Strict Scrutiny - How Bad Is Trump's Attorney General Pick?

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

Kate brings you a triptych of legal happenings this week. First, the latest news with friend of the pod Katie Phang, including a look at Todd Blanche’s Senate confirmation hearing, which certainly confirmed one thing: once you’re Trump’s personal lawyer, you’re forever Trump’s personal lawyer. Then, a conversation about making the courts an electoral issue and why we need fresh candidates for judicial seats with Run for Something’s Amanda Litman. Finally, ahead of a crucial August 4th ballot measure in Kansas, Kate speaks with Micah Kubic, Executive Director of the ACLU of Kansas, and Emily Wales, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, about how Republicans in Kansas are trying to change how justices are selected for the state supreme court in order to walk back abortion rights. Check out Katie’s YouTube channel & Substack and pre-order Amanda Litman’s book, When We’re in Charge, in paperback.Favorite things: Kate:Road trips, HUMBE Amanda:This Is the Plan: How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy, Ben Wikler; Ungodly Rich, Katharine McGee; Down to Earth, Julia Turshen Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE on November 6th in Washington, DC: Crookedcon.comBuy Melissa’s book, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern ReaderBuy Leah’s book, Lawless, now out in paperbackFollow us on Instagram, Threads, and BlueskyFor a transcript of an episode of Strict Scrutiny please email [e-mail]

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in Select Theaters July 24th. Mr. Chief Justice, I please support. It's an old joke, but when I argue, man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word. She spoke, not

elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our legs. Hello and welcome back to strict scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. I am your lone regular host today, Kate Shaw, but fear not. While Leah and Melissa are, of course, irreplaceable, I do have some great guests lined up to join me today. First, I will be joined by a friend of the show, Katie Fang, independent journalist, trial lawyer, host of the Katie Fang channel on YouTube. You can also find Katie on Substack at katyfang.substack.com. Next, I'm going to talk to Amanda Lipman, founder of the indispensable organization run for something.

She's been identifying and helping young leaders run for state and local and federal office for almost a decade. And we're going to talk about how courts and the court figure in her work these days. And finally, I will bring you a conversation I recently had about a critically important election happening much sooner than the midterms. And that is an effort to fundamentally change the Kansas Supreme Court in response to that court's protection of individual rights, including the right to abortion. The fight to preserve that court's current character

through the vote no campaign is underway right now. And I talk to two people working on the ground on it who can explain what is driving it and why it is just so important. Up first is legal news with guest host Katie Fang. Katie, welcome back to strict scrutiny. It is always so great to have you with. this. I feel like I'm cheating on Leah, though. So I'm just letting you know. I love all of you equally, but I feel like I'm cheating on my Leah right now. Because you have been a guest host for Leah

a couple of times now. First time, the two of us, but hopefully not the last. First time, long time, just letting you know. Awesome. Well, so happy to have you. And especially happy that you're willing to do this from abroad. You are in France. I am deep in the woods of upstate New York, actually battling right now this insane haze from the Canadian wildfires. It's pretty intense. But I know. The news gods, though, stop for no one. And I'm really happy to have you here for this conversation because it was very much not a sleepy summer week on the legal news front. And so we have a couple of really big topics to cover. And I want to start with last week's opinion out of a Miami federal court in the case, I know you're very familiar with, involving Trump's request for $10 billion with a B

from the federal government, a lawsuit that he leveraged into a quote-unquote settlement that produced both the $1.776 billion slush fund and the grant of tax immunity. So, Katie, I'm going to ask you to talk us through the opinion, but let me just remind everyone of a little bit of the background first. Sure. So the suit was filed back in January. It was ostensibly filed in Trump's personal capacity, and it grows out of this IRS contractor's disclosure of Trump's tax documents to some news outlets, including the New York Times, back in 2019 and 2020. The contractor, to be clear, has already been sentenced to prison, but this federal civil suit filed by Trump six years later, when he just happened to be back in the Oval Office, maintain that the IRS's failure to

properly protect this confidential tax information injured him and to kind of address that injury, he demanded once again the IRS he controls $10 billion. To be clear, the case should never have been in federal court. Federal courts are only supposed to resolve cases and controversies between adverse parties, like parties that disagree about something. And the oddity of Trump being on both sides of the V in this case is something that was not lost on Donald Trump himself. So let's play a supercut of him talking about that oddity. I'm sort of suing myself. I don't know. What do you settle the lawsuit? I'll say, give me X dollars, right? And it's awfully strange to make a decision where I'm paying myself.

In other words, did you ever have one of those cases where you have to decide how much you're paying yourself in damages? virtually won the Mar-a-Lago break-in suit. And I have to work out some kind of a settlement. I'm supposed to work out a settlement with myself. Mar-a-Lago break-in suit? What is the Mar-a-Lago break-in suit? I know you got indicted, buddy, for a classified documents, retention,

and espionage act violations, but I wasn't familiar with the, quote, Mar-a-Lago break-in suit. Evidently, he's rewriting the history of all of these episodes, including of that one. So as to the IRS case, right, like, obviously he just kind of as ever says the quiet part loud. Like he was on both sides of the case. He was dictating the terms of the settlement. And it's pretty clear that he decided to pursue this

in federal court to frame this shakedown effort as a lawsuit to give this kind of shakedown the patina of legality. Okay. So the judge actually picked up on those kind of dynamics from the start and asked for briefing about whether the case should be in court at all. And lo and behold, before those briefs came in, Trump and the federal government announced they had settled the case. Trump would be withdrawing it. Okay, so Katie, can you, before we get to the opinion from last week, can you remind us of the terms of that quote-unquote settlement? Well, it kind of evolved, right? Because the first iteration, and I love that you say quote-unquote, because I do the same, and I put it in the air quotes, right? Instead of an air guitar, we got air quotes here.

So that quote-unquote settlement, the kind of first iteration of it was multi-page. It was an actual document. And the gist of it was the creation of this, quote, anti-weaponization fund for the $1.776 billion. But it also had some familiar, particularly, you know, regular language that deals with the resolution of a conflict or dispute between parties, which interestingly included mutual releases, right, which is what people get. But the problem in this instance, though, is it had additional provisions that were not normal. And it kind of had defined terms that were never defined. So in legal documents, as we know, sometimes you'll refer to something and then you'll put it either in quotes or you'll put it in capital letters or you'll

capitalize the first letter of some of the terms and then we call it a defined term. And yet in the settlement agreement, we didn't know what the lawsuit was that was being referred to by Donald Trump in this instance. And there was also the inclusion of people that end up being beneficiaries under the terms of the settlement agreement that were never contemplated because they were never parties to the settlement agreement. And so that was just out of the blue. It was like Athena springing from the head of Zeus, except not that beautifully elegant ever because it's Donald Trump. There was a settlement agreement that came out of a non-controversy in front of this judge. Absolutely. And I think that is so critical. There just never was what is supposed to exist for any lawsuit, at least in federal court,

is an actual controversy. So, okay, so this, you know, multi-page document creates or purports to create this slush fund benefiting not just the plaintiffs in the suit, but all of these other non-parties, right, victims of Democratic administration, overreach and lawfare, right, like terms never defined in the agreement. And then subsequent to that initial, right, announcement, Blanche, I think exclusively Blanche, signs, and remember, this is the Attorney General nominee, former personal lawyer to Donald Trump, signs his additional order. granting the president and members of his family and their businesses this wide-ranging and unprecedented immunity from tax inquiries, including those that were pending at the time of this

settlement. So, right, like all of that, I think, is encompassed within this kind of quote-unquote settlement. And upon that announcement, the, you know, Trump and his personal lawyers announced they are moving to dismiss the case. We've settled it, like, no longer any need to proceed. And the judge granted that request initially. And people might remember, like, This announcement actually led to kind of mayhem on Capitol Hill. This, I think, is the only thing other than Epstein that actually in the last year and a half has led to genuine defections on the president's side of the aisle because, like, I think even Republicans understood just how bad this looked.

And they were in the process of maybe taking steps to override it legislatively or at least like making noises about doing that. And only when Todd Blanche shut it down by going before Congress and saying, basically, this fund is dead. We're not going forward with it. did those efforts at legislative override get sort of put to rest? Now, he wouldn't put in writing that this fund wasn't going forward. He did not make any representation about the IRS immunity agreement not going forward,

but he did say repeatedly that this fund was dead. Okay. So then, Katie, how does this case kind of spring back to life? Well, just a couple of additional things, though, Kate, one, there was separate litigation that was brought vis-a-vis that, quote, anti-weaponization fund. I just call it the $1.8 billion slush fund that's tantamount to theft of American taxpayer dollars. And there was an order from a judge in that litigation for Blanche, Woodward, and others that had the authority and the approval as representatives of the Department of

Justice to actually do sworn declarations that they were not going to move forward with the slush fund. And they refused to do so, citing to congressional testimony and even public media appearances, as if to be tantamount to something that is legally recognized in a court, which is not. And putting aside the defiance of a court order, that's a whole other thing. And I think the other thing, too, is what you just noted was important. There was never a notice of appearance entered on behalf of the Treasury Department or the IRS from the inception of this lawsuit. And the fact that there was no lawyers appearing on behalf of the defendants,

and yet suddenly there was a mutual, quote, again, settlement agreement reach, you know, even the judge said in her, it's like you could only see, and I know the judge, Kathleen Williams, well, it's like you can only see where she begrudgingly entered the order, you know, the order granting this voluntary dismissal, but here's the thing, that voluntary dismissal was so defensive. It pretty much told this judge, don't even try to think you have jurisdiction over this anymore because we filed this notice of voluntary dismissal. And so it was another kind of lay down the gauntlet move by these people that was incredibly disrespectful. And she made sure that she added in that language, look, you may think you did this notice of voluntary dismissible.

Let me let you guys understand. I've never seen a settlement. I've never approved a settlement. And I don't even know what the hell you're talking about because you guys never filed the required legal memorandum that would prove and corroborate that there was a controversy. So all of that being said, there were these. brilliant moves by, and here maybe this is where reasonable minds is a great, I call them Amici. I don't know what you call them, you know. I'm an amici girl, but I think that I think either one works just fine. I feel like I'm wondering. Friends of the court, we can agree on.

Friends of the court, the Amici. But you're in Europe right now, so go with Amici and I'll on this side of the pun. I'll stay with Amici. But yes, these friends of the court. So you have these incredible group of 35 former federal and state judges that are of a bipartisan. in nature. They were in both Republican and Democratic administrations and they filed as friends of the court motion that pretty much was instructive and provided a road map for Judge Williams to be able to make an inquiry into whether or not fraud had been perpetrated upon the court and that it told Judge Williams, which she already knew, but it was great to see it laid out so cleanly, that she had the ability and inherent authority to be able to continue to question

whether this was a legit deal or not or whether it was collusive of nature, which it seemed to be because it looked like Trump was controlling both ends of the litigation. And once that motion was filed, Judge Williams said, thank you very much. I'm now ordering the parties to be able to answer whether or not there is this case in controversy and to pretty much tell me whether or not I can move forward with reopening this, pulling the final judgment out and reopening it to be able to make inquiry into this perpetration of fraud. Yeah, so it is basically right, this friend of the court brief that allows her to kind of reopen the case to consider. This is a kind of narrow question, right, of whether there's been fraud on the court under both Rule 11 of the federal rules of civil procedure and also the inherent authority of any federal court to sanction lawyers who engage in misconduct in her court. And this was a 50-plus page opinion. I don't think we've said how long it was. And it really is quite a read if you're looking for some like beach reading this summer. It is just like the kind of distillation of like righteous outrage at the abuse of the courts and the legal process that the sequence of events that we have just been describing represents,

like just jumps off the page. Like it really is quite a read. So as a bottom line matter, the opinion concludes what we have just been saying was kind of obvious from the jump. There was never a live lawsuit. This was all a ruse. the president controls the executive branch, Slaughter, the case that we've already talked about in the show, a bunch of times, the one that gives the president complete authority over the heads even of independent agencies. Slaughter resolves any doubts that might have lingered about the president's

control over the executive branch. And since he controls the executive branch, the defendant, and he certainly is the plaintiff in this case, there is no possible way he could be adverse to himself. And just to read a couple of quotes from the Williams opinion, you know, she says the nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the parties and counsel make plain this was an attempt to use the court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the president. That's the tax immunity piece of it. But also with respect to kind of making this fund, the issue before the court is whether the lawyers ignored ethical norms, court rules and legal authority to manipulate the judicial process to gild their efforts to gain

unprecedented access to the public fisc with the patina of legitimacy. So you can, again, this is like legal kind of sounding language, but the rage is there. Like, absolutely. So, you know, there is this finding, right, that clearly this was an effort to use the court. And it's not just kind of an abstract condemnation of the lawsuit. She kind of names names. So, like, what does she say about the conduct of the government defendants? And we're going to talk about the Blanche confirmation hearing in a couple of minutes. But sort of what does she say and what does she do with respect to the specific lawyers involved in this case? Yeah. So, like you said, she names names. There were a lot of bodies left after that order. And it was amazing because she not only made referrals for these lawyers

to their respective bars, but for example, this lawyer, and it's so amazing, the stable of lawyers that kind of step up to do this work, and I call them the enablers, right? It's like with a capital E. And there's a solar practitioner dude that is now showing up on a lot of these filings. And he had a pending pro-cap v. Che to be able to enter, to do work in that jurisdiction of the Southern District of Florida. And Judge Williams is like, buddy, you are not allowed to practice in this jurisdiction for at least a year or until further order of this court. And then she specifically identified Todd Blanche and Stanley Woodward because they were signatories to these different quote settlement agreements. And she made sure that they knew that that order was being

sent by the clerk of the courts to the respective bars. And these were referrals for disciplinary proceedings. And I think at a minimum, that is what was to happen. She also reserved for fees, for legal fees to be able to be covered for some of the other amici, you know, in this case for having brought their friends of the court pleadings. I just think what's amazing is Judge Williams's order is the best. kind of summer read you could have. But she covered the waterfront, Kate. I was so pleasantly surprised to see the citations to slaughter repeatedly. The fact that she took a Supreme Court decision

that had just been entered a week before and used it to do what I call a bench slap was incredible. And this order really was, as I've called it, as well, she opened a can of judicial whoopass because it is a disgusting maneuver to take a judge her court and her jurisdiction to be able to perpetrate fraud on the American people. It wasn't just the judge. It was just the vehicle by which they were able to perpetrate that fraud. Absolutely. And just to kind of repeat what she says, sort of bottom line in terms of she refers both the lawyers, Donald Trump's personal lawyers, and, well, Donald Trump's government lawyers to their respect. perspective bars, which is basically like the point here is that like that was always just one team. But, and that's improper.

Like, it is wildly improper to bring a lawsuit that you absolutely know has no chance of not only, like, resulting in a victory, but even proceeding to any kind of resolution. Because it is just completely improper. It is not only meritless. Like, it is frivolous from the perspective of even invoking the court's jurisdiction. And that that's sanctionable, right? Lawyers have obligations to their oaths to the constitution. to the norms and ethical expectations of the profession. And it seems like there were breaches of those norms on both sides of this lawsuit, again,

which is just really one side of this lawsuit. And to stay on Blanche for a minute, she talked specifically about the testimony he gave to the Senate in May when he talked about the decision to walk away from this fund and basically said that the settlement agreement was never submitted to the court because the case had been dismissed and thus there was no mechanism for reviewing the agreement. And she is like that answer. Let me just quote from this, her opinion here. She says, that answer is at best misleading.

And at worst, disingenuous. The court was available to review any pleading by any party at any time during this lawsuit. So, like, again, it's using the cover of the court as an excuse. But she sort of calls bullshit on that, right? She says, like, no, the court was here. That's wrong. And again, this is the pending nominee to be the attorney general. She's describing giving testimony before the Senate that was, again, at the very least misleading

and maybe more accurately disingenuous. And then one of the thing I thought was really interesting about, when she talks about Blanche announcing we're not going forward with this fund, is like she says Blanche had this apparent capacity to speak for both the plaintiffs and the defendants when he both signed the settlement agreement and then said, oh, we're not doing anything. This is purportedly an agreement that has two parties to it. So his ability to unilaterally go before the Senate and say, no, we're not going to do this anymore, makes crystal clear there was only one party whose interests were being represented throughout this case.

And that party was Donald Trump. And again, that's not how any of this is supposed to work. So in terms of the bar referrals, right, we talked about those, those are, you know, meaningful social and reputational sanctions in our profession, typically. And then she also does impose this consequence of sorts, which is that Trump and his family are supposed to be prohibited from calling the audit protections part of this agreement, a settlement in any official proceeding. And then again, there's what you mentioned, the possibility of having to pay monetary penalties in the form of the lawyer's fees for the friends of the court. And I think that means both the 35 judges that you mentioned and also there were other friend of the court briefs, so potentially paying those legal fees. So again, a banger of an opinion, just really, really, I think, important at exposing the wild misconduct and abuse of the judicial process of which this is, I think, like the most flagrant

example, but we've seen many other examples in the last year and a half. So very much worth the read. Strict scrutiny is brought to you by Quince. Guess what, folks. One thing I love about summer is how easy everything feels. The days are more relaxed, and I find myself reaching for the same comfortable, go anywhere pieces again and again, which is why I keep coming back to Quince. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and they cut out the middleman, so you're paying for exceptional quality, not a brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has become a trusted favorite for everything from home, furniture, rugs, China, and travel. Beautiful luggage, beautiful totes, all your everyday essentials in

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that's 60% off your first order of smalls plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com forward slash strict. Since we've been talking about Todd Blanche, I think this is a good time to segue to the Blanche confirmation hearings. Again, you're abroad, different time zone. I presume you found a way anyway to least it in for part of it. I watched. Yes. I watched some all of the hearings. You did. We're massacus, Katie. What can I say? So I want to play just a couple of clips and maybe we can talk about them. And I thought this first one in some ways kind of captured the whole thing. So let's start here. Are you in President Trump, France? I'm his lawyer. Was his lawyer. And now I'm the deputy attorney general. Well, first of all, I call him Foghorn Leghorn, John Kennedy, Foghorn, Leghorn.

I mean, it's like he set him up. It's like he did him dirty. Kennedy did him dirty by asking him that question, right? The way he did. Kennedy is the sneaky. Kennedy is very, very good at this part of the job, right? Like he can kind of pin witnesses down. I actually don't know that he meant to do that here. Blanche, I think, did it to himself. But that was really a wild moment. I am his lawyer. Pause. I was his lawyer. That's kind of the Judge Williams' opinion in a TLDR. Like, you are his lawyer. You were his lawyer, you are his lawyer. Anyway, so I think that that illustrates what Blanche has never been able to do and maybe has never tried to do. And maybe Trump doesn't want him to do, which is divorce his prior representation of Trump as a criminal defense lawyer from the job that he currently holds, both deputy and acting attorney general and obviously the job to which he aspires permanent, not permanent forever, hopefully, but actual Senate confirmed attorney general. So, yeah, I mean, I guess did Blanche from kind of that clip and throughout the hearing,

did Blanche do anything to suggest this kind of ability to or interest in distinguishing his personal relationship with and representation of Donald Trump from the job of heading the Justice Department? No, and in fact, on other questioning, Blanche made it clear that there is no independence of the DOJ. I think Blanche took this unitary executive. theory and said, oh, hey, it doesn't just live, you know, in this, you know, scholarly kind of academic way in SCOTUS opinions. It's happening in real time at the Department of Justice. And the common denominator theme throughout the two days of the Senate confirmation proceeding with him has been, I am here to implement and execute what Donald Trump wants me to do. And it is the first time, even when we haven't had. qualified nominees for that job. I know it's the first time that I have ever heard a nominee for the Attorney General of the United States.

At least maybe the other ones just paid at lip service, but at least they pretended to say that there was an independence to the Department of Justice. In this instance, Blanche brazenly and very casually and smugly said, no, right? I don't have to. And it was funny. It didn't even matter what the topic was. It could be Miphypristone, right? And it wasn't a conversation about, you know, whether there's independence on the DHA.

It's, I know that this is an important thing for the most pro-life president in the history of our country. And I'm like, buddy, you have a different job. Like, you have a job other than just being his attorney. But John Cornyn, I think, surprised me out of everybody because he tied it all together when it came to the, settlement agreement and the slush fund and the tax issue because he did ask Todd Blanche who signed a written amendment or some type of revision in writing to the settlement agreement and Blanche is like we don't have one and Cornyn said well then what's going to happen to this term this material term of this contract of the settlement agreement and Blanche had to admit that

Donald Trump could sue for breach of contract because of the slush fund not happening. And other senators also noted that Todd Blanche is the one who was negotiating all of this. And just like Judge Williams, he had never entered a notice of appearance because nobody from DOJ had ever entered a notice of appearance. And so that just girds this idea, right, or undergoes this idea that there's all of this like shenanigans going on and effing going on at the DOJ. And there's, They're just so open about it now. They don't even pretend to hide it anymore. Yeah.

I thought that corn in exchange was fascinating too. Let's come back to it. But I actually, to what you were saying a minute ago about the kind of abandoning of all pretence of independence, I thought there were a couple of really revealing exchanges on that score. So let's play two. One with Senator Herono. One was Senator Coons. And then actually there's a third Coons exchange that where you sort of have Blanche kind of trying to say like maybe I have like this shred of independent. but I'll never have to use it anyway. So let's roll those clips now.

Do you believe it is the president's right and duty to order the investigation or prosecution of his perceived enemies? Yes or no? I can't answer that yes or no. That wasn't the question. And my answer was that as the president of the United States under Article 2, he's in charge of the Department of Justice. And so my answer reflects that idea. Is the Department of Justice that you're running independent from the White House? The Department of Justice, like every single department in the executive, is part of the executive. I mean, Article 2 of the Constitution gives the power of the executive to President Trump.

If you're confirmed and you're asked to take an action, you believe to be illegal or an ethical, would you resign? That will never happen. But yes, if it were to happen, I'm not going to violate my oath to the Constitution. I mean, yeah, the first two just confirm what you were saying a minute ago, Katie, but that last one I wanted to play it because it's like, He performs a serious lawyer in a way that, like, superficially you could imagine thinking, oh, maybe this guy's not a clown like many people in this cabinet. And then you're like, oh, that will never happen. Donald Trump will never do or direct anything illegal or unethical. And it's just like, oh, everything you say could be a lie because, like, no one believes that that will never happen.

It happens like five times before breakfast every day that something illegal or unethical has happened, happens or is directing. I guess Todd also forgot that his relationship, the I love you man, relationship with Donald Trump started because he was his criminal defense attorney. He didn't represent him in a purchase agreement for property, didn't represent him in a pre-up with Melania, represented him when he was being prosecuted in multiple cases on a state and federal level. So Blanche, not ever thinking that his client could be capable of breaking the law or doing something unethical is a first, truly. I kind of couldn't believe he said it, but it was almost like whether he's completely convinced himself that all those earlier representations were about Donald Trump being the target of these unfairly politicized, you know, kind of like witch hunt campaigns, or whether he just like has sort of lost touch entirely with like truth and falsehood. I don't know which it was, but I was honestly like, even though it wasn't like the biggest, most dramatic mode of the hearing kind of stunned by that.

But Cornon Furman, I really did think that was Cornyn acquitted himself well. Like that was an effective cross-examination in which we were talking about the fact that it was just testimony before Congress in which Blanche said, never mind with the fund. And Cornyn was, I thought, very effective impressing him, but you have a written agreement about a fund. So usually in the law, like some statement doesn't supersede a written agreement if you don't formally modify it. And Blanche did have to say, well, yeah, I guess it's true. Trump wanted to go to court to enforce it. We'd have a problem. We'd have a situation. He could do that.

And I wish Cornyn had followed up further on that and he did not. But it also, to my mind, kind of highlighted how I thought, in effect of a lot of the Democratic senators sort of like lines questioning worse. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry to say it. But yes, I agree with you, 100%. On this, but also I thought on various Epstein matters. And so I want to talk about Epstein in a minute. And in particular, the litigation that you've initiated regarding some of the Epstein documents. but maybe just to stay for another minute on the hearing, because you mentioned Miffa Pristone, and this is something that we in this podcast have talked about a great deal. I thought it was really striking that some of the senators on the Republican side of the aisle

took the opportunity to focus on using Blanche to shore up the president's credentials as this pro-life crusader and also to raise the question of the future of the approval of the medication abortion drug Mepha Pristone. Let's play one of those clips here. Can you commit to me today that this administration and DOJ will prioritize taking meaningful and thoughtful action to address the dangers that occurred in the current status quo to women all over this country? Absolutely, Senator. President Trump is the most pro-life president in history. Katie Britt and Josh Hawley, they were like, I sleep at the foot of the cross because all they wanted to do is just tee up, like you said, opportunities for Todd Blanche to do laps about how pro-life Donald Trump is. And I'm like,

pro-life, but when you're an immigrant driving to work, you're not pro-life, right? I mean, let's just be very clear about that. But yeah, yeah, that's a little bit. You know what's interesting, though, Holly and Blanche did a little bit of a dance, though, on the question and answering on the Mitha-Pristone issue because Blanche was trying to hide behind the fact that he didn't want to talk about active litigation and that he was relying upon what the briefs had to serve. because the reality is they really don't want medication abortion to be an issue at the midterms. They want to hide behind this quote unquote bullshit FDA review of the efficacy and safety of Mitha Pristone so that they don't have to deal with it in November because it really is a not good issue for Republicans. And seeing how the economy is bad, we're not an illegal war, the Epsine files, you name it.

And I think Blanche was trying to hide behind it. But even Holly kept on pressing Blanche on whether or not they were going to be. consistent with this agenda from Trump, which is the elimination of access to medication abortion. Absolutely. Yeah. I think you see a little bit of a distance between like the hollies of the party who do want, you know, kind of the administration to move as quickly as possible, maybe to yank the approval. And the administration, which I think you're totally right, understands that it is a losing electoral issue for them and they don't want to touch it before November. But I think there's every reason to expect that they might try something really dramatic in November. December, but after, of course, people have cast their votes in the midterm. Okay, so in terms of the questioning, in particular, from the Democratic side of the aisle about Epstein, was there

enough pressure brought to bear on Blanche regarding the administration's compliance with the federal law directing the release of the Epstein files, with Blanche's own personal involvement in his visit to and proffer to Gillian Maxwell, in the transfer to what, by all accounts, is a far cushier federal prison. Did he get pressed on that stuff? He did a little. But there was an embarrassment of riches for Senate Democrats on judiciary to be able to really ding him and hard when it comes to Epstein files. Pam Bondi made it clear that Todd was in charge of the day to day that he was the one. And then I didn't hear enough about the Situation Room reporting from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. The fact that Todd was the one. with all of those incredibly high-level people like J.D. Van, Susie Wiles, Cash Patel, and others. And that taught someone who was quarterbacking strategy to prevent the release of these Epstein files. And even Todd said, I'll go talk to Golan Maxwell, which then materialize. I just kind of feel like there was a disjointed approach by Senate Judiciary Dems when it came to Epstein. And then, I mean, to kind of just live in my own space, Kate, I also think they could have really hard.

on Judge Sullivan's order in the preliminary injunction in my case, because Sullivan made it explicitly clear that Blanche never defended the allegations that I made that there had been violations of the law. And Sullivan said that Todd Blanche, the acting AG, has conceded that he has violated the federal law. I just didn't hear that at all, really. And I was surprised because I feel like you can't put somebody in the, quote, permitted AG job who doesn't follow the law. Yeah. Yeah. And just to give listeners who aren't familiar with it, the context, this is a lawsuit that Katie filed challenging certain withholdings, right, and redactions in kind of a subset, a really important subset of the Epstein files in, I think late June, right, got a ruling in that case from

Judge Sullivan granting a preliminary injunction, right, ordering that some redactions be removed in these key documents involving email exchanges and, like, extremely disturbing contents of these materials. And at the moment, both you and Blanche for the Justice Department are filing briefs in this show cause order, right, whether the department should be held in contempt or Blanche should be held in contempt for failure to comply. Do I have that basically right? Yeah, you do. Judge Sullivan granted my motion for preliminary injunction ordered Todd Blanche to produce, I say put up or shut up, produce or show cause as to why you can't. But there were certain things that Judge Solomon didn't give him an out on. He didn't give him the option of,

show cause and Blanche said, I'm not going to do it. And I just think that the general theme of defiance by the DOJ while headed up by somebody like Todd Blanche, because before he was acting AG, he was deputy AG. And while Pammy Joe with the bad hair is running around doing all of her stuff, it was Todd who was in charge of this. And I do think there wasn't enough emphasis on the disrespect for court orders, the disobedience, the contempt and the general, you know, pooping on the rule of law that happens when Todd Blanche is at the helm of the Department of Justice. Yeah, and your lawsuit is an important and recent distillation of that, but it's also a reflection of something that is endemic, right, throughout the department

under the leadership of First Bondi and Blanche and now just Blanche. And from the perspective of the rule of law, it is enormously troubling that someone who could be getting the top job has shown and has headed a department that has shown this kind of contempt for the rule of law and the courts. Okay, we're going to have to leave it there. Katie, thank you so much for taking the time while in France to join me. Can you remind our listeners where people can find you? Sure. I am on YouTube at Katie Fang News. I'm also on Substack and all other social media platforms at Katie fang.

Well, we'll have to have you back when Melissa is solo in the guest here at some point to complete the trifecta. But in the meantime, thank you so much for being with me today, Katie. Awesome. Thanks. We're going to take a quick break. And next up is my conversation with Amanda Lipman. Strict scrutiny is brought to you by Mint Mobile. When people hear that Mint Mobile plans are only $15 per month, a lot of them wonder, what's the catch? Well, I can tell you that there isn't a catch. There are no gimmicks and no gotches, just unlimited talk, text, and data, and fast-reliable coverage on the nation's largest 5G network and an award-winning care team. I guess that makes MintMobile a catch. MittMobile took what's wrong with wireless

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Rules and restrictions may apply. And now I am delighted to welcome back to the show, Amanda Littman. No relation to Leah, which I think we've said before, but we should remind everyone. We had Amanda on the show when she published her most recent book when we're in charge, and that book is actually out in paperback with some new material in September. So Amanda, congrats on the forthcoming paperback, and welcome back to strict scrutiny. Thanks for having me, Kate. Amanda, for listeners who don't know, is one of the founders of the indispensable organization run for something,

and she has been identifying and helping young leaders run for state and local and federal office for nearly a decade. I've been wanting to have her back on the show for a while, in particular to talk about recruiting candidates to run for judicial office. And we are going to talk about that. But we are now in the midst of the midterm election season. And we on this show are obsessed with SCOTUS and the importance of making the Supreme Court and the federal courts in general an electoral issue. So we are going to talk about that too. But before we get into all of that, Amanda, for folks who don't know Run for Something, can you just tell us a little bit about the organization? Yes. So Run for Something started in January 2017. It

worked for Hillary before this. And right after the election, I started hearing from people from high school and college who said, I want to run for office. What do I do? And at the time, if you were young, if you were newly excited about politics and you wanted to do more than vote and more than volunteer, there was nowhere you could go. So along with my co-founder, we launched this organization, meant to be the entry point for young people in particular who wanted to lead. When we started, we thought we'd get 100 people in the first year. We've now had about 275,000 young people raised their hands to say they want to run for office. We have helped. We have helped us. We have helped elect nearly 1,700 people across 49 states, mostly women and people of color,

all millennials in Gen Z, to local offices all across the country. And we've now started to see a bunch of them rise to the top. So people like James Talariko down in Texas, Yasimine Ansari in Arizona, Sarah McBride in Delaware, and many, many others who are running for House, for Senate, for governor, for Secretary of State in Colorado, for Attorney General in Michigan, who have come through our pipeline. So it's been so cool to see. that the work is working. Amazing. And those numbers are really just eye-popping. Can you talk a little bit about what sorts of changes you've seen in interest in general in running during Trump 2.0? What does that look like?

You know, the issues have always stayed kind of the same. I would say housing has almost always been at the top of the list. People are desperate to fix the housing crisis. Child care, transportation, health care. The thing that we heard during Trump 2.0 that was different than Trump 1.0 was people explicitly saying, I'm pissed in my leadership. I'm pissed in my party. I am tired of being told to wait in line, that it's not my turn, that they can't do anything. Like, if they're not going to fight for me, I'm going to fight for me. And this didn't always mean running against the little members of Congress they were pissed at. But I think it was a sense of like, this cannot be the Democratic Party as it currently stands. Like, this cannot continue. So if I'm going to change it, I'm going to have to run for office to do it myself. Wow. So let's now pivot to what people,

are talking about as they're running for office now. And as you said, you, I think, remain focused on kind of this recruiting at the state and local level, but it's a huge testament to how successful the operation has been that you now do have people running for Congress. And you've had run for something, alums run, and both win and lost in primaries for the House and the Senate and are now running in the general elections. So you talked about some of the issues that you are finding candidates talking about, and I presume are really resonating with voters. How, I guess, how, have you seen the kind of approach to talking about the Supreme Court or the courts in general change? I mean, right, historically, there's been this enormous asymmetry, right?

The right and the Republican Party have long been hyper-focused on the courts and SCOTUS as this key electoral issue, and it has been a very effective mobilizer and galvanizer for their electorate. I guess over the decade that you've been doing this work, and I guess the federal focus has been more recent. But how have you seen that change and kind of what are your candidate? it's saying and what are you guys as an organization kind of thinking that the messaging should look like around the Supreme Court? You know, most of our candidates aren't talking about it because they're not running for Congress. But I'll say writ large we're seeing across the Democratic Party

and across especially our alum who are running for higher office, they come at it from one of two angles. One is the status quo cannot persist. Like this system, this establishment, these institutions, whether it's the Senate or the House or the Supreme Court, are broken. They do not serve us. They are corrupted. They are politicized, even when they shouldn't be politicized. They are explicitly partisan and they are rigged against us in many ways. And if you as a current leader do not see that and are not willing to rethink what that should look like, you're not right for this moment. So I think that's sort of angle one.

Angle two is actually pretty explicitly corruption. And we're talking a lot about like the Trump family's corruption, the Republican Party's corruption, the sense of money in politics. But this also goes to the Supreme Court Justice. corruption, the sense that like, you know, Clarence Thomas is in billionaires' pockets, that they have bought themselves their judges. So depending on the candidate, depending on the approach they're taking, they come out of from one of those ways. But both, I think, are really pushing forward. We cannot pretend that this is a problem we cannot solve. That's great. And I do think that for folks who are not cut, you know, we, because we think and write and, you know, podcasts about the Supreme

Court, really do focus on the Supreme Court. But I do think that there is real wisdom in the way you're describing this, just connecting the Supreme Court to a larger dialogue about profoundly broken and dysfunctional institutions. It is, but it is not the only such institution, right? That is also true about the Senate. That is also largely true about this kind of, you know, hyper-charge vision of the presidency with no discernible checks that allows, that facilitates rampant corruption, that has real impacts on all of us. So I think that that seems like really wise. And then I do think that there are ways to talk about individual corruption on the part of Supreme Court just the institution is broken, but it's the lack of checks and the lack of

meaningful ethics rules that have led to the ability to benefit from these billionaire benefactors by Justice Thomas, I think most egregiously, but not exclusively. And so I think it's interesting to hear that that's something that people are at least talking about and are responding to. Well, I think it speaks to the sense that this is not fair. This is not just that you are getting screwed over and someone else is benefiting because of it. And I think that that's that that like really kind of short, tight message, I think is equally true about Congress and the president and the Supreme Court. And I do think that what's novel, I think is the kind of Supreme Court piece of it. Again, as an electoral issue on the, you know, Democratic or left side, I wonder if there is. is a retirement announcement in the fall. So there wasn't one before the end of the Supreme Court term

when they often, but not always come. But I think it's at least possible, I don't know, likely, but certainly quite possible, that depending on how things look approaching November, one or both of Justice Thomas or Justice Alito might announce that they're leaving the court, there'll be a vacancy. It's also, I guess, possible

that if the Democrats manage to take the Senate, then there could well be a, you know, announcement or two at a confirmation or an effort to confirm in the lame doc. So I wouldn't rule that out. But sort of putting that to one side, if there were an announcement in like September or October, I'm curious if you think that would make a difference in terms of raising the salience of the court and kind of connecting that to some of the other themes on the campaign trail. I absolutely think so. I think it will galvanize people who perhaps were, you know, not eager to crawl over broken glass to vote for the Democratic candidate wherever they are, but understand now that they have to

I think that there is so much evidence now over the last six years of the importance of the Supreme Court, you know, Roe v. Wade being maybe the biggest one, but the V. Wight's Act, the tariffs, like student loans over and over and over again, people have seen how these decisions have directly affected their lives in a way that I think maybe even we perhaps knew that was true, but like normal people didn't know that was true before the last couple of years. So I think if there is an opening, especially for these Senate races, like it doesn't. even become a question of, do you like this candidate or not? Are you excited by them or not? It's do you want Trump to get his Supreme Court justices or not? And that's the question at hand. And I do think that's what made some of the, knowing that that's what the underlying context has made some of the Democratic primaries and these contests so heightened. Because if we lose, he gets the court for a generation. So there we are. Right, because he could replace Thomas and Alito with 35. year old versions of them maybe even further right because we have heard Trump say really explicitly that he's been deeply disappointed in the occasional votes against him that his, you know,

first three nominees is Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and Barrett have cast because they have mostly fallen in line but have very occasionally broken and voted against him. And I think it's quite clear that he and his advisors are single-mindedly determined to ensure that they do not put on the court anyone but a good soldier who will vote with them. No, matter what. And so I think that those are the stakes, at least with respect to the Senate. I mean, I do think the House matters a lot, too, because some of the kind of lack of checks that we were just talking about that have facilitated this kind of unregulated set of opportunities for self-dealing and corruption on the Supreme Court are fixable through legislation. And so if you had a House that

was interested in legislating things like Supreme Court ethics, you know, that would obviously be a significant step forward, you know, in the short term, obviously, in DeVito override while Trump is the president to actually get that stuff passed into law. But at the moment, you don't even have any legislative prospects. And so a Democratic House would, I think, make a difference on that front, too. It's not just confirmation. And I think that's why this conversation about fight within the Democratic Party has been so important. Like, yes, there are obviously policy things we want to like advance. But you just said it, even if Democrats control the House and the Senate, they're not going to be able to govern in any meaningful way until Trump is no longer in the White House.

So the most important thing they can do is accountability, oversight, and confirmation hearings in the Senate. And if they don't show that they have the backbone and the willingness to stand up to Republicans, to Trump, that they are willing to lay it all on the line, create some spectacle, create the perception of being able to punch back, even if they can't always win, it's like, what are we doing here? Why even give you the power if you're not going to use it to at least tell us that you're as mad as we are? Yeah, absolutely. So, let's shift now and I want to ask a couple of questions about something that we touch on from time to time, although we should do more about it. And I think that we will, you know, especially as

this next year begins. And that is state courts, state Supreme Courts, I guess, in particular, but state courts in general. And, you know, talk about sort of broken institutions. Lots of state courts are profoundly broken. And I don't think I realized until pretty recently that run for something doesn't just recruit candidates for, you know, state legislatures and various kind of local elected office, but, you know, in the kind of local executives and things like that, but also does recruit candidates to run for a judicial office. And, you know, in a lot of states, in some states, judges are appointed, and a lot of states, judges run as an initial matter or to retain their seats on the bench. So, you know, I want to ask some specific questions, but first, can you talk a little bit

about the worker front for something recruiting judicial candidates? Yes. So we work on all local racist state house, state senate, and below. So on the legal judicial level that includes judges, prosecutors, sheriffs, justices of the peace. And a lot of our alum have gone on to run for or serve on state Supreme Court. So like in Michigan, Cairo Bolden Harris, who was appointed to and then want to see on the Michigan state Supreme Court came through our pipeline when she was in the state house. Now, if you think it's really interesting to know this and some of the numbers and actually didn't realize the scale of this, so 38 states use elections to choose state Supreme Court justices. There are about 30,000 state judges in the United States versus only about

1,700 federal judges. So it gives you a sense of the scale here. There are about 7,000 judicial seats that state, appellate, county, and local on the ballot across this two-year election cycle. A lot of opportunities here. That doesn't even get into, like, prosecutors and sheriffs. The stat about sheriffs drives me crazy. 60% of sheriffs run unopposed. No contested. 90% of sheriffs are white men. Wow. Very interesting, sort of give you a sense of the demographics of these offices and how unreflective and undemocratic they are.

Now, should we be election judges? Separate question. But the fact that we do and gives you as, like, there's opportunity here to get people who are really not just like pro-democracy, pro-justice, pro-rule of law, but also like pro-equality and equity and bringing that sense of fairness into the work that I think is really exciting. Just a point on the sheriffs, like that demographic data is really stunning. They also, I think people who live in urban areas might not totally realize they have enormous power. And the fact that you said 60% are running unopposed is just shocking. And I think the number is lower, but also way higher than it should be when it comes to judicial seats. Like tons of judicial candidates face no opposition. And when we think about this moment, so to stay on the election topic for a minute, going into both the midterm and then 2020, presidential election cycle, there will be efforts to manipulate elections. I mean, we're sure of that.

And state courts and ultimately state supreme courts actually are a critical bulwark against election manipulation and a critical guarantor of the right to vote, which actually, you know, the federal constitution doesn't explicitly guarantee, but state constitutions do. And lots of state courts have really developed jurisprudence about the importance of protecting participation rights and democracy at the state level. And we saw state courts really were an important bulwark, you know, in efforts to actually disrupt and overturn the results of the 2020 election. Okay, so we have sort of state courts and kind of democracy and elections, but also, of course, in the post-Dobs era, state courts are critical guarantors of individual

rights, rights to bodily autonomy, rights to abortion. And so I think that this is another area where there has been this asymmetry, and that is that folks on the left and progressives just like haven't focused on state courts. I think about like my own cohort, I don't know a lot of people who have considered seriously or even thrown in for judicial seats. And we should be doing that. And so I will sort of say this in conversation to people all the time and it'll sort of go like, huh, it literally never occurred to me. And I just think that that's a kind of perspective and orientation shift that's really important that folks in kind of legal circles who think about their careers as sometimes maybe involving

time in government, time in academia, time in private practice. But the time in government piece, like it doesn't occur to them that trying to run for judicial office is something they should do. So, and, you know, I'm quite a bit older than you. So I'm probably out of the run for something demographic. But for younger listeners, I guess like how, just to go to brass tax for a minute, like how do they reach out if they're sort of like thinking about this kind of judicial office thing? So you should go to run for what.net.

And there you can look up what office you might be able to run for in the next year or two. You can join the run for something community where we have two different training tracks. One, if you're going to run, like, in the next year, one, if you're thinking about running a little further down the road. Both of these are options for you, whether you're running for a partisan office or not. And it's worth naming a lot of these judicial races, not all, but like in the 30 some odd states, they are partisan elections. And the remainder ones, they are not. You can participate in these trainings. They are fully free.

They're fully accessible to you no matter where you are on your schedule. We know you're probably working hard. Maybe you have kids. Maybe you're like, this is not going to be your full-time job, at least not yet. But it can be your full-time hobby until it's your full-time. time job. These offices are not as expensive as you'd think. You know, yes, there have been the exceptions to the rule, like the Wisconsin State Supreme Court Race, which was $150 million because Elon Musk engaged deeply. Again, this is how you know it matters. They are willing to spend

hundreds of millions of dollars for them. And most of them are in the $100,000 range. You can raise this money. It is absolutely doable. It is so meaningful. And, you know, for better, of course, the turnout in these elections is often pretty low. It's a bad thing for democracy. Good thing for campaign strategy because you could literally talk to every voter. It is doable and we will give you the skills and the training that you need to know how to do that in the way that is most efficient and effective. So if the obstacle are like, I don't quite know even how I would get started and I would have to raise some ungodly sum of money, like actually you have the tools to sort of address the first. And the second, it's actually not as expensive to run for a lot of these races as you might think.

So now $100,000 is not nothing, but if you reach out to your network and, you know, gets a lot of small dollar contributions, like that can go a long way. And then if you have the time and can mobilize your friends to actually like what, doorknock and actually just try to talk to people, I had a great conversation last week with the comparative constitutional scholar Kim Lane Sheppley, who this is a very different context. But I think I've been an applicable lesson was talking about how Peter Magiar, who, of course, you know, won and beat Victor Orban in the most recent Hungarian election. basically went to every county in Hungary and just talked to people over the course of two years.

And the electoral results are really stark in reflecting just how much support he had in the places where he just went, often driving a pickup truck and just recited poetry and sang songs and talk to people in town squares. I found it actually deeply inspiring that in this moment where so much of campaign strategy and our lives obviously is online, that actually that in-person contact still makes an enormous difference. And I gather that you guys are continuing to find the same thing. You know, political science research shows that the most effective way, the most scientifically proven way to get someone to show up to vote is creating a personal relationship between candidate and voter. The voter meets the candidate. If they know them, maybe they see them at the

grocery store, maybe they've come to their home, maybe they went to an event and they feel like, you know, some sense of personal responsibility or accountability to them, they're going to show up to vote. Everything else that a campaign does is about replicating that intimacy, the TV ads, the social media, the direct mail. It's about making you feel like you know them. In these races, where the number of voters you need to reach is usually pretty small, you can absolutely talk to every voter. You will know every person. I've had a conversation with them when they go to the polls. It's so powerful and it's the fundamental building block of democracy in a way that when you talk about it could feel really like cheesy or earnest. But no, choose it. It's listening and hearing and explaining what the Supreme Court does and how it affects their lives and why they should want you to win as opposed to. to why you want to win, which is because winning is great and losing sucks, they want you to win because they're going to feel something in your life change. It's so powerful. So so powerful. Well, so you can participate in that in all kinds of ways, talking to people about the various races that are coming up, that are, we're going to actually talk later in the show about something

happening earlier than the midterm elections, and that is a special election in Kansas. So stay tuned for that conversation. But there are lots of ways to do it short of running for office, but one of the critical ways do it is to run for office, including, again, judicial office. Again, this is, I know, not the sort of main thing you guys do, but I think something really critical to remind in particular our listeners of. Before we go, Amanda, can I ask you to stick around and make a couple of recommendations? So we do this sort of favorite things at the end of our conversation. So anything you want to recommend to our listeners to read, to listen to, to watch, I will maybe go first. And if you want to take a minute to think about it, and then

like to hear your recommendations. So I am going to shabby. out road trips. I just got back from two weeks on the road with my kids in the Midwest, like dropping people off at different camps and having a weekend on a farm with some friends. And I took, we have an electric vehicle now and we took this EV. And the road trip was amazing. And my kids and I had so much fun. And we put together a mix that is a collective road trip summer mix. So we had a great summer mix. But I will just say that the infrastructure for EVs, like fully electric vehicles right now in pockets of the country makes a road trip, a cross-country road trip, kind of an interesting challenge. It was fine at the end of the day,

but I had a couple of like, oh, I'm actually going to just run out of batteries like in the middle of Wisconsin. And anyway, I had to sort of like change my running a bunch. So I guess that's both a road trips are still wonderful and the EV infrastructure like is way behind where it needs to be. And that of course is a policy issue as well. And one new artist that I encountered during the kind of collectively assembled Michigan and sort of we call it the Michigan mix but actually we go other places but Michigan is where we started Michigan 26 road trip mix was the Mexican artist umbe hume b'embe um and it's both like really good and relaxing music to road trip to but also to write to um so those are the two things three things I guess that I will shout out

Amanda over to you I'm doing I'm gonna go with three books um the first very serious and it's actually sitting at my desk because I just got a chance to talk to about it so Ben Wickler is the former cheer of the Democratic Party. He has a book coming out on Tuesday. It's called This is the Plan, How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy. It is a full chapter on state Supreme Courts, including how much, how they were able to win the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race and the history and why it matters. It's great.

He makes a lot of Princess Bride references. There's a lot of dad jokes. It's very fun. I really recommend it. He also shouts at Run for something a ton, which is good. Oh, that's great. I haven't had a chance to read yet, but I'm really excited too. So thank you for mentioning it for our listeners.

It's a good time. Two very different tones of books. One, as I actually like stayed up late to finish reading this the other night, it's called Ungodly Rich by Catherine McGee. She wrote the American Royals, which was like what if America was, she still had a royal family in since the Washington's. Ungodly Rich is what if the Greek gods still lived on earth and were billionaires and one of them wanted to fall in love with a mortal. And it's just like fun, rich, soapy goodness. Like if you just need to turn your brain off and read something by the pool, 10 out of 3.5. 10. The other one, and I cannot help myself, Julia Tertian, the cookbook writer, wrote a great romance novel called Down to Earth. It's about like a farmer upstate who falls for a single mom. It makes you going to want to eat a tomato sandwich. It's just so sweet and so endearing. And she is such a lovely person and writer. So, you know, one serious, two for fun. Awesome. Down to Earth sounds like something. Both Leah and Melody really love romance novels. And if they don't know that one, I suspect that they we'll grab it on your recommendation.

So, well, those are great, and all the information you shared was so awesome. So Amanda Littman, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me, Kate. We're going to take another quick break and stay tuned for my conversation about the Kansas Supreme Court. Strict scrutiny is brought to you by Lisa. Summer is one of my favorite times of the year, but it can also be full of chaos between travel, family activities, work commitments, and trying to enjoy the longer days. It can feel like there's no time to truly unwind.

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and they back it all up with free shipping, easy returns, and a 120-night sleep trial. Just head over to Lisa.com for 25% off select mattresses, plus get an extra $50 off with promo code strict, exclusive for strict scrutiny listeners. That's L-E-E-E-S-A.com promo code strict for 25% off select mattresses, plus an extra $50 off. And when you use our code, you'll be supporting strict scrutiny. That's Lisa.com promo code strict. Okay, we are coming to you today with a conversation about an attempted court takeover. And no, it's not SCOTUS that takeover happening over there is basically already a fate accompli. This is a different effort. This one involving the Kansas Supreme

Court. And it's an effort that has everything to do with Dobbs. And to help give me and all of you a sense of just what is going on, I am really happy to be joined by two people working very hard on the ground in Kansas. First, Micah Kubick, who's the director of the state chapter of the ACLU, and Emily Wales, who is the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, and its advocacy arm Planned Parenthood Great Plains votes, which Great Plains include the Great State of Kansas. So welcome and thanks to you both for being here. Thanks so much, Kay. So people might recall that the majority opinion in Dobbs said it was returning the question

of abortion to the people and the democratic process. A little hard to square that claim with the court's many other efforts to undermine democracy in the democratic process. But Kansas was actually a really important site of post-Dob's developments in the democratic sphere and in particular a key ballot initiative. So, Emily, can you remind us what happened in Kansas just like, I think it was about a month and a half after Dobbs came down? So right after the Dobbs decision, we were preparing for a statewide vote on abortion access. In 2019, the state's Supreme Court had recognized the right to bodily autonomy, including abortion in the state constitution. So Kansin still had access to abortion care as of the Dobs decision.

But the legislature, I think not anticipating when Dobbs would come down, had put on a proposal that would have restricted and actually remove that protection from the state constitution for August 2, 2022. So by the time Dobbs came down on June 24th, we were in the heat of the campaign looking at the country's first statewide vote on abortion access. And actually what, when the people in the great state of Kansas went to the polls to vote on whether to approve that initiative, which again would strip these constitutional abortion protections out of the state constitution, what did they decide they wanted? Unsurprisingly, it turned out that Kansansans didn't want to give up their own rights and they wanted to continue being able to lead healthy, safe lives and make medical decisions without political interference. And by 59% of the vote, they decided not to take out their own rights from the Constitution. As we like to say, if we had won by 10 points, that would have been a landslide. It was much, much bigger than that in Kansas. Yeah, so this is almost a 20-point win, which is sort of unheard of in this very closely divided, highly polarized moment. So that was a really kind of stark first post-Obs development. But the forces in the state of Kansas hostile to abortion access, including now Attorney General Chris Kobach, started working, if I understand correctly, on a different strategy. So, Micah, can you tell us about that strategy?

So as Emily said, we won the ballot initiative in 22 in a good old-fashioned tail kicking. Normally, something like that, someone would say, oh, perhaps I should retreat to my corner, do a little bit of introspection, perhaps figure out where I went wrong. Chris Kobach and extremists in our state legislature did not take that tack. Instead, they said, what can we do to find ways to continue to undermine access to abortion, but all of the other things as well? And so what they landed on was an amendment to change the way our state Supreme Court is selected. Right now we have a merit-based system that allows folks to be selected based on the fact that they know something about the law. They have a judicial temperament. They treat everyone fairly. And they go through this very advanced vetting process and then still get retained by the voters. The voters say every so often, yes, we want to keep them or we want to fire them and send them home.

Chris Kobach and the extremists in the legislature don't like that system, though, because it does not give them control over the system. And it does not give their billionaire buddies who want to buy outcomes control over the system. And so, because our current system creates a court that is fair and impartial, they instead want to create a court that is made up of politicians who are bought and paid for by out-of-state billionaire political donors. And to be clear, the outcomes that that group of folks wants are, are outcomes that are paid for in advance and that are hostile to values that Kansans themselves say they want. That includes not just access to abortion, but Chris Kobach and his friends, they're still mad that more than 15 years ago, the Kansas State Supreme Court said that public schools in the state should be adequately and equitably funded. It's in our state constitution. The state Supreme Court upheld that. They're mad that the court has from time to time had reservations.

about certain restrictions on voting rights that the legislature has tried to put forward. And they're worried that in the future, a fair and impartial court that is not bought and paid for in advance might just perhaps rule in ways that uphold LGBTQ plus equality and dignity or that uphold the humanity of immigrants or do anything to uphold our democracy, period. Rather than risk having a fair and impartial court that would uphold any of those things, They're trying to amend the state constitution now, have voters amend the Constitution, to give control of the court over to direct partisan elections bought and paid for by billionaires. I don't like it.

People should vote no. Okay, so that's what's going before the voters. And it's early August. Am I right that August 4th is the election date? Okay, so let's say that date a couple of times. That's coming up pretty quickly. And, right, it is on its face a ballot initiative that is just about judicial selection. But obviously, that is kind of a vehicle for a bunch of substantive outcomes that the proponents of this initiative would like to see.

And restricting access to abortion, right, may be putting in place justices that are going to overturn this prior ruling that the ballot initiative didn't successfully overturned is one objective. But school funding, democracy, LGBTQ rights, these are all things that obviously are at stake in what this court looks like and how it interprets the rights that are in the can. Kansas Constitution and other provisions in the Constitution. So this would be a switch from this merit selection process to partisan elections. And, you know, some of our viewers might be saying, well, judicial elections actually do work out, okay, some of the time. Like, some of us just followed very closely and were really invested in the Wisconsin statewide Supreme Court elections. Now, those are nominally nonpartisan elections, but obviously very ideological. And that court really did change its composition in a way that has been very good for state-level democracy in Wisconsin.

So I guess what's your response to someone who says, I don't know, that doesn't sound so bad to elect judges statewide. I can understand why folks would think that. I think it's also important to note the context here in Kansas, which is that we used to have a system like this 70 years ago. We used to have direct partisan elections for state Supreme Court. And we changed it on purpose because of a huge massive corruption scandal that consumed the state. And voters said we don't want to open the court up to that kind of politics in the future. That's why we changed it in the first place. We shouldn't go back. in time. But beyond that, I would just say that the reason we are having this discussion now is not because we're having a political science seminar about the optimal way of selecting a state Supreme Court, right? This is not a dialogue engaged in by good faith actors trying to reconstruct a system anew. The context here matters a great deal. And the context is that Attorney General Kobach and the extremists

who brought us this amendment have said from the beginning that the real purpose of it is to be able to get rid of the protections for abortion, to have a total ban on abortion, and to get rid of school funding. They have been really quite candid to the world. They've said it out loud over and over. This isn't something they say behind closed doors. Some they say out in public. That the reason they want this is because it is the tool that will allow them to ban abortion and cut public school funding and give control over to billionaire political donors. There might be different systems in different states, that's fine. The context here is that this is not about the optimal method of selecting Supreme Court justices. The stakes here are really about the issues,

and that is why I describe this as the single most important thing that has ever happened. Like people learned how to make fire a long time ago, this is the next most important thing. Because it touches on absolutely every issue that we face. It is not contained to this granular, kind of boring issue about the best way of selecting state Supreme Court judges. Okay. So that's a great answer. And also it just emphasizes the importance of context, right? So it may be that there are states in which judicial elections work really well. Kansas has had history and this kind of decades-long effort to get the system in place that people actually say works well. And this court has issued a number of progressive rulings, not exclusively.

Like, I think there have been conservative rulings too. But this is a system that is working and the effort to fundamentally change it is not a good faith pursuit of the optimal kind of method for constructing state-level democracy. It's about specific outcome. So Emily, we've said this is not just about abortion access in Kansas, but it is, among other things, about abortion access in Kansas. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, both Kansas and how Kansas fits in the larger regional picture, because I think it plays a pretty important role. We knew when we were talking to supporters in the spring of 2022, we were telling folks, this Kansas vote's going to happen. In this historic moment, there's a chance that Roe will fall and we will be one of the first states to vote.

So we knew that political context was there. But also on the care provision side, we operate health centers in Oklahoma and Arkansas, Missouri. We knew that abortion bans were coming in those states. And we had already seen in Oklahoma when Texas passed a six-week ban in 2021. We had Texans sleeping in our parking lot the next night, trying to get care in Oklahoma. And so we then started doing everything we could for infrastructure in Kansas. to build a system that could support out-of-state patients. And all of the terrible predictions came true.

And fortunately, we planned for it. But it's an awful thing to see that we now have more than twice as many abortion patients coming to Kansas as we did before. Something like 7,500 or 8,000 abortions in 2021 is now nearly 20,000 abortions in the state of Kansas. We've opened two new health centers. We now have whole systems to support patients who show up with kids in the car who are crying because they have been driving overnight trying to balance taking off work, finding child care, having loved ones who say, I would absolutely come with you and support you, but I don't know if what I'm doing is legal. If I get pulled over and you're in a state with an abortion ban, can I tell them where I'm going

because the care is legal in Kansas or can I not? That is what our health center teams have faced every single day. And the idea of losing what is now an essential point of access for abortion care for the Midwest and the South is just not something we can risk. Canzans have seen what a man-made crisis looks like. They know what it is to have patients from Arkansas who, you know, now appearing in the news with stories about being transferred by ambulance from Northwest Arkansas to Kansas to get care to save their lives because doctors in Arkansas said their hands were tied. And can you just sort of draw a line between? So this ballot question gets voted on in early August and, you know, what's the sequence of events by which, you know, we could end up? up with the elimination, either reduction or total elimination of abortion access in Kansas and then

in the states in the region that you're just described. Yeah, well, I'm glad you mentioned it's August because to that point, we are seeing the exact same misleading tactics we saw in 22. The legislature put this on the ballot at a time when they expect low turnout of their base in the hopes that most Kansans don't show up, don't know what's going on. They also have retained the rules for themselves. So I can make some predictions about what would happen if we were unsuccessful in August, which, to Micah's point, We're not going to be. It's the most important thing that's ever happened. But if we were unsuccessful, the legislature gets to write the rules. We don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but we know that the process will change and that there will be a concerted effort to put anti-abortion justices on the court. And the legislature is ready to go when it comes to abortion restrictions, even after this vote in Kansas, which really shows us exactly why the fallacy of Dobbs is playing out. This is not about sending the right back to the people. The legislature in Kansas got to hear how Kansans felt. Dobbs was supposed to be about sending this decision back to the

states. Well, here we are in a state where the majority of Kansans want to protect their rights, and the legislature continues to pass additional restrictions, forcing us to go to court to enable patients to continue getting essential services that are constitutionally protected. So I don't know. I don't know if it's going to be six months, a year, five years, but the court is going to change. Abortion rights are going to be restricted. And we may be in a situation in the, future where Kansas will be forced to leave their home state fleeing for care that was once protected here. Wow. So, Micah, can you talk a little bit about, you know, Emily said one really important dynamic here is, and this is, I think, not exclusive to Kansas, legislatures trying to, you know,

put these really important questions first to kind of cloak them in this anodyne structural kind of language. This is about judicial selection methodology, but also to do it at a time when they're expecting low voter turnout. We saw the same thing play out in Ohio, and we've seen it in other states as well. So can you talk about what you and the coalition that you're working with are doing to try to get the word out for this early August election and sort of what folks watching either in Kansas or outside can do if they want to help? Yes. So they, there absolutely is an attempt to make sure that the turnout is lower than it should be. Our legislature has been hard at work at trying to do that for the last several years. To one of Emily's points, the immediate response from

our legislature in 22 and 23, after we won on the constitutional amendment, was to try and shrink the size of the electorate to pass new voter restriction laws because they said in a choice between us and the voters, we think we know best the voters shouldn't have a say, let's try and shrink the electorate so something like this doesn't happen again. That is part and parcel of what we have been enduring the last couple of years. And so our coalition, is a coalition called Canaan. Kansas United for Impartial Courts, KUIC. We have been working day in, day out, to make sure that Kansans know the facts, that Kansans know the stakes, that Kansans know their rights, and that Kansans vote no on August 4th as a result. We have built a professional campaign that is using

all of the tools that exist in order to communicate directly to voters. Many of us were involved in the campaign together in 2022. We got the band back together. It plays good hits, so we figured we should try again. And so we are working together as a team to make sure that Kansans know what this is about. A lot of that is making sure that Kansans know that our courts are, in fact, fair and impartial today, and that voters already get a say. And that the shift here is that it would allow judges to become politicians bought and paid for by billionaires. We want Kansans to know if you are tired of billionaires being able to buy every ding-dang thing in America, here is one thing that we can make sure stays fair and impartial

and unbought. And so we are running television ads. We are doing mail. We have a field program talking to voters directly on their doors. We're doing all of the things. We're pulling out all the stops because this is the fight of a lifetime. And so we definitely need help from our friends, from strangers, from anyone who cares about abortion access, who cares about school funding, who cares about accountability, who cares about separation of power. who cares about democracy, we need your help. And that means if you know folks in Kansas, make sure they know about this, that they know how important the stakes are. And if you care about democracy, about judicial independence, impartiality, about accountability for those

in power, especially extremist ideologues, I don't know who we could be talking about there. You can guess for yourself. One way to make it clear that you care about that is to financially support our campaign through our website, KUIC.org. org. We've got a lot of work to do. We're doing it, but we need all the help we can get. Well, that was rousing. Emily, final word before we wrap this up. You know, these are real patients, real people, real lives who are impacted. And I think that's what we've said over and over. When we talk to folks about what's happening in August, a lot of times voters are confused, of course, by the language, but also they're like, I don't hear a lot about the court. And we have

to tell people, that's a good thing. When your courts are functioning well, they're making key decisions, but they are not knocking on your doors, trying to raise money, trying to sell themselves to you. The court should be a step back from the legislature and a check and a balance. And in Kansas, they have heard from the people. They know people want their rights to bodily autonomy. They know they want to make medical decisions without the government telling them what to do. Kansas is in a rarefied space right now in the middle of the country to have decisions that you can make without politicians in your doctor's office. And we want to keep it that way. And we can. this is not the most important point you just made, but the idea of a court that does not loom so large that you have to think about it all day, every day sounds really nice. That sounds like the kind of state of affairs that one should hold tight to in general, but in particular in the circumstances that you are both describing. Okay, so August 4th, it is the vote no campaign. It's most important thing since the discovery of fire. The stakes are really clear. Micah Kubick and Emily Wales. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk today.

Really glad to shed some light on this important issue. Thanks again. Thanks for having me. Thanks so much, Kate. Strict scrutiny is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Melody Raoul and Michael Goldsmith. Jordan Thomas is our intern. Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Hethcote, Johanna Case, Kenny Moffitt, Eric Schute, and our music is by Eddie Cooper. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.