Strict Scrutiny - Project 2025 (cont.): How to Create a Geopolitical Hellscape & Back to School With Meredith Marks

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

Ben Rhodes of Crooked's Pod Save the World joins Leah and Kate to break down Project 2025's truly frightening foreign policy goals. Then, Leah and Melissa are joined by The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City's Meredith Marks. In addition to braving the "rumors and nastiness" of reality television, Meredith is also a graduate of Northwestern Law School. So who better to help analyze the intersection between reality TV and the law?  Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky

Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court. It's an old joke, but when a 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 necks. Welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We are your hosts today. I'm Kate Shaw. And I'm Leah Littman. We have an exciting two-part episode for you today. The first

segment will be the next installation of our series on Project 2025, or Disaster Peace Theater, and we're going to cover foreign policy with the help of a special guest. The next segment will be a special back-to-school segment to welcome all of the incoming and returning law students who are coming back to school. We have a wonderful guest who is going to give you some A-plus advice on beginning your legal careers. But first up, Project 2025. And today, as Leah mentioned, we are going to cover Project 2025 and specifically the foreign policy section of Project 2025, and specifically the foreign policy section of Project 2025, which in the Mandate for Leadership is called the Common Defense, because they and only they love the Constitution and want everyone to know that. But something that we know enough to know is that

sometimes we need to bring in reinforcements, and foreign policy is just outside of our bailiwick. And so we are thrilled to be joined today by Ben Rhodes, who's the former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama and co-chair of the organization National Security Action. He is, of course, also the co-host of Crooked's great Pod Save the World podcast. Welcome to the show, Ben. Hey, I'm very excited to be here. I'm going to get smarter just from this conversation. I think we're the ones who will be getting smarter, but I appreciate that anyways. Maybe before we get into the nitty gritties, though, I want to put one question to you, which is, how scary would it be to give these

yokels the nuclear codes and classified documents again? Like, how many more of them will or can be stuffed into bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago? Yeah, it's pretty frightening because actually, to keep with the theme of this podcast, once you signal that there's total immunity for breaking the law, you have no reason to expect that when the people come back, they won't take that and drive a truck through it, right? So it's not just that they're the kind of people that put the Iranian nuclear plans in the bathroom in Mar-a-Lago. They're the kind of people who've been told that, oh, that's okay. You can get away with it. There are no rules that apply to you. And so I think that they'll come back this time and they won't even try to

cover their tracks. They'll just do whatever the hell they want. And that's what Project 2025 represents. They'll like sell the Iranian nuclear plants on True Social or something. Yeah, exactly. You know, there's no need for under the handed, you know, bank shot deals with Jared Kushner getting $2 billion for his, you know, fixed income fund in Saudi Arabia. They'll just, you know, they'll just sell the things. I think it's such an important point because it is not just that a second Trump administration would involve much more kind of planning and forethought, which Project 2025 obviously reflects. There is also the overlay of this ghastly Supreme Court opinion granting absolute

immunity to a lot of presidential conduct and presumptive immunity to most of the rest of presidential conduct. And it just feels like, you know, to the extent there were any constraints in a first Trump administration, both failure to plan and the legal constraints that, you know, Trump and others felt themselves to be at least somewhat bound by, all of that is gone. And that's a pretty scary place to be. Let's turn directly to Project 2025, which really is the gift that keeps on giving. So the Common Defense section lays out plans for the Department of Defense, Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the intelligence community, what the plan calls media agencies, and the USAID, the Agency for International Development. So we want to spend a little bit of time on each of these. And maybe let's start with the Department of Defense. And DOD and Department of State are grouped together in the introductory section. So, Ben, the intro section starts with this sort of

sorrowful note. Despite such long and storied history, as I'm reading from the introduction here, neither department is currently living up to its standards. The success of the next presidency will be determined in part by whether they can be significantly improved in short order. There are long excurses about how large swaths of the State Department's workforce are left-wing and predisposed to disagree with a conservative president's policy agenda and vision. How would you describe, generally speaking, what we can glean from this section about what they would do with the Department of Defense and the Department of State? And then we can talk maybe about more specifics. Project 2025, is look, even before Trump, right, there's always been this kind of anti-government bureaucracy, anti-anybody that has kind of a career background in the Department of Defense as a civil servant, or even like a career uniformed military officer, or certainly a kind of career foreign service officer ambassador, that those people don't subscribe to kind of pure purist conservative ideology. Now, Trump took that to a different level where it became these people won't do anything,

everything that I tell them to do because they'll follow the laws. And I think that, therefore, there's been a kind of fever dream on the far right for a long time to come in and not just replace the top. So, Kate, you were there during transition in 2008. I think most people don't understand that when a president's elected, a few thousand political appointees replace a few thousand political appointees. Essentially, the tops of agencies get a haircut and the assistant secretaries of defense and state, they're replaced or some of the ambassadors to more political posts are replaced. But essentially the government continues to function in its own kind of apolitical way.

The most aggressive part of Project 2025 is they want to reach deep into these bureaucracies and fire deep into the civil service, clean out anybody that doesn't pass a kind of ideological litmus test or personal loyalty litmus test, and seed all these agencies that are responsible for the nuclear codes, responsible for war fighting, contingency planning, diplomatic relations. They want ideologues in all of those places. And if you don't believe me, look at the end of the Trump administration, where you had like absolute lunatics like this guy, Kash Patel, like literally functionally running the Defense Department, you know. So this is the main thing is taking, you know,

the kind of career foreign service and DOD employees and even uniformed military officers that, you know, threwore a note to the Constitution and not Donald Trump and kind of replace them with your garden variety MAGA people. And they have lists of these people that are ready to move in. This is definitely something that the Project 2025 people, I think, have been extremely focused on, this kind of personnel overhaul issue. This is something that J.D. Vance, before he was on the ticket as the vice presidential nominee, before he was even in the

Senate. This was when he was running for the Ohio Senate seat. He gave this interview to Vanity Fair in which he basically sketched out exactly what you just said, Ben. He said, look, you know, Trump was early on. I guess he hadn't maybe declared yet, but he was obviously running. And Vance said to an interviewer, if I was advising Donald Trump, I would give him one piece of advice, which is fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant, and replace them with our people. And then when the courts stop you, you know, tell John Roberts, like, okay, you've made this decree, go ahead and try to enforce it. So essentially do this, and then if the law stops you, defy it. And I'm not even totally sure exactly what John Roberts

would say in response to such an effort, but I think that this is something that they have been working on for a long time. And it is scary throughout the government. But I think that, you know, the stakes are obviously heightened when we're talking about Department of Defense, the Department of State and the intelligence community. Staffing those places with ideologues could be so dangerous, you know, from a geopolitical perspective. Obviously, it completely disrupts the function of the US government. If you replace people that have been there for decades, in some cases cases with people who have no idea what they're doing and they're interns at the Heritage Foundation.

One way to think about this is you could lose tens of thousands of years of experience and essentially just have a bunch of incompetence and ideologues in these places. The second thing is that is hard to recover from. Even if, let's say in the best case scenario, there's only four years of Trump. Well, you still don't get that back. We will essentially have decapitated our own government. And the last thing is in the DOD, and this gets even scarier in the intelligence community, which we can talk about. I think that they will appoint and elevate, they will find in the military, and the military has, you know, millions of people in it.

They will find the most extreme MAGA type people and they will make them in charge of the military, and the military has, you know, millions of people in it, they will find the most extreme MAGA-type people, and they will make them in charge of the military. And I think they have a fever dream of kind of turning the U.S. military into not just an extension of Donald Trump's political interest, but a kind of almost like massive white nationalist militia, you know? And we can talk about personnel policies, because I don't ask to tell, and, you know, trans issues, and all the steps the military has taken to represent America. They're going to try to turn it into like kind of what like a militia in Michigan looks like, you know, and that is a terrifying thing to consider.

Yeah. So they have some specific thoughts on how to, in their view, fix the Department of Defense. And I wanted to at least put some of them to you. So one big plan is targeted at, quote, the Biden administration's vaccine mandates, which the report maintains, quote, have taken a serious toll. So I guess, Ben, like, how important do you think anti-vaxxers are to military readiness? And do you think it's important for military officers to take orders? I think that they're incredibly important, obviously, because these are people living in close quarters,

and these are people that can obviously, if you get rid of things like vaccine requirements, you would be putting the health at risk of all the people there. I think the bigger point is the military can kind of become a place for a certain kind of reverse social engineering for the far right. We've already seen them seeking, you know, Tommy Tuberville, not the sharpest tool in the Senate, wanting to kind of impose abortion restrictions so that, like, if you're a woman serving on a military base, you know, you're in this kind of dystopia where you can't access reproductive

health care and you can't even travel to access reproductive healthcare. All these things, you know, no vaccine mandates in the military, no abortion in the military, no reproductive healthcare in the military. Again, I would be concerned about things like, you know, can LGBT people serve in the military? I think they will turn, because the military is the institution that you have the most control over, they'll turn it into kind of a right-wing social engineering laboratory. Same thing with veterans, by the way. They're talking about in Project 2025 privatizing VA health care, which is a catastrophic idea, you know. So it's using the military as kind of this group of millions of people that you control and you can kind of do your social engineering.

You know, undoing any kind of clean energy uses that the military has. All of these things, they're going to turn the U.S. military into a kind of an extension of their idealized version of, you know, dystopian America. And can I give just a couple of more discrete examples? So, there's a line in the chapter that proposes to, quote, audit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination. The natural question is, is there a lot of Marxist indoctrination happening, to your knowledge, Ben, at military academies right now, such that we need to remove said indoctrination? Yeah, the reading list is not heavy on Marx and Hegel, nearestgel nearest i could tell at the national defense university but the other thing is that like the funny thing to me about all these things is that honestly like i and i love the military and it represents all aspects of you know they're conservatives and liberals in the military but the u.s military and like the fbi and some of these agencies that

they're constantly attacking in my experience were like the most conservative institutions in the u.s government i mean this is is not like the mythology of a woke military is not something I ever interacted with. No, agreed. You know, they basically have all this anti-DEI rhetoric. And I do think that it is right that obviously like this, you know, cartoonish, like woke military vision that is laid out in these pages, I think bears a very scant resemblance to reality. But DEI initiatives have been present in the military. And I guess, you know, they basically want to eliminate all of those policies with respect to offices and staff. So, I guess, what would that mean for the military? And I guess a related question, which you have alluded to, they propose outright to prohibit service by transgender individuals. And I don't

actually know what they would seek to do with respect to currently serving trans service members. They would seek to have Trump send a tweet and just like fire them all like he tried to do last time. Maybe they just rerun that. But I guess, you know, in a serious way, like what would all of that mean for kind of personnel at the military if they were able to implement any of these proposals? No, I think this time it's the same thing about them being more extreme this time. And this time they will fire all the transgender people, you know, and they'll collect lists and they will probably empower in a thuggish way, kind of some of the worst elements in the military to kind of out people, you know, point fingers. And I would truly expect that in terms of what it

means generally, Kate. I think, you know, one, the military, like any American institution, is behind. Like, it was often uncomfortable, the extent to which if you visited military bases as I did or military facilities overseas, most of the officer corps was white. And then you go into a large enlisted pool and it's very diverse, you know, and the military would be the first to acknowledge that there's strength in having DEI because you want the entirety of the military to reflect not just the country, but the service itself, like the personnel itself. And kind of some reality in which you have a bunch of white male MAGA guys, like in all the officer positions, and then a

bunch of diverse gender, race, and ethnicity service members, it's an uncomfortable reality, but it's the one they want. And not just uncomfortable, but I think from everything I have heard from individuals from inside the military, like really bad for readiness, like bad for morale and bad for readiness. So this is not just like some kind of like emotional desire or superficial or cosmetic desire, but like it does feel for people who think these efforts are important. And I know this more from like, you know, litigation around this, but there is very much a considered view that military and combat readiness are hurt if you don't have an officer corps that reflects the diversity of the rest of the military and the nation writ large. Yeah, absolutely.

And also, like, how does it manifest in warfighting and operations overseas? You know, side note, but I think it kind of pivots off the kind of white nationalist piece of this. You know, you'll recall there was like a thing in the Trump years where there was a Navy SEAL that had committed pretty horrific crimes, you know, killing prisoners in Iraq and his own men had, Navy SEALs had reported on him. And Trump and the MAGA right kind of made him a cause celebre and, you know, he beat the rap and then he's out on the campaign trail with Trump. Point is that like, there will be carte blanche for, you know, not only will there be readiness and morale issues, but also I think, you know, there'll be this kind of green light for people.

Go do whatever you want. And if someone underneath that is uncomfortable with it because it, I don't know, violates the laws of war, that person is the one who's at risk, not the MAGA person who might want to be killing civilians indiscriminately. So it's real life and death stuff that comes into play. So we've been talking thus far about what is in Project 2025, but also something that's important is what isn't in Project 2025 and some important omissions in these sections. Some serious ones we'll touch on in a bit, but one that stuck out to me, there's no plan to get Jordan Childs her medal back. At least, you know, at the time we're recording this, her medal has not yet been reinstated. So Ben, if you were advising Vice President Harris, how would you suggest they do that? I would bring the full force of America's deep litigation capabilities. We have significant

capabilities. We don't just have military capabilities. We have litigious capabilities that could be deployed for the next four years. Leah's like, sign me up. I want on that litigation team. And just to be so relentless, you know, like you reject an appeal here, we're going to appeal here. I would like to see this brought up in like just about every international tribunal we could find, you know, and just grind them down through litigation.

We can do that. Jordan's medal. And meanwhile, keep that medal in the meantime. Yeah, all right. Okay, but in terms of more serious omissions, the Department of State section has, you know, some interesting and kind of like telling both discussions and omissions. And the discussion of Ukraine in particular is fascinating in that, as I read it, it doesn't actually take a position but outlines several strains of conservative thought, basically

like outlining one, which would be a more traditional conservative position that Moscow's illegal war of aggression presents major challenges to U.S. interests. And then there's another position presented as an alternative, which is just essentially to kind of summarize, you know, denies that U.S. Ukrainian support is in the national security interests of America at all. So like sort of MAGA forward, Ukraine aid skeptical position. And I don't know if that just reveals like internal tensions on the part of the drafters of this and, you know, in the Republican Party writ large, but I don't know what to make of what the position vis-a-vis Ukraine really is. Can you tell? No, I mean, in the Project 2025 itself, there are pieces of coded language that play to Trump's interests.

It talks about transforming NATO. It talks about prioritizing like a rapid conclusion to the war in Ukraine. And so how I take both of those things is, yes, the right wing of the Republican Party is still a bit split here. All the momentum is with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. And I think the selection of J.D. Vance as his vice president sends a powerful message

because J.D. Vance was the most outspoken opponent of aid to Ukraine and has been attacking NATO. But there are still some people in the Heritage Foundation hallways that are more traditionally hawkish. So they may have had to make some allowances for those people. But when you say transform NATO and end the war in Ukraine, the only way to transform NATO is to do what Trump wants to do, which is essentially withdraw U.S. support for NATO. And it talks about moving burdens onto NATO allies and them increasing their defense spending. I think what we can, and when you talk about ending the war in Ukraine, that means withdrawing U.S. support and pressuring Ukraine to accept a deal in which Putin essentially has all the territory that they're currently in.

And obviously, Ukraine's not going to be integrated into NATO and the European Union with the Trump presidency. So what we're really talking about is the U.S. cutting the cord on Ukraine, cutting the cord on NATO, you know, Trump making a combination with Putin, and then being in this very destabilized world in which none of the NATO allies can count on a U.S. security guarantee to come to their assistance if they're invaded. And that is, you know, tantamount to what Trump said out loud, that Putin can do whatever the hell he wants when it comes to Europe and NATO allies. And so I think it's a recipe for, you know, more Ukrainians,

right, in countries like Georgia, Moldova, potentially NATO states like the Baltic states, being, you know, at really serious risk of Russian intervention. Okay, one more question on the State Department discussion, and also a question about an omission, which is that in the Middle East section, there is essentially no discussion of the war in Gaza. And that does strike me as really important to think about kind of the political dimensions of this for a minute. We know people, a lot of people in the Democratic Party in particular, many young people are horrified by the suffering in Gaza. They hold Joe Biden and perhaps by extension Vice President Harris at least in part responsible. But this document, I think, makes quite clear that there is no reason to expect anything like a humane policy vis-a-vis Gaza in a future Trump administration. So I guess is the omission revealing and is there some political meaning to that omission? Or sort of how do you read what, if anything, they would propose to do in Gaza? Yeah, I think the omission is revealing that they have no interest other than a green light

to whatever the right-wing Israeli government wants to do, not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank. And I think one way that I would think about this is, first of all, the people who wrote this are deep in an ideological stew with the global far right, which includes everybody from Viktor Orban and the Hungarians to Bibi Netanyahu and some of the far right in Israel to people in Latin America. I say this because I believe that the implementation of this agenda is also going to be a permission structure to far right actors to do what they want. We just talked about Putin, you know, obviously consolidating annexation of Ukraine, messing around in other nearby states. I think it's a green light to the Israeli right wing.

This is the time to annex the West Bank. So not just Gaza, but when else would you do that? You know, if you're sitting there and you're in the Israeli right wing, which is said out loud that they believe that's believe that's part of Israel. Of course, the Trump presidency is when you make your move, you know? And so I think in the Middle East, but also globally, um, what the destabilizing thing that we can expect in the second Trump term that didn't quite happen in the first Trump term, cause there were still, you know, Jim Mattis is at the secretary of defense and HR McMaster's at the white house. All these conventional

people are still around. Well, now it's going to be, I think, free reign for, and I think in the Middle East, what I'd be worried about is not just obviously the continuation in Gaza, but the West Bank becoming the next venue for a really concerted effort to assert Israeli control. That is terrifying. So I think we briefly wanted to touch on some of the other parts of the common defense plan. So one is the Department of Homeland Security. And to prime listeners for what's coming here, Ken Cuccinelli did this section. This guy has said gay people are harmful to society and is sought to repeal birthright citizenship. And this section basically to me reads like how to be cruel in thousands of different ways. Here are just some examples. So it proposed to eliminate T&U visas because it says, quote, victimization should not

be a basis for an immigration benefit, end quote. Those visas are for trafficking or crime victims. It also wants to eliminate all of the immigration and customs enforcement memoranda that prohibit ICE personnel from operating in certain sensitive zones, i.e. prohibiting them from doing immigration enforcement, let's say, in hospitals or police stations or fire stations, which could deter immigrants and non-citizens from being able to use those services. It maintains that ICE should be funded for a significant increase in detentions, and it specifically argues for more detentions of children. It recommends Congress repeal a section of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims

Protection Reauthorization Act, which provides benefits to unaccompanied non-citizen children. It also calls on Congress to end a settlement and explicitly set terms and standards for family and unaccompanied detention and housing. The Flores settlement has protections against detaining unaccompanied minors and families. So, Ben, is this the foreign policy equivalent of, like, pro-family policy? Yeah. I mean, this is essentially turning the Department of Homeland Security into a mass deportation agency, you know, that completely empowers ICE and takes off any guardrails. And so I think what you're going to see is a kind of brutalist immigration policy that

combines mass deportation with efforts to make life so miserable for anybody who might think of coming here that, you know, that essentially you're not only closing the doors, but you're punishing people. Some cases, people have been here, you know, maybe their whole lives not only closing the doors, but you're punishing people. Some cases, people have been here, you know, maybe their whole lives. They're just not documented, you know. And I think people have to realize this is going to have knock-on effects, right? There's first and foremost a human cost to these people and their families, millions and millions of people.

But also, if the U.S. essentially, as Project 2025 envisions, ends asylum, shuts the border, is throwing immigrants into camps, deporting millions of people, busing into hospitals to pull children out and put them in detention. Again, globally, the immigration system and refugee system that's already been kind of breaking down with 80 to 90 million people displaced around the world, other countries are going to start to do this too. If the U.S. isn't doing our part, you're going to see, you know, I think other countries shutting their door and you are going to have no safe haven, no asylum for people who've been trafficked, people who've been fought with us in wars in places like Afghanistan. And you're going to have this kind of swelling

populations of stateless people with nowhere to go. Now, that is both a humanitarian catastrophe. Ultimately, it's a security catastrophe too, because that is not a sustainable outcome, particularly with climate change creating more refugees. And so this is not the way to fix the problem. It is cruel and inhumane, but it also, I think, will contribute to global instability in ways that people aren't really getting their minds around. So let's hit just a couple of other points from this section. One, there's a discussion of media agencies in which the document calls for stripping the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of taxpayer funding. So the corporation funds NPR, PBS, and it would be hugely significant for these places to lose all federal government funding in a moment in which we have already seen the decimation of local newsrooms and cuts at major national entities.

And it does feel as though eliminating Americans' access to, like, credible information is actually kind of part of the point here. Definitely. And on the Agency for International Development, it calls for restoring the Mexico City policy, which is also commonly known as the global gag rule. So it would prohibit the United States from funding organizations that facilitate or advocate or refer people to family planning services that could include abortion and some forms of contraception. It calls to stop funding the UN, the United Nations Population Fund. And it has a telling few lines, you know, that are underscoring they are still the party of forced childbirth. One of those is, quote, families are the basic unit of and foundation for a thriving society. Without women, there are no children and society cannot continue, end quote.

Ben, there's so much more we could talk about, but I guess I would just put to you, like, any final thoughts on the common defense section? I'm glad you flagged media. I'm going to throw one other piece in the media puzzle, which is the overseas broadcasting capabilities of the United States. I was always a little worried that Steve Bannon would figure out that there's like a billion-dollar enterprise of U.S. international broadcasting in which there's a firewall, you know, traditionally and legally, you know, the White House is not supposed to control the editorial content, you know, Radio Free Europe. And I mean, those of us who are old enough to remember these kind of iconic brand voice of America.

The the the Project 2025 would turn this into essentially Trump television or RT like like the U.S. international broadcasting, I think, will become just a kind of extension of Trump's personal brand in kind of brutalist ways that I don't want to envision. The other thing I want to, just last thing I'd say is on the personnel point to kind of end where we started. One thing that doesn't get a lot of discussion because it's hard to discuss is covert operations in the United States. So what, you know, I'm on a legal podcast. Title 50 programs, which will basically allow the U.S. executive branch to do things with minimal oversight, no public oversight, and no need to kind of abide by certain. Well, I don't want to get too into it, but essentially you can do a lot through covert action out of the sunlight that people don't know about. And I think one of the only breaks on that in the Trump years is that most of the people in the intelligence community were

still career people. Well, if you essentially have a bunch of ideological people engage in covert actions with, you know, slush funds and no oversight and no accountability whatsoever, you know, Iran-Contra is going to be like, you know, the Boy Scouts compared to what these people could do, you know? And I think it's something that people don't get their minds around enough that it's not just the stuff that we're going to see. Like, it's stuff that we won't see their minds around enough. It's not just the stuff that we're going to see. It's stuff that we won't see. And these people know that. They were there for—it takes you a while to figure this stuff out.

I was there for eight years. To be honest, it takes some time to kind of figure out how the machinery of government works. They know now how the machinery of government works. And they're determined to use it. And I think that's why we have to take this so seriously. Well, Ben, thank you so much for your time and doing this segment with us and for making Project 2025 somehow more terrifying than it had already seemed, which was already pretty terrifying. And we would also be remiss to note our co-host Melissa is dying to talk to you about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Oh, good. So just wanted to come back on after the election. That's like a good post-election conversation, a palate cleanse.

All right. Ben is agreeing to it. We're going to do it. I'm in. I'm in. Terrific. Thank you so much, Ben. All right. Good to see you guys. So now stay tuned for what's become kind of an annual tradition, a Welcome Back to Law School episode with a very special guest who is going to provide some stellar advice about how to use your legal career and legal education. And before we get to our special guest, gavel gavel, all rise for a little housekeeping. We have merch. If strict scrutiny has been helping you make sense of the court's recent batched opinions, you will probably love our merch, including the best-selling I Respectfully Dissent t-shirt and the terrifying sequel,

Hot Off the Presses, With Fear for Our Democracy, I Dissent. We also have stickers, mugs, even candles with scents like this smells like the interior of a private jet, so you can get a taste of what it's like being a lifelong appointee with no fucks to give. The merch is a great way to support the pod and remind everyone in your life that the Supreme Court is on the ballot this November. Head to crooked.com slash store to shop. Second announcement is about a new podcast, Assembly Required. Stacey Abrams knows a thing or two about not giving up. On her new crooked show, Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams, Stacey is breaking down the biggest issues in politics right now

and sharing stories of action to keep you motivated for the long haul. Meet incredible advocates from across the issue spectrum fighting for a better future and discover how everyday people like you and me can help that future become reality. You can listen to the first episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams right now, wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes will be dropping every Thursday. And make sure to subscribe on YouTube for the video version. I could not be more delighted about the special guests we have in store for this very special episode. So this is designed to bring together two of my deepest loves, the law and reality television. Melissa, I didn't want to necessarily identify reality television as one of your two

greatest loves, but you know, you're happy to own that. Definitely top five. Okay. Well, then, two of our greatest loves. Maybe above the law. Two of our greatest loves, and we are going to be highlighting the connections between the two and what the law and reality television can learn from one another, including what reality TV can teach us about the Supreme Court. And to help us with this topic, we have the perfect guest, none other than Meredith Marks, the queen from Salt Lake City. Meredith, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be with you.

We're so excited because we love anyone with the initials MM. And so I would like to welcome you as a fellow MM, a special welcome to the show. Thank you. I see there's a lot of alliteration going on here. That's why we had to get rid of Kate today. Leah Littman, strict scrutiny. Maybe we'll bring her back. But for those people who have been missing out, and among those is Kate Shaw, who has been fired from the podcast. For those of you who haven't evolved to the point where you consume reality TV in the same manner you consume Supreme Court opinions, we're here to tell you that Meredith Marks is the woman who can actually do it all.

And she does do it all on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. So Leah, tell them exactly what Meredith can do. Okay. So I'm just going to do a super short intro so we can dive right in. But Meredith can read a bitch and hold her own in a fight. Literally her tagline was, when I take a shot, I always hit my mark. But she also knows how to shut down fights that aren't productive. She's a successful jewelry designer and creator of the Meredith Marks Jewelry Line, and she is a law school graduate, so really the perfect guest for this occasion. I actually thought when you started that you were going to say this was all about Elena Kagan, who can also be the bitch and hold

her own in a fight. When you got to jewelry line, I was like, okay, not Elena Kagan. Okay, you're right. When we ask Meredith to jewelry line, I was like, okay, not Elena Kagan. Okay, you're right. When we ask Meredith to assign taglines to different Supreme Court justices, I do think that some of Meredith's will be Elena Kagan's, but we'll get to that later. Okay, we'll get there. All right. Meredith, I wanted to start with questions about your background and the relationship between reality TV and the law more generally, because we're basically asking you to put on a little masterclass, teach some lessons about what you've gleaned from reality TV and how those lessons might

be fruitfully applied to the Supreme Court. And again, all of this is because we believe firmly that the drama of reality TV is nothing compared to the drama of one First Street. So on your background, can you walk us through your trajectory? You attended Northwestern Law School like our co-host Kate Shaw. You guys have had very similar career trajectories. You went to Northwestern Law School. You also got an MBA at Northwestern's business school. And then you went into jewelry design. And from there, you launched your platform as a reality TV star.

So how did all of this happen? You know, it's like everything in life. It just sort of all unfolded and came about. You know, I was in undergrad and I was going to take a criminal justice minor because the criminal law was always very intriguing to me. It was always the criminal mind and how law works and everything surrounding it. And in order to do that, I would have had to add another year on to undergrad. And so I thought, well, why not apply to law school? I don't know

what I want to do anyway. So I did. And during my first semester, I decided to apply to the business school because I still didn't know what I wanted to do. And I was one of the early people in Northwestern's joint degree program way back when, decades ago. I guess I can say now, unfortunately for me, but that's okay. And I completed the program during my time there. I actually started businesses as well. I'm, you know, a very ambitious person. I do not sit still ever still to this day. And so I had opened one of the first Pilates studios in Chicago, which we later expanded into a full scale gym with um, with everything from weights to gyrotonics and yoga, whatever, all the above. And then I also started a real estate development

company. This is all while you're in school. Yes. It was a little crazy, but, um, a lot of fun. And, um, I'm a bit of a workaholic. That's a fair statement to make. But in any case, I did do all of that and was kind of plowing along and having children. I also had my oldest son, Reed, who's not on the show, but he is in existence. I had him while I was still in school. I remember the day that I couldn't fit in the desk anymore because my stomach was too big. So yeah, I kind of just

was plowing ahead, plowing forward. And then I had Brooks and Chloe as well and was doing all these projects, all this different stuff. And one morning I was mugged walking home from dropping my oldest son off at school on a street that you would think was very safe and never expect anything bad to happen. And it was oddly this wake up call for me where I decided that I wasn't doing the things I wanted to do, that I wasn't present when I was with my kids. I was constantly dealing with contractors and phone calls and this, that, and the other. And so I decided to take some time off. And it was a crazy time, extraordinarily volatile stock market, similar to what it is these days. And so I was day trading for myself.

That's how I was keeping busy. And I eventually decided to start my jewelry brand. Maybe a few years later, Seth told me he was going on a business trip to Hong Kong and India. And I know there's a lot of stones and production and sourcing that goes on. And I was like, you know what? I want to tag along. I think I want to start a jewelry collection. And he thought I was crazy as did everyone I spoke to were in the height of the worst recession of my lifetime for sure. And, uh, I thought this is the time because I have no inventory going in and, um, you know, I can see how it goes and tread lightly and people who wouldn't have done business with me before were looking for business to do, you know, so kind of like lowered the barriers to entry and I did it. So you described your trajectory from college to law school as initially being provoked by an interest in the criminal mind. Is that what also led you to reality television? Or when you were sitting in law school classes, were you like, ah, yes, right?

Like, I am interested in the criminal mind. I will go to law school and then later on, right, go to reality TV because of the overlap. Yes. I mean, I did not have any clue that the criminal mind would be quite so prevalent in reality television. That was definitely a surprise to me. So my fascination with the criminal mind is what led me to law school. I knew I would never, ever practice criminal law in reality just because I'm a very afraid person and I'm already neurotic enough where I move houses every single winter, as you've seen. So I'm very self-protective in that way. So I never would have actually gone down that path. But that was the original intrigue that brought me there for sure.

And no, I did not have any clue that it would overlap with reality TV. That was definitely not what I was thinking. Can I tag on there and ask about your experience in law school? It seems like you and Kate had very different experiences at Northwestern. So I just want to push on this a little bit. Is Northwestern where you learned to read a bitch? Is that where you learned to do that in law school? Northwestern taught me legal reasoning, which I would say probably helps read a bitch. You said legal reading or legal reasoning? Okay. Okay. Not legal reading a bitch. Okay. It's a totally different- No, legal reasoning. But the reality is that is how you read a bitch at the end of the day.

You know, if you're going from A to B to C and it makes sense, you're going to win the argument, always, from someone who's just going from A to Z and nobody understands it. Harry Osofsky, this is a great tagline for Northwestern Law School, where you will learn legal reasoning and incidentally, how to read a bitch. Like, I think that's the line. Correct? I'm sure that they would be very proud of that. Honestly, we at Michigan did a profile of a former student on The Bachelorette.

So I don't see why they wouldn't be, to be clear. There are actually a lot of reality TV stars who have gone to law school, like a former guest and friend of the pod, Mark Moran from FBoy Island. There's Yul Kwon from Survivor. There's also that guy Sean from Survivor. I forget what his last name is. I think it's Williams or something like that. So lots of reality TV stars. I mean, I think there's something here, Meredith. Legal reading, writing, and reading a bit has got to be on the curriculum. I think so. I mean, the reality is law school is a way of thinking. Like, it teaches you how to think and how to reason and how to process information, which is crucial to reality television. One other plug for the law school method before we ask you to apply the lessons from reality TV to the Supreme Court, and that is, is there any sense in which cold calling,

that is the Socratic method where professors just call on students without them volunteering, prepared you to respond to the unexpected from your castmates on reality TV? Oh my gosh. Every class, I remember just sitting there dreading, thinking, when are they going to be like, and Ms. Rosenberg? And I'd always be like, oh. So yes. I love this.

Christopher Columbus Langdell walked so Andy Cohen could run. I love that. Exactly. That's exactly what happened. Law school teaches life skills. Life skills. You never know when you're going to be called on to respond. Okay. So I do think now we want to shift to thinking about how your experiences on reality television might translate to the Supreme Court and specifically what advice you

might be able to offer certain Supreme Court justices and or legislators in light of your experiences dealing with all of the drama that is the Real Housewives franchise. So hypothetically, let's say you think one of your work colleagues is leaking things to the press. You think they're probably the source for stories, but you just can't prove it. Like hypothetically, let's say the Wall Street Journal reported some behind-the-scenes negotiations at the Supreme Court. And it just so happens that one of your colleagues on the court has repeatedly given interviews to the Wall Street Journal. And you think it's them, but you can't prove it. What are you going to do? We go Socratic method entirely. You just

start asking a lot of questions and you kind of have to listen, let them talk, listen, ask more questions, let them talk. And hopefully they trip themselves up somewhere along the way. If they're guilty of it. If they weren't, then they won't trip themselves up because they didn't do it. Could this all be accelerated if you took the person on an all-justice field trip, like say to the Cayman Islands, and like there was a yacht and you went on a booze cruise and there was some side drama and then this became the main drama? Do you think that would accelerate the disclosure of the inevitable leaker? I think as we see on Housewives, girls trips and alcohol will always accelerate it. I think that's a tip. Right. I think this could be very useful. PIO office, get on it. I know. This is how you do it. Don't call in the marshal. This is the way.

Or really the advice is that other journalists and outlets need to be hosting parties for Supreme Court justices and simulating the drama of a Cayman's Island vacation. How do you know this isn't already happening, Leah? I mean, we've heard a lot about the FedSoc and Heritage Foundation parties. I think this could already be happening. Private jets, private yachts, I mean, Galapagos trips. We need the other justices there to actually get to the heart of who the leaguer is. Another question, Meredith, and again, I actually do think this is not only relevant for reality TV, but also the court. What do you do if one of your colleagues has a social

media burner account where they are dragging everyone else and no one knows who it is? Well, first you have to figure out who it is. That would be number one. So this is back to the girls trip. Yeah. You've got to figure out what you're dealing with because wrongful accusations in that light can be very serious and negative. So first you have to decipher who it is. And I mean, once you figure that out, you have to make a choice. Like, is this something that was so negative that we cannot move forward? Or is this something that, you know, the person's being accountable, they're being apologetic.

It was like a one-time mistake because they were upset and lashed out. You know, you got to assess the situation and see if it's a situation you can move forward with the person or not. What if you agree with the dragging that they've been doing on the burner account? Do you then sort of like, I know who you are. I would like to join the dragging. Then you give them presents and you applaud them. Checking, just checking. That's when you get yourself in real trouble then, right? Only if someone finds out. Even if you agree, you don't drink it. Only if ProPublica finds out.

Okay, so next hypothetical question. What if one of your work colleagues is actually putting their name behind interviews, dragging you in the press, like saying you're the Supreme Court justice without any real methodology or you're too negative on the court and you're causing all of these problems, then what do you do? So in reality TV versus the Supreme Court, I think those are probably a bit more different than some of the other

situations. In reality TV, for the most part, if it was just like in the press and not like in our own interactions, I'd probably ignore it until at some point we were back interacting again and address it at that point in time. If I'm a Supreme Court justice, I have to speak up in the press immediately, obviously. You can't let things kind of slide for a while and deal with it later like you can in reality TV. There's just a little bit of a difference. We're allowed to be a little bit more messier. I don't know. I was just about to say, I'm not sure that that's right. Because if I took that advice, I think the Chief Justice is going to have to take some steps because you're saying, right, he might actually need to respond to some of what Sam Alito is saying

in his face. I think that, you know, it's definitely different. I feel like with us, we have more time to let things kind of, you know, one comment from somebody I would ignore if it's been over and over and over again, I am going to address it, but I'm not, I'm not going to worry about running out to the press to address it immediately. It's just a little different because for us too, like what someone says in the press doesn't really live forever. What they say on camera does. That's interesting. So it's a different.

That is interesting. Yeah, it's just a different situation. So for me, I'd rather address it on camera where it's going to live forever. So you're saying they should address it at Supreme Court oral arguments. Have oral arguments between the justices. Like, live streamed should actually be filmed and televised, but we'll take what we can get just live streamed on it. That's where you should do it. Like, Clarence, what did you mean when you said everything was better before I was Chief Justice? Like, what did you mean by that? Like, it'll be like a reunion show.

Yes. And that's it. And then Andy Cohen comes out, and everyone's wearing really nice robes, their dress robes, as it were. And they just sort of sit up there, and they just go back and forth and answer questions. I love it. I love that. Yeah, me too. Here's another scenario, Meredith. Again, the parallels between the court and reality TV are just so striking. What do you do when one of your work colleagues, who is supposed to be relatively wealthy, the whole point of this

is that it is an aspirational lifestyle, but you know that this person does not pay their own bills and seems to be on the franchise for the grift. And I'm not naming names, but, you know, the kind of person who will let a patron pay for boarding school tuition for their kids or will accept a free seat on a private plane because it was going to go to waste anyway. What do you do with that person? Well, obviously, again,

it's a little bit different circumstance but on this show i would let that go i wouldn't be as bothered by even if it was like a danielle staub level grifting like again real housewives of new jersey i was very into it at one point i shouldn't say i let that go okay it depends on the level like you're saying if it's something where someone's just trying to make themselves look like they have more than they do, I would be like, I don't really care, whatever. Like, you know, fine. Yeah. It'll come out in the wash. Yeah.

It's not my problem. Not my business. Not my problem. But if it's truly like hardcore drifting, that's not like someone just trying to fluff and puff a little, I'd have to call it out. I'd have to call it out. Okay, so again, message to the Chief Justice. Gotta call out the grift.

That's also on his to-do list at our reunion. So, given your experience with the Real Housewives franchise, which Supreme Court justice do you think is most likely to be on a Real Housewives franchise? Oh my gosh. I hope none of them. Feel free to elaborate on that answer. Oh my gosh. Yes. I hope none of them. I do not believe there are Supreme Court justices belong on reality TV at any level. But they're literally living for the drama right now. Like women dying and parking lots. Look, if I thought that I had a chance of becoming a Supreme Court justice, I would not have gone at housewives.

Let me say that. But they've already been confirmed. So they can do it. That's true. Like Sonia. Exactly. I really hope none. I really would.

I think it's not a positive for a Supreme Court justice. No. How about this? Let's assume, hypothetically, some of them do make it on to reality television and maybe a Real Housewives franchise. The Real Housewives of One First Street, Northeast. Exactly. Exactly. I think we should try to figure out their taglines. And so maybe we can take some of the already in play taglines and ask if they would work for any Supreme Court justices. So I'll throw out one and we can kind of see if... I know which one you're going to throw out. Okay, well, fine. You can read my mind.

First one. When you take cheap shots, always expect a hangover. Could this suit any Supreme Court justice? Well, that's a Lisa Barlow one. It is. It is a Lisa Barlow one. Who's going to be hung over?

Melissa, do you have any ideas? I think I do. I'm going to let Meredith answer, though, the other MM. The other MM? No, you go ahead. I think I should be throwing out the tagline. Oh, we can do that, too. You can throw out the tagline.

We're happy to do that. Feel free. I think we should start with my last one. Okay. In a town filled with dirty lies, everyone could use a bath. I would say Clarence Thomas. The problem is... Sorry.

I would also say Ginny Thomas. I was going to say the problem is this applies to too many of them. Like, they can't all have the same tagline. I'm making it too easy. Dirty Lies, Sam Alito would have to be, you know, near the top of the tagline list for me. All right. Well, what about going back to season one?

Okay. Jealousy is a disease, which I say get well soon. That's trickier now. I say Sam Alito again. So jealous of the good press some of the other justices get, and he wants people to come out and defend him. The first half of the tagline works really well for him, but the second half of the tagline projects some more, I don't care, do you energy, right? Like someone who actually isn't jealous um so in that case i would probably

say justice jackson because she has been able to project like very strong i don't care what sam alito is saying energy it's bs um so that's what i would go for your original tagline yeah she she is giving i'm just a bad bitch. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, how about this one? I don't actually know whose tagline this is.

You don't have to like me. I love myself enough for both of us. I think that was also Lisa, no? Was that Lisa Barlow too? I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I love myself enough for both of us. Yes, that's definitely Lisa. I think it could also be...

I think there's an obvious answer to this one. My favorite Virgo, Neil Gorsuch. I think so. Neil Gorsuch, exactly. He does love himself enough for the whole court. Exactly. There you go, right? Exactly, for sure. Yes. Okay. So, Meredith, if you had to pick a Supreme Court justice for your tagline, when I take a shot, I always hit my mark.

Which justice do you think might be able to rise to the level of that tagline? Well, I don't know. Who's always on point? That's the question. Elena Kagan. That is Elena Kagan's basic tagline that should be emblazoned on her robe. I think another Meredith Marks easy Elena Kagan translation is, I may be known for my ice, but I always bring the heat. I think we've basically established that Elena Kagan is your spirit justice. Yeah, there we go. Or at least, you know, the thing is with the taglines, it's always going to be like what resonates with you. Well, on that point, we shouldn't leave the other justices out. What about Mary Cosby's, if you come for me, I will send Jesus after you?

Oh, that's so funny. I was thinking of that one where we were just running through them. I couldn't remember exactly what she said, but I was thinking the one where Mary says, I'm sending Jesus. Who would send Jesus to get them? Oh, God. I mean, to get the enemies. Leah? This is Justice Barrett. I think that's right.

I think that's right. Yeah. What about Jen Shah? I really liked the line when she was going through her legal troubles. I'm fighting for my life, not your approval. That's a kind of DGAF kind of attitude. Is that a liberal justice?

Maybe Justice Sotomayor or Justice? I do feel like they are fighting for everyone's lives right now. Well, that's fair. Just in a different way, you know? Yeah. Maybe not what Jen was thinking. No, I think Jen was thinking for her own as opposed to, you know yeah like maybe not what Jen was thinking but no I think broadly for her own as opposed to yeah like not like an existential threat to democracy just sort of like an existential

threat to myself yeah I like that for them um this one is hard because I think it could go in a few different directions you know if you think of it as I'm fighting for lives you know then I think maybe one of the democratic appointees yeah if you think of it as I'm fighting for lives, you know, then I think maybe one of the Democratic appointees. If you think of it as I'm fighting for my life victim complex, like persecution complex. Justice Alito. Right. Then it's more Justice Alito, Clarence Thomas. And so I think it really depends how you read this one. If I'm fighting for lives in Jesus, not your approval. Also, Justice Barrett with a very fetal personhood forward kind of reading.

Yes. Yes. That is another possibility. The Housewives contain multitudes. I mean, the level of layers and the simple tagline, you know. Andy Cohen is, again, American Academy of Arts and Sciences for Andy Cohen. He's really just undersung like what he's managed to cultivate here absolutely genius what about this one um

this rose isn't scared to handle a little prick that one always makes me laugh. I mean, I always interpret that in a way that it probably is not intended to. I think that's probably how it was intended. So I can't even think about that in terms of... I know. It really does melt the brain a little and your eyes to think about it in those terms. Let's just leave that one. It's almost too good to contemplate. We'll leave that to our listeners' imagination. I really think we should.

Yes. We'll leave that to the marshal to discern who is the appropriate bearer of that tagline. So I guess maybe one final question, Meredith. Any general words of advice you can offer to Supreme Court justices based on your experience with reality television? Yeah, advice I could offer them. I would say actions speak louder than words, which is my mantra, my everything. There's so much fluff and puff and people spewing stuff that they don't really stand behind. So let's see the actions. Yeah. Instead of some namby-pamby code of ethics adjacent writing, actually do a code of ethics and then actually apply and use said code of ethics. I think that's a great idea.

Or instead of a Brett Kavanaugh, I'm a very reasonable concurrence person coupled on to his let's overrule Roe opinion or a Justice Barrett, I'm a very serious statutory interpretation person, separate writing, while doing major questions doctrine. Actions speak louder than words. So there we go. Meredith, thank you so much for your time and indulging our efforts to bring law and reality television and the Supreme Court together. We sincerely appreciate it. Thank you, Meredith. Thank you, guys. It was fun. I wish I was a little better at the game, but it was certainly fun. Oh, you're a pro at this game. I mean, like, basically,

this game is reading a bitch and you're great at it. As long as you're willing to play, the game works. Well, thank you guys so much. Thank you. producer. Our interns this summer are Hannah Seroff and Tessa O'Donoghue. Audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Music by Eddie Cooper. Production support from Madeline Herringer and Ari Schwartz. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. And thanks to our digital team, Phoebe Bradford and Joe Matosky. Subscribe to Strict Scrutiny on YouTube to catch full episodes.

Find us at youtube.com slash at strict scrutiny podcast.