to four, because remember Kavanaugh agreed with the dissent on the constitutional issue. And the legal issue came down six to three. So, you know, it's, it is what it is. There's no more room for Congress to act at this point because of, because the ruling is constitutional, because the majority said that birthright citizenship is a constitutional guarantee for, with the narrow exceptions of invading armies and kids of diplomats and things like that. And so the only thing that can be done is

continue to debate it politically. Maybe some future court would reverse it or a constitutional amendment, which of course are exceedingly rare and hard to accomplish. But essentially here, I'm sorry to interject here, but didn't essentially Trump v. Barbara in which they talked about, you remember in the past they talked about the constitutional or the constitution is not supposed to be a suicide pact? In some ways, Trump v. Barbara, when it comes to trying to make, you know, keep the borders and keep invaders out, especially the, you know, the leak of illegal immigration that has been going on for a long, long time. Isn't there a bit of a suicide package, packed kind of feel to this ruling? You know, to just say that, hey, you know, someone comes in here and

buy hook or crook and pops a baby out, instant, presto citizen, you know? Well, that could be a bad result, but it's not, I mean, it's anybody's, it's anybody's call what, you know, national suicide might be. The, there, there is not a majority to say, even, even Thomas and Gorsuch said that, you know, kids of longstanding illegal immigrants probably would have an as-applied challenge because they have no allegiance to any other place. So it's, I think part of this is legal strategy if the president's executive order have been narrower and only targeting birth tourism, for example, it may well have gone through because the analysis there is somewhat different than for people in the country illegally and pressing

this that way rather than first trying to get it through Congress in some way or having a narrower executive order making the political case. This might have ended up differently in the Supreme Court. So, you know, I – I – I – I – I – I – I – I – I – I – I – I – Again, there are things that the executive branch can do now, tighten up vetting on people trying to get into the country. You know, maybe if you're heavily pregnant, you don't go, you know, there's a higher suspicion. Currently, consular officers aren't even allowed to ask the question of whether you're pregnant or how long you intend to stay and if you're pregnant, that sort of thing. All right. Now, I'm glad you brought this up because the president already has the power. Well, Trump v. Hawaii back in 2018 settled that question by saying the president can come up and declare any class of alien vet that he wishes to if he thinks this is in the national interest that he can say, hey, you can't come in.

So essentially, yeah, you could tell pregnant people, as the left would like to call it, no, you can't come into the United States of America because essentially this is what, you know, they're trying to pop out instant citizens. I guess, boy, you know, how do you work that there, you think, Elya, do you end up having, you know, obstetricians hired as a TSA and Border Patrol? I mean, it's what we're going to have to do. I don't know. And some of that would be subject to legal challenge, depending again on how it's framed. But the court made it very clear that the president has broad authority in Trump v. Hawaii in that case, right? Yep. No, I mean, I think our vetting for visas should be tightened.

in a host of different ways. Ideologically as well, you talk about not being a suicide pact, importing people who would then demonstrate against, in protest, sometimes violently against the American way of life. No, there's a lot of things that could be reformed about our immigration enforcement regime that perhaps might not even be as controversial or newsbreaking as, you know, the ICE enforcement that we've had. Very good. Ely, you had mentioned that there appeared to be no legislative remedy to this birthright citizenship question. I'm seeing some Congress people going on the talk shows and saying different things, and there was talk about, and I'm just going to run it by you, and tell me what you think, that they were talking about Congress actually passing a law, defining what subject to the jurisdiction actually means, to actually place it in federal law. Is that something that could potentially work or did the Supreme Court essentially say, nope, nothing, nada?

No, the majority opinion takes that off the table. Kavanaugh's opinion would have allowed Congress to do that. He said that existing federal law says this, but that can be changed. But the majority did, you know, it defined as a matter of constitutional law what subject to the jurisdiction means. So, nope, sorry, that won't work. Neil Gorsuch, Justice Gorsuch, said something the other day that I think is quite interesting. And I'm wondering if you think he's going to be getting some traction. This has nothing to do with any cases that they were hearing this time.

But he's been making noise that he really wants pressure from the court brought down to stop coercive plea deals. Is that starting to gain some traction within the justices? because, you know, we're at the point now where I can swear almost nobody goes to trial. And there are all sorts of cases in which, you know, the states and local governments end up doing everything by plea deals now. And I know there was a case that was discussed. I think, I don't know, was it in this session here what it had to do with coercive drugs? They were forcing someone as part of a plea deal to take psychological drugs or psychotropic drugs. Do you recall that?

there was something like that. Yeah, you know, I don't know if the court is going to look at coercive plea deals, but it might be, there might be more of an appetite for policing over criminalization. So the way that prosecutors can leverage the coercion of some, to get someone to take a plea deal is because there are all of these different charges they can include and for a relatively minor crime to say, well, if you go to trial, you roll the dice, you could be a, up there for, you know, get 30 years in prison. Oh, yeah. They'll throw 30, 40 charges in something, right? You went in there for something, and then there's process charges and process. And I mean, it's just amazing what happens. And then everybody cops unless you're wealthy, I guess. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And I think that the court has done a little bit of that, but it's, you know, especially at the federal level, you know, there shouldn't be that many federal crimes. Most crimes should be at the state level, although they're obviously coercive plea bargaining at the state level as well. But that's not necessarily something that the U.S. courts grapple with.

That's more for state Supreme Courts. But I think there is some appetite along Gorsuch's line, and it's one area where there are cross-ideological coalitions. So kind of Gorsuch gets together with Sotomayor on some of these things. Now, we had Gorsuch, I believe, and Justice Thomas, and I think, forget who else, but it was the other conservative justice that ended up wanting to hear a challenge to New York's COVID law in which they fired a lot of of workers in which Governor Hockel just said, nope, nope, no more religious in, you know, exemption here, nothing like that. And they wanted to hear it and the rest did not. Did that surprise you? Because I'm thinking, boy, if there's any issue which is ripe for the Supreme Court to weigh in on,

it's the tyranny that came down during COVID. What are your thoughts? The court, like the rest of society, like most of the rest of society, just wants to put COVID behind it. It hasn't taken a COVID case in, I don't know, five years at this point, and it really is done with it for good or ill. It stopped taking them, you know, once the masks came off, as it were, once the, you know, the lockdowns and everything were done, they didn't really want to be in the business of, literally relitigating some of those things. It was a nasty period. And there's some parallels, actually, to 100 years earlier during the Spanish flu. If you read some of the histories, it was such in the moment, obviously, it was such a big

major deal in a more deadly pandemic. But once it was over, I mean, hey, we just went into the roaring 20s as if nothing had happened. Yeah, as if the masks could never come back and the lockdowns could never come back. I was kind of disappointed with that one. I don't know if you had an opinion on it one way or the other. I was disappointed with many more, like several years ago, but at this point, I had no expectation that they were going to be taking COVID cases. So it's just the reality of it.

I thank you so much for coming on in giving us a take on this. Elia Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. You write on this quite frequently. And once again, give her about your substack. Great grief. It's a great read. Yeah, Shapiro's Gaville. and this week especially I've been writing up a storm all over the place.

Eventually it will make it into my substack, but I've been in the New York Post and the City Journal and free press and all over. If you go to my page at Manhattan.com. You can find all my writings. Elia, thanks so much. Pleasure having you on. Take care. Bye, bye-bye. 655.

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