Chapo Trap House - 1051 - U.S. v. The Money feat. @Garliccorgi (7/6/26)

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

This week on Chapo, we finally beat the news curse to talk about Graham Platner’s latest and likely career-ending scandal…only to fall victim to it by talking about the Trump-FIFA red card reversal that absolutely did not matter at all. Our friend Tim (@garliccorgi) of the ALAB podcast is here to talk about this all, plus a roundup of the Supreme Court’s recent stripping of the copper wire out of everything, the narrow survival of the 14th amendment, and any potential options a future administration might have to reverse this. Find all things ALAB Series here, and get the show wherever you get podcasts: https://www.alabseries.com/ Just ONE WEEK left to get CHUNKS at the early bird price here: https://www.patreon.com/chunkstv 🚨🚨 LIVE SHOW ALERT 🚨🚨 NYC - NOV 6. - 10 YEARS IN THE ZONE Chapo & friends will be live at New York’s Society for Ethical Culture on Friday November 6th. Pre-Sale for Patreon subscribers on Wednesday, July 8 General sale begins Friday, July 9.

Greetings, friends. Hope everybody had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend, but let's kick it off on Monday, July 6th. We've got some chopbo coming out to you. And on today's episode, Felix and I are joined by our friend Tim, who will be here to discuss back once again to discuss the Supreme Court and the majesty of the law and the Constitution. Tim, how's it going? It's going great. The law has never been better. Supreme Court has solved all our problems. And we can pretty much. just wrap, put a whole bow on everything. All right. Cool. All right. I mean, it was a short episode today. Quickest episode ever. I love when I can clock out early.

Oh, wait. No, Felix, we can't clock out early today. Now, we'll peer behind the veil here. We are recording quite a bit. We're recording later than our usual Monday, Monday episode. So we have actually not been stung by the Chapo breaking news curse, which usually happens around 3.3.30 right after we stop recording. So just at the time,

of the show today, would like to discuss today's breaking news, which is, looks like curtains for Graham Platner. Yeah. And we were going to get hit with the chop of curse because Tim was a late replacement guest and I think you can

guess who the original guest was going to be. We were finally going to endorse. I do have to say as a lawyer, I do feel more qualified to answer the question, did this guy commit a crime or not, as opposed to, you know, lawfier questions

about democracy or social change or things like that. And I do feel like these allegations are pretty bad. Yeah, they are, this, this is the one, you know, for full on sexual assault here. And, you know, obviously, I feel a little stung by this, you know, given my semi-tempered endorsement of Grand Platner. But I just, I would like to say in my defense, I, I just really wish there were some signs that he was a lunatic. Yeah. It's just like, it's just, you don't expect this from a Blackwater employee. I mean, from such an erudite student of history as well, you'd think that he would,

you know, learn about powerful men being laid low by sexual assault like that. Well, yeah, it looks like it's a Sionare for Mr. Platner. And I don't know if he doesn't drop down yet, but he should because like this is, these are credible sexual assault allegations. I will say, though, obviously, like on, you know, like Twitter and Blue Sky, obviously, like, overwhelmingly negative response. But in the home of the stupids Instagram, overwhelmingly supportive response. So, I mean, I don't, like, I don't, like, honestly, look, like, yeah, if I had to bet on it,

I would say, yeah, like, yeah, he. probably drops out. You don't make an announcement where you're like, all of this is bullshit, but, you know, we're going to figure out like what we need to do for the best shot of being Susan Collins if you're going to stay in. But I am not the first, but this is not quite an original observation. But Grand Padner is the monkey's paw wish that many people had for a Democratic Trump. And if people

even remember 10 years ago almost. Or no, yeah, 10 years ago exactly, when the Access Hollywood tape came out and Donald Trump looked like he had been, he had spent the past 36 hours in his storage closet and did his only apology video ever and then won the election. You know, it's just, I, on balance,

do I think it is a good thing, that we no longer live in 2017 and articles can no longer fell the man. No, but the fact is that we don't. So I don't get like, again, betting man, I think he drops out probably, but you never know with the Democratic Trump. Hear me out.

We could have the first kickstreamed congressional campaign ever. You'd be uncannable there. Felix, what does threads, how does threads feel about Grand Platter? Okay, so we're, Checking threads right now, here are the responses to the Grand Platner announcement. I'm 95 years old. My mom was run over by a steamroller when I was 18 months old. I think about her every day. That has 78,000 likes. There's another post that just said, I had the dream where I killed my husband again. That has 18 million likes.

and then there is a recipe for something called chicken shishime. That is the, these are threads update. They're playing this coy close to the chest. Yeah. Well, moving on from the breaking news, before we get into the Supremes today, and this will actually lead very nicely into the discussion of the recent Supreme Court cases.

But listeners, if you're like me, you've been having a grand old time watching the World Cup this summer. And, you know, like last couple of days have been no exception. Shoutouts to Cabo Verde. That was one of the most exciting sporting events I've ever seen. Mexico, England last night was great. That was awesome. Norway beating Brazil.

That was super fun. And, you know, I love the World Cup. I said, like, I don't follow soccer, but I love the World Cup because it allows me to root for and against countries. in the context of sports, which I'm rooting for and against countries pretty much all the time. So it's nice to put a fine point on it. But I do want to talk about the red card gate, the Flo Balligan red card gate. Because like this is perfect for us because it's, you know, international probably like the premier sport world sporting event.

But Donald Trump has inserted himself directly in the middle of it. Now, if you haven't been following it, probably the team USA's best player or like is the best scorer on team USA. this guy, Flo Balagan, he was red-carded in their last game against Bosnia, Herzegovina. And I was not, this is how little soccer I know, I was unaware that if you get red-carded, your whole team has to play a man-down for the rest of the game. I just thought you sub-in another guy if you get ejected from the game. But not only are you out for the man-down for the rest of the game, Balagan was red-carded, so he's out for what we'll be kicking off in about an hour or two.

the game against Belgium tonight. Well, a lot of people said that this red card was sort of phony. It was a Mickey Mouse call. Once again, I don't know anything about soccer. I watched it on TV, looked like a very steep penalty for what was an incidental contact to me. I put it to my Twitter followers, like the soccer knowers out there, I said,

is this a red card or not? And the responses were all the American soccer fans said, total horseshit, yellow card at worst, case of absolutely crooked zebras. Every European soccer fan who responded said it was textbook case of a red card, no controversy whatsoever, just USA whining. I can't adjudicate that.

But the fact that Donald Trump called the head of FIFA infantino and got this overturned or got the red card suspended is perfect Donald Trump and it's also perfect FIFA. And he bragged about it too, right? I mean, it's not just the fact that he did it. It's that he went to a press conference.

Like, yeah, I did it. I did it. I called him up. I made it happen. Everybody can blame me for this. But Tim, like, now they're trying to walk it back and Trump was saying today that he was like, I just called, I called Infantino. Keep in mind, this is the guy and the organization that gave Donald Trump the first ever

FIFA World Peace Prize. Like probably will be a couple of weeks before he started a war. I'm on Tinder took Sunni. who's going to win it this year, to be honest with you. It's going to be the 2026 FIFA conference recipient. But like, yeah, like just to assuage him for not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. And like, this is the thing. It's hard to get too bent out of shape about this because FIFA is historically

probably one of the most corrupt organizations in the world. And I have no doubt that, like, all of the big soccer powers, I'm sure, have been doing all kinds of underhanded shit to give their team an unfair competitive advantage. But the thing is, I think they did it in a way that had a little bit more finesse than Donald Trump, who just literally called, just called the boss of soccer and just said, take away this penalty so Balagan can play. It's not like FIFA did themselves any favors either with their very bare bones kind of walking back of that penalty. And it was, you know, a controversial penalty at the time. They had to do VAR. So there was probably space to do this graciously.

But the fact that they just kind of upped and the next day were like, yep, Balagan's playing again. And then you hear Trump saying, yeah, I call. Gianni Infantino. It just creates the perfect storm of making this look as bad as it possibly could. And let's be honest, it is bad. Well, I feel like, I feel like Team USA is kind of an impossible position now

because if they win the game, everyone will say it was because of the obvious corruption. But if they lose the game, then they're really, like, then like, that's a choke of all shows. Because, like, they've been given every fucking possible advantage to win the game. And, like, I guess the way I feel about it is like,

obviously, I was rooting for team Iran in this World Cup. That was my strongest rooting interest in this World Cup. And they got absolutely hosed on like three different VAR, like callback, off sides penalties, right? There would have been three game winning goals for team Iran. And the thing is, once again, I don't, like, I will defer to the soccer noers. Offsides is the rule.

They go to the, you know, VAR and like the guys, like, by a hair's breadth is like further downfield than the defender. fair is fair fine like you know getting your heart ripped out by an officiating call like that's part of sports but what I will say is that Iran unquestionably had an like a disadvantage to every team they played by the corrupt way in which they were like

had to sleep in Mexico they had to travel every every every game day and that like half of their team like logistics and doctors either didn't get visas or were fucked with so like Iran definitely was fucked over by FIFA and this corrupt World Cup not so much on the calls per se but just the way they're treated.

And now with Team USA, even if they win this game, it's obvious that they have gotten an unfair advantage because something was decided off the field of play. And it was because the president of one of the host countries.

And like it's like Shinebaum or fucking Mark Carney could have done this. It's just because of Trump and like how openly corrupt he is and how fucking cowed at FIFA is. They've, you know, they've given the United States

now they wind enough and now they can play their best player. Not to mention that I think Trump already kind of poisoned them well for Team USA because after their first couple of victories during the group stage, DHS put out, you know, with their army of epic Reddit social media interns, were able to post like defending the homeland, you know, from all the like hordes of non-Americans and really positioned Team USA's kind of campaign to win this as, you know, kind of being linked to their, you know, general anti-immigrant stance. Yeah, their white power, fucking political agenda.

And that's the thing I want to talk about this red card and what leads directly into the Supreme Court cases that we're going to talk about. Because the big decision last week was about the Supreme Court in a five to four decision upholding birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment. And I think this is particularly interesting, given Donald Trump's, you know,

sort of sweaty, fat thumb pressing on the scale of this World Cup, on behalf of Flo Balligan, who is his life story and the circumstances of his birth are literally what Stephen Miller is like wakes up in a cold sweat every night thinking about. If you don't know, Flo Belligan's parents are British by way of Nigeria. And when his mom was seven months pregnant, they visited the United States. They visited New York. And then a doctor would not clear her for the flight home. So he was born in Brooklyn, New York and has U.S. citizenship.

and that's why he's playing for Team USA. So I think it's funny that Donald Trump is going out of his way to extort FIFA to allow him to play and hopefully win a game against Belgium tonight for the USA, as he is trying, as him and his administration are trying to remove the citizenship and, you know, sort of, yeah, just remove the citizenship of Flo Bellingen and everyone like him, whose parents are not citizens but was born in this country. Right, yeah. I mean, the citizenship decision, or rather, let me, starting with the executive,

of order, right, that he was just kind of by fiat, trying to get rid of citizenship of people who were temporary staying here, you know, not going through Congress, not going through any kind of formal rulemaking process, just kind of up in one day by essentially imperial decree, say that people's citizenships were not going to count. You know, it was such a brazen move. And, you know, I think anybody who was paying attention to this at the time saw that basically every commentator was saying that this was patently unconstitutional, right? That it wasn't just, you know, something that had been the law of the land for a while. It was just one of those bedrock things that really going back to the founding of the republic has been true.

And yet we see with this Supreme Court that these guys are slicing the salami so thin that we get to. I think it's, I forget it was a six three or five, four decision on the on the actual judgment. But regardless, you know, you have justices like Judge Kavanaugh saying that he doesn't even support the, constitutional amendment for birthright citizenship, that there's a separate statute, the Civil Rights Act, that he based his decision on. And there are four justices that outright said, no, I'm willing to terminate birthright citizenship for, you know, people that were born in this country. I mean, it was five, four on constitutionality and six to three on a more narrow interpretation. Like, could you explain that? Yeah, I think Kavanaugh was, he concurred in the,

on the judgment, but his, his reading of it was that the 14th Amendment, it's sell. does not provide birthright citizenship. It's that Congress passed a parallel act. It was called the Civil Rights Act that also confers birthright citizenship onto people. And so because there was the statute, Donald Trump couldn't go against that statute, right? So if there had been no statute establishing birthright citizenship, Kevin a might have, I wouldn't say that he would, but he might have voted a different way. I did like that Gorsuch said that birthright citizenship is legal, except for birth tourism, which is like,

I guess what Flo Baloggins mom did. But Tim, I like, I like Gorsuch's position because it was like, I mean, this used to be my specialty, finding the position

that makes everyone angry. We're, okay, so if you are in legal immigrant and you give birth to a child, they're a citizen. They're a citizen.

But if you're just, just like here and you give birth to a child they're not and it's just Tim conservatively how many years would it take to delineate that in a legal sense yeah like he's i love gorsuch yeah he's he was so excited for this he probably spent the entire day wearing those uh 2006 era midterm election shirts that were like the really politically confusing. I still really don't know what the point of them is where it's the pictures of the Native American guys that guns. And it says the original Department of Homeland Security.

Right. And they were like. Orsage for sure has one of those. I think he would probably defer to tribal law and citizenship for American citizens. Yeah. They were born on, you know, occupied Piscataway land. You have to do a check for that. and if you're a birth tourist on Piscataway land

or if you have to go to whatever home tribe from the land that you were born on. He was trying to wear that to the trial. And Roberts was like, can you like, give it a fucking rest? Thomas's test was also kind of strange. His in a way is a little more straightforward because, and it's the most stringent, right?

He basically said that he would require people to be quote unquote domiciled in the United States for there to be any finding of birth rate citizenship. But of course, the whole reason that this case is before the court in the first place is because we have these temporary visitors who later become permanent residents because we keep fucking up their countries for, you know, 20, 30 years at a time. And so their neighbor able to go back and they start a family here. But, you know, it would be an even more serious inquiry into whether or not somebody's domiciled here or not, unless, you know, you presume that you create this stringent impossible to pass tests on what, who counts as being domiciled or not. And then, you know, you presume, you know, you presume that you create this stringent impossible to pass tests on what, who counts as being domiciled or not. And then, you're allowed to freely deny citizenship to basically everybody who's born here unless you want them to happen in the first place. Now, Tim, another aspect about this decision and how it broke down the interest made is like, look, I think if you're listening to this show, like, you're pretty well aware that

originalism and like textual literalism as it relates to the Constitution is a fraud among the people who promote it. Because like this, if you're talking about the text of the Constitution. And a listener, for the Fourth of July this weekend, I went to. a reading of the Declaration of Independence at the up where my mom is near the local town meeting hall. And, you know, this is one of these very bucolic New England towns that's very historical. The average age is about 75 and it goes 80, 20, a Democrat in every single election. But I do have a pocket constitution now, and I'm going to read the text of the 14th Amendment now.

Section 1 says, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the states wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges of immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny any person within its jurisdiction, the equal protection of the laws. But Tim, it's that first clause there. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof

are citizens of the United States. if you're an originalist, what's the way out of that? How do you get around? It's subject to the jurisdiction thereof, and then you play some games around what it means to be subject to the jurisdiction thereof, which creates, I think, one of the biggest problems with this opinion with regards to originalism is that it is a fucking boring slog that Roberts writes going all the way back to English common law, talking about who accounted as a citizen under the rights of the king and creating this,

this, I would probably call it illegal fiction because my guess is that, you know, an actual historical inquiry into this would create a much more complicated picture. But basically the idea that anybody that's born on, you know, a king's territory is kind of sub, they owe a natural allegiance to the king. And so that's where we get this concept of Jusili from, right? Even though I think, you know, if you think about originalism as it's how it's actually supposed to work, right, we're supposed to really focus in on when they were drafting the actual amendment, right?

in the context of post-Civil War, in the context of having the Dred Scott decision, which the opinion also goes into, right? After, again, this just interminable thing about English legal history. But I think even going on that, you know, you run into problems. I'm sure everybody saw if you're, if you're on Twitter or, you know, one of these other social media is that's not threads where you're getting psychically mind assaulted every day, you probably saw conservatives kind of posting like, oh, look at Senator so-and-so talking about how we wanted to exclude, you know, alien citizens when they're not assaulted every day. you probably saw conservatives kind of posting like, oh, look at Senator so-and-so talking about how we wanted to exclude, you know, alien citizens when they were discussing the amendment. And any look into that, you know, if they're not just posting something that directly contradicts the point that they're trying to make, you'll see that Congress pretty quickly came together to very expansively define what it means to be a citizen at birth, right? There are these kind of categories that they point out, you know, with the amendment that have been kind of exclusionary categories from the beginning. which are, you know, children born from invading armies, children are diplomats, people that are

very obviously not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, right? And so while immigration has changed a lot in the intervening 100, 150 years, it's always been pretty clear that birthright citizenship was meant to be decided very broad, right? And the precedent that they're relying on Wang Kim Arc was somebody that was not only an immigrant, right? They were a Chinese immigrant in the 1890s. They were, they had to go through this deportation process in the first place because they were subject to all these exclusionary laws against the Chinese and that they were suffering through all this racism from the beginning, right? And the Supreme Court said, no, this person who was born in the United States, two immigrants, right? Admittedly, immigrants who were quote unquote domiciled there,

which is I think where a lot of this, we'll call it creative looking at the 14th Amendment goes. But, you know, nevertheless, they were immigrants, right? There was no documentation back then. So there was no distinction to be made about undocumented versus documented. There were just immigrants who were there and this person was born within the United States. Therefore, they were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States laws and they became a citizen. Interestingly, one little tidbit I'll point out is that I actually learned after this case that Wong Kimark actually left the United States to go to Mexico because at the time there was a lot of Chinese working in Mexico. So I think he worked across the border doing who knows what for a few years,

tried to go back to America and was almost deported again by, again, racist immigrants officials saying we don't want no Chinese on our borders, right? And it took him, having to go back and essentially produce the ruling on his own case to be admitted back into the United States. Yeah, no, Tim, I did see a lot of that commentary about like, oh, because of birthright citizenship, that means if China invades America, every kid that they, every kid born to a Chinese soldier invading America would be an American citizen. And the other really funny thing I heard was that China is going to send a cruise ship full

of pregnant women and just like yeah you know into new york harbour Stephen miller said that he said China could send a hospital ship with a hundred Chinese babies and then we just be stuck with them and it's like well like what are the

what's the payoff for that right like that they win a school board election in kindergarten like in like in 18 years when they're able to vote for school board elections we're going to put it in curriculums in

Lake County, Illinois, that Lynn Bao actually crashed his own plan. Like, what's the payout? Like, what, maybe they're trying to make their citizens really stupid and fat. And so they're just trying to like learn our best ways

to, you're sending them in Wisconsin to learn beer cheese soup so that they can start selling it to people in Guangzhou. Yeah, it'll be, yeah, it's like, it's like, um, I for, what was it the patriots who were accused of recording in other team's practice. Yeah, yeah.

University of Michigan, too, they did that. Yeah. They're figuring out new ways to be anti-vaccine and anti-medicine. They're learning new ways to be like antisocial and hate their lives. But you know, you got to think for, you know, a nation as old as China, you know, their plans are measured in centuries, not years. So, like, I know it seems a little ridiculous that, you know, you know, you know, to mint hundreds of new Chinese spies that will hopefully pay off in 20, 25 years time. But, you know, this is the way the Chinese think.

You know, it's the masterful game of go. You know what I said? I didn't say chess there. I said, go, which is even more complicated than chess. But, Tim, like, the gnashing of teeth last week among the American right wing over this decision was really, really something to behold. And you know what? to guys like Stephen Miller,

you got to hand it to them because they really do understand their audience. And by understand their audience, I think like they know how submental the Cretans that they're pitching this to. Because like the way the people were reacting to it, you'd think that the Supreme Court just

legalized birthright citizenship. And not that it had been the law of the land for the last 150 years of U.S. history, meaning there is not a single human being alive in this country today. that ever lived at a time in which birthright citizenship was not the law of the land. And you know what?

Like things have been pretty, things have worked out okay the last 150 years as far as American dominance or power on the world stage. And it's not like, you know, even before the 14th Amendment, it's not like birthright citizenship didn't exist in some way or another, right? We had, you know, millions of Germans and Irish and Italians of whoever else being born here and, you know, getting citizenship the normal way, right? It's not like we had these endemic classes of stateless Germans wandering the Midwest planes like gypsies, right? These people were fully like incorporated in the body politic long before, you know, the Civil War happened.

Yeah. That was really, that was a huge problem in during the early Wilson administration, all the German hedge knights that we have. Really, really came into the no-quartering soldiers amendment either. Yeah. It was really, really, during the war of the nine penny kings under Coolidge, it really came to a head. But I don't know if you guys have been following the conservative web comic renaissance. They all draw in a very penny arcade style, which is like so charming. The FDR friend guy is definitely one that I keep a very close eye on. That guy's the king. That guy's the best.

I like him, but I saw a. Another guy, though, where it was like it's a child being born in a hospital. And then Amy, Amy Coney Barrett runs in and goes, now your child owns the hospital. Oh. I mean, you know, he really do be like that, though. Yeah. Yeah. I really do be like that.

I do own the hospital I was born at. It's just, you know, it's just the way it goes. That's what happened to Chris Leville. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I hate fucking, do I hate Napo medical goats? Birthright PhD.

You're parents or doctors. You're born as a doctor. You can practice medicine in America. Medical scion. Tim, like, so like, my personal favorite reaction to the birthright citizenship ruling was came courtesy of our old friend Sean Davis of the Federalist who said, this ruling will compel

America to, quote, deny entry to all female foreigners or require the sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry. He really was feeling himself after this. And like, and like, this is like a reaction to something, once again,

to a ruling that just upholds 150 years of precedent. Doesn't create anything new. And now he's saying that we may have to deny entry to all female foreigners, which is like, bro, sausage party much? What the fuck? That's not America to me. I want all the baddies coming to this country.

But, you know, I will get him credit. He did not require the sterilization of only female entrance to the country, but merely all people who want to visit the United States. It's not going to be a gender discrimination case. Yeah, you land at Kennedy Airport and they're like, yeah, everything, business or pleasure, everything appears to be in order here. Now, before we can let you into the country, we're going to need you to get your balls x-rayed

for about an hour before shipping you off your Uber ride into the city. They are reversible, you know. Imagine being like a German businessman and you have to go to San Francisco for like B-to-B-S-A-A-S and you come back as Veris the spider. You're just completely hairless. And everyone you know is like, what the fuck happened?

And you're like, you know. He burned my parts in abrasia. They were afraid. But, you know, I mean, like, I appreciate that from Sean Davis because, like, I think it really gets to like, I don't know, like, last week we talked about how, like, the, the right is, is obsessed with rape both as like their worst nightmare, but also a slur that they can use to slander their enemies with. And it's just like the psychosexual fixation on sex and children.

and birth things that like a foreigner having sex in America is an existential threat to the United States that would that would might necessitate the forced sterilization. Like we're having the World Cup right now. Imagine every fucking like tourists in the America right now who's here for the World Cup had to get their fucking balls and nuked or had their uterus cut out. Well, okay. Okay. Okay. That one German guy who is being really epic in the White House is keeping him. I would not mind it.

Oh God. He needs that just to calm down a little bit. So he can talk about ranch like a normal person. I get that guy is kind of like the German Lowville. Yeah. Yeah, he got it. And he even had the fake, I think who is the Australian guy who used to be really epic? Who's now like the head tourism official for Trump?

Oh, Nick Adams. Oh, yeah. Adams. Yeah, they had a little sciop where the German guy was supposed to meet him, but he was going to get diced by vicious leftists. and so they had to like secretly take him to the white house. Docs. Like he's a guy who's like,

comes to him. Who's going to do? You're going to lose your job because people in Germany find out that you like some shitty town in Ohio? You might, I guess in Germany. Maybe. Maybe.

But Tim, obviously like the right wing is, is taking this very hard because obviously they have an extremely right wing Supreme Court who like they think it's just like it's green light on everything. Right. And by everything, I mean like it's digging for granted that they want to. to roll back everything that's happened since the New Deal.

But like, this is the, they want to roll back everything that happened since the Civil War. That's really what we're talking about here. I think the old testament, really. Yeah, yeah. They want to roll back the New Testament for the most part. And like, look, I mean, like, theoretically, the vote should be there to get rid of birthright citizenship, which as an aside, you know, I'm not much of an American nationalist or an American exceptionalist.

But birthright citizenship is, for as long as I've been alive, has been one of the only things I can point to in this country that says that we are different. or in some way better than the rest of the world because of that very principle that if you were born in America, you are an American. That to me sums up everything that American freedom should be about

or like what has made this country to the extent that we are good or admirable in any way. I think that that would be a big part of it. And obviously that's got to go if you're Stephen Miller or, you know, anyone else who considers himself a defender of Western civilization.

Tim, the question I want to ask you is how do you view John Roberts and like like the sort of the character of the Roberts court as a guy that is sort of always I don't know like like balancing the very hard right ambitions of his right flank with I don't know like preserving some sort of credibility of the Supreme Court like what how do you view him and the way he sort of games out these decisions that is a great question and actually something I think is very important to look at I think with respect to this one first off just as a quick aside on birthright citizenship you know not with saying the fact that basically basically every other country in the Americas has it. You know, it's more of a Western Hemisphere thing than an old world thing. It's very effective policy in that it essentially assures assimilation within one generation, right? I mean, you know, there's a lot of, you know, I look at kind of the Mexican population here in Chicago. And, you know, because a lot of them were able to get that birthright citizenship, they have assimilated very successfully, you know, into the society here, right?

And, you know, again, Germans, Italians, all these people, they were able to assimilate so effectively to the United States because of birthright. citizens. But with your question to the Roberts court, I actually think he's doing a very good job, which is a problem for kind of, you know, people that want to effectuate social change in this country because he is, you know, I think people look at him as being kind of a bulwark for the craziest parts of the Trump administration, right? But it's important to remember that he got in there really on the unitary executive theory was one of the big things that George W. Bush kind of wanted him to do once he got nominated, right? And because Trump really goes beyond that, right? It's not really an executive unitary theory. It's more of just an imperial decree presidency because I'm Donald Trump

kind of theory, right? He's able to kind of pick and choose not only, you know, where to, where to step back and where to let Trump do stuff, but how much to do so, right? And you see that, I think most with Trumpy Slaughter, which is the independent agency case for, I believe it's the FECC. Forget what? You know what? It doesn't really matter what they should see this, but it's not the Fed, right? Whereas Roberts is okay

letting Donald Trump fire people from nominally independent agencies, whereas the Fed is, you know, he says don't fuck with the money, right? And so he puts up the special rule. Next is that like the Justice ruled 6.3 that the president can remove members of independent agencies at will.

But except for the Federal Reserve, which is a different case. And like that to me makes perfect sense about like who Roberts is. And I think you're exactly right. Is it like, because like, you know, for the money machine, it doesn't matter if he can fire the head of the Department of Education. You're like, or I mean, he can appoint them or like fire, fire any independent, the head of any independent agency,

save for the Federal Reserve. Because like, they're like, you can molest anyone you want, Donald, but not the money. Yeah. And this is part of their political project, right? They want to be able to have a presidency that, you know, isn't hamstrung in the areas like national security or defense, right, where John Roberts, I think sees a strong, powerful executive as being very important, right? So we can defend Israel over popular sediment or over, you know, geopolitical realities.

But when you come to things like, you know, the FEC or technical environmental stuff, right, that Republican presidents aren't hamstrung by the science and they're not hamstrung by experts who are able to say, hey, no, I'm doing my job right. You know, they can just move in politically and take that stuff out. And they don't have to worry about the fact that when Democrats are in, they can go back and do it the same thing. One, because I think they understand that Democrats, you know, for national security and all those important stuff, Democrats aren't really going to be the opponent that they want them to be. And for all the other stuff, it doesn't matter if it happens every four years or not. Like you said, that can go back and forth, right? The Fed obviously being the big example. But that that decision, I think, really, you know, you want to talk about originalism being kind of like a hollow. dead ideology, right? There was nothing, I don't think, in originalism that creates this special exemption for the Fed, right? They had to overturn a 90-year-old case called Humphrey's executor to allow Trump to fire all the other independent agencies. And that was pretty good case law. It's not like, you know, there was in the other case with campaign finance that was overturning Columbia, too.

You know, that law was pretty dead. There was, you know, because of McCutcheon and because of Citizens United, campaign finance law obviously has been dying on the, Vine for some time. Humphrey's executor is not in, at least in my opinion, wasn't in the same boat, right? There were still these nominally independent agencies, and I think, you know, everyone kind of woke up at least on January 1st, 2025, thinking that those people could only be fired for cause, not for whatever reason the president saw fit. Yeah. And another defeat for Trump on this docket is that mail-in voting rules were affirmed. And this was another 5-4 ruling that rejected the Republican National Committee's challenge to a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be tallied as long as they are

postmarked by election day and arrive within five business days of the vote. Now, Tim, Donald Trump has always had like a problem with mail-in voting because like it's a big reason he blames mail-in voting for him losing to Joe Biden in 2020. This has been like a definite a boogeyman for him for a while. How did that case break down? Was it a similar five-four split, like with Roberts breaking the tie? Yeah, I mean, I think with that one and with the citizenship one, too, you kind of see that I think Trump is limited kind of by the facts, right? You can't just go in and change every single law willy-milly, right?

I think with the mail-in ballot, there's an amount of just being limited by the fact that that states can run their own elections and, you know, it's going to be hard to find support elsewhere to really say that. Right? Now, that's, again, that's not going to stop a motivated John Roberts, as we'll see, you know, as we've seen with him getting rid of precedent. But I think fashioning an entirely new law like that out of the books was just a step too far for the court in that particular case, right? And I think you can kind of see that with the tariffs too, where just the statutory language required those emergency findings. And so that's why they just didn't go with it, right?

Yeah. And once again, it's like, it's sort of like you got to get. If you're Roberts, you've got to give Trump his victories where it counts the most or where he'll do like where it makes the most sense for you to do that. And on something like mail in balloting, it's just sort of like, we can't give you everything you want. And I think like if it were someone other than Roberts, like for instance, if like Kavanaugh was the chief justice, I think they would be giving Trump everything they want, everything he wants. But like for instance, you mentioned the campaign finance ruling. Because you talked about that one because that really was a disaster. Yeah, that one to me was probably one of the worst decisions.

And the docket of pretty bad decisions. This one was, funnily enough, J.D. Vance of all people, was one of the candidates who was attempting to sue to allow parties to coordinate unlimited campaign finance contributions in coordination with the candidates, right? Previously, parties and candidates couldn't directly coordinate on those expenditures because they didn't want it to be seen as kind of circumventing the, donations that one could give to a candidate, right? You're limited in the amount of money that you can give to a candidate. This essentially creates a scenario where the parties are kind of like big

super PACs now, right? Where they now have this unlimited funding available to them that they can coordinate with candidates. And, you know, this is kind of, again, like where Roberts can see a death by a thousand cuts, right? Not to jump around to the cases too much, but the voting rights case that I want to touch on two. It's a similar thing, right? Where there had been these lawsuits around Section 5 of the Voting Act, the conservatives in the court were able to successfully get rid of Section 5. And so, you know, the organizations that work around voting rates access in the South were

using these racial gerrymandering in Section 2. But they were able to move the ball even forward, right? Roberts is able to find those opportunities here moving from one African-American district to two. use that to kind of advance the race neutral theory of how the Voting Rights Act needs to be perpetuated. Again, despite the very obvious legislative intent behind the Voting Rights Act, right? Yeah, you can make the voting rights act race neutral.

I mean, you consider the context of why the Voting Rights Act was passed in the first place. Yeah. And the campaign finance case, this go around is very similar, right? What part of the holding does is it really reifies the idea. that only quid pro quo corruption is the is the thing that you can do to regulate campaign, what they call free speech, right? The contributions to people. That is only this like direct quid pro quo that you need to look for in order to find a justification for these laws. And

without that quid pro quo corruption, it's free speech. It has to be strictly scrutinized. Other justifications for regulating that quote unquote speech fail. I mean, like, I, I, I, I understand the logic behind that. But that's very funny to do under a Donald Trump presidency, who is the most quid pro quo corrupt president who's ever held office. Like, usually most presidents who are corrupt aren't stupid enough to do, like literally being handed a sack of money and giving someone a fucking pardon or, God, Christ knows what else he's up to.

But, like, Donald Trump is like, has flatly just taken money for political decisions. Right. And I think that's what Roberts can kind of bank on, right? Like eventually, hopefully one of these cases bubbles up. And, you know, worst case scenario, he can just dump Trump, right? It's not like Roberts and Trump have any love between them anyway, right? Trump isn't, or Roberts isn't really, you know, for all this mega stuff. He has his own kind of deeper conservative project there. But Trump is just somebody that can usefully do this, right? Because he is doing that quipro corruption. He almost sets the fence that Roberts wants to have to first place. Right. Right. Yeah. that's a good point. Yeah, so like campaign finance and then and then getting rid of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, that was back in April. But like essentially that has opened the door to all kinds of like flat, blatantly racist gerrymandering of southern states to essentially remove pretty much what remains of any black political representation in a state like Louisiana or Mississippi.

Yeah, yeah, I think so. And, you know, I think it's important to remember that part of the test that they wanted to originally do was like, do these people form distinct political. communities. And the reality is that they do, right? I think, you know, take it in line with the campaign finance decision. You can almost cynically look at it and be like, well, these would have just been like bought and paid for Richie Torres style districts at the end of the day anyway. But I do think that there is a legitimate kind of tamping down on a distinct political minority here in the South, right? And that was the whole reason we had this law in the first place was to

prevent that from happening. And it really has come to fruition. I mean, you know, know, I guess you can, you know, if you're on the right, you can kind of hope that Trumpism continues to be multicultural and incorporates a bigger 10 and whatnot. But that seems to be very contrary to the aims of, you know, Stephen Miller and all them, right? I mean, these are people who are talking about deporting 100 million people. So you can see why they don't want political minority to have power in the country. Tim, more broadly, I mean, we were, I know we were joking earlier about Neil Gorsuch. And the fact that like, he has this like, despite being a very hard right-wing justice, he does have these sort of eccentricities

in his penchant for Native American tribal rights. And I'm wondering, like, in your observations of the Supreme Court, of the other justices, did any of the other justices have like similar eccentricities that shape their decisions sometimes against the grain of their appointments? You know, Scalia, I remember every law school professor, Scalia had this with Fourth Amendment rights. And every law school professor would like, you know, I think, I might have brought this up last time, but that, you know, Scalia, you know, sometimes he would let his originalism win over his politics, right? And so I kind of always see that as, you know,

it's like a flavor that they like to give themselves more than anything. Gorsuch for sure has that on Native rights. And Roberts, I think, has it on the executive, the unitary executive authority, right? That's more in line with his politics, but you see those kinds of things. But at the end of the day, I think a lot of the, And this increasingly now, right? You see more just kind of the raw power of this kind of coming through, right? The Fed decision, I think, being the perfect encapsulation of this.

What I am seeing more of these days is Clarence Thomas writing kind of concurrences as well as dissents that really sound like they're out of Free Republic. Alito, too. But the one I noticed while I was preparing for this was for the transports case, which was a conservative victory, right? Thomas basically wrote separately to be like, that's not a woman, right? Because the actual decision isn't based off of just crude transphobia, right? They have to go into Title IX and the history of Title IX and different sports and all that. But Thomas essentially wrote to be like, no, I actually, I actually don't like me.

No, wait, this is the decision. There was the last one that came through. This is the one that upheld state-level bans on transgender youth participation. Correct. Yes, that one. Right. But essentially this removes Title IX protections from all trans athletes, right? Potentially, yeah. I mean, I think for now it's probably going to be limited to the sports, but I think what you see, again, right, you see this with the voting rights case,

you see this with the campaign finance case. And you see this earlier with the abortion cases, that they're very content to do the death by a thousand cuts thing, right? And I think the Roberts court in particular is really content to just kind of continue this death by a thousand cuts, shrink it down, right, find a smaller box for things that they don't like in a bigger box for things that they do, and then just kind of carefully use, you know, striking down precedents that they don't like and then creating a new record and a new precedent to kind of have this new thing of, oh, you know, it was always the case that states had rights for this kind of title, type of that stuff.

And another decision here, this was personally my favorite decision on the docket, Monsanto versus V. Dernel. This was the court ruled 7-2 that federal pesticide law over. overrides state lawsuits that seek to hold companies liable for failing to include cancer warnings on pesticide labels not mandated by the EPA. So this is basically, if you have a lawsuit against the makers of Roundup for giving you your family cancer, you're out of luck. I missed that one.

Yeah, this one, I was particularly fascinated by this one because it has been like a 30, 40 year project by the Republican Party to do away with any type of class action. I mean, this was for the Republican Revolution of 94, it became a big thing amidst like rising HMO and health insurance costs that, oh, they're only so expensive because of malpractice insurance. And once we make it illegal to sue a doctor for doing the stuff from botched, then everything will be fine. And they did that in a ton of fucking states. And obviously we are where we are now. And it kind of the same story with everything. They expanded it to everything. I mean, this, I foolishly thought that after Mangione that there would be more than a week of fear from

people like this. But that was about it. That was about it. There was about a week of fear. And now we are back to the Supreme Court basically ruling that, no, Michael Clayton was the bad guy in that book. That is what they think. Although I was going to say that decision, 7-2, is kind of hearkening back to a gentler time in American politics where we'd have a bipartisan decision. Yeah. It completely runs rachshackle over consumer protection and class action lawsuits. I was going to say, actually, for one of those idiosyncratic kind of things, I remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I want to say there's a case in the 90s or 2000s called Italian Colors. excuse me,

telling colors that severely limits class action lawsuits. I want to say she was one of the votes, if not writing the opinion. I remember her being one of the kind of more pro-business friendly anti-class action lawsuits when they were really setting that up. One of the just like online, one of my favorite reactions to the Monsanto case

with someone who was like being like, oh, this is horrible. Like Monsanto gave like all these people cancer with Roundup. Like they don't deserve some restitution for like being poised. by this company and like someone replies them and goes only a fucking idiot would use roundup they deserve what they got and i was like well like wouldn't it be wouldn't it just be easier not to have like the cancer chemical that sold over the counter in like every store in america to be sprayed on on your lawn like everywhere around your house like that's like being a if you were a believer in

chem trails and you were like just don't live under the chem trails You know, those are probably already a big contingent of like Maha people on the internet already. They think that they can live to go to like Montana and not live under the chemtrails or something. Yeah. It's just, just don't use Roundup,

simple as. I mean, if your neighbor does and it gets into the groundwater, just don't drink water. Yeah. Yeah. There's plenty of zero calorie soda so you can, you don't give your kids baths.

It's what we've always said on this show. Drink soda for help. give the plants Ivermectin and then really, really kick off this adiocracy thing going on. Tim, are there, before you get just like sort of a broader question about the Supreme Court, are there any other cases that I've neglected to bring up here that interest you? I'm looking real quick. No, I think we actually hit all of them. Like I said, I think the big ones, well, we didn't go over the tariffs case.

I don't have much to say on the tariffs. Yeah, exactly. the real the real horror shows I think are the the voting rights act case the the campaign finance cases as well as the independent agency cases honestly at this point the supreme court is a little bit of naval gazing right I mean you can only destroy democracy so many times before it dies in darkness I guess but the independent agencies and the campaign finance are really I think going to be big problems kind of going forward when you talk about kind of actually fixing any of this, right? I mean, that is something that I wanted to ask you. Outside of like, you know, do fucking four consecutive war in courts in a row or something, which, I mean, frankly, the damage would already be done. Is there any recompense for this outside of either packing the court or some type of like

ultra left lib or a DSA president who just goes full Andrew Jackson mode on this stuff. Or arranges a group vacation for like, let's say, six or seven of the Supreme Court. Just battle after another president. I, you know, I think if there is hope, it's probably more in the states, right? You see the way that, you know, the courts are kind of doing this stuff, you know, on the more cultural war stuff. But it is creating a way for states to kind of take a lead, which is going to be a lot more smaller in scale, but there are going to be able to rely on constitutional protections that way, right? And I don't think Congress, the reality is this. It's a double-edged sword that Congress is

completely useless, right? I think at this point, it's very hard for me to envision right now without a really severe legislative reform, a Congress in the next eight to 10 years that's really capable of doing anything of no, right? And that's one of the ways the Supreme Court's able to kind of create this space for themselves is they just kick things over to Congress and they say, it's Congress's responsibility to do this, not us, right? And so that's when they decide not to act. But that does mean that Congress is probably not going to be able to create new federal legislation that carves themselves out a unique role, right? And if they do that, they're probably not going to be able to effectively craft legislation that actually curtail those right. So I think,

working in local municipalities and states can be one area where I think you can see a little more change. And I think you do see a little more change, right? I mean, that's, you know, the marijuana legalization thing that we have going on right now, I think is a good example of ways in which state laws kind of circumvent the complete inaction at the federal level. And, you know, I think beyond that, I think it's just more informal than that, right? Like, you know, smaller community networks and things like that. that they can exist to kind of mitigate that stuff. But obviously that stuff is just so much smaller scale that it's hard to really advance

that as that kind of solution. Yeah. And I get what you're saying. And I do, yeah, share similar optimism in some of those things. But it does, you don't, you do kind of run into a wall over. Well, yeah. I mean, if a state theoretically, you know, made the use of Roundup illegal, I feel like we know, how that would end.

And short of, yeah, packing the court or, in this case, a particularly ambitious governor going, let them enforce it. I just, yeah, I just don't like how that ends. Yeah, I think the one thing to think about is just to look at that in concert with kind of the electoral stuff that's going on, right? I mean, I think, you know, everybody here has their problems with Zoron, but he's, you know, the poster child of all this stuff for a reason, right? He's able to do the rent freezes and he's able to kind of, he was able to maintain, at least as far as I can recall, the car free zones in Manhattan and things like that.

Right. And so, you know, it's going to depend on that, right? And part of the reason why I don't like the campaign finance decision is because it creates this big incentive for even state parties to become really, really corrupt, right? And so that really going forward could be a problem. And when we get to that level of political delegitimization, it's really hard to say what the solution. would be, right? But, you know, just looking at the state of plane now, that that does seem to be kind of the most effective, shall we say, structured institutional method of fixing things. Well, yeah, I mean, like, just to go off what Felix said, like, going forward, like,

theoretically, if there's any, like, Democrat or progressive or even, I don't know, DSA president, like president AOC or whatever, like any liberal or left-wing or progressive reform that people want, I think we all know is going to hit a brick wall of the Supreme Court. Like, for instance, if they ever theoretically pass Medicare for all, I expect very quickly there to be a lawsuit in the Supreme Court finding something in the Constitution to say. Actually, it's unconstitutional to have anything like a national health care system or to not, you're to, or so to have anyone under 65 get Medicaid. Medicare, sorry. But Tim, like, I keep hearing like these potential solutions to like what what needs to be done about the Supreme Court. Like are any of them realistic like in terms of like a Democratic president packing the court, impeaching certain justices or in my particular favorite solution like, you know, Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito, Amy Kobe Bryant. They all get like, you know, a letter in the mail that's like, you want a free trip to Disney World. And then we just like get them all in the same airplane, yada, yada, yada. And you know, A.O.C.

he gets to appoint for new justices to the Supreme Court. Like, is there anything realistically that can or will be done? Or is the most realistic option just a president or a governor or like a state government just saying enforce it, bet? Like, go fuck yourself. My personal opinion is more towards the latter. I think, you know, a couple of things that really structurally inhibit this, right? You're going to have the Senate, which is very biased towards rural states and is going

to resist change to itself, right? And so I think any change that really kind of works at the level of the Supreme Court is necessarily going to touch upon being able to get around the Senate and probably involve a bunch of really deep legislative reforms that would really radically alter how Congress operates. And, you know, I think doing all that, you know, it's hard to see that happening in the space of one term, right? And the other thing to think about, too, look at. the, what was it called the Inflation Reduction Act or the Green Jobs Act or both of those things that Biden did, right? Supposedly this marquee legislation, right? It wasn't just that it got struck down in Supreme Court and I think it did have court challenges. It's that Trump was just able to go, no, I don't want to do it now, right? And again, it's what they've been building towards this

unitary executive. And when you have this executive, it's not just having that power, right? It's not just having a president AOC. President AOC needs to create something that the next president can't just go and undo at the flick of a switch, right? And that's the scenario we're really creating for ourselves with the president, right? Is that the president can turn things off real easily, but not turn them on, which is by design. And that's just going to make it harder and harder and harder to actually, you know, create any kind of reform or change absent a movement that just, you know, if president AOC comes in with like 80% popular vote, we get 80 senators and 300 Congress people, right, then they're going to be able to do whatever they want, right? But the Supreme Court is really

setting it up so that we need, at a minimum, something like that before we can really see the kind of reforms that, you know, would address a lot of problems in this country, right? I'm kind of speaking on this circuitously and kind of quote unquote bipartisanly, but, you know, I think it's important to remember that these problems are, you know, with campaign finance and with governance are really kind of not partisan in a way, right? This is about like just the functioning day-to-day of our government. And I just see us running into a wall with some of this stuff. All right.

Well, there you go. There is no hope for anything better than a high note. Best you can vote for complete collapse of the United States, but as a government and a country. So maybe like some sort of natural disaster. XUSA. have a reverse Goonter. Or

if Goonter makes a lawsuit doing XUSA on the premise that it's all, you know, that the Iroquois Confederacy never ended. And he's got, let's just say he's got an ace in the hole. Oh, man. That's it.

That's it. We got to find a court case that, like, that in some way, render is illegitimate all of American history. and we just give it back to the unseated tribal to tribal authority. And then they're the government. And then, okay, I think we got at least one to vote on the screen for that. Decentralized power.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And Gorsick becomes like scarecrow in Dark Night Rising. You know, I don't know how Gorsick shows. The new indigent trial system. I don't know how he treats sovereign citizens because you think he'd kind of have a similar soft spot for them. But I don't believe he's as a. as with it on their on their ideology uh well uh tim before before we go uh do you have anything you'd like to uh plug at the end of the show uh no i mean obviously you know a lab episodes if they're gonna come out

they'll come out i love your guys is yeah you guys have real jobs yeah exactly that is i love i just love how you treat it it just i envy it so much there's a there's a there's a beauty to it um but you know you can always find me on twitter i am on blue sky too technically So anything that comes out, I will announce it there. All right. Well, before we go, I actually have an announcement for you at the end of today's show. And it's a good one. If you are going to be in New York City on Friday, November 6th, we are announcing a live show to be held at the Society for Ethical Culture in Manhattan.

It is 10 years almost to the day since our election night 2016 show. And who could forget that one? We are celebrating 10 years in the zone on the East Coast. We'll have special guests from the Chapo family's East Coast branch. There will be a party like the one we had in L.A. Presale tickets for Patreon subscribers will go on sale this Wednesday, July 8th at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. And a special promo code will be posted on Patreon for subscribers then. General sale starts Friday, July 9th at 9 a.m. Eastern time.

Once again, we're doing an East Coast version of the Chaucer. Chappo 10-year anniversary show. November 6th at the Society for Ethical Culture in Manhattan. If you didn't get a chance to see us in L.A. back in April, we're doing it again. 10 years in the zone. Chopo, Society for Ethical Culture in Manhattan, November 6th, Friday.

Be there or B-square. And, of course, while you're picking up stuff on Patreon, you have just one more week to buy chunks, chunks at the early bird price. Price is going up on Monday, July 13th. go to patreon.com slash chunks TV to get our new film featuring shorts from the pot about list boys, episode one,

Nick Mullin, Sandy Honig, Pierce Campion and Claywoman, Ruby McAllister, and many, many more. That's one week left until July 13th to get the early bird price for chunks at patreon.com slash chunks TV. Chunks. Chunks. Chunks. Chunks. Chunks. That does it for today's episode, everyone.

Thanks to Tim. Until next time, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.