Breaking News from Pod Save America - Legal Expert SLAMS Trump's Authoritarian Moves

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

Jon Lovett is joined by Leah Litman, co-host of Strict Scrutiny and legal expert, to explain Trump's authoritarian moves including gutting of the FBI and DOJ, indicting his enemies, going after universities, and how we can make the conservative Supreme Court own their hypocrisy. CHAPTERS 0:00 - Leah Litman 10:15 - Ad break 10:47 - Leah Litman cont. Get 50% off your new system. Visit https://simplisafe.com/crooked. There’s no safe like SimpliSafe®. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, I am here with Leo Lipman, co-host of strict scrutiny, legal scholar and expert. Good to see you. Good to see you, too. Good to be here in person. I was running through the topics we were going to talk about today, and it was, okay, we've got military crackdown, the end of dissent and prosecuting our political enemies. Classic fair here in America. And then we came up with something additional. Yes, Supreme Court justices.

Hawking their books. Hocking their books. a competing book tour to your own? Yeah. I think I am saying more substantive and interesting things, but I guess we'll see. So let's start with this. Lawyers for James Comey announced they plan to file a motion to dismiss the criminal case. One argument is that Trump's appointment of former White House aid and insurance lawyer, Lindsay Halligan, to replace the prosecutors that wouldn't go after James Comey and Tish James was not lawful. What do you make of that strategy? So I think it's a smart one, and I think it has a good chance of succeeding because so far there have actually been two

successful challenges to two other U.S. attorneys that Trump appointed basically in the same way that he appointed Halligan. So this was the Alina Haba challenge, and then also to the U.S. attorney in the district of Nevada. And basically the argument is that federal law, this federal vacancy reform act, allows you to appoint someone to serve as an interim attorney, U.S. attorney or acting official for 120 days. And then the core. courts get to decide who is going to be the interim use attorney after that. And the administration has attempted to evade that by then firing, you know, the person that the courts select and then appointing their chosen person.

And now two courts have decided that's basically an end run around the federal law limitations on appointing people outside of the Senate confirmation process. So, yeah. So it does seem a little bit like trying to get Capone on tax fraud, you know, because this is such a brazen political prosecution. What legally can Comey do to get the case thrown out on the basis of this being an unfair targeting? So he's definitely going to raise those claims as well. And those are malicious prosecution or vindictive prosecution claims that basically argue that he is being targeted vindictively and selectively that the government wouldn't actually prosecute

someone for engaging in this conduct if it were anyone else and that they selected Comey, you know, basically to make his life more difficult. And again, these are the sorts of claims that usually don't succeed. But because he is basically posting his direct messages telling his attorney general, please go after my political opponents and critics that makes these claims a little bit more likely to succeed than the modal selective prosecution claim. So if let's say the Trump. administration argues, regardless of the president's musings about who should or should not be tried, it is obviously important to prosecute a former leader of the FBI if that person lied under oath to

Congress. Is there any way in which an argument like that could gain purchase? I mean, sure. Imagine you have Emil Beauvais, right, as the trial judge. You know, sure. It could get purchase before some Trump loyalist hack. But the problem is there is so much external evidence that just suggests that's not what is happening here. You know, they had to fire another U.S. attorney in order to get these claims to actually go before a grand jury. They had to ignore the evidence of all of the career prosecutors. And then there is the fact that they haven't even put in the indictment what the specific lying allegations were or how he possibly obstructed justice. So I think there's just so much external evidence that this actually isn't about someone

lying before Congress. It is about him just not liking Jim Comey. Yeah, I guess like what I don't under, I guess maybe in part because this does feel unprecedented, like it first of all, they didn't seem to have enough evidence to prosecute until they brought in this outside person, uh, uh, who's now leading what I call howigans hooligans, uh, but like are there examples where cases have been thrown out where some, where they, where you say, hey, this was. a political prosecution, even if the person did it, even if there is plenty of evidence to justify a trial. So almost no, because, again, vindictive selective prosecution claims are so hard to succeed

because you rarely have evidence that, okay, yeah, we actually are targeting this person because we don't like them. And if you had that evidence, even if, right, there was a plausible basis to believe that they were in violation of the law, then you still might be able to prevail on your selective or vindictive or malicious prosecution claim. But those cases just haven't existed because everyone else listens to Stringer Bell and doesn't take notes on a motherfucking criminal conspiracy, you know, or at least like tweets them out. So there aren't cases like that, but that's because no one else has done anything remotely like what Donald Trump is doing to the DOJ and FBI. And this isn't the only area

where Trump is being both selective and vindictive. He's going after universities by offering preferential treatment in exchange for administration-approved policies. The Pentagon is trying to get media outlets to sign a pledge on how they will cover the Pentagon, which has now been rejected by not only ABC and BCC CNN, but also Fox News and Newsmax joining the woke mob. You have Pam Bondi and DOJ pressuring social media companies to clamp down on users who are trying to direct people to. to ice raids and other ways in which they're trying to protest ice. What? Boy, it's bad.

So maybe we should just start with Trump going after universities. You know, we've seen some universities cave. Columbia, obviously, famously, was one of the first to get a lot of attention for doing this. What is the, like, legal basis for what Trump is doing and how the colleges could fight back? There is no legal basis for what he is doing. He is attempting to assert powers over universities that no law allows the federal government to assert. The federal government can't tell universities. You have to dismantle these departments because they belittle conservatives, even though that is literally

one of the demands in this demand letter. The federal government can't tell universities hand over your teaching evaluations so we can determine whether you have too many woke faculty on staff. And these are just some of the powers that they are asserting over universities that are fundamentally incompatible with academic research and academic freedom. And that's also what they are doing in the context of this Pentagon letter because in all of these circumstances they are using, you know, the art of the deal to basically evade the law because they know the law doesn't actually allow them to strip universities of this authority or to give them, you know, pre-approval and sense. sorial authority over like what the print media publishes. And so they just arrange these agreements and in so doing try to evade like so much of what law is supposed to provide like predictability, transparency, stability. And so then they ask these institutions to sign these agreements and basically

wave away their rights because if you read the university compact, it basically says, well, we agree that if the DOJ finds us in violation of this compact, then they can withdraw these benefits, you know, that they are offering. But the benefits are DOJ and the federal government complies with the law. You know, they're basically saying... It's a protection racket. Right, exactly. Pretty nice college you got there.

Be shame if something were to happen to it. Yeah, exactly. And it's a sign of weakness, I think, that they are opening it up to all universities now. Because after their first offeres, you know, refuse their protection, you know, imagine that the mobster, you know, goes around the block and the first few stores say, like, get the fuck out. Like, we don't want your protection. And then he just, like, posts, right? He runs an ad in the newspaper that's like, anyone else, right, want to fork over

some money in exchange for protection, right? Like, no one would do that. And yet that's what they're asking them to do. Yeah. And it's interesting because a bunch of these journalistic outlets said no to the Pentagon, which was the right thing to do. I'm glad they did. I think they should be applauded.

When people do the right thing, they should be applauded, though, the Pentagon made it easy to say no because it's so unhinged to do this. It's not addressing any sort of specific problem either. But the Pentagon comes back and says, we're not actually making you do anything. We're simply forcing you, we're asking you to acknowledge our policies and the consequences for what happens if you participate in their violation. But in signing a document like that, you are conceding something very big. Exactly. And that's the same thing with the university compact, where schools are basically saying you federal government can do this. to us, even though the law doesn't authorize that, you know, they are signing away their academic

mission, their academic freedom, and the legal protections that the law provides. And again, that's why they're trying to make these deals. Is there any, if a college signs something like this, does that, and let's say then later say they don't agree anymore, have they given up a right that they may not be able to get back? Yeah. So I think that's a little bit hard to know because usually we allow individuals to waive their constitutional rights. So a criminal defendant, for example, can say, I don't want to go to trial. You know, I will take a plea deal. And we allow them to waive their, you know, right to a jury trial.

But we also require waivers to be knowing and voluntary. And here it's not exactly clear how voluntary the concession would be to the extent the federal government is threatening to extort these schools and take away federal funds and basically trying to badger them. into submission. This video is brought to you by SimplySafe home security. SimplySafe is the new way to keep your home. Typical security systems only react once someone is inside your home. Real security stops a crime before it even starts. With SimplySafe, the moment someone steps onto your property, AI powered cameras detect threats while they're still outside your home and alert real security agents right away. To get 50% off your new system, go to simplysafe.com slash crooked. That's simplysafe.com com slash crooked for 50% off. There's no safe like simply safe.

So I want to talk about how we fight all this when we know it is under the watchful eye of a conservative Supreme Court majority. I'm old enough to remember when the fact that the federal government had gotten big and put money all over the place. It was very important to conservatives that that did not come with strings attached, that if you were giving money, say, to hospitals, it was wrong to make those hospitals provide for certain treatments that if you fund the highways, you don't get to do seatbelt laws. It seems to me like there's a conservative case against allowing the federal government to use its funding for research as a cudgel to force schools to do anti-woke, anti-DEI policies. Like, if you get rid of the ideological

contours of the demands, is there a like a conservative case here that like has per, has like some kind of like kind of persuasive ability with the right wing judges that we don't want the federal government using its money in this way? I mean, absolutely there's a conservative case. Is it going to have purchase, you know, on these hacks who have been only too willing to abandon originalism, textualism, and every other methodology that they purport to adhere to when it serves them? I kind of doubt it. But that doesn't mean it's not worth making the case because I think we should kind of force them to bear the costs and own their hypocrisy because otherwise we're just like greasing the wheels and making it easier for them to get away, you know, with abandoning

the law and abandoning principles. So what are the conservative cases? There's a separation of powers angle, you know, under the Constitution, it's supposed to be Congress, not the president, who possesses the power of the purse and actually set the conditions on federal funds. And I remember a time, I don't know, was it two years ago, when we were all super concerned about executive power and the tyranny of the executive, which apparently just means canceling student debt. And so the idea that the president gets to make these determinations, you know, without Congress actually passing a law and laying out the conditions, that should concern people who at least professed some, I don't know, concern about executive power. So that's one angle. And then the other angle is federalism. Again, like, we used to have this concern about the federal government being too powerful

and basically crowding out the states, which we're supposed to have primary control over things like health, education, welfare, and safety. And so the idea that the federal government just gets to take over, you know, state institutions and badger them into being arms of the federal government, you also would think that would raise people's federalism hackles. There's also this whole thing called like the private market, which I thought, you know, conservatives were all about. And so the idea that the federal government could exercise control over private media outlets and tell them like what you can publish or private universities and tell them, here's what you can teach. That also should be antithetical to people who are concerned about big government, you know, and want the free market, you know, to just decide things. Yeah, do you feel like there's some hope that, okay, Alito Thomas, they are going to do what they're going to do, but that on some level, like Amy Coney Barrett is an ideological operator, but not a partisan hack in the same way they are, that even Kavanaugh Roberts, right? Like there are six people on the court. Gorsuch is sometimes strange.

I mean, they're all weird in their own way. Sure. But I worry that drawing that comparison is just the banality and bigotry of low expectations. Because of course they're not as bad as Thomas and Alito. I mean, who is? And yet, like, you know, I don't think that that should make us believe that, oh, the Supreme Court is going to be the one that saves us. Again, you know, there is some chance that we create the conditions under which the court could,

would, and will rule against the Trump administration on some of these matters. And I think it's worth making the case, right? I think it is worth, you know, drawing out the legal arguments about why what the Trump administration is doing is illegal, violate conservative principles, et cetera. But I just don't think we should count on that, you know? And so that's why I kind of, when people ask that question, I always want to kind of divert the answer to and also put your energies elsewhere. Of course.

I guess what I want to understand is what is the absolute best arguments that we should be coalescing around. And I remember the arguments that were made to try to save Obamacare. And those were not the ones that John Roberts used. He went to taxes, right? Like that I think sometimes on the left, we don't put ourselves in conservative shoes when we need to. The reason I wanted to ask about that is because I thought that the opinion that Karen Imriga wrote was beautiful. It was such a logical and thoughtful conservative argument against military deployment.

and what I appreciated about it most was that it made a distinction that the Supreme Court seems to be using almost as a shield, which is deference to the executive. All these laws require deference to the executive. And she makes this argument that is so clear, which is you can be deferential while understanding that words like insurrection, rebellion, these words have meaning and that you can have a great deal of deference while still. factually asserting that those those events aren't taking place. That was a phenomenal opinion. And I think that opinion drew on some of the constitutional principles. We were just talking about, you know, fears about an executive branch that becomes too powerful. Fears about a federal government that is too powerful and basically has a standing army at their behest.

You know, fears that the federal government basically takes over law enforcement when it was supposed to be the states that have primary responsibility over things like against safety, welfare, and the police power. So I think that that opinion sounds, you know, in the same constitutional principles like you were asking about and that we were spinning out before. And I think those arguments, again, are out there. They are being persuasively made and people are echoing them, you know, in basically every channel that is available as they should. And I think that opinion was very strong. But, you know, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit like partially stayed it. They concluded that the president did have the authority to federalize, you know, the National Guard, even if he didn't necessarily have the authority to deploy them.

So that's part of why I am just always in the camp of like sounding a note of caution because you can have the best arguments in the world. And at the end of the day, like, you're still not necessarily going to win a case before this Supreme Court. Like, I was at the court during the Obamacare litigation, and that was so scarring for me. Like, that explains a lot of, like, what I have come to think about the Supreme Court. Because to see the Affordable Care Act almost get completely wiped out, torn down, because people were afraid that the federal government would one day make you eat broccoli was insane to me. And, again, like, those are the arguments that have some chance of success at the Supreme Court. I do think that no one ever paid a price for the food pyramid. No one was ever held accountable for 67, six to ten servings of bread a day.

And I do think it's part of what led us to this moment, along with the financial crisis in the Warren, Rock. All right. Now, speaking of the Supreme Court and the way in which you were shaped by watching how it works. So there's a couple big cases coming down the bike from the Supreme Court. One is the push to overturn a ban on conversion therapy. I believe it was one of the liberal justices made a pretty compelling argument here for it is about where they want to defer to medical expertise and where they don't. Can you just do it? What's the latest there? Yeah, so Justice Jackson, she drew a pretty pointed comparison between the court's decision last term in Scrimetti, which upheld a ban on gender affirming care for transgender minors and the law issue in this case, which is a ban on conversion therapy.

And she said, look, okay, if you're saying, well, the medical evidence is subject to debate, you know, bracket for a second that that's not really true for conversion therapy, if you're saying that we generally defer to states, you know, where there's contested medical evidence, experts on both sides, and on these, you know, high profile ideological issues, then why are we just deferring to states when they're banning, you know, one form of medical treatment and not deferring to them? when they ban another form of medical treatment. And please try to answer that without just deciding you like one and don't like the other. And the federal government struggled to do that because literally all they came up with was, well, the law at issue in the Scrametti case, the ban on gender affirming care, that was a ban on minors and medical treatment. And it's like, okay, do you recognize that the ban on conversion therapy is also a ban on the care that a licensed professional can offer?

like that is treatment in a professional medical setting. That is a restriction on medical treatment. Seem to escape them and also all of the Republican appointees. And by the way, it isn't just to be clear. It's not, doesn't ban conversion therapy because it can't ban conversations. Right. What it bans is people being licensed by the state providing that treatment. Exactly.

Which seems to be just a matter for professional organizations and how they, you know, and the licensing system, which. which is fraught in a lot of different ways, but something we all understand involves restrictions on how people can and cannot practice medicine. Right, exactly. And if you're saying the First Amendment just applies straightforwardly with no limitations to the regulation of professional speech and professional standards, then what stops me, right, who has no medical training and no medical professional background from just saying,

I'm going to market myself as a licensed professional therapist and offer talk therapy, right? Like I'm just talking. That's speech. You know, are you infringing my First Amendment rights when you tell me I can't do that? No, that's insane, right? And the reason why that's insane is because the state gets to set professional standards for the medical profession, the legal profession, and other highly regulated professions. And yet the Supreme Court denies that, right, in the context of speech that the right-wing

culture warriors, like, really want to engage in. Yeah, I was thinking about this. And tell me if I'm, like, saying something that's off. obviously stupid. But the point that Justice Jackson makes to me is a good one. And I obviously would like to see professional organizations prevent their members from providing harmful medicines. Of course. But if I had to choose which regime to live under, I would like to live in one where, as much as we find it disgraceful, there are parents taking their children to conversion therapy, but also kids that have gender dysmorphia are able to get gender affirming care.

If you want to make those one thing, I don't like it. But I would rather live in a world where these kids are able to get the treatment they need. I don't know. Like that was sort of my reaction to it. Yeah. I mean, at least treat them the same, right? And this is part of what, you know, frustrates me about the conversations of, well, isn't there, you know, like a legal argument that will persuade this Supreme Court? And it's like, well, here again, you were faced with a state law where there's your saying, like, debatable medical evidence.

And the political process has made a decision. And yet you can't swallow that result, you know, when it comes to a type of, you know, medical treatment that you just think, right, people have to be able to provide because you don't like the gays. It's so interesting because it's like you just see this in like so much of our politics, which is what you're talking about is like for someone like Alito or Thomas, there's a slight nuance and discomfort with reality. And like as adults, we learn to handle that, you know what, I may not perfectly like the outcome, but I'm going to find out. my principles to their logical conclusion, even if it allows for a circumstance that I personally don't like, which is not just like the basis for what a judge is supposed to do. It's like what we're all supposed to do. And I am sure we will see Alito and Thomas find some convoluted way to find a way to rule differently, even though it's obvious that they're doing it because

they just have a bias in the case of these different kinds of treatments. Principles don't know her, right? Like that would be the Sam Alito response. One last case to keep us up at night. What's happening with the latest effort to continue rolling back the Voting Rights Act? Well, so a little over 10 years ago, the Republican appointees blew up one part of the Voting Rights Act, the preclearance process, which had required certain states with especially bad histories of voter discrimination to get the federal government's permission before changing their voting laws or policies. And when the Supreme Court blew up Section 5, the preclearance process, they said, don't worry, that's no longer needed because there's still the other provision of the Voting Rights Act Section 2, which prohibits voting discrimination on a nationwide basis. And one way that it prohibits voting discrimination is by preventing legislatures from drawing districts in ways that result in white voters being overrepresented and minority voters being underrepresented, you know, and not having the chance to elect candidates. candidates of their choice. And now the argument is prohibiting that form of racial discrimination,

the Voting Rights Act, is itself racist and discriminates on the basis of race. So that is the argument that the Supreme Court is hearing. And that's actually the argument that they indicated they were interested in because this case was on the Supreme Court's docket last term. And they rolled it over to this term and specifically asked the parties to focus on the question of whether the provision in the Voting Rights Act that, again, requires legislatures to draw districts in a way that ensures we have a multiracial representative democracy violates the 14th Amendment or the 15th Amendment by discriminating on the basis of race. Let's say they throw this out. And a state were to draw a map and they were to say, all right, we figured out a way to get all the black people into

two districts and that'll allow the majority of white people to elect many more white people or representatives of these white people. And we are doing this on the basis of race. Presumably that would still be a violation of the law, but they are raising that they would be basically it would be going, it would be going, it would be going from a system of like outcomes to a system of like you have to evaluate the intent, raising the threshold. Exactly. And because we live in a world where legislatures just say, oh, we're not drawing districts on the basis of. of race, we're drawing it on the basis of partisanship, you know, to advantage to the Republican party and disadvantage to the Democratic Party.

Which is allowed. Right. Well, so the Supreme Court has said federal courts can't do anything to fix those partisan gerrymanders. So if a court concludes, okay, yeah, the legislature, that's what they were trying to do, that just ends the case. There's nothing that a court can do from there. And so because legislatures, unlike Donald Trump, no, not to exactly take notes on a

motherfucking criminal conspiracy. Like, it's really hard to prove that what they were doing was indeed based on race, not party, because of the close correlation between, you know, race and partisanship today. It's so easy for them to say, well, of course, this disadvantages minority voters. But what we were really trying to do was stick it to Democratic voters. Just to close the circle on this, that would ultimately just allow them another means to do the kind of gerrymandering they're already doing. It's a, like, how dangerous is this? It would allow them to do even more of it. It would allow them to erase.

several districts that have been drawn because the Voting Rights Act required legislatures to ensure minority voters had the opportunity to select candidates of their choice. Because right now, they can engage in partisan gerrymandering, but the Voting Rights Act prohibits them from drawing districts in ways that dilute the political power of minority voters, even if they were trying to do so for political reasons. Once you eliminate that constraint, to make their job that much easier. Exactly. So before we let you go, there are two competing book tours going on right now. One is yours.

The book is lawless. It's fantastic. Helpful guide to this moment. Understood where we were heading, I think, in a way that is, I think, all too prescient, unfortunately. Kind of shitty. Shitty of you. But then... Shitty of me.

I think it's shitty of the Supreme Court. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's correct. At the same time, Amy Coney Barrett. It's here to tell America. It's all good. It's all good.

she too is on a book tour and she was on Fox News and she was asked about what the court has been doing with what's called the shadow docket and this is where the court basically issues rulings without any opinion attached, leaving everyone to wonder, what the heck? Hey, what the heck? Do you have to make a temporary decision on something and there have been some really heated dissents from those who are on the losing end of some of those decisions. One of them from Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Kagan and Jackson, said in the last eight months, this court's to circumvent the ordinary appellate process and weigh in on important issues has grown exponentially. Its interest in explaining itself, unfortunately, has not. So what about her criticism that there's not full transparency on that, whether you want to call it emergency docket, shadow docket, interim docket? Yes, we can't decide what to call it. It seems it's a relatively new phenomenon that it's, or at least the amount of activity on it

is relatively new. You know, these are cases that are preliminary, and so they are not cases in which the court has had full briefing and made a final judgment. And I talk in the book about the opinion writing process. It's deciding a merits case is a painstaking process. It's slow. It takes a lot of work. And when we write an opinion, it reflects our final judgment. On the interim docket, these preliminary decisions that we make, it's not just about the merits, whether a case is right or wrong. We can count for other factors as well. And if we wrote a long opinion, it might give the impression that we have finally resolved the issue. And in none of these cases,

have we finally resolve the issue? If you want to quiet quit because your job is so fucking hard and you can't do it, like I volunteer. I will replace you. So that's one thing. It's just such nonsense what she is saying. You know, one, it's true that there are determinations on these emergency applications like stays and whatnot are preliminary. But newsflash, so are the lower courts.

And guess who manages to write long fucking opinions that make factual findings and explain their reasoning, the lower courts, including the courts of appeal, which have to fashion opinions for multiple judges. So the idea that it's so tough to write an opinion deciding a case in a preliminary fashion is just not an excuse to not do your job. And then second, if these are just preliminary interim bases, then what you should be doing is just sticking to the law and not using these shadow docket orders and interim orders or whatever you want to call them to upend an unsettle longstanding precedent, which is also what they have been doing. They've effectively overruled some cases on the shadow docket giving the president the power to fire federal officials in violation of laws that the Supreme Court has upheld.

And so if you want to say, oh, these are just interim and preliminary, let the law be until you actually have a chance to decide the case and weigh in with an opinion. It's just so ridiculous. And the reason why there are more requests is because you keep granting them. You know, if you want the Trump administration to stop running off to you and making all of these requests for emergency relief, stop giving them fucking cookies. Right. Well, it's also like it would also be more understandable if what they were doing through these rulings was whether they're overturning precedent or not, if they were stepping in to prevent outcomes that couldn't be reversed. Yes. Right?

Like if what like if they were issuing a statement. that said, you can't fire all those people. You may have the authority. We're not sure yet, but don't fire them right now because they're going to lose their jobs. And once they're gone, it causes all kinds of ramifications. And that's not what they're doing. They are without any explanation causing, even though they claim their decision is preliminary, huge changes to the government that can't be reversed. Yeah. No, John, you have managed to work your way into what the legal test for these forms of emergency relief is supposed to be, because one of the factors is supposed to be the likelihood of irreparable harm, right? The likelihood that something is going to happen

that can't be undone. And in so many of these cases, the court just ignores that factor because what it treats as irreparable harm is the Trump administration not being able to do what it wants immediately. Right. That, that, that, that, that, that they're, they're often like, seem almost like emotionally concerned with the harm that is done if Donald Trump can't do exactly what he wants to do when he wants to do it. Right. Yeah. No, they are treating him like a king. like a sovereign, right? The second his command goes unobayed, right? It is basically a constitutional crisis that requires their immediate action and deference. When, you know, it's not the likelihood of irreparable harm that thousands of federal workers are going to be laid off and you're not

going to be able to bring them back, you know, two years down the road if you ultimately conclude their firings are unlawful. Or it's not irreparable harm to basically dismantle the Department of Education or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or any of these other agencies such that you can't immediately bring them back to life, you know, two to three years later after you've already hollowed them out. Or it's not a reprable harm to allow ICE to engage in these roving immigration patrols, you know, and haul people out of their cars, terrorize their children, you know, separate them from their families and treat them, you know, with no dignity, no respect. And no, like the real problem would be telling Donald Trump, like, you can't deploy

these, you know, yeah. It's just so interesting what kind of like, kind of, kind of, like kind of bubble they live under where I suppose America's greatest threat is an executive that isn't unleashed, that we live in a place where the president is unable to act. A Republican executive is exactly isn't unleashed. That's the true, true danger. Well, Leah Littman, the book is lawless, the country's lawless. The Supreme Court is lawless. The future is female. And we will talk about it off mic, but you didn't like Life of a Showgirl. That's what you're telling me off.

Stay off camera. And we're done. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

I have complicated nuanced thoughts about Life of a Showgirl. But as you'll see, my nails are Life of a Showgirl coded. Colors with Gold Stars and TS on the thumbs. So I have some positive thoughts. I have some negative thoughts. Loyalty. Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks.