Some More News - Even More News: Why The Supreme Court Keeps Letting Trump Break The Law

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Hi. Katy, Cody, and Jonathan are joined by Leah Litman, author of the new book "Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes." They discuss how the Supreme Court is making it up as they go and allowing Donald Trump to do pretty much whatever he wants while they maintain a facade of legitimacy.Get Leah's book here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/lawless-how-the-supreme-court-came-to-run-on-conservative-grievance-fringe-theories-and-bad-vibes-leah-litman/21872837?ean=9781668054628PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/join#evenmorenews #SupremeCourt #donaldtrumpF*%k your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code Morenews15 at http://www.theperfectjean.nyc/Morenews15 #theperfectjeanpoBring the action with you and stream for free on all your favorite devices. Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, hello and welcome back to Even More News, the first and only news podcast. That's right, I'm Katie Stoll. Hello, Katie Stoll. Thank you. And welcome to the first and last time I will say hi, I'm Bonnie. How's it going? Hi, Bonnie. It's so nice to meet you.

Yeah, I'm Cody. It's the real thing. Guys, we have such a great guest joining us today. Law professor at the University of Michigan, co-host of the podcast Strict Scrutiny, and author of the new book Lawless, How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes, which by the way is a New York Times bestseller. We are thrilled to welcome Leah Litman. Hi, Leah. Hi. Thanks so much for having me. We're thrilled to have you. Jonathan's also here. Oh yeah. Hi. There he is. There's the guy. Nice to be here. Happy to be here. Thank you, Katie. We've got some holidays to celebrate because it's always a holiday.

Somehow, someway, apparently. So Friday, May 30th is National Creativity Day. I like that. Oh, that's nice. Lots of ways to be creative, just, you know, in your life. Jonathan, I love this joke. If you're having trouble figuring out a way to be creative, you can always just ask Chet, be cheapy-tee. Might not be Shakespeare,

but that's a joke that I wrote myself. It's pretty good. With your own brain, exactly. I, you know, I'm celebrating creativity day every day. I thought you were going to say if you're having problems getting creative, get creative, be creative about it. That's pretty good. I liked yours better.

No, that would be real advice and mine is cynical about the world. Yeah, Leah, yours is real. Okay. Then Saturday, May 31st, this is a good one, National Speak and Complete Sentences Day. Sentences Day. Sorry, I thought it was Finish Each Other Sentences Day. I mean, this is a podcast that is specifically run on sentence, it's one run on sentence where someone talks and then the next person finishes,

and we can't do that here. I've started to assume that some will interject so that I don't have to finish a sentence. And then when no one does, No problem. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I got it, I got it. I'll take it from here, Katie.

We got it. We're gonna finish it. Complete sentence with a period at the end. This is the best part of having co-hosts never having to actually finish a real sentence. The thought of doing a show by myself is terrifying. Don't do it. All right, Leah, now is the time, part of the show

where we pepper you with questions and get to know you a little bit. And hear about your book. Congratulations again, New York Times bestseller. It's very good. I haven't finished yet, but I wanted to admit that when we booked you and we got the book, there was something in me that got a little nervous because whenever I read legal, Supreme Court, law things, I feel stupid. Charlie Brown thing where you're like, but I very much appreciate your style of writing because it makes it accessible to those of us that don't have a law

degree. And I feel like that was purposeful and important. And before we get into some of the more hard hitting questions, but maybe talk to us about how it came to be that you wanted to write this. So I think the book is in some ways the product of my long running battle with the Supreme Court, my own feelings about the Supreme Court. So I clerked at the court about 15 years ago when they heard the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act, and they almost blew up the entire Affordable Care Act based on their absolutely bogus theory that one day the government might try to force you to buy or even eat broccoli. And the idea that that was the real threat, rather than people not having health insurance and dying because they couldn't afford medical treatment or going bankrupt trying to save themselves and their loved ones was so rattling and wild to me that I felt like I thought,

oh my gosh, this institution is really messed up. People don't necessarily realize it. It felt like more people got clued in to just how wild the Supreme Court was when they overruled Roe versus Wade. But even then, I think people's focus has shifted away from the Supreme Court with some people now thinking the Court is going to save us from Donald Trump and Trumpism. They are the heroes. And I just want people to have a more complex picture of the Supreme Court and how it got to be where it is and what we should worry they might do next if we do indeed take our eyes off the court. So that's where the book came from and it is intended for a general audience. I'm so glad to hear you found it accessible because I think one important step in doing something about the Supreme Court is having more people informed about the Supreme Court.

Like, majority of voters can't name a justice. Absolutely. And you're right. I think for a lot of us, certainly for me, you almost took it for granted that the Supreme Court is going to protect us. The Supreme Court is the final stop. You know, I used to think naively that once you were given a right, you can't have it taken away, for example. And as we were chatting about briefly before we started recording, there is just this onslaught all the time, constantly of this is getting challenged. This has been put on pause. Wait a minute, it's been reversed. This federal court going back, it stopped for now. And I find, just to use the word accessible, very

inaccessible, even just in the standard reporting which you think would be designed to reach as many people as possible, but instead everything just feels so complicated, which adds to the terror that I feel all the time because I don't quite understand what is actually happening. Matthew 14 It seems to me that conservatives were much quicker to understand that this is a political tool. We can cultivate people who will do what we want, make them feel like superheroes, insulate them from all of the people they're affecting, but on the liberal side everyone kept believing like no no no they're impartial they're just reading the text. I feel like this

went that way with Obama nominating Merrick Garland and trying to smooth the divide. And the other side for decades was like, no, we've got this Federalist society. The entire point is to get them to do what we want. Now that they have such a head start, is there any chance of the left having a Federalist society of its own or a whatever it would

be called, the woke society. You know, like, can we, is it too far gone? So I think there's a lot of work to do on the left to take back the courts. I think the conservative legal movement strategy paid dividends over the course of basically five decades and it wasn't a straight line. They had some setbacks along the way, but they stayed committed even as they were screaming about how the left was politicizing the court and the court was full of judicial activists. They were busy building a political case

for taking over the court and trying to find judges who would fulfill their political ideology. The left's response has been just to defend the institution as an institution without thinking about what they are actually doing, which seems like an utter shell game and mistake at this point, given how corrupted the court has become and how captured the court is. As for a federalist Society of the left, I think there are some parts of the conservative legal movement that progressives and Democrats should seek to emulate,

like making the court part of politics and building a case for voters to care about the court over the long term. That's necessary. I'm not sure we need a Federalist society or could have a Federalist society in the same way. And that's in part because We're not trying to do weird ass shit that a majority of the country doesn't like and part of why the Federalist Society was

needed was to have You know some affirmation for when the justices did weird things and that isn't really needed here. I do want to kind of bridge this to another question I had, because one thing that I really liked about your book is that I knew going in that I agreed with it or most of it, but there were still a lot of details that kind of blew my mind to read about. And on one of the first pages, there's a detail about Samuel Alito's diss descent in the Obergefell case, which

made same-sex marriage the law of the land. And it kind of blew my mind that he wrote it in there because it is not a legal argument and it is a bad argument. Can you go through that real quick? Yeah. So part of why I put it in the introduction is I wanted to hit people in the face with just how much they are grounding the law on vibes, like their personal feelings, and this idea of conservative grievance,

that they are the real victims, no matter what is happening. So this dissent says, marriage equality, the Court's Obergefell decision, facilitates the marginalization of Americans with traditional views about marriage and even recalls the harsh treatment of gays and lesbians in the past, which some might think about turnabout as fair play.

So he is equating the fact that gay people can get married with the persecution and criminalization of sexuality and sexual orientation throughout the 1900s and early 2000s. Like he is saying the way that opponents of marriage equality feel today and are treated today is the same on the same plane as when you could be thrown in jail for being intimate with a person of the same on the same plane as when you could be thrown in jail for being

intimate with a person of the same sex. Totally same in his mind. And it is truly just that kind of logic, this grievance logic. Yeah, we are seeing that applied across the board to things. It's essentially that in essence that's the way that they are approaching so much of this. How much do you think that is a actual belief and personal grievance that he has? Like, is it like, oh, he actually thinks that these are the same thing,

or is it more just this sort of language he's using? You're like, right, it's like, well, I need to make a case. I need to say something because I hate this. I don't want it to happen. So they're sort of like creating these ideas after the fact. I think it is a both and situation. I think it is a rhetorical strategy where of course

it is easier to whip people into a frenzy and get them really mad and agitate them to like go do what you want them to do if they feel attacked and if they feel like there is an enemy. On the other hand, I really do think he believes this. I mean, he has said it in so many different ways, in so many different fora, in oral arguments,

in speeches, in the pages of US reports. And I just think if you say it that much and you keep coming back to it, you probably believe some part of it is true. Yeah, it's not just that it's effective. You really want to believe that these people just live and breathe the law and are steeped in legal theory for decades.

But they're steeped in weird theories that are fringe theories, as you call them, and just the Fox News alternate universe. Like it's like the inside of a Jiffy Lube where it's just Fox News on 24 hours a day in their minds. It's at least for a couple of them. Well, sure, there's that. And then there is the obvious problem of bribes

and them being in the pocket of people that are giving them fancy trips and fancy gifts. and then being in the pocket of people that are giving them fancy trips and fancy gifts and funding their projects and would think that would be utterly delegitimizing. But we seem to have just blown right past that culturally and have just rolled over and given up. Yeah, we ignored that.

We just, and it presumably is continuing to happen, but that has to have some sort of an element of the, as to why they're jumping through so many hoops. Yeah, I mean, I think this is another example where they feel personally attacked any time anyone suggests they are doing anything improper because when it was about to come out when ProPublica was about to report that Samuel Alito had taken this luxury fishing vacation with this

Billionaire hedge fund person who also happened to have some business before the Supreme Court later on Justice Alito preemptively went to the Wall Street Journal and wrote an op-ed saying ProPublica misleads its readers. And it had so many self-owns in that op-ed. It was stunning. So one of the details that ProPublica reported is that someone who worked at the vacation lodge where they were, heard them talking about drinking $1,000 bottle of wine,

or said they were drinking $1,000 bottle of wine. So Justice Alito wrote in the Wall Street Journal, op-ed pages, if there was wine, it certainly wasn't $1,000. Like, okay, Marie Antoinette, that makes it so much better. It was only $500, actually. Right, exactly, exactly.

It was actually $10,000, you plebs. Is this the same trip where he said, listen, the seat on that private jet of Paul Singer's private jet would have been empty if I wasn't, if my ass wasn't sitting there? I had to. That would have been empty if I wasn't, if my ass wasn't sitting there. I had to. That would have been bad if that seat was empty.

It was an otherwise unoccupied seat on a private jet trip. So he, Sam Alito, the environmentalist, just wanted to save jet fuel. And so he took that trip. If he didn't sit in it, it would have been more waste, fraud, and abuse. Exactly. You also recently co-wrote an article in the Atlantic with the headline, How to Hide a Constitutional Crisis. And that has been on everyone's mind lately, like, are we? Are we not? Will they? Won't they?

But what you put forth in this is that what they're using is a strategy called legalistic noncompliance, which is honestly maybe more dangerous than outright noncompliance, where they're kind of sneaking it around so there's never a moment where we're all like, aha, it's finally happening. If you could speak more on that. Yeah, so that piece is about one particular aspect or definition of a constitutional crisis that people have fixated on, namely,

whether the executive branch is complying with unfavorable court rulings and court orders. And our argument is, across a range of cases, they are insisting, both in court and publicly, that they are complying with court orders, when in fact, they are insisting, both in court and publicly, that they are complying with court orders, when in fact they are not. They are just making utterly baseless legal arguments for why they haven't violated court orders

and why they are in compliance with court orders. And that obscures the extent to which they are doing the very thing that people are so concerned about, not abiding by court orders. So that's the phenomenon we write about and are trying to draw attention to. And it's very scary to me as all of it is because it seems as if the courts, we're doing a dance right now of trying to see how far it can go.

And it feels like no one wants to make a strong case to make it clear that they are in noncompliance, that they are just shucking the rule of law. And it terrifies me that we might not ever have a moment where there is any sort of accountability. I mean, they're using the tactic, like kind of like what your reaction to the book was, Katie, where it's like, well, I don't understand this stuff. And it's hard to understand, like being able to read it in this way is like, oh, that makes perfect sense. And they are using our lack of knowledge and lack of understanding and this sort of legal

like legalese and like this like this hard language to obfuscate this, combined with Trump who can just say, I'm doing what they tell me. I'm just doing what my lawyer said. Like he's so good at like just like wiping stuff off his lifelong with anything. Exactly. He's just a constant bullshitter,

has been his entire life. So that power that he has over everybody, combined with these like quote quote unquote, serious people are able to use this language. Like I even have friends now who are like, I'm going to go back. I'm going back to law school. I'm doing this and doing like going into this because the knowledge of it is so powerful now and important to have to know that they are lying to you so that you can you can hear

Stephen Miller up there at talking about all these things and go, nah, that sounds wrong, actually. Sounds like he's lying, which he does every single day. You know how to define habeas corpus. Right, yeah. Do you feel like they're OK with just kind of giving up their power? They don't want to do this confrontation?

Because they should be writing right now, like, hey, we told you to bring Kilmar Obrego-G from El Salvador a month and a half ago you said on TV that you could with a phone call Where's he at and they're not doing that we only talk about it because you said it was a mistake at the beginning of it Yeah, so this is a part of the situation that I think is also concerning which is a part of the situation that I think is also concerning, which is courts desperately want to preserve their own authority. And sometimes that means preserving the appearance of their own authority by adopting a legal standard that basically doesn't require the administration to do anything to cure their legal violations. And I think the Kilmar-Abrego-Garcia case is unfortunately an example of this.

So what we call this is legalized noncompliance, where a court will basically say noncompliance is the law in some sort of like perverted way. So they're like using law to enable lawlessness. And in the Abrego-Garcia decision, the Supreme Court said the lower court was right. They can order the administration to facilitate return, but they also suggested the lower court went too far when they tried to order the administration to effectuate,

i.e., actually bring about the return. So already they created this gray area for courts in the administration to manipulate and maneuver in to say, we tried, but we can't actually do it. They added additional language about how courts had to give the executive due regard for their power over foreign affairs. And also they are the ones that required all of these challenges to proceed via this one legal procedure, habeas corpus, which focuses attention on where and under what authority an individual is detained. So they are the ones that precipitated this situation where there are now questions about whether a court can do more to get the administration to do anything to actually get Mr. Obrego Garcia

back in United States custody. It's infuriating. Yeah. It does feel, and I know facts don't care about feelings, but it does feel like a different president. Facts care about some people's feelings, it turns out. Some people's just not all people. It depends, it depends, it turns out. Some people's just not all people. It depends, it's very situational.

But it does feel, again, like we're in this dance where a different administration, a different president, they wouldn't feel so cowed, perhaps, and would take a stronger stance, would be clear, and yet they are letting this administration run circles around them for fear of what comes next. It's fascinating seeing them sort of like, try to like get all these people in the court

and get this and like, get this power in the courts but then slowly delegitimize the existence of the courts at the same time. So like, okay, you did it. You got like the power, but also you're deteriorating their power at the same time. It's wild because in some ways, I think that that could be the backstop

that makes the Trump administration or Republican party bulk at outright compliance because they know at the end of the day, this Supreme Court is their friend, and they're going to allow the Trump administration to do an awful lot. And also, they're the ones that will be there to stop Democratic presidents from governing. They're the ones who blocked Joe Biden from doing student debt relief. They're the ones that blocked the Clean Power Plan. So they need them in order to advance their weird agenda in some times where they don't

control the White House, in some places, states that are purple or blue. So I think that is in some ways this awful backstop that is preventing more outright noncompliance in this administration. It's very depressing. It's very depressing to think about how we even possibly can crawl back from this in the near future or to any point. I don't know that you have answers for ways that we could, you know, expanding the Supreme Court, not right now.

My God, but. Great idea. Why not? 20 people. While the previous administration. But yeah, and I also, this has gotta be heavy work for you to live and exist in. I do think that there's something fun about your book. I want to highlight, you know, with different pop culture references that does make it feel

less heavy, but it is heavy. It is, but I wanted people to come away with it agitated and angry, but in a way where they wanted to fight, not where they wanted to give up. Because I think giving up is just another form of obeying in advance and anticipatory obedience, which we've been criticizing, some media institution schools and whatnot for doing. And I don't think we can adopt that posture toward the Supreme Court either.

And I'm a know, I'm a professor, so obviously have a soft spot for education. But I do think that public education and information is the necessary first step because I think at the end of the day, a majority of the country doesn't actually believe that mega rich billionaires should be able to spend all of this money to overpower elections, drown out everyone's voices and purchase themselves the presidency. Like a majority of the country doesn't believe that. I think a super majority of the country opposes that.

And so I think if we can get this information out there, like there is a chance of fixing it. Yeah. This is the naive and hopeful part of me. I'm not saying that this is going to relax everyone. I'm not saying this is a way to play out. But I live in a pretty conservative community. And yeah, oh, surprise.

Did you move around somewhere? Yeah, I recently moved around. More and more, conversations are dicey right now. But a through line is this. This idea of, you know, the wealth, the corporate rule over our lives and people feeling really disenfranchised. A lot of people voted for Trump, not the right answer.

But there's part of me. Electing Trump and Elon Musk wasn't the right answer. No, no, no, no. But there is a part of me that is naively hopeful that over the next few years, there will be more cracks and people start to see, especially with this one big, beautiful bill act that is going to decimate so many lives

that maybe, maybe this will radicalize some people to realize maybe. Yeah, as it gets more prominent in public, more brazen and worse for people, we're gonna definitely see the stories that there's one over the weekend of like a guy's like, yeah, I voted for Trump and he ruined my life and I've lost my job, but like I don't regret it at all

He gave him a B plus. I think I Like yeah, that's apparently worth the price of the United States and maybe global economy Just cuz I want to try to prepare myself for the next year or two Do you think they're gonna give him birthright citizenship? And do you think they're going to give him birthright citizenship and do you think they're going to think the 22nd amendments, the consecutive or whatever thing? Oh, God. Yeah.

So why do you have to ask? I got to ask. So birthright citizenship, I think if and when they actually hear a challenge to whether the executive order is legal, I think they will say it's illegal. The case that they are hearing now is about whether lower courts have the authority to issue these nationwide injunctions to block a policy everywhere. And I think in the event they limit that, that is going to be problematic, though I ultimately think they are going to allow courts to issue effectively nationwide relief in the birthright citizenship case based on the argument. I just think they are going to allow courts to issue effectively nationwide relief in the birthright citizenship case based on the argument. I just think they're going to require them to jump through some additional procedural hurdles and whatnot to do so.

They want to give him a sense that he won a little. Exactly. Well, exactly. And I don't think we should dismiss the possibility that they are doing that for that reason. I mean, Justice Jackson basically came out and accused the court of doing that in the case involving the funding freeze at the Department of Education.

She wrote in a footnote, like, what reason is there for the court to do this other than to give the administration an early win, a notch in its belt, in the beginning of what is likely to be protected litigation give the administration an early win, a notch in its belt, in the beginning of what is likely to be protected litigation involving the administration. I mean, just last week, Justice Kagan, in a very pointed dissent to the Supreme Court's order allowing Donald Trump to fire National Labor Relations Board, Merit Service Protection Board, officials wrote that this court, the Republican appointees, favor this precedent over our precedents. Like they have basically told us this court is in

the bag and trying to give Donald Trump some W's. But you think they'll allow other people to do injunctions in this district and that district and they're not gonna say that the 14th Amendment, well that only intent, you know, like that's, that's hopeful for me. That's better than I thought it would be. It's something. But again, I don't want us to revert back to like, and therefore the Supreme Court is good. Because like, when they rule 7-2, that actually the 14th Amendment still is law, does not mean all is well. Yeah, those two are still a concern.

Yeah. Those those seven two rulings are really fun for me when they come out to read through. I'm like, oh, wow. All these guys, Lito and Thomas are just like, come on, we had it. We're so close. Yeah, I thought we had a. Come on, Amy. You're a professor and I have to ask. I just have to. how is it these days?

What's the chat GPT situation over there? I know it can be a useful tool for summarizing cases and things like that, but is it a problem and how much of a problem is it? Yeah, so it's definitely modified how we give assessments. I used to be very in favor of take-home exams. They gave students more time to process and think.

And I liked doing that just to create more space for critical thinking. Unfortunately, with the advent of chat GPT, I just don't think that is a fair and realistic assessment method anymore. So I think more people have switched to in-class examinations that kind of limit your ability to rely on different forms of AI for different reasons. I think

some people have also incorporated some oral assessment, oral examinations as well to counteract that. So I think thus far it has been a move toward changing assessment methods as well as figuring out how to teach students to use it responsibly. That's nice. That's nice. That's nicer than, yeah, it sounds like you're mitigating the issues instead of despairing. Appropriately, we're pretty worried about that reporting that came out a few weeks ago about what a widespread problem it is. And I was actually, I'm glad you brought that up Cody, because I was thinking about it,

leading up to this just in general, already hard enough to digest the news, hard enough to understand what's happening from a legal standpoint. And the less informed we get, the less able we are to parse through tough language and sit through something that's dense, the more terrified I feel about our future.

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I've got mixed thoughts on taco, but I'll get it to it. Okay, so let me try to get through what happened in the last what two days so I guess some Wall Street folks have a new Phrase that they've been using a new strategy to make money around things. It's taco Trump always chickens out They say okay Trump's gonna announce a tariff the markets gonna react poorly we can buy buy buy Then obviously it's gonna rebound when he pulls back on the tariffs and we sell and the cycle repeats again He's predictable this money is so fake and stupid

But then some reporter had to ask Trump about this and said hey, are you a chicken? They're like they're Marty McFly him and so Trump is like first of all Trump misheard and was like, what are you? Who am I kicking? What are you kicking? And they're like, no, Trump always chickens out. What did you hear? Yeah. Who told you that? So he's like, I don't chicken. I go, what, 145 down to 30.

He's just like throwing off numbers. He doesn't know what the tariffs are. Mr. Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the taco trade. They're saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats, and that's why markets are higher this week. What's your response to that? I kick out? Chicken out. Oh, and that's why markets are higher this week. What's your response to that?

I kick out? Chicken out. Oh, and then I chicken out. I've never heard that. You mean because I reduced China from 145 percent that I set down to 100 and then down to another number, and I said you have to open up your whole country? And because I gave the European Union a 50% tax tariff, and they called up and they said,

please, let's meet right now, please, let's meet right now. And I said, okay, I'll give you till June 9th. I actually asked them, I said, what's the date? Because they weren't willing to meet. And after I did what I did, they said, we'll meet any time you want. And we have an end date of July 9th. You call that chickening out, but don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question.

And so everyone yesterday is like, Oh, no, is he going to just put 300% tariffs on everyone despite us? And then a that same day, a three-judge panel of the US Court of International Trade ruled that Trump overstepped his authority in issuing the Liberation Day tariffs. A judicial coup. Right. And they said he can't use the emergency authorization. It's called the IEEEPA. International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Thank you. That one. She knows off the top of her head. The National Emergency Economic Powers Act. Thank you. She's good. That one.

She knows off the top of her head. I knew she was going to know this thing. They said, you can't use that. This isn't what the emergency is. Trade deficits exist. Right. Get out of here is what they said. Get out of here.

But then just before we started recording in appeals court, paused the ruling. So this one will not be going to the Supreme Court just yet. So now the tariffs, believe it or not, guys, are in limbo. Oh! Oh, wow. So we don't actually know whether the tariff issue might make its way to the Supreme Court at some point in the near future, because you're right,

the Federal Circuit paused the Court of International Trade decision that had blocked the tariffs. But the day after the Court of International Trade blocked the tariffs, another court, the District Court for the District of Columbia, held the tariffs illegal but on other grounds. So the Federal Circuit isn't the court that oversees that district court. So whether this tariff issue gets to the Supreme Court soon might depend on whether the Trump administration succeeds in getting the DC Circuit, that Court of Appeals, which oversees the district court for DC to pause that ruling as well.

This is a joke. A joke. A clown joke. Is there... Is there argument the same as it is with the El Salvador stuff where they're saying you're interfering with our ability to do foreign affairs? Good question. So it's a little bit of a grab bag.

First I just want to pause and reflect the idea that we have now gotten to a position where the default is that the president gets to carry out unlawful policies while litigation unfolds is not a good default position to be in. But it's in part, they are emphasizing the president's authority over foreign affairs and the deference that courts owe to the president on issues of foreign policy. But technically, the legal issues are a little bit different. They're about whether this particular statute authorizes tariffs in general, authorizes these tariffs in particular,

whether courts can even review the president's determination that there is an extraordinary situation requiring some emergency response. So the precise legal issues are a little bit different. But yes, there's also a gloss of, and of course, courts, you have to give the president a lot of deference on foreign affairs in this case too. I'm gonna need to buy stuff though is the problem.

At some point, I wish it wasn't that way, but I got to buy stuff. There's a lot of stuff I need to buy and I'm like, this is the time. I just wanna say, I'm not, this is, everything you've said is very intelligent and worth pointing out and explaining. I just bothers me the taco a little bit. I'm like, I get it, it's a catchy phrase or whatever. I'm also like, don't, I don't need to taunt him

in any capacity, I don't feel the need to like, challenge him to prove us wrong and really like, don't feel the need to, like, challenge him to prove us wrong and really, like, go all in. We don't want that. So I think there are ways to taunt him that actually could be productive. Like, when they were presenting themselves and still are presenting themselves

as so powerless to do anything to get Kilmara Brega Garcia back, I feel like we should mock them for being weak, right? Since they are so all in on masculine energy and being manly men. It's like, okay, a real manly man could call up a foreign leader and get someone out of their prison

and back in their custody if they wanted. They were sitting right in front of each other. 100%. They were in the same room together. Goating him into another Great Depression, maybe not the best idea. That's my takeaway. I'm glad we're on the same page.

Perfect example of a situation where goating maybe would have been appropriate. Well, we missed that, I guess, because now it's been months. There will be other opportunities, I'm sure. Yeah, I think because I guess a counterpoint to that would be we did bully Elon Musk out of government. He's very sad, and it's likely that everyone hating him

is part of what he's sad about. We also apparently bullying Dan Bongino. Oh yeah. Oh he's so sad about his schedule. Do you guys want me to play that clip? I do. Sure why not? I think we might as well.

Let's just have some fun. I happen to have the clip. A little treat before we just do this, it's just so funny how every single one of these guys is so miserable about being in control. Like they're all in control of the government and they're just like, I didn't have to do this. Yeah, you didn't have to, but you did. So get off TV.

Yeah, OK. So here's Dan Von Gino. He used to be a podcaster guy. Now he's the deputy director of the FBI Just under cash Patel and here he is complaining that like it. It's a lot of work Not like podcasting who would have thought it would have thought you know I mean I gave up Everything for this I mean you know My wife is struggling and I'm not a victim. I'm not Jim Comey. It's fine I did this and and I'm proud I did it But if you think we're there for tea and crumpets, well, I mean cash is there all day We share it. Our offices are linked. He turns on the faucet. I hear it. He's there

It I he gets in like six o'clock in the morning. He doesn't leave till seven at night You know, I'm in there at 730 in the morning. I you know, he uses the gym I work out my apartment, but I stare at these four walls all day in D.C., you know, by myself, divorced from my wife, not divorced, but I mean, separated divorced. And it's hard, I mean, you know, we love each other and it's hard to be apart. I mean...

I mean... I mean... I mean... Which he describes going to an office. That's so funny. Right, having a job. Having a job and working. Look, I get it.

Being a podcaster is sick. I have pants, I have short shorts on and then a professional top. My dog's in the other room. I'm not divorced from him or separated from him. But I didn't sign up for this, the government job. It's so funny. You're describing government job. It's so funny. You're describing a job and like going to a job and leaving a job and then like,

I didn't ask for this. Well, yeah, you literally did. You literally asked for this job. He thought that running the FBI would be like six hours a week tops of like, here are the files with the secrets. Right, right. The secret files are around, and he was just gonna get to go online

and say, look at the, here's a picture of Clinton doing crimes, right? Got her. Like, that's what he thought it would be. But it turns out it's like a lot of administrative work. Like, what are you talking about? I thought this was a remote job. Yeah. That's incredible. Every single one of these guys, Musk can't stop complaining. They're all victims. Like what are you talking about? I thought this was a remote job.

Yeah. That's incredible. Every single one of these guys, Musk can't stop complaining. They're all victims. I just, again, I want to like highlight the title of your book because it nails, it's not just like, yes, it is about

like this conservative court, but it's the conservative movement. The Republican party, all these guys, Musk and Bongino and Cash Patel, all these people are just driven by grievance and these fringe theories and just like the bad vibes of it all. And they want everybody to absorb their bad vibes. And it's, it's so dangerous and obnoxious. That's it's, it's so annoying to is the problem. Like if it weren't as annoying. Okay, so there was this guy,

I won't get too in the weeds, so stop me if I start talking about Ashley Biden's diary. Okay, so this guy, Paul Walczek, is a nursing home executive, and he takes taxes out of his employees' paychecks, and he's supposed to give that money to the government, and he didn't. He kept like $ million dollars for himself

A lot of millions of dollars. He was buying yachts and things of this nature Check out our episode about nursing homes and how terrible they are and how they're run by horrible people. The executives are bad So he pleads guilty to these tax crimes last November on Inauguration day or around inauguration day. Sorry, he applies for a pardon from the Trump administration. And that pardon application largely talked about his mother, Elizabeth Fago, and how she was a huge Trump fan and had helped raise money for Trump's campaign and was even kind of instrumental in getting Ashley Biden's diary out there, which they got in a very strange, criminal way.

But anyway, and then there was no pardon right away. And then a couple of weeks later, this guy's mom, Elizabeth Fago, goes to a $1 million per person fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago, and then three weeks later, the guy is pardoned. A pardon just appears. I don't know what you're implying, Jonathan.

Just a series of events, I don't know. All of this is so disturbing, and you know what also is very disturbing is this conversation online. I interrupt myself because I say this every week, but my God, the people saying, that's right. That's right, you support Trump. Just, you know, we like this.

We like this actually. This is what I voted for. This is what I want. I want the criminals free as long as they are Donald Trump's criminals. That's fine by me. Yeah, he said he'd look into pardoning the people who tried to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer.

Like, he's just like, whoever.. Like, he's just like whoever. He's just the crime. As long as you're a Republican, right? No MAGA left behind. That's what Ed Martin said. Yes, exactly. And that's always been true, but it's just like every day

they're just so much more blatant about it. What is he running? This was a fundraising event. Well, right. Is it for the RNC or other candidates? Because he can't run for anything. What's the money for? Leah, do you know?

Do you know what the money is for? Unclear. You know, I think in the past, we've heard stories about it going to some of his legal defense. And there's plenty of. Exactly. But not anymore. It's over. It's free.

Yeah, he freed himself by being elected again. So like, he's just having fundraising dinners. Going to his quote presidential library like the jet from Qatar. Yeah, just piling the money on the jet. This has been going on for a long time. An Associated Press review of donations to Trump over the last five years found 1600 contributions from donors who live abroad have close ties to foreign interests or failed to disclose basic information.

I'm quoting the AP here, by the way, often making it difficult, if not impossible, to identify them and verify the legality of their donations. Like you can just pay the president money for things. And like, make it really obvious. It's so, I always come back to, I think the very first episode of the show we ever did in 2017 was about the Emoluments Clause and how like, they can just impeach him right now,

just do it, like he's clearly breaking the law right now. And so like, what a bygone era. Now we have Amal U Jets. Exactly. Yeah. The Amal U Jets Clause. All of my Jets Clause. Yeah. And so like what an what a bygone now we have a mall you jets All of my jets claws yeah, yeah, it's it is very weird. I think it's been this way in Not just the bribes for Trump, but in all these different ways that things are normal now that they weren't not that less Right. We were all adults. We all like remember seven, eight, nine years ago.

Like this stuff would have made people lose their minds and yet- One of them. One of these. Right. But his strategy has been like successful. We are gonna throw everything at you. Ten things a week, 15 things a week. And then you're gonna get used to it and then we're just gonna be able to do it.

Well, there's that. It's horrifying and fascinating in a way how this can come about. I mean, I don't fully understand it. Part of me wonders if, we're so entrenched. The same on the left, knee jerk, Democrats can do no wrong vibes, but there's this, like, I've got to support my guy,

and if he ends up being a criminal, then I look bad, because I support him. I don't know, I think there's just some sort of a knee jerk. He's always getting attacked, so no matter what he does, I'm gonna have his back. Energy? Because I don't feel that even at this stage that any of this applies to anyone else.

Literally anybody else, no. Literally anybody else. And I just, again, maybe naive, hopeful that once we eventually recover from this man, some semblance of normalcy will return. I don't know, but it does seem to be just for him. And I guess the Supreme Court justices, they can get bribes and shit.

I mean, we kind of already have seen this already, where the justices rule a certain way for Trump. But then if Biden does something one-tenth of that, they say, well, the rule doesn't apply to you because of this specific reason, and they make something up. Is there a sense that they will ever call out something so ridiculous that they are the ones who start to get mocked? I'm thinking specifically about this Federal Reserve, like a carve out that they did recently. Can you speak to that real quick of what happened?

Oh yeah. So in their magic made up ruling where they said Donald Trump got to fire officials in violation of federal law because the president has to be able to fire everyone who exercises considerable executive power. They then added, well, not everyone, the Federal Reserve Board,

because reasons. They just inserted this phrase in which they described the Federal Reserve Board as this quasi-private, unique, structured entity with a distinct historical tradition. This is not law. It is not plausible law speak in any sense of the term. It is just, as Justice Kagan said, a bespoke

exception because they recognize their new made-up theory require a new made-up exception because it would have catastrophic consequences. So they're just making it up as they go along, turning Republican policy into law. And here, like their rule threatened their stock portfolios and wealth protectionism. And so they just said, well, there seem like good enough reasons for Congress to prohibit the president from firing the feds. So we're good with that, but not anything else,

is my brief summary. But this is that like hyper normalization of everything where we all know it's made up. We all know it's a joke, it's kayfabe, but we're all like just putting on this facade that it's legitimate. But what are you going to do? They're the people who get to say the law. So I'm not saying it's legitimate. I'm saying it is bespoke made up bullshit. No, like we we you can say it and I'm glad you're saying it and I'm glad we're saying it. But

like we're over here and it does not impact. The collective we. Can we get this in the Wall Street Journal editorial page? Because there's an alternate universe out there where what we're saying is not true or it is true but it's good because they're doing it for the good reasons. I don't know what breaks that spell.

Yeah. If anything can break that. Yeah, that is kind of the question, I think, in general. Across the board with this man, this administration, some like absurd, like more absurd than it already is example to break through or just one individual at one of these places to be like, can we just say what's going on finally? But whether or not that will even have the desired effect is also.

Maybe Amy will do it. Maybe Amy will do it. Maybe Amy? Maybe Amy. Maybe that's a new podcast where we just ask Amy Coney Barrett, we'll be like, we think there's a person in there. I think they've got some integrity in there.

Maybe you should do it. Well, Leah, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. Please tell our listeners and viewers. There's the book. Oh, yeah, there's the book. Get the book. Yes. Where can you buy the book?

Where can they follow you, read more of your work? Listen to you. So the book is Lawless, How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. It is out anywhere and everywhere. You get your books, including at bookshop.org, where you can order online, but support independent bookstores. I also co-host a podcast about the Supreme Court, strict scrutiny, we have new episodes every Monday. I am also a poster at Blue Sky and that's pretty much where you can find me. Find her, follow her, buy the book, listen to the show. Post alongside her, get posting folks.

Post our way to Blue Sky. All right guys, that's it. We are done. We are out of here. Like, subscribe, et cetera. Take care of yourself. Have a nice weekend. And remember, we love you very much.

Speak in complete sentences. Much. This is a story that begins with a dying wish. One thing I would like you to do. My mother's last request that my sister and I finish writing the memoir she'd started about her German childhood. When her father designed a secret super weapon for Adolf Hitler. Deutschland Sieg Heil! My grandfather, Robert Lusser, headed the Nazi project to build the world's first cruise missile

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