No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Pete Buttigieg SMACKS DOWN Republicans who voted NO but took credit

Episode Date: July 2, 2023

The Supreme Court blocks Biden’s student loan debt cancellation as the White House pushes back with a new plan. Brian interviews Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg about his response to being demonized on Fox, what he thinks about those Republicans who voted NO on infrastructure but took the credit, how I-95 got rebuilt in record time, and why the White House is focusing so heavily on rural broadband that’ll help Republican voters who didn’t even vote for Biden. And NYU law professor and co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, Melissa Murray, joins to discuss the spate of Supreme Court decisions just handed down.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the Supreme Court blocking Biden's student loan debt cancellation and what the White House is doing to push back. I interview Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, about his response to being demonized on Fox, what he thinks about those Republicans who voted no on infrastructure but took the credit, how I-95 got rebuilt in record time, and why the White House is focusing so heavily on rural broadband that will help Republican voters who didn't even vote for Biden. And I'm joined by NYU Law Professor and co-host of the strict scrutiny podcast, Melissa Murray, about the spate of Supreme Court decisions just handed down. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So one of the rulings handed down by the Supreme Court was a 6-3 decision striking down the White House's student loan debt relief program, which would have forgiven $10,000 in student loans for those earning less than $125,000 per year and up to $20,000 forgiven for Pell Grant recipients. It had been immediately challenged by Republicans in court because, well, because it was popular, and they couldn't risk Biden getting credit for popular policy, especially not when the focus right now.

now should be on gas stoves and Hunter Biden. And I should know just for posterity here that the people who spent the day celebrating this ruling because, you know, the federal government isn't there to bail people out are some of the same people who themselves receive PPP loans that were then forgiven by the government. Like, listen to some of this grandstanding, Republican Mike Flood. The only person responsible to repay a loan is the person who applied for the loan. The Supreme Court made the right decision in finding Biden's student loan bailout unconstitutional. He had an $840,000 PPP loan forgiven. Ralph Norman, you cannot cancel student loans any more than you can cancel a car repayment or credit card debt.

$306,000 in PPP loans forgiven. Greg Pence, today's Supreme Court decision to block Biden's student loan giveaway as a major win for American taxpayers and for the Constitution. This student loan bailout would have forced the 87% of American taxpayers who do not hold any student federal loan debt to foot the bill for those who do. $79,000 in PPP loans forgiven. Chuck Edwards made a comment. He had $1.1 million in PPP loans forgiven. Kevin Hearn complained, $1.1 million forgiven. Mark Wayne Mullen, $1.4 million forgiven. Mike Kelly complained, $975,000 forgiven. Vern Bucannon complains, had $2.8 million forgiven. Because apparently, letting taxpayers forgive hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of loans is fine.

But $10,000 for those struggling to get by, we couldn't possibly allow that. And that was a sentiment echoed by Biden. I was trying to provide students with $10 to $20,000 to $20,000 relief. By comparison, the average amount forgiven in the PPP for the pandemic loan program, average amount forgiven was $70,000. Now, a kid making $60,000, trying to pay back his bills, asking for $10,000 in relief. Come on.

The hypocrisy is stunning. You can't help a family making $75,000 a year, but you can help a millionaire and you have your debt forgiven. My plan would not only have life and life change for millions of Americans would have been good for the American economy. Free millions of Americans with a crushing burden of student debt, more homes would have been bought, more businesses would have been started. More couples would have had the competence to start a family. Millions of people would have felt they could get on with their lives. has blocked all that. And so as a result, Biden announced a new path to providing student loan debt relief. And I hope even those people who say Biden knew this was legally dubious all long,

he knew it would get struck down on the court, he just wanted young people to vote for him midterms. I hope those people are listening right now, because first of all, Biden is reintroducing the forgiveness plan using the Higher Education Act, as opposed to the Heroes Act, which was the legislation that the first attempts was rooted in. Supporters argue that the Higher Education Act allows the Education Secretary to, quote, compromise, wave, or release student loans. And as far as pause repayments go, Biden also announced a 12-month on-ramp for repayment, where if you miss a payment, you won't be at risk for a default or your credit won't be impacted for at least those 12 months. And look, short of a legislative

solution, he's doing everything he can do. So maybe disregard the attacks by the only people preventing any actual solution from being passed. And I just want to touch on one more thing here. Republicans are trying to frame this as like some huge injustice that Biden would even consider allowing the government to forgive student loans, but in doing so, they are effectively defending loan sharks. Like, oftentimes the interest rates are so high, so predatory with these loans that many people have already paid off the principal amount, and yet they're still left with a loan that's even higher with them when they first took it out. We hear about this all the time. People take out a $150,000 loan. They've been repaying it every month for decades, and

their principal is now at $200,000. This isn't about like walking into a restaurant and refusing to pay your bill at the end of dinner. This is about trying to get by and repaying your loan every month and yet somehow still plunging deeper and deeper into inescapable debt. And the fact that Republicans are trying to conflate the two is as clear proof that you'll ever need that these people do not care about working people. They care about special interests and the ultra-rich who do not need to worry about student loan debt. My take on this is that if my tax dollars could go toward helping regular people who just need a break, then by all means, let's help them. For once, let's give a hand to regular people who are trying to get by

instead of watching billion-dollar corporations get our money, instead of watching the military-industrial complex get our money, instead of watching the ultra-rich get tax cuts. We never hear a word of pushback when the top 1% get a handout. No one on the right ever decries socialism then, but God forbid a teacher, a truck driver, a cashier, a cook, a small business owner, a nurse gets a little bit of help. Notice how people making millions of dollars a year

are always the ones trying to convince those making $100,000 a year that the people making $30,000 a year are the real problem. And even if that argument doesn't resonate with you, even if your position is that you don't want to pay for someone else, full stop, consider this. Biden's student loan debt forgiveness plan

was intended to benefit 43 million borrowers. About 20 million of those borrowers would have had their loans eliminated completely. What do you think would happen to the economy when you suddenly make it accessible to 43 million more people? What do you think happens to small businesses, to restaurants, to travel destinations,

to clothing stores, to theaters. What do you think happens when people can inject money into goods and services instead of pumping it toward predatory loan sharks? And when businesses thrive, what do you think happens to the stock market? What do you think happens to your 401k? Allowing people to participate in the economy helps all of us. This is the prime example of how a rising tide lifts all ships. And just think about this for a second. These are conservative politicians and operatives who successfully sued to prevent people from having their loan debt forgiven. This won't impact them in the slightest. They just don't want people struggling.

to get a break. That's all. This is the conservative movement in a nutshell. Make sure the less fortunate, don't get a break, even if it has zero impact on your own life. The fact is that we've been here before. We constantly sit back and watch as Republicans use the same fake populism to glide their way into power, only then to protect not regular people, but the special interests that are screwing those regular people over. If you're the kind of person who's railed against the elites, only to then applaud a Supreme Court decision screwing over regular people trying to escape the grip of predatory lenders, then no, sorry, you're not against the elites, you are one.

Next up is my interview with Pete Buttigieg. Now I've got the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg. Thanks so much for coming back on. Here to be with you again. So I want to start off with a clip of a Fox host taking aim at you in the aftermath of flight cancellations and the collapse of a section of I-95. Here's that clip.

We've seen at Christmas thousands of flights that were canceled and delayed. we see the railroad derailments that are happening on a constant basis and then of course what's happening most recently look what happened in philadelphia the roads have collapsed and that's because you have a secretary uh transportation secretary that has little to no experience in what he's doing and understanding the nation's infrastructure when it comes to transportation and so until we have effective leadership who you know someone that understands the importance of strategic planning and collaborating with the states and the communities and understanding their needs then we're going to continue to see these catastrophic events. So can I have your response to this idea that you are now somehow unilaterally to blame for I-95 collapsing? And when you were deciding which highway to destroy, what made you choose that one in particular? I mean, some people seem determined to make literally anything into a partisan attack. But if you look at I-95 in the response to it, and of course, it wasn't caused by any policymaker, it was caused by a terrible, tragic, fatal, fiery crash. which melted the structural steel.

But the other really important thing about the story of I-95 is how quickly it was reconstructed. Because we worked so closely with the Pennsylvania DOT under the leadership of the governor of Pennsylvania because we made sure they had the funds that they needed because there was such great coordination, that was reopened in record time with really innovative approaches and solutions.

And that's what we're trying to do across the board. Look, if we really want to talk about transportation, Let's talk about results. Same thing with the airlines, where one year ago, even when the weather was perfect, we were seeing huge amounts of cancellations and delays. We've seen dramatic improvement in the performance of the system since then. Still a long way to go,

but a huge improvement, and importantly, a huge improvement in passenger rights because of the commitments and passenger protections that our department secured. So look, in area after area after area, I can point to the work that we've done, the results we have to show for it. And I just think it's strange and unfortunate when somebody wants to, you know,

make some kind of political attack out of these things happening in transportation. The other thing I would note is that, you know, we have launched or funded over 30,000 transportation projects. Just this week alone, it was in eastern Kentucky and an Appalachian community that lost dozens of people to flooding. We're doing a highway project that's also going to improve the dam there and make them more resilient to future floods. We're in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Lexington, Kentucky,

all very different communities, all benefiting from the funding. I never see these kinds of projects covered on Fox News. But at the moment, something problematic strikes the transportation system. You have a commentator who's ready to try to turn it into a political attack. I don't think that's how most people think about their transportation systems. I think most people want problem solving, and that's exactly what we're doing every day. Yeah. And you know, it's worth noting, too, that the irony here is that she's blaming you for the state of our roads and airports and railroads when that is quite literally what the infrastructure package was passed to do. And by the way, most Republicans voted against it. So you have these Republican mouthpieces who want to have their cake and eat it too, basically. They want to blame you for the state of the roads, all the while having tried to ensure that those same roads wouldn't actually get fixed at the end of the day. Yeah, it's been remarkable to see a lot of frequently Republican members of Congress,

sometimes in the Senate too, who voted no on the infrastructure package, showing up to either criticize when something goes wrong or to celebrate when we are delivering funding to these communities. Just the other day, my department sent funds to a South Carolina community to improve their transit. And there was a member of Congress there who attacked the funding, attacked the bill, attacked the package, but was there to celebrate the funding when it came to her community. And I think that just shows that at the end of the day, this really is good policy. Look, the sign of a bad policy is the people who supported it wind up changing their minds later and running away from it. And by the same token, I think the sign of a good policy

is even the people who voted no, try to come back and take some credit for it when it's yielding all those benefits in their communities. Yeah. And of course, you know, you may not name them, but it's Nancy Mace, John Cornyn and, you know, other Republicans like that. Now, as far as I-95 is concerned, I want to stay on this for one more moment. The speed with which that project was completed was pretty mind-boggling for an American infrastructure project. So how did we shorten that window from months to just days? And what was the innovation here?

So the specific innovation had to do with using a material that looks and feels like a kind of unusually light stone, but is actually made out of recycled glass. The Pennsylvania DOT was familiar with this because they'd worked with it. that in a few other contexts and realized with support and help from the funding we were able to provide that this could be used to create a temporary fill that would allow them to restore about two-thirds of the traffic flow on I-95 while doing the permanent fix, which will take a longer period of time, but there's a period when we thought there would be no service on I-95 for potentially months. So this is what happens when you try to clear the way for

innovative solutions while still holding a very high bar on safety. And I think that coordination, that collaboration is an important lesson as we look to some of the even bigger and more challenging projects that we have ahead, the tunnels that we're rebuilding, the bridges that we're replacing, the airport terminals that we're renovating, all of which are circumstances where we need to beat the normal pattern of big infrastructure projects in America for decades now, taking too long and costing too much. Well, that's my exact question. Is this going to have any discernible impact on infrastructure projects moving forward? Is there any way that we can use the innovations or the techniques that we used in PA to then, you know, speed up other infrastructure projects across the country? I think there is that potential. Look, every single project, every single event that goes well is a learning opportunity. Same with anything that goes poorly. And so we're gathering data working to take lessons learned, both from historical and recent. experiences of projects that did take too long and cost too much and those more rare events where a project comes in ahead of schedule or under budget we saw that a lot of airport work that was done in the last few years as well so we're trying to apply those lessons because look we're taking a huge amount of funding now out into these

communities to build these projects if you can make it even 1% 2% 3% quicker or more efficient if you add that up across the the whole set of things we're doing that's billions of dollars which is that many more projects you could do with the money that you saved. So we're very focused, you know, year one, we were very focused just on getting the bill passed and getting the funding authorized. Now we're very, very focused on delivery and doing it efficiently, doing it right, because we may not get a chance like this again. Yeah. You know, I know a lot of the funding for the infrastructure project is going toward fixes for existing issues, like the one that we saw on 995. But are there, is there any funding

being allocated to projects that are entirely new, entirely innovative? There is. Look, a lot of what we have to do is to repair the infrastructure we've inherited. There's a tunnel I was at with the president recently near Baltimore that's over 150 years old. I was the project we were celebrating in Lexington this week, 86 I think years old. And this is just a lot of areas like that that need repair. But this isn't just about fixing what we have. We're trying to make sure there are new opportunities as well, including the potential of introducing true high speed rail on American soil for the first time. This is not something that's going to happen overnight and we don't have the funding to create a national network right away. But there are several projects showing a lot of promise

that we may be able to fund for the first time with the dollars that are in this infrastructure bill. You know, just recently I was in Japan where we conducted the G7 meeting of transportation ministers from the G7 countries. And of course, I took the opportunity to visit the control center of the famous bullet train there and beyond that train and see how they do that. It is extraordinary. It is remarkable. But it is also something that I believe that American citizens deserve, ought to experience that same kind of high-speed service right here in an American way. And those are the kinds of things that are going to be possible that just weren't possible before because there wasn't even enough funding to keep up with what we have. Yeah. Yeah. I lived for a couple of years in France and they have the TGV, the train of Gromvitez, and you kind of go on that and you realize what's possible. And there is this dichotomay. because you have like American innovation and there's no reason that we wouldn't be able to create something like that here But then you get here and you realize how difficult it is, you know even with half the government that put up so many roadblocks to getting this infrastructure

Bill passed, but the fact is that it does have such a discernible impact on people's lives and I think you know with with what we're seeing right now in the infrastructure bill and and and broadband which we're going to talk about shortly it does come and impact your life life in a really big way You know this is all part of a broader economic message that the White House is calling Bidenomics, which is positioned basically as a foil to Reaganomics, which is this prevailing notion for decades now among Republicans that the way to stimulate the economy is for money to trickle down from the rich. Biden's approach is obviously different. It's that funding should go from the bottom up. So why is Biden right and why is this Republican approach of trickle down wrong? Well, you know, we know because we've seen the results.

Look, this Reaganomics concept, which really dominated not just in Republican circles, but really seduced some Democrats over the last 40 years as well, was the idea that if you just made sure you, you slash taxes for corporations and the wealthy, you absolutely minimized responsibilities and regulations. The result would be economic growth for everybody. And instead, what you saw, I would argue what you saw very predictably, was a widening income inequality, an economy that worked very well for the wealthiest, but not so much for a lot of other people, or not so much for a lot of other communities, including places in the industrial Midwest, like where I grew up in northern Indiana, that was largely left out of that economic

growth. Bidenomics is, as President Biden often says, about growing the economy, not from the top down, from the bottom up and from the middle out, having policies that favor work over wealth, having policies that reward what working people contribute. It's why we're so strong in being a pro-union administration. It's why we believe in good public investments, like fixing roads and bridges and improving trains and transit and enhancing ports and airports, because we know that when you make those good public investments,

good private investment follows. I mean, we've seen hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment, much of it in those good-paying manufacturing jobs, just in the last couple of years since President Biden took office. And I think that reflects the fact that just to be clear, Bidenomics is far from being anti-business. It's actually good for business, but business on terms where working people

and the middle-class benefit the most. And we're going to keep pursuing that. That's the president's focus. It's how we approach everything from sustainability to transportation. Make sure that it's working in a way that helps working people thrive. And by the way, we do have an example, like a pretty obvious example of how this Republican approach of trickle-down economics doesn't work, of tax cuts for the rich so that they could, you know, keep as much money as they can,

and then that money will purportedly trickle down. In 2012, you know, I spoke about this on my podcast a few weeks back, but in 2012 in Kansas, there was something called the Kansas experiment where Governor Sam Brownback wanted to basically use a condensed version of trickle-down economics within the state and and and they they passed it they passed these these massive tax cuts and they were hoping that it would just stimulate the economy and what happened is within five years uh the economy was not only doing worse in that state than it was before it was trailing all of their neighboring states it was even trailing their own state's economy from before they implemented this plan

and sam brownback ended up having the worst approval rating for any governor in the country the The Republican-led legislature ultimately voted to overturn these tax cuts for the wealthy and impose taxes instead. So we have all of these concrete examples of how trickle-down doesn't work, and yet I think it really does go to show that the only reason that people stick with this idea is because the people who are passing this kind of legislation are really just pandering to the people who donate to their campaigns. Yeah, it's a great example.

You know, we don't believe in these economic principles. because of our idealism. We believe in them also because of our experience. You look at the experience in Kansas. And this is a very conservative state, which turned away from trickle-down economics and Reaganomics because they experienced it in its purest form. And it was terrible. Let's move over to broadband. The White House just deployed $40 billion for rural broadband. This is going to disproportionately benefit rural America. And rural Americans disproportionately vote for Republicans. These are Republican voters. So why is it important that the White House work so hard to serve the people who are least likely to support you? Well, something we believe as an

administration, certainly something President Biden has made clear, is that we have to serve every American, every community, red, blue or purple, Democrat, Republican, independent. When you were in charge of the federal government, you are in charge of benefiting every American. It's the approach we take with our transportation infrastructure spending. I just shared. some examples. I'll give you another one. We were in North Dakota and in Grand Fork celebrated a railroad crossing that we're getting rid of that they've been trying to do something about since the early 90s, but they just didn't have the funds to work with to do that. We're doing that in communities, many of them rural communities around America. There's example after example

and broadband is one of the most powerful examples. This is something that will lift up the entire country by lifting up these rural, largely rural areas that have been left out in the past. And I think it's truly historic. I think in the same way that FDR is remembered for rural electrification when many parts of America, shockingly, did not even have access to electric power. I think President Biden's administration and presidency will largely be remembered for bringing rural America online because it's just as important today to thriving in this economy. And I also think just like a lot of people today probably scratch their heads, looking at the history books thinking, how could anybody have ever been against rural

electrification and how could anybody have tried to stand in the way of FDR trying to do that with the New Deal? I think similarly, future generations will be puzzled that anybody would have voted no on the rural broadband funding that President Biden in this administration delivered. Yeah. Well, to that exact point, have you had any encounters with any of these, you know, Republican voters, staunch Republicans, who have seen what the White House has been able to do for them, like with broadband, for example, and kind of voiced recognition for that. Well, let me tell you again, I was just in some very conservative areas, including a part of Eastern Kentucky, which is a deep in...

No liberal bastion. Yeah, not known for, you know, urban liberal values. And, you know, the thing is when I was there, we didn't talk about Republican Democrat. We did talk about delivering. We talked about getting that road fix. We talked about getting that dam repaired or replaced so that they would not face the same kind of lethal threat from flooding that they've experienced. And we talked about how that flooding is happening more and more frequently in this community. Now, I didn't go around asking anybody how they were going to vote.

But what I could tell was that you had members of a community who weren't there for the politics. They were there for the results. They had teamed up to support each other when they went through these terrible floods. And they appreciated that they had a governor who happens to be a Democrat, Andy Bashir, and a president and an administration who are there to make sure that they get to support that they need. And again, that's the approach that we believe is the right one. It's always been said that good policy is good politics might sound naive, but I think in the end it works. And we're just going to keep getting out there trying to take care of people, not by checking who they voted for. Although, you know, we're also not going to be shy about occasionally reminding folks, you know, who was with us and who was

against us when we sought to get this infrastructure funding. And by the way, there were quite a few Republicans who crossed over the aisle in Congress and worked with Democrats and worked with President Biden and our team to get this thing done. It wasn't a majority, but there were some. The exception that proves the rule, I think, in terms of the Senate Republicans and House Republicans who said, yes, of course, you can't be against better roads, bridges, broadband, and more. We're going to come with you on this. Yeah. And I should note, too, that it's not just these governors in the states like Andy Bashir and Shapiro in Pennsylvania who are making sure that some of this stuff happens. You know, it's also, if you look at the dichotomy between the Democratic-controlled Congress

from 2020 to 2022, where they pass the Chips Act, the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Pact Act, the first gun safety bill. I mean, you know, the list goes on and on, and those achievements are pretty black and white there versus the 2022 to 2024 Congress, where it's nonstop investigations into Hunter Biden and, you know, maybe an effort to protect our gas stove. So I think the difference is right there in black and white. I do want to switch over and finish off with the recent spate of Supreme Court decisions. There's one in particular.

The Supreme Court just handed down a ruling siding with a Christian web designer who refused to create wedding websites for LGBT couples, effectively allowing a public business for the first time to discriminate against members of a protected class. What was your reaction to that ruling? Well, my big concern is that we seem to, to see the country retreating under this court from what had been a high watermark of rights and freedoms. Every generation, even though it's not been a perfect progress or straight line,

it remains true that in America, every generation has seen greater rights and freedoms and less discrimination than the generations that came before. And up until now, that was true with Supreme Court rulings. I mean, this very week or month, Chaston, my husband and I have been celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary and just not that many more than five years ago. Getting married wasn't even an option. That's unthinkable to me now as we make sure that our kids are ready for daycare every day. And, you know, Chaston was at Target with the kids when he saw the news on his phone about this ruling. It's also an example of what we're seeing across the country, whether it's in the courts or in legislatures, about a solution in search of a problem.

My understanding is this business hadn't even been approached by a same-sex couple asking them to produce a website for them. This case went forward on a hypothetical basis to try to establish a principle that you are permitted to discriminate in certain circumstances, provided you use religion as your excuse because they wanted to make sure that they chipped away at the non-discrimination that's been established by the court in recent years of until now. Just like you've got state legislatures across the country where the biggest issues those legislators are hearing about are often about things like housing affordability, infrastructure, gun safety, health care, prescription drugs, and yet so many of them choose to spend their precious time and particular power on stuff like making life a little harder for queer high school kids, which the idea that that would be how you spend your energy and attention as somebody who has to make very tough decisions every day about which worthy projects we have to lay aside so that we can do even more worthy projects. I just don't understand how you would spend your scarce time and attention or your hard-won power that people have trusted you with, whether you're a judge or whether you're an elected official, on making life harder and making it easier to discriminate.

Yeah, it is so crazy, too, how the same people who crow relentlessly about freedom had to conjure up not even a real example, but a hypothetical example of, you know, a situation where they could then use that as a predicate to take more freedoms away from the LGBT community. You know, you've been pretty outspoken about your faith and you've pushed back against this idea that the right has a monopoly over religion in this country. Can you speak about how certain conservatives are weaponizing their religious beliefs as basically a tool, a political tool to wield against vulnerable communities? You know, the faith that I practice in a Christian tradition and the scripture that I read focuses on making yourself useful to the least among us.

It talks about how salvation has to do with protecting the poor, with protecting the oppressed, with welcoming the stranger. And there's a particular emphasis in the Christian tradition. And I think in most faith traditions on looking out for those who have sometimes been ostracized or, marginalized and put upon by society, those who are in need of defense. And it's so different from what I see as some figures try to invoke religion as an excuse to make things even harder for those who are already on the margins, to afflict the afflicted. I don't recognize my faith in that. And even more importantly, none of us should be out imposing our interpretation of our religion on anybody else. That's one of the most basic principles of our Constitution and of our country.

It's part of what makes America America, the freedom to practice your faith and the freedom to go about your life knowing that whatever faith, if any, you subscribe to, that's not going to be held against you and somebody else's faith is not going to be imposed on you. Well, that was perfectly put, as always. So Secretary Pete, thanks for the work you're doing. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today. Thank you. Good speaking with you. Now you've got NYU Law Professor and host of the strict scrutiny podcast, Melissa Murray. Thanks so much for taking the time.

Thanks for having me. So a lot of big Supreme Court rulings. I want to talk first about the Supreme Court ruling 6-3 in favor of overturning Biden's student loan debt cancellation. Can I have your response to that? So I think you have to understand the student loan case in tandem with the affirmative action case that was decided just the day earlier. Again, student loans and higher education more generally has been a major engine of social mobility, especially for women and people of color, people who historically have either been underrepresented in these institutions or who have been foreclosed from them entirely.

And so this really was a kind of one-to-punch. The affirmative action decision really narrowed the opportunity for underrepresented groups to have access to higher education. And with student loan forgiveness, they've really made it less accessible to see. higher education, even when you do get through the door, because they've made it so much harder for individuals to be able to assume the cost of doing so. And again, costs of higher education have just skyrocketed over the last 20 years. So, I mean, this isn't a situation where, you know, you go to year old state you for something like $800 a credit. Like, it's really expensive to go to

college. And there are a lot of people for whom this would be a bridge to the middle class, if only they could figure out how to get it. And I mean, you know, it really is. You know, it really is. part of this sort of revanchist grievance kind of conservatism that's really taken root with the Supreme Court because they really feel that when individuals are getting a leg up, someone is being pushed down and they don't want those someone's to be pushed down. So again, I think you have to understand these cases as part of a bigger hole. Do you think that perhaps the federal government should have supplied some type of a yacht to some of the justices to make their case a little bit more convincing? I mean, you know, a yacht, some salmon, some waggy beef,

Kobe beef fillets. I don't really know what the particular proclivities of the justices are these days, but definitely some of them do have some refined taste that can be sated if you are of the billionaire class. What do you say to people who lay the blame for this on Joe Biden, for example? All right. I'm not going to be out here as a Joe Biden apologist, will say this for Joe Biden. He did what he said he was going to do. He said as a campaign promise, he was going to forgive student loans, and he did. If you want to lay blame here, you should be laying the blame with this Trump court. And that's what it is. It is a Trump court with three justices who were installed by Donald Trump, one of whom Neil Gorsuch is actually in a seat that should

have been occupied by an Obama appointee, but for the machinations of Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senate caucus. So this isn't on Joe Biden. Joe Biden did what he said he was going to do. This is on the court and the GOP and the conservative legal movement who for years have been trying to narrow the scope of executive power, but only when Democratic presidents are in office. Well, is the only avenue at this point to cancel student loan debt by passing legislation, knowing full well based on what we've seen from this court, that there won't be any avenue through the courts to do anything like this? I think that's right. Of course, the real issue here is that this is not a Congress that's going to be mobilized to pursue student loan relief. So it's almost dead on arrival in that

respect. If you take seriously the fact that there is no Democratic majority in the House and there's only a very thin Democratic majority in the Senate. So I mean, if you want to see student loan forgiveness, like, you know, you will have to go out and vote for it. I mean, really try and vote and vote more sizable Democratic majorities who are bestirred to take these steps. And I think the Democratic Party understands. This is something that young people really do take seriously. This is something that motivates them and animates them. And I think they're listening. So again, I think there's an opportunity here for coalition building and mobilization. But to think about this right now with the current Congress that we have, I think that's probably very, very unlikely. Well, to your point,

you know, your initial point, I mean, this really does have major implications on so many people's ability to get into the middle class, for example, because if you can't afford the predatory lending rates on these student loans, I mean, there is no other avenue then to be able to, you know, pursue your education that would actually allow you to get into the middle class in the first place. No, I think that's right. And, you know, I say this as someone, you know, I come from a family of immigrants, like modest means. I was lucky enough to get a full ride to college, but I paid for law school. I think I just finished paying for law school. I didn't seek student loan for

Nimbus, but I don't begrudge anybody the opportunity to do so because those loans were literally an albatross in a lot of ways. And I can't imagine what it must feel like to start your life and, you know, know that your choices are so sharply circumscribed because you have this crushing debt that was the only way that you could actually get the kind of education you needed to do the work that you wanted to do and to move into the circles that you wanted to move. So I think as like all those people who talk about, you know, I paid my student loans and everyone should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Like, you know, I think that's utter BS. Like, we have to stop playing this politics of begrudgement. Like, we should want the best

for everyone. And, you know, I know I sound like a Berkeley hippie when I say that. But yeah, that is the way. There's an economic argument to be made in favor of exactly that. I mean, when you have more people going into the economy, they're able to. then use their money to spend it on the economy. That benefits everybody. I mean, you spend that money on restaurants, on clothing, on food, on travel, like... You buy a house. You buy a house.

You have a kid. Like all the things. All of that money right now instead is just going to paying off these predatory lenders as opposed to like injecting that money into the economy. And it's an economy that we all participate in. Well, it's more than that. I mean, think about all the life choices that people put off or foreclosed because they feel so encumbered by this debt.

Like people decide they're not going to get married. They're not going to have children or they're going to postpone it. They're going to wait. They're going to do this or that. I mean, this is a conservative legal movement that says they love marriage. They love families. They love people having children, sometimes without any choice. Why would you want to limit the avenues to pursue those kinds of paths simply because of finances?

I mean, this isn't easy. There are two ways you can do this. You can make college and graduate school more affordable all the way across the board. Or you can figure out how to forkib some of these loans. And I want to be really clear about this. You know, at the oral argument in this case, Chief Justice John Roberts had this really interesting hypothetical where he's like, you know, why should we allow the president through the Heroes Act to forgive student loans when, you know, there's this guy who didn't go to college and he instead decided to start a lawn care business.

he doesn't get student loan relief. And you can imagine, like the hypothetical guy that John Roberts has in mind looks a lot like John Roberts. Like, you know, a white guy who's not getting a, like a quote unquote getting affirmative action, not getting student loan relief, and he's being left behind. What John Roberts doesn't say is that this guy is getting other kinds of relief. Like student loan debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, but the loans that you might get to start your lawn care business are dischargeable in bankruptcy. More importantly, during COVID, when we were having this discussion, people got a lot of government loans. In fact, members of Congress got government loans through PPE. Those were forgivable. So it's not the case that we are not in the business of having the

government forgive outstanding debts. We are very definitely in the business of doing that. We have just decided to let this court decide in this moment that we're not going to do it for something like higher education. Yeah. So we also had a ruling allowing a Colorado Baker to refuse service over sexual orientation in deference to the baker's religious beliefs. If both religion and sexual orientation are protected classes, how did the Supreme Court decide which one trumps the other, aside from the obvious of, which is just that they chose which one they care more about? Well, you forget, Brian, when you have six, they let you do what you want.

So there's that. But first, it's important to understand. This was not a case brought under the religion clauses of the First Amendment. So many people, including myself, have talked about this as a follow-on from the 2018 case Masterpiece Cake Shop, which involved a evangelical Christian baker who refused to provide wedding cakes for same-sex weddings. That was very much a case dealing with free exercise of religion. This case was not decided on free exercise ground. The court in granting certiorari very clearly said it was only going to decide this on questions of compelled speech. So it's a speech case.

And that's really important because although religion is a. protected class and sexual orientation is in some jurisdictions protected. It's not protected under federal law in the same way. Speech is much broader, which means that in this ruling, which the court has basically said, speech trumps these anti-discrimination mandates. That means there's just a much broader and wider array of bases for individuals to assert in refusing to provide services to same-sex couple. So now you don't have to say it's about your religion. Like my religion does it? It's just like I object. I feel like the state of Colorado and making me serve these gay couples and provide websites them, they're making me say a message that I don't agree with. And that doesn't have to be

religious. That could be about anything. I just don't believe that. So can you imagine? And I think this decision opens the door to it. Imagine if you were someone who was a photographer and you decided that you were going to do school pictures as your main business. And you went to a school and you're like, you know what? I take school pictures, but I don't want to take pictures of black kids or I don't want to take pictures of multiracial kids because I don't believe in interracial marriage. I just don't. I think under this ruling, you probably could be able to do that. Right. So I mean, it's a really broad ruling. The fact that it's rooted in speech, I think, makes it broader still than the claims that were raised under religion in the earlier case. And I think it really

has the potential to really reshape the public sphere in ways that are in hospitable to same-sex couples going forward. And if you think about this in tandem with last year's decision in Dobbs, or we saw Justice Thomas in his separate concurrent saying, everything's on the table. We could reconsider everything, contraception, same-sex marriage. This perhaps is an opening salvo in that. This perhaps lays the foundation for normalizing that gay couples can expect different treatment in the public sphere and the Constitution not only permits that, it blesses it. Do you think that if Congress were to pass some type of equal protections amendment or add sexual orientation to that, then this would have been, this would have had a different outcome

because there would then be federal protections? Or would this still not matter because it's just reliant on compelling speech? Well, so one, you know, for Congress by itself cannot amend the Constitution. So it would require action on Congress and then it would be sent to the states and you need about 38 states to ratify that. So again, a very big hurdle to enact an amendment to the Constitution that would provide those kinds of protections for sexual orientation. Enda, which is basically a law that would provide protection on the basis of sexual orientation, has been stalled in Congress for decades,

a decade now. That doesn't seem to be going anywhere. It's not clear here how much protection ENDA would have afforded because this is really about a state-level case. it could be the case that if ENDA provided more protections than the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which was the law at issue in this particular case, then there'd be a broader federal umbrella in which this might be protected and there would be a conflict there. But, you know, as it stood, we don't have federal protection for anti-discrimination in terms of sexual orientation, whether in the form of a constitutional amendment or statutory law. So it's really left up to states to provide this kind of protection. And a number of states have these laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation for individuals who are doing business in the public sphere. So if you're, if you decide to put your shingle out and you're selling cakes or whatever, you can't decide not to serve same-sex couples or black people or people who wear yarmikas or whatever. So, I mean, there are broad protections under these state laws.

And this court, I think, opened the door today to challenge those broad protections. So I want to move over to Moore v. Harper. why do you think the Supreme Court, which has done so much to bolster Republican congressional maps and that's gutted the Voting Rights Act, why do they opt to rule against the independent state legislature theory in Moore v. Harper? Because the independent state legislature theory is not a theory. It is not doctrine. It is not law. It is a BS fan fiction cooked up in a meth lab of conservative anti-democratic grievance. And even for this court, it was a bridge too far. So to be very clear here, the court rejected the most extreme version of the independent state legislature theory. And the independent state legislature theory stems from a reading of the Constitution's elections clause. So the Constitution says the times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, so federal elections, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature

thereof. But the Congress made any time by law make or alter such regulations except as to the places of choosing senators. So essentially, it gives the things. power to determine the way that federal elections will be conducted in the states to state legislatures. And the Republicans and the conservative legal movement argued in Bush versus Gore, a minority of them, argued in Bush versus Gore that that meant that state legislatures had exclusive control over the rules of the road for federal elections. Other people said, I think what they were talking about state legislatures, they meant sort of broadly the various organs of state government, including state courts, which have the authority to,

interpret state-level constitutions, and in circumstances where the state legislature makes a law governing a federal election that violates the state constitution, the state court can step in and say, yeah, no, that's not going to fly. We've reviewed this and we say it's unconstitutional. In this case, Moore v. Harper, what you had here was the North Carolina state legislature, which is Republican-controlled, drawing a gerrymandered state map that it was going to use in the elections. And the state, there was a claim filed in state court, and the state Supreme Court said that is an unconstitutional gerrymander under the North Carolina state constitution. Not deterred the state legislature filed suit and took this all the way to the

United States Supreme Court, arguing that under this independent state legislature theory slash fan fiction, that that was impermissible, that only the state legislature had the authority to determine the way that elections would be conducted. And there was no room for the state court to interpret the state constitution to limit them. The court rejected that. But what it did do was say that in circumstances where state courts interpreted the state constitution in a way that the federal court might determine to be an improper reading of the state constitution, there was still room for the federal courts to step in and invalidate the rulings of state court. So it's not an unalloyed victory for state courts and for state court's ability to check state legislatures.

It is an unalloyed victory for the federal court and for the Supreme Court, which has basically arrogated more authority for itself, even in circumstances involving state constitutional provisions, to say what the law is. Is there a possibility that had more, I mean, it's moot now, but had they ruled in a different way for Moore versus Harper, that if they had given the sole power to remake these state maps to state legislatures, that it could have actually backfired on Republicans in the sense that there are a lot of states that Democrats control right now that have a lot more power to gerrymandered to within an inch of its life, its own maps, and keeping in mind as well that a lot of these Republican states are already gerrymandered to within an inch of their

lives. No, that's certainly true. I think in the short term, like it's sort of Anything could go, it could go either way based on the composition of the state legislature. But I think you have to think about this in terms of the conservative long game. Like conservatives, perhaps more so than Democrats, have been really studied and considered in their attempt to focus their attention, not necessarily on the federal government, but on states. So this project that has been decades in the making is really focused on turning state legislatures red. And they've been mostly successful. And it's still a project that's ongoing.

So, yes, there are a handful of states at this point where there are reliably blue legislatures, but there are a lot of states where it's more purple, and it could go either way. And I think that's sort of what this theory was betting on. If we can turn more of these state legislatures red than, you know, and we then vest all of this authority in the state legislature to say and to have exclusive control over the conduct of federal elections, well, that's the whole kit and caboodle. And, you know, under this particular decision, I think there's going to be not only pressure to really pay attention to state legislatures on the part of conservatives. The conservatives, I think, are also going to be really exercised to start paying attention or paying more attention to state

courts. I mean, you'll forget here that the state Supreme Court in North Carolina that first invalidated this map, then control of the state Supreme Court went to the Republicans. It was first democratically controlled court. And then it became a Republican control court after the 2020 midterm election. And then the Republican-controlled court invalidated the earlier court's decision, which raised questions about whether or not this case was moot and whether the Supreme Court should be reviewing it at all. Taking a step back, 30,000 foot view, Joe Biden had come out and said that he would hesitate to expand the court because it would politicize the process. Isn't it already pretty damn politicized? So again, I think this is where I kind of part ways with the president.

It's not just that the court is political or even that the court and certain justices who seem to have very cozy relationships with billionaires have politicized the court further. It's that the court has always been a political organ. This idea that the court is apolitical and above the prey is completely specious. This court has always been deeply entrenched in politics. And unlike the other branches, it really depends on the public's perception of it for its legitimacy and its authority. When the people lose faith with the court, there's nothing that keeps them obedient to what the court says. Like, I mean, like, you know, just look at Brown versus

Board of Education. The South thought that decision was absolutely lawless, and they refused to follow it so much so that the only thing that made integration happen in the South or that began opening the door to integration in the South was President Eisenhower sending the National Guard in. It wasn't the people were like, you know what, we've got to go and listen to the The court means what it says. That's not what happened. Like, the court depends on us for its legitimacy. And I think the president has to understand, like, there are a lot of people who are looking at these junkets, these billionaire private jet jaunts and the salmon fishing and wondering, like, is this my Supreme Court? Or is this a Supreme Court that's in the pocket of billionaires? And there's already questions about whether this court is actually doing law or whether it's doing. and prosecuting a particular project of the conservative legal movement. And I think that raises question. So this court's already politicized. I think everything should be on the table in terms of court reform from term limits to recalibrating the court, all of it. But there's something

deeply, deeply wrong with this court. And I think that's the first place the Biden administration should start. Yeah, I think that's such a great point in terms of like, we need to be completely accepting and obedient of everything that they hand down. But they have to, they're they answer to nobody, and they're not obedient to anybody. And so just that asymmetry there is pretty striking. You had touched on this, but what do you think is the best avenue in terms of rebalancing the court in terms of taking back some degree of legitimacy here? Do you think it's court expansion, term limits, what would you opt for? So I agree with the Biden administration that, you know, expanding the court, like, that's a big project. And, you know, I fully agree that that is a big project.

But that doesn't mean it should be off the table in time. I do think there are smaller things that could be done that could, like, make clear to the court that we're not playing around with them. Like, you know, they've got to play by the same rules we play by. So ethics reform of the court, the fact that Congress controls the purse springs for the court, like, wouldn't it be amazing if there were no clerks to do the heavy lifting for these justices? Like, what would that look like? I mean, there are lots of ways in which Congress could make clear to this court that something needs to change. Like, not necessarily in sort of, deliberations, but just the way it looks to the public. Like, you can't be hanging out with

billionaires. You can't allow billionaires to infiltrate the Supreme Court historical society and buy a building across the street from the court because they're hoping to hang out with justices. I mean, like this billionaire adopt a justice thing is like save the children back in the 1980s. Like, you know, for the cost of a cup of coffee, you too could adopt a justice. I mean, this is insane. Yeah. All right. Well, that seems like a great place to leave off. So Melissa Murray, thank you so much for like this, this wealth of information here. And for anybody listening, absolutely head over to strict scrutiny. It is a great podcast.

It's on my rotation of podcast. So definitely a great listen. Thank you again for taking the time. Thanks for having me, Brian. Thanks again to Melissa. That's it for this episode. Happy Fourth of July, everybody. Enjoy, have fun.

Take some time away from the news now that you've listened to this podcast and talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian. Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.