Some More News - SMN: How The Supreme Court Is Undermining Democracy

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

Hi. The Supreme Court - which has never been an apolitical entity - has been coming out with some really frightening rulings lately and is likely to keep it up. That's because fringe right-wing groups have infiltrated the Supreme Court and are now circumventing democracy to make laws. Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949 SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Please fill out our SURVEY: https://kastmedia.com/survey/ Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news  Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews  Make sure your online activity and data is protected with the best VPN money can buy. Visit https://ExpressVPN.com/morenews right now and get three extra months free.  Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/MORENEWS. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! Athletic Greens is going to give you an immune supporting FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit https://athleticgreens.com/morenews today. Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M4QmTC9aEFjPCvNnmh2NLazb1OlKiB4vD_qrQ5pGWS0/edit Support the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Oh yeah, stroke that chin. Yeah, put your whole hand in your mouth. Hi, what's up? I was just watching a previous episode of the show at patreon.com slash some more news. Like and subscribe and mail us your blood and spit and elderly. Anyway, it was the one we recently did on Roe v. Wade

and how the Supreme Court was gearing up to overturn it. And then the week we recorded the episode, the Supreme Court actually did overturn it, which was great synergy for us at the showdy, but less so for America. Anyway, fucked up stuff. What with the millions of Americans losing their reproductive rights

and access to bodily autonomy, and it really shined a light on the Supreme Court as a whole. A lot of Americans probably weren't paying attention to the Supreme Court before that point. I mean, the bear just came out and we had a lot of other stuff going on. And so this tilt toward the far right no doubt snuck up. Combine this with the news of Ginny Thomas,

wife of Clarence Thomas, who appears to be a proponent of Donald Trump's election fraud lies. You know that guy, Donald? He's the crime president who is now asking the Supreme Court to intervene in the review of the classified documents he stole as a crime. So yeah, a lot of people all over the country are now questioning the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, defenders and members seem to want us

to think that the Supreme Court is some kind of divine institution incapable of corruption. As Justice Alito recently said, it goes without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions and to criticize our reasoning as they see fit. But saying or implying that the court

is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line. Boy, I would argue that perhaps having family members actively working to pull a coup crosses that important line first. Also, maybe if you had an ethics code, we might question that integrity less, but we would still probably question it

because we should all the time to act as if the Supreme Court isn't a political institution, especially while they are making so many obviously political decisions, is just pretty gosh darn silly. The reality is that the Supreme Court has always been political and should always be questioned.

But more so than ever, their integrity is very much up for question right now. And so here's some news. Let's talk about that. Let's do an episode about the Supreme Court. I know it's October and everyone wants to get the spookies going, but this is kind of important. And no better place to start than Roe v. Wade.

And a bit of a refresher about what happened with that and what has happened since. Are we ready? Okay, so. Oh my god! Oh yeah, it's the gay worm. You just came out of the ground. Yeah, like Bugs Bunny.

Pretty cool, right? Sure. What the hell? Yeah, I'm making this a spooky Halloween episode. Shouldn't you be covered in dirt? I ate the dirt. Okay, you can leave. I'm going to.

Hey, babes! What's up? Happy Halloween! Here's some spooky news for ya. The Supreme Court sucks! The Supreme Court is undermining democracy. A lot of dirt coming back up. Okay, so not the best spooky subject. I think I can make it work. Everyone always tells me how unnerving I am, which I think is the same thing as being spooky. So since the Dobbs ruling, abortion has been fully banned in at least 14 states,

with another state banning the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy and three other states with a 15 week ban. Spooky lack of human rights. OK, this is going to be harder than I thought. Anyway, in some other states, including Utah, Montana, Indiana, and even Michigan, abortion rights are tenuous, with bans either expected to come in the next few weeks

or having already come, but then having been immediately blocked by lawsuits in lower courts. See, a lot of these bans have been enacted through trigger laws, legislation passed a long time ago designed to only go into effect once Roe was overturned. Lawyers in states where these laws are being blocked argue that they go against state constitutions or are too vague or out of date to be enforced, but that hasn't stopped conservatives from trying to

enforce them anyway. And the resulting back and forth has caused major problems for people living in those states. In Utah, abortions were banned on June 24th, immediately after the Dobbs decision was released, but then unbanned on the 27th when a judge blocked the law. And then the day after that, they were restricted to 18 weeks or earlier after conservative state legislatures revived an old law in their, you know, continued effort to control pregnant people's bodies. According to Dr. David Turok,

the director of surgical services at the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, the legality of abortion access changed day by day and hour by hour. There were days where we had people show up and wait in the waiting room and we weren't sure if we were going to be able to see them. Wow, man, even our nation's dinosaur hunters are at a loss. Of course, things are worse in other states. In Louisiana, wait, sorry, in GOO-LY-ZIA-NOO, the state's trigger ban has been blocked and reinstated three times in the course of six weeks. Even in states where the trigger laws were blocked immediately and abortion access has technically remained unimpeded, there's been mass confusion with patients calling clinics to ask if IUDs are still legal. They are. If Plan B is still

legal, it is. And general uncertainty as to how and where to still access abortion services and other prenatal health care. And that confusion is valid. That is the point. The goal of conservatives is to make it as difficult as possible to have an abortion. A clinic in Fargo, North Dakota, where the trigger law was temporarily blocked the day it was meant to be enacted, has continued to schedule appointments, but has begun to tell its patients that they can't guarantee where the appointment will be. It might be in North Dakota or it might be in Minnesota where abortion remains legal for now. It's like some kind of dystopian Mr. Beast challenge or rather a more dystopian Mr. Beast challenge.

And in Arizona, even lawmakers themselves can't figure out if abortion is currently legal or not. The state's attorney general says abortion is banned because of a law from 1901. But abortion rights advocates say that law is no longer valid due to a 1973 injunction. Unfortunately, that confusion and uncertainty tends to end up favoring the state and nearly all Arizona providers have stopped offering abortion procedures. As Dr. Gabriel Goodrick, the medical director of Camelback Family Planning in Phoenix, puts it, you have actual abortion bans and then you have confusion that causes a ban, which is essentially a ban. Are you spooked yet? Because it's seriously pretty fucking scary. Anywho, we did a whole

episode on this and all the horrific consequences of broadly banning abortion and how it affects literally everyone. And now we are seeing the cruelty in effect. Horrific news stories involving goddamn children being expected to carry pregnancies, young people being pursued for the crime of getting an abortion. Sometimes with the help of Facebook. Thanks, Mark. The point is, all the dystopian things we said would happen are indeed happening. Sometimes to the shock of the politicians who wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

I voted for the pain-capable bill, the fetal heartbeat bill. And fetal heartbeat has been for six weeks now. The second week that the fetal heartbeat bill became law, a doctor called me out of Anderson. I live in Easley. A 19-year-old girl appeared at the ER. She was 15 weeks pregnant. Her water broke. And the fetus was unviable.

The standard of care was to advise her that they could extract or she could go home. The attorneys told the doctors that because of the fetal heartbeat bill, because that 15-week-old had a heartbeat, the doctors could not extract. The doctor told me at that point there's a 50% chance, well, first, she's going to pass this fetus in the toilet. She's going to have to deal with that on her own. There's a 50% chance, greater than 50% chance, with that on her own. There's a 50% chance, greater than 50% chance that she's going to lose her uterus. There's a 10% chance that she will develop sepsis and herself die. That weighs on me. I voted for that bill. These are affecting people, and we're having a meeting about this. It took that whole week. I did not sleep.

Yeah, dipshit. Maybe you should talk to some fucking doctors before you pass laws affecting people's medical health. And I can't stress this enough, ya dipshit. The point here being that this change has been a legal and logistical disaster. It is not the work of a group of serious intelligent people analyzing the law and science, but rather something extremely partisan and based on religious fanaticism. It is designed to destabilize and punish and was rooted in lies. The lies that justices told when they heavily implied that they wouldn't overturn Roe v. Wade

and the lies the GOP told when they claimed this was about states choosing, which it clearly isn't. And so the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling was a monumental turning point in American history that is going to have an untold number of negative consequences on the well-being of everyday people. Seems kind of amazing that a decision like that would be left up to an unelected group of eight randos and kids in the halls, Mark McKinney, instead of, say, the other, much larger and more diverse-ish branch of our federal government that is actually supposed to be making sweeping legislative decisions. Maybe we should look into why the Supreme Court is able to make such massive, impactful decisions when that's not really the whole point of them.

Yeah. You know what? Yeah, let's do that. Not me, specifically, though. I meant, like, the royal let's. As in, hey, let's have Cody do that. Oh, no! I spilled all my weed and Star Wars collectible cards on the ground.

What am I going to do? I'm standing right here. I know you're lying. Also, I'm not interested in Star Wars collectible cards. I'm interested in the Star Wars customizable card game. It's like Magic the Gathering, but with lightsabers and worse. So do you have weed and Star Wars stuff? No, no, no, no.

I'm going to jet. Got to go scare some trick-or-treaters. Halloween is weeks away. Well, whatever the case, kids are going to get scared. Okay, bye. Thanks, four eyes. All right, cool, great. Just feel free to pick and choose which parts of the show you want to do.

Oh, my God, thanks. No problem. Okay, well, time for the fun part. The Supreme Court, what is it, history-wise? This is the fun part? Damn you, Cody, from just a second ago. All right, so the Supreme Court of the United States, of America, which I'm told is a country,

was established in 1789 by Article III of the U.S. Constitution, which also gave Congress the power to establish lower federal courts. The Constitution doesn't actually specify what the Supreme Court is supposed to do. It leaves it up to Congress. They first made that decision via the Judiciary Act of 1789,

which divided the country into 13 judicial districts, which were, in turn, organized into three circuits. For a while, SCOTUS wasn't really all that special or powerful as a political body other than being like the highest of the courts. The very first case the court saw, 1791's West v. Barnes, turned out to be, quote,

an unremarkable case involving a financial dispute between a farmer and a family he owed debt to. In fact, being a Supreme Court justice sucked so hard early on that several of the first justices complained about the court's limited stature, and Chief Justice John Jay resigned from the court in 1795 to become governor of New York instead, a job that obviously doesn't suck at all and is only for cool, chill dudes. A large part of everybody hating the job was probably because until 1891, justices were required to hold circuit court twice a year in each judicial circuit. That's a process called riding the circuit that required them to physically travel to

each circuit like they were a production of Wicked or some shit. Except this was the olden times. So it was on like a bobsled or however people traveled in the past. Some kind of horse rocket? Ooh, sounds fun and historically accurate. But the purpose of the court changed for good in 1803 when fourth Chief Justice John Marshall famously stated,

"'It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. This statement was a big fucking deal. For one, it officially solidified the idea of judicial review, a concept which was otherwise pretty radical at the time, since, you know, the core premise of a democracy is that the governing body that makes laws

should be the one that's actually elected by the people. But somewhere along the line, Americans realized that even an elected body could rule undemocratically and decided that maybe we should try to like check the power of Congress a little bit, you know, balance things out some. And so Justice Marshall declared that duty to decide what the law is includes the power to strike down even acts of Congress if they're found to conflict with the Constitution. Even after that, though, the power of the Supreme Court remained broadly limited to federal matters since the Bill of Rights applied only to federal actions, not to the states.

However, that changed in a major way in 1868 when the constitution was amended specifically to tell states that owning people is not cool. Due to the 14th amendment, the post-civil war Supreme Court suddenly had a lot more power to make decisions that affected states and individuals. Most notably Brown v. Board of Education, which found racial segregation in public schools

to be unconstitutional. In the early 1900s, the court took a pretty active role in lawmaking, oftentimes ruling against progressive legislation to protect the interests of private enterprise. For example, in 1905, SCOTUS struck down a New York law limiting the number of hours bakers could work in a day. This case, Lochner v. New York, is one of the most controversial rulings in the court's history.

And while it was eventually overturned in 1937, it ushered in a period of anti-progressive rulings known as the Lochner era, which lasted until the 30s when FDR threatened to pack the court and SCOTUS decided to pull back a little bit. So while the purview of the courts has certainly expanded over the years, it hasn't always, always been a bad thing. In the 60s, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the court saw some of the most monumental cases in our country,

deciding on issues like segregation in schools, interracial marriage, and the rights of criminal defendants. Even Roe was seen at the time as a big step for the court. And while it was that exact logic that allowed the Dobbs ruling to overturn it, the initial ruling still set a pretty massive precedent by deciding for the first time that we as citizens

do actually have a constitutionally grounded right to privacy. Call me wacky sacksacks Fuck Brother Cody Pants or something else, but I think privacy is good. But now it's time to discuss the more recent history of the Supreme Court, which is starting to feel like a return to that Lochner era. And so we're gonna do that after we cut away to some ads

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Do not actually send me cards. See, I says I would be back and it keeps me word. If you recall, we were lubed up and elbow deep in the Supreme Court. Specifically, we were finished with our history lesson and landed the DeLorean on the train tracks of today. You know, the part where the train pulverizes it. Because recently the Supreme Court has come out with a series of decisions that we here at Cody's Showdy

like to call bad. In the 2021 to 2022 term, the United States Supreme Court, going almost entirely along ideological lines, voted to broaden and strengthen the Second Amendment, expand the role of religion in public life, limit the EPA's authority to regulate carbon emissions, strike down a campaign finance law, restrict relief for prisoners challenging their convictions,

and limit the ability of citizens to sue police officers and federal agents for alleged constitutional violations. Looking at the cumulative effects of these cases and seeing the speed with which they've come out and the absolute vitriol with which they were decided, it's tempting to say something along the lines of, After all, how could so many terrible things happen in such a short amount of time?

I mean, we know how that can happen as the country continues like it has been. But how does that happen in the Supreme Court is the question. For starters, I really need to reemphasize that the Supreme Court is absolutely not an apolitical entity that's impartially gifting us with judgments based on a singular interpretation

of the Constitution. Even if that was what they were doing, why would we care about following every word of the Constitution in the first place? Have you seen who wrote it? Freaking Snow Roach's convention. But again, as the Lochner era and what's happening today shows, the Supreme Court is very much political. The justices are appointed by politicians, after all. And while you could argue that those politicians were appointed by a democratic process, were they?

Is it democratic when the person who won the popular vote doesn't become president? Is it democratic when the state with half a million people is represented with the same number of senators as the state with nearly 40 million people? Nothing about the Supreme Court is actually democratic or impartial or apolitical. It never has been.

And I want you to remember that when we talk about this problem. But going back to how this happens now, probably the best answer is that all these recent rulings were kind of like the ending of Avengers Endgame, in that there was a lot of backstory and lead up with an oddly colored dude at the center of it all. Because what's happening now

isn't actually happening quickly. It's just the culmination of a very slow, years-long effort by conservatives to control the courts throughout the country. Ironically, while Republicans have spent a lot of their time accusing Democrats and progressives of wanting to pack and expand the courts to benefit our evil gay trans agenda, the GOP has been doing it for a literal decade.

And it's largely thanks to one guy. Ooh, I wonder who it is. Maybe it's Harry Styles. That guy's hot right now, huh? Do we have a picture? Dah! There he is. Hi, Mitch.

You fucking phantasm, you. Mitch has seemingly made taking over the courts his life's work, consistently putting it above other important things like bipartisan cooperation and moisturizing. In 2018, he described his goal as, to do everything we can for as long as we can to transform the federal judiciary because everything else we do is transitory. And in a way, he was kind of right. Laws can be changed, executive orders can be revoked,

federal guidelines can be altered, but most court appointments are for life. And the more you can jam in while your party is in power, the fewer vacancies you leave for the other party. I was shocked that former President Obama left so many vacancies and didn't try to fill those positions. I'll tell you why.

I'll tell you why. I was in charge of what we did the last two years of the Obama administration. And I will give you full credit for that. And by the way, take a bow. All right, that was a good line. Man, why haven't the Ghostbusters gotten him yet? That's a clip from 2019,

back when Mitch was advertising his book, The Long Game. No, that title isn't a reference to his unusually long and thin penis. Yes, it's like a single spaghetti, but rather in it, he explicitly describes his plan to block Democratic judicial appointments and replace them with conservative judges. The most famous example of this is obviously Merrick Garland.

In 2016, after Antonin Scalia's body finally caught up to his soul, Mitch argued that because Obama was in the last year of his presidency, he didn't have the right to appoint a replacement, and that Congress should wait until the next president was elected to choose. This is obviously total bullshit and completely unprecedented. After all, Mitch announced his intentions before Obama had even chosen Garland, and flatly refused to hold any kind of hearing or proceeding at all. And because the Republicans controlled the Senate at the time, there was nothing the Obama administration could do, and the seat remained unfilled until Trump took office and appointed Neil Gorsuch.

The kicker was, of course, the obvious hypocrisy when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and Mitch took the exact opposite stance and rushed through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. Because as we all kind of know, Mitch McConnell doesn't actually believe in anything and seems to be cartoonishly villainous. Like, geez, Mitch, dial it back a bit. Reel it in like you reel in your long, thin dick.

While this was all a devastating blow in and of itself, the Obama stuff also only happened because of another huge conservative win, which was when Republicans triggered the nuclear option and eliminated the filibuster for SCOTUS nominations. That meant appointees only need a simple 51 vote majority to be confirmed instead of the previous 60 votes. Democrats were actually the first to use this option in 2013 for judicial nominations other than for the Supreme Court. A fact Republicans were quick to point out in defense of Mitch's decision, but they only did so because, you guessed it, Republicans were blocking Obama's nominees early in his second

term, forcing the majority leader Harry Harry Reid, to do something drastic if he wanted to get anything done at all. Technically speaking, eliminating the filibuster should benefit both sides equally, except this couldn't have happened at a worse time for one of those sides. I won't say which one. I'll let you guess.

Hint, the ones who fear norm-breaking. You kind of know the rest. This change allowed Trump to force through the appointments of two more justices, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett, without any of the bipartisan cooperation that would have been required. This is why a lot of establishment Republicans tolerated Trump during his extremely embarrassing term.

Because along with being just so very hilarious, Trump successfully appointed 226 judges to the trial appellate and Supreme Courts. When he left office, his picks comprised one third of the Supreme Court, 30% of the 13 circuit courts, and more than one quarter of the judges presiding over the nation's 94 district courts. He managed to appoint 54 judges to the circuit courts, which are the courts that have the final word on most appeals. Again, a very silly guy who didn't win the popular vote, not democracy, not even close. So while it might seem like this recent wave of conservative decisions are coming out of nowhere, in reality, McConnell and other conservatives have been

working tirelessly for the better part of a decade to make their goals a reality. In reality, McConnell and other conservatives have been working tirelessly for the better part of a decade to make their goals a reality. In fact, you could even argue that the plot extends much farther back since the Federalist Society, a libertarian legal organization with direct ties to multiple SCOTUS justices, has made choosing and elevating judicial candidates

one of its primary goals. We actually did a video on those guys and Leonard Leo, their former vice president. Cool vid, check it out if you're into judicial stuff. But going back to why it's all happening now, as in why we're getting so many opinion pieces about legislating from the bench, it also has to do with the fact that Congress

has simply gotten worse at its job. It's no secret that there's less bipartisan cooperation in the House and Senate than there used to be. There are a bunch of reasons for this, but more importantly to this episode, the big reason nothing gets done in Congress these days is that the GOP has become singularly focused on becoming an obstructionist party.

Thanks again to Mitch McConnell. Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term. CBS News has confirmed that Senate Republicans have collected signatures on a letter which pledges to block everything unrelated to tax cuts and spending during the lame duck Congress. Sure seems that electing a black man really sparked something vindictive in Mitch and a lot of the GOP, as if having a non-white man in power was seen as a direct attack against the GOP. Weird how that happened. And so in the post-Bush era, we really saw this turn more than ever before. They became a party of digging their heels in

the mud to stop any progress. Then Trump got elected and they got their window to permanently anchor us with the judicial branch. As much as a failure Trump seemed to be, he really was a success for the GOP's obstructionist goals. It doesn't even matter that they don't have the majority. Cut to 2021, and Mitch once again said that he was 100% focused on stopping Biden's administration, just like he was with Obama. Yeah, 100% of my focus is on stopping this new administration.

No focus on getting his own shit done. No policies he vocally supports or progress he wants to make. No vision for the country other than to reverse the direction we're going in. He's just singularly focused on stopping the other side from doing anything. Seriously, just listen to him as he struggles to describe the GOP's accomplishments when they were in power. Our side takes a great deal of pride in the accomplishments that three consecutive Republican Senates have delivered for the American people. In 2014, our majority was

elected to check and balance the last years of a lame duck presidency. In 2016, we were reelected to help ignite a real all-American economic comeback, rebuild and modernize our military, and fight for the forgotten corners of our country. Together with the Trump administration and a Republican House, we did just that. In 2018, we were rehired again on those strong results, especially the historic job market for American workers and our commitment to the judiciary. How fucking vague and sad is that? Checks and balances on Obama,

an economic comeback, rebuilding the military, and strong results. Oh, and let's not forget that commitment to the judiciary. Gee, wonder what that's about. Mitch goes on to say this about Biden's administration. On the Biden administration's very first day, it took several big steps in the wrong direction. For context, the steps Biden made on his first day

were to reenter the Paris Climate Agreement, halt the Muslim travel ban, revoke the permit for the Keystone Pipeline, mandate mask wearing in federal buildings, extend student loan pauses and eviction moratoriums, launch a government initiative toward racial equality, and a bunch of other things geared toward climate action. These are the steps in the wrong direction

that Mitch must be referring to here. And so you have to wonder what the right direction is for Mitch. How does he define helping the American people if it's not trying to fight climate change and disease and inequality and debt? What does he want America to be? The answer really seems to be that he wants it to look

like the America that existed when he was 20 years old, which if you're wondering was the goddamn 60s. So I don't know, seems bad that someone this out of touch has so much power and is wielding that power to stop any and all progress. Mitch McConnell's favorite whiskey is Old Crow because he says that's the whiskey that Henry Clay used to drink.

Dude loves Henry Clay. And aside from the fact that Old Crow tastes like a rail yard suicide, perhaps we need to elect people who aren't so old that their idol is a haunted painting. Not that Biden is any younger or more in touch, but like, what do you expect Biden to do with a guy like McConnell?

What can you do with that? How are we supposed to even attempt to cooperate with someone this openly antagonistic? And since this is the case, since good old long dick crow is jamming up an entire third of our federal government, is it any wonder that the Supreme Court has expanded its purview? Hell, that was probably Mitch's plan all along. You stick a bunch of conservative judges into positions of power, jam up Congress, and let the judicial branch make laws instead. A branch of people handpicked by your minority party. Boy, it seems like the system done fucked up, doesn't it? Seems like perhaps we need to rethink

this whole America thing. But failing that, perhaps we need a system where judges aren't given lifetime appointments by people who were in no way democratically elected, who are somehow able to push very unpopular ideas on a population of people because of the special interests of the very few. We're actually gonna explore just that, specific examples of how these fringe,

often extremist and right-wing groups have infiltrated the Supreme Court and are now circumventing democracy to make laws. And we're gonna talk about that in the context of some actual future cases that SCOTUS will be hearing in the current term. But first, oh my God, my wrist! That must mean it's time for ads.

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Wait, leave? No. Okay. No, you can't. Ever. Wow. Ads. Buy those things things or don't. If you recall, we were talking about the Supreme Court and how we got to a place where they are both

the only people seemingly making decisions that affect the country and also packed with the conservative ghouls. The stakes are a tad bit high and in the interest of not being blindsided, let's take a look at some of the cases that the Supreme Court is about to start looking at. Specifically, the ones that are clear examples

of the courts expanding their power and circumventing the will of the people in order to erode policies that conservatives don't like. And I know legal stuff can be a little boring, which is why we will introduce each one with a really sexy title. Get your genitals ready. 303 Creative LLC v. Hot Girl on Girl Weddings.

Or guy on guy weddings, mind you, both hot. So 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis is a free speech case wherein a web designer claimed that she should not be forced to create websites for same-sex weddings. The poor baby. Do the gay people want wedding websites? Is that gross and icky for you? How sad. The web designer, a woman named Lori Smith, argues that a Colorado law that says she must work with all people regardless of sexual orientation violates her First Amendment rights. Fun fact, she doesn't actually offer services to weddings, but says that she plans to. What I mean

is that this is a completely hypothetical situation that she is fighting against, and we will get to that in a second. Also, a fun fact, while Smith and her attorneys are arguing this on the grounds of freedom of religion, the question SCOTUS has decided to look at is whether or not a law that compels an artist to speak or stay silent is a violation of freedom of speech, not religion. The case has reached the Supreme Court

after the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Smith's attempt to overturn a lower court's decision to throw out her case. The circuit court said that Colorado must protect the interests of marginalized groups under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which is actually the very same law that was in question a few years ago

when that homophobic baker guy, he refused to make a wedding cake for that gay couple. Hey, what is going on in Colorado? Are you guys good? In that case, the court ruled that state officials had not properly considered the Baker's religious beliefs, broadly siding with the Baker over the gay couple. However, the decision specifically avoided

providing a general ruling on whether a business can invoke religious freedoms to deny services to members of the LGBTQ community. If the court sides with Lori Smith in this case, it could open the door for any bigoted business owner to legally justify discriminating against LGBTQ people by citing religious protections, which would be, and correct me if I'm wrong here, bad.

And to go back to Lori Smith and how her website doesn't actually offer services to weddings, well, it turns out that Smith is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom Group, which happens to have represented that Colorado Baker I mentioned earlier, which happens to be a full-blown anti-LGBTQ hate group. See, this is actually just a thing this group does.

They go around the country supporting religious freedom cases that just so happen to mainly be about the right to discriminate against gay people. Specifically, the right to post Jim Crow style signs telling LGBTQ people that they are not welcome. To be fair and or balanced, it's not always about gay people. The ADF also funded Hobby Lobby

when they didn't want to give employees contraceptives. So that's neat. They're shitty in multiple ways. The Lori Smith situation is what's known as a test case, meaning a case that can then be used to make similar decisions across the country. Lori wasn't being harassed by some uppity gay couples demanding her service.

She's not retaliating against oppression. It is in fact the opposite of that. Lori's case is being used to attack LGBTQ people in a preemptive way. Some people connected to the ADF include, but aren't limited to, Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, and neat Amy Coney Barrett, who has spoken five times in an event run by the hate group.

Hey now, that's some obvious bullshit. I sure hope this Amy Coney Barrett person isn't in charge of laws or some junk like that. There are other important cases coming up that deal with things like indigenous rights and affirmative action, cases like Holland v. Brackeen and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc.

v. President and Fellows of Harvard. Those cases are a little more business as usual in the sense that they aren't clearly backed by a fucking hate group. But needless to say, there are a lot of human rights being put at the mercy of a group of people clearly planted by right-wing Christian fundamentalists. But oh boy, bad news.

It's not just human rights that are on the line. Sackett v Environmental Protection Agency, moist earth action. Oh yeah, you get it earth, get fucked. You love it. Sackett v Environmental Protection Agency is in short, a case deciding what exactly is the EPA's jurisdiction in relation to the Clean Water Act.

So hot, the Earth is so incredibly dangerously hot. More specifically, this is about the EPA's jurisdiction in terms of wetlands. Wetlands are extremely important when it comes to a lot of things, but most notably they act as sponges for surges of water. Getting rid of wetlands often leads to more flooding. They're also like really important

in terms of nature and junk, one assumes. Frogs are probably important. So for this and other reasons, the Clean Water Act has always been considered uniquely vague in terms of defining what specific waters the EPA can regulate. It's designed this way to give the EPA a lot of flexibility

in making these determinations because nature is unpredictable. And in theory, this flexibility helps everyone because it gives the EPA leeway when considering emerging technologies and businesses in a specific area. The vague terminology means they can handle things on a case-by-case basis.

However, 14 years ago, Chantel and Michael Sackett purchased a residential lot near a lake in Idaho and used gravel and sand to fill the lot and get it ready for home construction. The EPA ordered the Sacketts to remove the fill and return the lot to its natural state, arguing that the lot contained wetlands. The Sackets sued in 2008, and 14 years later, this case has been endlessly bouncing around the courts like a really fast tennis ball.

Court, you like tennis? In fact, this is actually not the first time the Supreme Court has seen a case related to the Sackets. Back in 2012, they ruled that the Sackets could challenge this restriction. During that ruling, Justice Alito wrote in a concurring 2012 opinion that the reach of the Clean Water Act is notoriously unclear

and that Congress should provide a reasonably clear rule regarding the reach of the Clean Water Act. What this all means is that if the Supreme Court rules against the EPA, it could force them to redefine the areas regulated under the Clean Water Act. Potentially, that either means they will overshoot their jurisdiction or more likely, be forced to not include a lot of wetland areas.

That would no doubt create a ripple effect leading to, well, ruined ecosystems and flooding. So I don't know, maybe it's better to let the Environmental Protection Agency decide what environment to protect. Of course, the Supreme Court aren't the biggest fans of the EPA. In fact, Neil Gorsuch's mother even ran the agency under Reagan

and largely focused on budget cuts and limiting their power. They already ruled against the EPA this year, preventing the agency from setting carbon emission limits from the power industry in an effort to move them away from coal and oil. Considering how dire climate change is becoming, this was seen as a devastating attack on existence.

But hey, what's a little human extinction when you have the Koch brothers paying your way? As in, three of the recent justices, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, were backed by the Koch brothers advocacy group, Koch Industries being a company that heavily deals with coal and petroleum products. Their advocacy group has spent decades

lobbying to limit environmental regulation for the single purpose of increasing their profits. Give them a bing if you haven't heard of them. And so what we're now seeing is their efforts paying off. Rich assholes who put their asshole friends in positions of power where they can make them even richer assholes at the expense of everyone else. More on that connection in a bit. But right now it's just, it's just getting way too sexy. I certainly have some wetlands that need protecting in my pants,

in that I pissed myself out of rage. Let's keep going. Moore v. Harper, voting while having sex. Okay, now we're getting into the real meat and potatoes, V Harper voting while having sex. Okay, now we're getting into the real meat and potatoes, the unusually long dick and balls of the Supreme Court. This isn't the only case dealing with voting rights. Notably, they just let stand a racist ass district map in Alabama, but more V Harper is something

that could potentially redirect the entire country. The case examines a legal theory that would grant state legislatures significantly more power over federal elections. In November, 2021, the Republican controlled North Carolina General Assembly adopted a new congressional voting map. It was gerrymandered so freaking hard that if the popular vote were to be split down the middle,

as in if hypothetically half of votes went to Democrats and half to Republicans, the result would still give 10 of the 14 seats to the GOP. Democrats challenged the map in court, calling it unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. Because it was. And in February, 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court sided with the Democrats

and ruled that the state could not use the map in the 2022 elections. After the GOP turned in a second gerrymandered map, it was also rejected and the state Supreme Court ordered a special master to create a fair map for the 2022 elections. This is when the Republicans got the Supreme Court involved and whipped out this legal theory in question.

It's called independent state legislature theory and has generally been considered pretty fringe. It argues that state legislatures alone are empowered by the constitution to regulate federal elections without oversight from state courts. It all comes down to weirdly interpreting two clauses in the constitution

that we don't really have to get into. But what it would ultimately mean is that state legislative bodies would have the power to violate state constitutions when it came to federal elections with absolutely no checks, balances, or oversight. Seems like that's very obviously not how the system was designed to work. And it is absolutely not a coincidence that this case is being brought to the Supreme Court during a time when the validity and security of federal elections is being questioned on an unprecedented scale

by dishonest, highly motivated actors. The theory has actually been brought to the court three times before. Once after the incredibly controversial presidential election of 2000, once in 2015 in an effort to dismantle Arizona's independent redistricting commission, and then a third time in 2020 when President Trump

and his allies used the independent state legislature theory as part of their effort to overturn the results. As of recently, this theory is being pushed by something called the Honest Elections Project. The group has been filing numerous court briefs around the country attempting to push judges to support this independent state legislature theory. In case you're wondering, no, the Honest Elections Project is not a group of concerned citizens who just believe in the very down to earth cause of reinterpreting state constitutions.

They are in fact an organization that is being funded by Leonard Leo, the former executive vice president of that Federalist Society we mentioned earlier. Remember? Remember Leo? He's the guy who has been slipping butt tons of dark money into the courts to push a conservative agenda, who also happened to's the guy who has been slipping butt tons of dark money into the courts to push a conservative agenda, who also happened to be the guy

to personally shape Donald Trump's list of Supreme Court nominees. Leo should be a household name at this point, the guy we should be protesting outside the home of. Leo worked as an outside advisor for the Bush administration back when that guy was a thing, which is when Leo met a one Brett M. Kavanaugh. Brett, along with Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett,

were all people on Leo's nominee list. Unsurprisingly, these are also all people with ties to the Federalist Society, who got their jobs because of this group. Justice Alito once gave a speech to the group specifically targeting liberals. Clarence Thomas is also a member and has even done personal business with Leonard Leo.

They are all buddies. They attend the same cookouts and orgies. Members of this special club, a club that has embedded itself in the justice system, purchased it, literally donating to universities in order to control the curriculum and push conservative values. This is a club that is now funding

this honest elections project and trying to reshape election law by bringing their case to the Supreme fucking court. And boy, must be a coincidence that the last time this fringe independent state legislature theory was looked at, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch endorsed it. Cool.

Very cool, guys. Cool, cool. Cool. Cool. Hey, remember that stuff with the EPA and Koch brothers? Sorry, Koch brother. Yeah, any surprise that those guys are also buddies with Leonard Leo? According to their own annual reports,

the Koch brothers have donated millions to the Federalist Society. Meanwhile, Leonard was said to have had privileged status at the EPA when Scott Pruitt was in charge. Leonard was so tight with the Prue dog that he arranged a private trip to the fucking Vatican for him. Just a fun spring break at Pope land.

Can't stress enough that Leonard Leo needs to be talked about all the time as one of the biggest threats to our climate and democracy. So now this election stuff and that EPA case are finally being brought to the court, a court where six of the members are fucking buddies with the people who stand to gain power and money by the decision.

A court with a majority that was handpicked by one guy with ties to conservative groups and fossil fuel giants. If the Supreme Court sides with the independent state legislature theory, it would grant state lawmakers the power over redistricting and election procedures, including voting by mail, and would give conservative state legislatures

the ability to fuck with and reject election results in all the ways they tried and failed to do during the 2020 election. So like, I have a question. How is any of this different from a coup? To put it all together, we have a handful of political operatives and figureheads working to do a few key things.

First, gridlock the legislative branch. Republican politicians have basically run on the singular platform of owning the libs by obsessing over wokeness and stopping any and all efforts by Democrats. Democrats being, you know, Democrats, have no ability to respond to this in a meaningful way. At most, they did what Harry Reid did with the filibuster.

At worst, they whine about civility as the GOP crams wrench after wrench into the process. That's Mitch's part in all of this. By the way, Harry Reid is what Mitch calls his long twig-like penis, like a fleshy bamboo shoot in an unkempt Zen garden it is. So long. To be fair, Joe Biden has done a good job

of getting federal judges through. Keep it up, Brandon. Meanwhile, folks like Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, along with a bunch of extremist groups and the Koch brothers and other millionaires, have been secretly flooding the courts with conservative judges who have very little interest

in what the majority of Americans actually want. Things like abortion rights and LGBTQ equality, environmental concerns, et cetera. They have completely circumvented democracy and are now making unpopular legislative decisions through the courts, to the point that they are now going to potentially change voting itself in order to tip the scales

toward the Republican party, a party that hasn't won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. Their entire winning strategy is to undermine democracy. They know this. That's why they have to attack anything that would make voting easier for people. I will tell you this, if you look at before and after, the things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican

elected in this country again. It's extremely maddening to watch, and even more maddening to watch Democrats do very little to stop it. There are, of course, plenty of suggestions for ways to fix or improve the institution of the Supreme Court. For one, maybe justices shouldn't be allowed to hold their positions until they literally die. Another solution proposed primarily by Democrats these days is packing the court, or in other words, expanding the number of justices on the court so as to be able to appoint more progressive aligned justices. It was most famously attempted by FDR in 1935 after the court struck down three of his New Deal laws. But of course, the big risk of court packing

is that it can just as easily be done by conservatives. It's not a permanent solution and could actually make things worse down the line. There's also the solution proposed by Senator Bernard Sanders, who in 2019 suggested the possibility of rotating SCOTUS justices with judges from lower federal courts. This would lessen the impact of a nomination and decrease the power any one singular justice might hold.

Unfortunately, however, the idea is pretty impractical. Not only would it require legislative authorization from Congress to shift current SCOTUS justices into lower positions, but there are several barriers in the Constitution itself that would prevent a lower federal judge from sitting on the Supreme Court through any means other than the traditional appointment process. Sorry, Bernie bros, you know who you are. Ultimately, what we can do, as in you and I and maybe our pets, is at the very least pay attention to what's happening in terms of people like Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society and other upcoming cases. We need to not be blindsided by these

decisions when they happen, because there's nothing surprising about them. This wasn't actually sudden, but the result of a long-term strategy by the GOP. We need to be upset and demand action against this small group of individuals hijacking our democracy. You can't just let someone take over like some kind of, I don't know. Spooked you, didn't I? Yeah, when someone bursts from my floor, it spooks me. didn't I? Yeah, when someone bursts from my floor, it spooks me. Listen, idiot, I was

lurking under your floor when I heard what you said about the Supreme Court hijacking the democratic process and it reminded me that I should hijack your show. So here I am. Got you some Halloween gifts, too. Not quite Star Wars

cards and weed, but it is close. Toenail clippings and a child's wand. No need to thank me. Consider it your holiday bonus, because that is literally what it is. Katie, have you ever considered getting your own show, perhaps? You know, maybe something set far away from my house. know maybe maybe something set far away from my house what an interesting idea that is my own show can you even imagine such a thing yeah that's why i asked yes can you imagine that happening perhaps next year why are you saying it like that yes Yes, why am I saying it like this? Do I need medical

help? Should I call an ambulance? This is really weird. I've eaten so much dirt. I'll call. Do you want? Can you just grab it out? Grab the dirt from inside your. Get it out.

Hello. Hello. Hi. Thank you so much for watching that video that you just watched. We're here to tell you to like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. That's one of the things we gotta, we have a Patreon.com dot com slash some

more news. Hey. And we've got a podcast. Cast. Yeah. Look at this. It's called Even More News and we both host it and other things that we're supposed to say. Merchandise.

I don't know. You get it. Comment. I feel like I'm talking a lot. No.