Strict Scrutiny - Yes, We’re in a Constitutional Crisis

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Live from Fordham Law, Leah, Melissa, and Kate stay on the Trump 2.0 chaos beat. They cover the continued ransacking of the federal government by the new administration, lawlessness at the DOJ, and the gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Finally, they take some time to consider just how much this new administration hates women.  Pre-order your copy of Leah's forthcoming book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes (out May 13th)Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky

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Let's get more of you talking in a new language. Babbel's gifting our listeners 60% off subscriptions at babbel.com slash strict. Get up to 60% off at babbel.com slash strict. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash strict. Babbel dot com slash strict. Rules and restrictions may apply. Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court. It's an old joke, but when a argued 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. Hello and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it.

Because the Trump administration 2.0 is in full can't stop, won't stop mode with an onslaught of executive orders and other actions that seem designed to break the constitutional order and maybe even the world order, we are not going to be actually talking about the court today. The court's also been on vacation like, where are those guys? Like, mustique, where are they? Who knows? The court's not in session, but the federal government is.

So we're going to be covering much of what the Trump administration has been doing over the last week. So this is all to say that we are staying on the chaos beat. And we should note that we are recording live at Fordham Law School on a big crowd here at Fordham Law School. And they're excited. And we're recording on a Thursday evening.

And the way this usually plays out is that we record on Thursday. And then there's all kinds of stuff that happen on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then this episode gets released on Monday. So we don't even know what's going to happen. So a lot of this may be preempted by other things, but take it as a time capsule of a moment that we were

in on a Thursday night and that there's more to come. And we're just going to soldier on and do the best that we can. So we are going to start with a rundown of the most outrageous recent developments. It would take us days to get through all of them. So we're just going to cover some highlights, really lowlights and not JVN-approved lowlights. This is going to include some new moves made

inside the administration by Musk, Trump, and some perhaps less familiar figures such as the acting Deputy Attorney General who we'll call Dag Bag, Emile Bovet, and interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia aka USA Dick. Yes, good, good. Yeah, so we're also going to cover some developments in courts involving some of the administration's actions. So it's going to be a lot of stuff on DEI for men with bad personalities. And if there's time, we will take a step back and focus

on what these early moves tell us about the substantive vision of women and their place in society that seems to drive Trump, Musk, Vance, the Doge bags, maybe we should call them doggy bags, dogy bags, they are full of shit, the Muskrats, evil Musketeers, and whoever else is calling the shots over there in the Mojo Dojo Casa White House.

I hope the Dean was prepared for us to get a little spicy tonight. I feel like Charlie XCX at the Grammys, right? Like performing guests. Anyways. There's no delay, though. They can't bleep anything out. OK, and I actually want, before we dive in,

to make one threshold observation, which is that Leah has been saying for years that the meanest thing you can do to the conservative justices on the Supreme Court is to accurately describe their rulings. It is outrageous. Not a joke.

Not a joke. Just a fact. That is a deep cut RuPaul drag race reference, just to be clear. And I feel like there is something similar afoot right now, which is that the best way to sound kind of like a raving lunatic right now is to accurately describe the ransacking of the federal government that is occurring in front of our faces. It is crazy. Reciting it without embellishment truly makes you sound unhinged. And I think if you landed here from Mars and just tuned into what we were saying, that would be your

conclusion. Like this, there's something wrong. These people are not right on the head. No, like this is all just what is happening. We are trying to dispassionately just describe it for you. So on that note, let's start breaking it down. So we spent a lot of time in our last episode talking about Doge and we'll do a bit more of that today, but we're gonna start with the Department of Justice, which is actually becoming pretty Doge-like.

Get it like D-O-J, Doge. D-O-G-E, Doge. Okay, anyways, we are recording this live show in the city of New York, a great city, with... Whoo! ...a not-so-great mayor. He's pretty mid. He's pretty mid. Eric Adams.

So...right. Where do things stand with Mr. Adams, Melissa? So he seems very committed to the rat situation, which I appreciate. Very committed to threading his eyebrows, which I'm always here for some strong manscaping, so good for him. But until last Monday, Mayor Adams was actually under federal indictment, which make America great again, make America Tammany Hall again, whichever you choose,

not great for the city of New York. He had been charged by the US Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York with corruption charges, specifically bribery and the solicitation of foreign campaign contributions. Now, when this was first announced, we were a little dubious about how those charges would ultimately fare before our very corruption-forward Supreme

Court, which in recent years has taken a hatchet to various federal anti-corruption laws. But it appears that we will never actually have the experience of reciting faithfully the conservative justices' anti-corruption slash corruption forward decisions because this particular case is never going to get to the United States Supreme Court because acting Deputy Attorney General Dagbag, Emil Beauay, who was also one of Donald Trump's lawyers in the New York hush money trial and who is now emerging as a top lieutenant in the Trump DOJ,

has decided to put the kibosh on this prosecution. Or at least he has tried to do that. So this is a developing story. But here is where we are as of Thursday night. So Thursday 6pm, we should say. It's gonna be a long night. It could be a very long night. So let's just bring you up to speed on where things stand as of what is it 6 15 Eastern Time. On Monday, as Melissa mentioned in a letter that I personally

hope will be widely taught in both legal ethics and government lawyering classes for years to come. In that letter, Beauvais directed Danielle Sassoon, then the acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York, to dismiss the case against Adams. Dismissed without prejudice, so the charges would remain dangling out there. Seemed like that was part of the point. And so soon, we learned just before the recording started, resigned rather than agree to dismiss the charges. Remember, she was the acting US attorney designated by the Trump administration.

She was picked for, elevated for, this role by Trump. And that's part of why this resignation is such a big deal. So she wrote a letter to the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, saying she could not... Pamela Jo Bondi. Say her name. Say her full name. I told Melissa I would and I already failed. It's a very Florida name. Like I grew up in Florida. In the fifth grade, there were five girls who all had Joe as their middle name. So this is very specific, very of the moment. I will not omit that again.

Pamela Jo Bondi. In the letter, Sassoon explained that she could not in good faith request that these charges be dismissed. And Beauvais responded with an eight page screed of his own saying that Sassoon's resignation was accepted in light of her refusal to comply with his directive and also saying many, many other things.

So we are mostly gonna focus on the initial letter and there is a lot in it. That's the initial letter directing Sassoon to dismiss the charges. First, there is the fact that Beauvais decided to put in writing this letter at all. It is in some tension with Stringer Bell's sage advice not to take notes on a criminal conspiracy.

So, I mean, to be clear, the main Justice Department could have leaned on the Southern District of New York quietly, could have tried. Putting this letter into the public domain reflects a choice, and I think a choice to signal and to broadcast real antipathy for these kinds of anti-corruption prosecutions. And more than that, so it does seem in DOJ's defense that they do sometimes understand Stringer Bell's advice because Sassoon's later letter to Pamela Jo Bondi notes,

quote, Mr. Beauvais admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusion. Like, I know I'm engaged in a little conspiracy here. Light conspiracy. Light conspiracy. Don't take notes.

All right, so what did the DOJ letter directing the dismissal of the Adams prosecution actually say? Well, first, it makes clear that Maine justice did not decide to dismiss these charges against Adams because it had determined that there was a problem with the case or with the underlying evidence that had been gathered in support of the prosecution.

So that was not the issue. Rather, the decision to let this light corruption slide, as it were, is because Mayor Adams in the administration's own judgment apparently needs to be free and on the streets to help the federal government enforce the immigration laws. Hmm, let's put this differently. This is a non-prosecution that apparently is in exchange

for Mayor Adams' cooperation with the Justice Department, the Immigration Department's decision to enforce the immigration laws and do this mass deportation scream, literally. And Sessun's letter also says as much. It says, quote, Adams's attorney repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist

with immigration enforcement. So apparently, that was what was on offer. And the DOJ said, yes, I would. So I heard that. Exactly. Yes, please. Look, to be fair, the initial DOJ said, yes, I would solve that. Exactly, yes please. Look, to be fair, the initial DOJ letter did contain some suggestion that the case

should be dismissed for other reasons. Not because of the weakness of the evidence or the legal theory, but because the charges were at least being pursued too close to the mayoral election, right? They were impeding Mayor Adams' reelection bid, and also there was a suggestion that the previous presidential administration

was essentially punishing Adams for his criticism of their immigration policy, and that at least was the ostensible reason provided in part of the letter. But all of that, even inside the four corners of the letter, seems pretty pretextual because the letter then goes on to say, quote, we are particularly concerned about the impact of the prosecution on Mayor Adams ability to support critical ongoing federal efforts to protect the American people from the disastrous effects of unlawful mass migration and resettlement. So really does seem to be a thank you for

your cooperation kind of situation. And as we all know, tips and gratuities to officials are perfectly legal, right? Per the US Supreme Court. Non-prosecution, the best tip. Exactly, exactly. Now there is a footnote in that letter that tries to walk it back a little. It reads, quote, your office correctly noted in a memorandum, as Mr. Bove clearly stated to defense counsel,

the government is not offering to exchange dismissal of a criminal case for Adams' assistance on immigration enforcement." End quote. Insert Catherine Hahn winking face here. That's not actually in the letter. But the footnote doesn't really blunt the impact of the text that's right there above

the line. Like we said, Stringer Bell would never. But these guys seem to want to convey to people, scratch our back, we'll scratch yours. They want to make clear the implied slash not so implied quid pro quo, do our back, we'll scratch yours. They want to make clear the implied slash not so implied quid pro quo, do our bidding and we'll put you above the law too. Can I ask a question though, just as a con law matter? Do you remember that whole Prince thing about how

the federal government cannot commandeer state officials into the service of a federal program? It's true, but what if the federal government instead implies that a state officer's freedom depends on whether they are keeping daddy happy by enforcing federal immigration law? Not conscription. Not commenting.

Exactly. Then it's totally fine. So after the Department of Justice's public integrity section was informed they would be taking over Mayor Adams' case, the acting head of the unit and his boss, the senior most career official in DOJ's criminal division, both resigned. This is Trump's Saturday night massacre when Nixon was firing officials who wouldn't do his bidding to keep him above the law, and this is just another Thursday afternoon, less

than a month, into the Trump administration. This is an order so foul, so transparently corrupt, Trump selected officials are resigning rather than touch it. So the New York Times also reported that Mr. Bove in accepting Sassoon's resignation informed her that the prosecutors who worked on the case, Adams' case, were being placed on administrative leave and would be investigated by the attorney general and the Justice Department's internal investigative arm.

He also named those line prosecutors by name in the letter, so I mean, like, not full doxing because their addresses aren't there, but I mean, this does open them up to all kinds of stuff. Yep. So, you know, the district judge who was presiding over the case, Judge Dale Ho, whose nickname we have regrettably had to retire since he took the bench,

but you can listen to the back catalog. If you're a true fan, you know. But, you know, I don't think it is clear who is going to actually stand up in front of Judge Ho and ask that these charges be dismissed, maybe it will be Bovet personally, who is in main justice, but it'll be big balls. That's a joke.

Yeah, so we don't know, but I am quite sure that is going to be quite a hearing, if and when somebody puts their name to this ask and has to answer questions about why. Maybe it'll be Elon Musk. Anyway, guess what? We're not even done covering the DOJ. That was just one episode in this week

at your Department of Justice. There are more DOJ slash New York City hijinks that we can talk about. Last night, newly confirmed Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi announced that the Justice Department is suing the state of New York. At her press conference, Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi announced that DOJ has, quote,

filed charges against Kathy Hochul, Tish James, and others, end quote. Now, that is not actually true, because Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi was talking about a civil suit that does not involve charges at all. It is a challenge to the city's immigration policy. So it's not a criminal prosecution, and therefore the term charges is really not apt.

But why would the nation's top law enforcement official pay attention to these minor, minor distinctions between a criminal prosecution and a civil suit? The best people, the meritocracy in action. I think so. All right, so staying on the topic of New York, because there is yes, more. So the great controller of our city, Brad Lander, who is also running for mayor without federal charges

dangling over him, announced yesterday some not so great news, which is that the federal government has apparently clawed back $80 million in funds that were not only approved, but evidently also dispersed to New York. The funds were appropriated by Congress to help New York cover the costs of housing and providing other services to migrants in the city.

I do not know the mechanism by which this clawback was achieved, but I do know that it seems outrageous. The administration is, to be clear, absolutely entitled to change its immigration enforcement policy. Like no one disputes that, but it cannot do it in this way. I mean, that I think observation could hold true for much of what we have seen in recent weeks and what we're gonna talk about, But it cannot do it in this way. I mean, that I think observation could hold true

for much of what we have seen in recent weeks and what we're gonna talk about. But we should say that Lander has pledged to challenge the federal government's actions in court. And so that's something that we're gonna keep an eye on. And what this amounts to, they literally took $80 million out of New York's bank account.

Like that is looting the American people. And we should link this back to corruption. Like you would think New York City's mayor would be making a stink about this. Alas, he has been bought off with a non-prosecution decision by the Trump administration. Like it is the corruption all the way down. All right, there's more, we're not done.

Literally covering DOJ in this environment is like drinking from a fire hydrant. So we recently learned that the Trump DOJ is planning to take a pass on enforcing anti-corruption laws. So, kell surprise, right? This is no surprise. Not only is corruption going to be encouraged,

anti-corruption laws will not be enforced. And as with many of the administration's moves, reading about this felt a little bit like reading an onion headline, but it's not. So pursuant to a new executive order that was issued, the administration has plans to stop enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The FCPA is a 1977 federal law that prohibits US citizens and entities

from bribing foreign government officials in order to benefit their business interests. Seems like a good idea. But I guess the administration decided that it was going to take too long to wait for a case to get up to the United States Supreme Court so they could strike down the FCPA. So the Trump administration decided just

to do this with a stroke of the pen instead. And I have to wonder what big law is going to do. Because a lot of big law firms have huge FCPA practices. So I mean, if there is a burgeoning coalition to fight back here, I think it's white shoe law firms. From your lips. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Ha! Ha! Ha! Complimenting this executive order, ordering literally non-enforcement of this corrupt practices act, Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi has also announced that the administration will disband the National Security Division's corporate enforcement

unit and drastically limit prosecutions under the Foreign Agent Registration Act or FARA, you know, does seem to reduce to make corruption great again. Strict Scrutiny is brought to you by Naked Wines. Ever walk in a store and have no idea what wine to get? Me too. I've stopped wasting time at the grocery store staring at a giant wall of wine and not knowing what to pick. That's why I love our next sponsor, Naked Wines. This podcast is sponsored by Naked Wines. It's 2025. Do you still shop for wine like we're still back in the days when we had a functioning democracy? Okay, that one stunk. But Naked Wines is here to help. Naked Wines is a service that

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and use the code and password strict for six bottles of wine for 39.99. So let's move from the end of the video of wine for $39.99. So let's move from the acting deputy AG Dagbeg and the newly confirmed AG to the interim US attorney for DEC, as we said USA Dick, a guy by the name of Ed Martin. So a few days before Beauvais absurd Adams letter, Martin sent a fawning letter to Elon Musk and Doge compatriot Steve Davis that was evidently sent via X only, as one does, you know, when you're-

Your postal service is just X. Right, like when you're a government official communicating with private citizens. Sliding into your DMs, as it were. Yeah. Yes. So the topic of this letter appears to be I'll communicate using. Communicating with private citizens. Sliding into your DMs, as it were. So the topic of this letter appears to be reporting on the names of individuals in Doge wreaking havoc on the federal government.

And Martin pledged in the letter that, quote, if people are found to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically, we will investigate them and we will chase them to the end of the earth to hold them accountable." End quote. That last part is bolded in the letter. So too is a sentence in the next paragraph which reads quote Noon is above the law. Yes, that's spelled N-O-O-N-E.

Who is?guyen? You asked? Only the best person, I think. Definitely. Someone who's part of the meritocracy. 100%. So Martin is really distinguishing himself even among this administration of absolute winners.

So after being installed as interim US attorney for the District of the District of Columbia, he fired dozens of prosecutors who were involved in the prosecution of the January 6th protesters. So again, very, very normal. And I want to step back to note that what they are doing seems to be in tension with Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi's, PJB's,

new Department of Justice policy of requiring all DOJ lawyers to sign all briefs. Previously, the department had allowed attorneys to opt out of participating in certain cases or signing their names onto briefs. A move Bondi said, quote, politicize the department. So now people seem to be in a double bind. You have to sign your name to all briefs. And the administration will fire you if they don't like some of those briefs,

because in addition to firing people involved in January 6 prosecutions, the department is reportedly investigating the prosecutors on the Adams case as well. All right, back to Ed Martin. So Martin also withdrew all of the still pending charges against those January 6th defendants. So folks who had not yet been convicted

but still had charges pending against them, all of those charges were withdrawn. But guess what listeners, one of the January 6th defendants. Wait, wait, wait, question. Did those January 6th defendants, were they needed to help enforce federal immigration law? Probably, yes. Probably, probably. Awesome. Or the enforce federal immigration law? Probably, yes.

Probably, probably. Or the Voting Rights Act. Yes. It's hard to say. Deep cut. Very deep cut. All right, well, it turns out that one of the January six defendants who got one of these get literally get out of jail free cards

was Martin's own client. So Ed Martin was still representing this guy. He hadn't actually withdrawn from the representation of this defendant. And when that was brought to Martin's attention, like, hey, there's a little conflict here, he said that he believed that he had withdrawn from the case. But it turned out that he hadn't.

And when he went to actually get dismissed from the case, having already directed the dismissals of those charges, the district judge, who he went before, basically told him that he would not be granting leave for Martin to withdraw, because Martin was no longer a member in good standing of the federal court there. That is how you do it, OK?

Legend. Absolutely iconic. The district court was like, yeah, your card's no good here. Thank you. And correctly, there's at least one ethics complaint growing out of all of this that has been filed against him by the 65 Project, so we will see where that goes. I mean, I truly cannot imagine what the, I think, hardworking, decent people in the U.S.

Attorney's Office in D.C. must be making of all of this, their nominal head who can't even withdraw from his unethical representation because he has let his bar membership lapse. Only the best people. One more piece of DOJ kind of adjacent news involves Rod Blagojevich. I really was not expecting to hear Rod Blagojevich. Me either. You sort of forgot that that whole thing happened. It's almost like he's been under a bridge somewhere.

Right. He had just kind of become irrelevant. Well, I don't know. I don't know what the next season is going to hold. But I think he could be a central figure. It's entirely possible in any event. He is, as a reminder, the former governor of my home state of Illinois.

And Blagojevich did not have the good sense to try to sell a Senate seat while Donald Trump was the president. That was poor timing on his part. So he was prosecuted because that's what we did then. And he was convicted. He served eight years in federal prison. And he had the rest of his 14-year sentence

commuted by Donald Trump the first time Donald Trump was the president. Well, Trump has now made that commutation into a full pardon. Plagovitch feels quite vindicated. And I just feel like maybe this is his moment. I don't know. Maybe he'll run for mayor too. Well no, he too is needed to help enforce

federal immigration law and the Voting Rights Act. Yep, yeah, yeah. All right, okay, we need a palate cleanser from all of this DOJ nonsense. Let's do some updates on some other agencies outside of DOJ, and then we can turn to all of the lawsuits, which we've gotten a lot of questions about, so lots to say about that.

First up, I think we should remind everyone that Russell Vought was confirmed to OMB. And who is Russell Vought? Well, he is, if you listen to our summer episodes, the architect of much of Project 2025. When Project 2025 was the conservative blueprint for the first 100 days of the Trump administration, which Donald Trump said he had absolutely no knowledge of.

Interestingly, the first 30 odd days of the Trump administration seems to be following Project 2025 pretty much down to the letter, so. Maybe there was some overlap. Hasn't even been 30 yet, Melissa, can you believe it? Who knows? When we hit the 30-day mark I don't know where we're gonna be. How many days has it been? 25 when we're recording. We are 25 days into a four-year sentence. Oh my god. And four years is optimistic. Oh, god. Well, there is that third term. Exactly. Anyway, we know that Russell Vought

is part of the unilateral funding freeze. He hadn't even been confirmed to OMB when he got that going. But despite that, you would think that the fact that he paused all of this federal funding would have been a moment for the senators on both sides of the aisle to be like, hey, is this the guy we want running OMB? But apparently not. Well, it sailed through the Senate, was confirmed, and for good measure, he was then subsequently

made the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB, who's real director, Donald Trump, fired last Friday, two Fridays ago. Yeah. So for folks who might not be familiar with it, the CFPB does super important work. It supervises banks and other financial institutions. It protects consumers by doing consumer education, investigating complaints filed by consumers, finding companies that engage in fraudulent and abusive practices. And so of course these guys were like, that one's got to go. Very very populous.

Yes. Definitely good for the price of eggs. Yeah. And you know, I think this too is part of the corruption forward ethos of the administration because guess who was and is trying to do something that the CFPB might have regulated? Our secret president, Elon Musk, who wants to create some sort of Musk buck and use X as a digital payment system and federal regulators had to no surprise been carefully reviewing and scrutinizing digital payment systems because of security risks, fraud risks, and more. And that's no longer a problem.

Coincidence. I'm sure it's a pure coincidence, but Votes first act as the acting CFPB director was in fact to tell the entire agency we're no longer enforcing any of the consumer protection laws. Literally, that's essentially what his agency-wide message said, the offices are closed, no one is to perform any work tasks. If there is an urgent matter, you

should email Mark Paoletta, who's the chief legal officer. Then there was an email address for Paoletta that I'm pretty sure had a typo in it, because CFPB's letters were transposed. So I don't know where that email went. But it turns out, if you want to work at the CFPB and you have a job at the CFPB, there is literally no way for you to do that.

You are barred from doing any work at the CFPB. Yeah, so. And Mark Pailetta, is that, is he a friend of our favorite Justice? I mean, all roads lead back to Clarence Thomas somehow. So yes. All roads do lead back. Speaking of roads and meritocracy,

do you remember road rules slash real world contestant slash lumberjack slash new Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy? Oh, I do, because I took a flight today and was literally panicked the entire time thinking about it. You have good reason to be panicked, because there was yet another airline collision, this time in Arizona, on Duffy's watch.

So again, I just want to point out meritocracy. Yes. Meritocracy. All right. This airline collision, there was fatality involved. This is really a catastrophe, deeply concerning if you ever do air travel, which a lot of us do. But interestingly, guess where you're not

going to hear about this sort of thing? Typically, it's been the case that when there is an incident like this, there would be an ordinary press release because the National Transportation Safety Board would release one. But in one of the most disturbing instances of the unholy entanglement between the United States government and Elon Musk's X, it was

announced that going forward, the only way that investigative information and information about agency news conferences will be released is through X itself. So X is not only going to be your mail service and your digital payment system, it is also going to be the way in which the United States government communicates with all of us about airline safety and maybe other things. So this seems great for free markets and competition and data privacy. Yeah so I also want to be clear what I think is kind of happening here why they're doing this. So I think it's related to the fact

that some federal departments are reportedly considering telling reputable news agencies to clear out and make room for wing nuts. So CNN reported that the Pentagon shared a plan that would replace NBC News, as well as Breitbart, apparently not right wing enough, with one America news network in the Pentagon press corps workplace and

the New York Post was going to be invited to the New York Times work. They're just rotating Leah. They're giving everybody a turn. That's what happens. And it just so happens that OANN's turn is forever. Don't you love the idea of page six in the Pentagon? I don't think they're on the list. He had stuff having lunch with so good.

So I think this harkens back to something we covered a while ago, which is a project that was called Teneo. This was Leonard Leo's Federalist Society for Everything. That was a plan that was described as a way to crush liberal dominance in the media, in education and elsewhere. And here I think they are propping up these far-right news networks to give them access and to give them stories that other outlets are not going to have.

I also think this same impetus is partially what explains the administration going after higher education institutions by withdrawing or attempting to withdraw National Institute of Health research funds and other, you know, again, penalties that they just seek to be imposing on these places. All right, so we have a lot of other moves and other agencies we wanna cover.

We talked last week in our last episode about the abrupt termination or pause, but potentially longer term pause of many of the programs run by USAID. There was a lot of additional reporting just in the last week about USAID workers literally stranded when the agency abruptly placed employees on administrative leave, stopped their programs, ordered many people back to the United States. I mean, and to be clear, these are individuals, many of them who are essentially US diplomats. They hold diplomatic passports.

They represent the United States and carry out US aid policy in programs all over the world. And last Friday, many of them were told they would have to immediately leave their post, meaning pack up their lives, pull their kids out of schools. One family reported having to leave a post and not bring their dog with them, which, for us, all of us

as dog owners, is just like an unthinkable thing for the government to have done of all the horrible things the government has done in recent weeks. It also kind of appears, since we last recorded, that the Doge Cabal has now set its sights on the Department of Education in a way it hadn't even a week ago. And can I just pause to say how truly a military takeover

it feels to be saying things like, or reading things like, okay, the Department of Education has fallen, right? And like no no wait it might be holding on it might not have fully fallen yet this is the tenor I think of our conversations and much of the coverage this week and it's chilling. Yeah so a few hours before we were recording Senator Ron Wyden posted this on blue sky quote my office is hearing that Doge is now at the IRS. That means must's henchmen are in a position to dig through a trove of data about every taxpayer in America, end quote.

So it seems to me that we are like a few news cycles out from a story along the lines of some Doge bro on a ketamine bender leaves at least, you know, at some weird strip club like a USB drive with millions of Americans' bank accounts and social security numbers. I'm not trying to manifest that. Sorry.

All right, so it seems that the Musprats have stormed the Department of Education and have announced that they are unilaterally terminating nearly $1 billion in US DOE contracts, including essentially eliminating a research office that was intended to track student progress. And there's already a lawsuit challenging that, and we're going to turn to it in a minute, but that's sort of where things are.

They are definitely in the building. Yeah. So this was a short list of lowlights out of DOJ, OMB, USAID, education, and more. Axios described this as masculine maximalism. They're trying to get a desk at the Pentagon. I just could not with that. But much of what is happening is in clear violation of laws passed by Congress, leading me to say, like, babe,

wake up. New unitary executive theory just dropped. Not only is all of the executive power vested in presidents, Republican presidents, all legislative power is also vested in presidents. You would think Congress would mind and make. You would be wrong. Right, yeah, you would be wrong

because when Senator Tom Tillis was asked about Elon Musk exercising Congress's power of the purse, Tillis answered, quote, "'That runs afoul of the Constitution "'in the strictest sense, "'but it's not uncommon for presidents to flex a little bit "'on where they can spend and where they can stop spending.'" I don't even understand that statement.

Like how can a little flex be unconstitutional in the strictest sense, but still be okay? We knew stare decisis was for suckers. Now it turns out constitutions are for cucks. Strict scrutiny is brought to you by Fatty 15. Life, DogeBros, and the decline of democracy are getting me down. I mean, every Wednesday, I'm thinking, what a year it's been since 8am this morning. The news is kind of running me ragged and making me feel like it's been a million years every 75 minutes. So I need something to help me stay feeling energized

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to help you live healthier and longer. You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription starter kit by going to fatty15.com slash strict and using code strict at checkout. So it seems that Congress is not just asleep at the wheel, it also seems to be co-piloting the plane right into the storm. You can pick whatever metaphor you want, but the good news is the lawsuits are flying fast and furious. So that's good. Yeah.

And so we're going to turn to that topic now. We cannot provide a full roundup of all of the lawsuits pending right now. There are too many, over three dozen, and probably significantly over. But we do wanna quickly shout out the organizations that are doing some of this work. State Democracy Defenders, Public Citizen, Protect Democracy, Democracy Forward, the ACLU,

the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, and I'm sure there are more. But these are all scrappy little organizations doing incredible work, pulling together plaintiffs, filing complaints, really laboring to make sure and to show all of us that something of the rule of law remains. There are also some law firms that

are stepping up to support this work, but more need to be doing that. And I also want to note that state attorneys general offices have also been on the front lines doing a lot of work. Over 40 lawsuits in total have already been filed. Melissa's colleague at NYU, Ryan Goodman, and the Just Security website have been doing fantastic work cataloging all of these cases. The suits are challenging among other things, the removal of officials who cannot lawfully

be fired without satisfying certain conditions, granting DOJ access to sensitive payment systems, unilaterally canceling programs, activities, expenditures, entire offices, and even agencies, as well as substantive challenges to things like the birthright citizenship, executive order, and many of these cases have resulted

in preliminary relief. So let's start by mentioning one that was just filed, that I think makes a really important argument that's distinct from those that have been filed already. And it's a suit filed against both Elon Musk and Doge. And it is challenging the extraordinary power that Musk and Doge are exercising as inconsistent with the Constitution

and specifically with the Appointments Clause. So the claim is that this kind of power can only be exercised by officers of the United States, individuals appointed as the Constitution requires for those who exercise significant authority on behalf of the United States. So if it's a principal officer, the president has to nominate and the Senate has to confirm,

and even inferior officers can only be appointed through the mechanisms that the Constitution allows if Congress acts to confer the appointment authority somewhere other than the president with Senate confirmation. None of that happened here. And so the focus of the suit is just that, you know, this extraordinary power that they are wielding

as to the education department, that's the focus of this lawsuit, but the arguments absolutely apply much more broadly. All right, we also wanna talk about some of the personnel related actions and the litigation that those actions have prompted. So just to give you a snapshot, over the last three weeks, the first three weeks of his administration,

Donald Trump has fired the following people. Career officials at the DOJ and the FBI, for no other reason than the fact that they worked on the January 6th prosecutions. He has fired a number of inspectors general, the internal watchdogs of the federal government. They fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, which is an entity that enforces the civil service laws and protects whistleblowers. He's fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics, because that person is in charge of ethics, he's fired a board member of the NLRB, preventing the board from having a quorum

and not being able to do its work enforcing labor laws. It's fired the head of the CFPB. It's fired the FEC commissioner. It's fired the EEOC commissioner, and it's fired much of the Kennedy Center's board and replaced them with new board members, including one Usha Fannis. So each of these offices slightly different and the legal arguments against the permissibility of the firing looks

somewhat different from one to the next, but the cumulative meaning and effect of these firings is clear. You know, it is to eradicate from the federal government any individual or entity that would act with any degree of independence in a way that would check a lawless president. It sounds like something I read in Project 2025. What's that? Don't know her. And to be clear, some of these officials

are not going quietly. So there have been lawsuits filed. Actually, just last night, a district court issued an order to allow the head of the Office of Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger, who is represented by friend of the show Joshua Matz, to remain in his position in advance of a hearing that was scheduled for next week. So for now Dellinger stays put. So we've already mentioned others are also planning to sue. That list includes NLRB board member Will Cox and friend of the show and

previous guest Ellen Weintra, who was attempted to be fired as an FEC commissioner last week. So the administration is going to have a number of these suits on their hands, and lo and behold, Wednesday night, acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris made an announcement that we knew was coming, but is nevertheless significant. So they are going to argue before the Supreme Court

that the case of Humphrey's executor should be overruled. As our constitutional law students know well, Humphrey's executor is a 1935 opinion that allowed Congress to create agencies with heads that are somewhat shielded from the president's ability to remove them and thus are able to be somewhat independent from politics and the president.

So this has been building for a while, but it's still a very big deal. The announcement came in the form of what's known as a 530-D letter the Department of Justice actually sent to the Senate. And that happens sometimes. The executive branch decides not to defend a statute or a precedent.

A recent example was when the Obama administration decided to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act. It announced that it had concluded that DOMA was unconstitutional, and it announced that in a letter, a 530-D letter sent to the Senate. But here, obviously, the upshot of this argument, if accepted by courts, is that many, maybe not all, but many of the restrictions that

exist in statutes that constrain the ability of the president to just summarily remove anyone he chooses will be unconstitutional. And thus, one of the last remaining checks on the president inside the executive branch will be gone. And as we've said previously on the show, it couldn't come at a better time. So we should say these arguments are not identical

to the arguments against the job protections that members of the civil service enjoy, because on the list of individuals that we've mentioned are a number of civil servants who don't have the exact same protections that the members of boards like the NLRB have, but they may be gearing up to make that argument too, that all of the protections that career civil servants enjoy are similarly impermissible

in that they encroach on the president's power, which again, apparently includes not just all of the executive power, but all of the legislative power and just all of the executive power, but all the legislative power, and maybe all of the judicial power too. All to say that the lawsuits are flying, and some of those lawsuits are resulting in rulings against the administration.

And the men's at Harvard Law School and Yale Law School, well, those men's have some thoughts about this. And we promised you in last week's episode that Leah had some thoughts about Harvard Law School, well, those men have some thoughts about this. And we promised you in last week's episode that Leah had some thoughts about Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman's intervention on this question. So Leah, I'm just going to let you cook. Go. I just want to say I got on a plane,

even though I was scared I was going to die in a fiery crash, specifically so I could get to this part of the show We are all so grateful. Yeah, so the column by Noah was Don't worry. The system is working great because courts are invalidating some of these Trump orders I Don't even know where to begin with how

I don't even know where to begin with how absurd and wrongheaded this is. Like the fact that these cases are even getting to court is itself, I think, like a mark that something has gone horribly wrong, like an indication of a real crisis. Like the president is engaged in systemic and systematic legal violations, seems to view the law as like a decorative wall plant. And courts are not going to be able to stop everything

because some of what the administration is doing is legal but wildly destructive and the damage is going to be long-term and hard to reverse. And also courts are more likely to do their jobs and enforce the law ruling against the administration if people are agitated and if there is public outcry and using your platform to give the public false assurances right to tell them basically to calm down and to take away some of the public outcry is a choice and this guy's metier is is bad, lawyer-brained, nay, Harvard

law professor-brained, fakes. He is just vamping and primping in Bloomberg, and I have no patience for it. So we are definitely not getting invited to do a live show in Harvard, and I am OK with that. And he does this because, this is another callback,back just like Metier was because people say things like quote, neither of us can remember what Noah said, but I know it was so profound that appeared in the New York Times, just to be clear.

And again, like the chasm between how our constitutional system is working. Okay, he's dead, he's dead. No, I'm not done. I'm not done. I'm Elena Kagan with some douchebag at the lectern in front of me and I am not done. Go off, go off. Okay, so the gap between how our constitutional system is functioning, like, and how it should be functioning is so huge. The idea that you would write a column

that says everything is hunky dory, did you look around, it is just so delusional. It is beyond delusional. I'm gonna stop you because we are an equal opportunity destroyer podcast, and it's time for Yale Law School to enter the chat. That's right, okay, yeah. So let us set up the Jed Rubenfeld intervention.

What triggered this intervention was one of the district court losses that we have mentioned, which was a ruling by district judge Paul Engelmeyer in the Southern District of New York, which was really just a very preliminary ruling pausing Elon Musk's underlings from accessing the Treasury payment system until a couple of days later when an actual hearing could occur. It was a very modest light touch order. But JD Vance took it personally and he took to X, which is apparently how we all communicate and exclusively must communicate, to inch awfully close to encouraging defiance of court orders.

Awfully close? I am in a strike. So Steve Lottick had a good column about this, reading in the most charitable, conceivable way what JD Vance was saying. It's not how JD Vance intended it. But let me read the couple of sentences, and then we can decide how close he came.

And maybe he is all the way there to encouraging outright defiance. So Vance said quote, if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal.

Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. So I think there is a kernel of truth there. A judge directing a military operation, telling a general where to send troops. Everyone agrees courts can't do that, would clearly constitute a political question not suitable for judicial resolution.

The point though is irrelevant because no judge is trying to do anything close to those examples and thus the claim is deliberately misleading and seems designed to stoke opposition to courts in ways that could be quite dangerous if the administration decides it needs to actually amass public support for outright defiance. Okay, that's the context.

Now enter Yale Law Schools, Jed Rubenfeld. You wanna do the honors, Melissa? I'll read it, I'll read it. So weird. Okay, and the voice of Jed Brunfeld. GD is correct about this. And his examples are exactly right. Where the executive has sole and plenary power

under the Constitution, as in commanding military operations or exercising prosecutorial discretion, judges cannot constitutionally interfere. That's, yeah, I mean, but there was more to it. Like I think contextually, this wasn't about military operations and both of them knew that. So this is just a very Yale Law School kind of thing to do.

Yeah, yeah, no, I was not trying to co-sign the kind of embrace or endorsement that Rubenfeld seems to be offering here. I actually think that it is incredibly dangerous to, so the very narrow, I think, point made by Vance in a law school classroom has a kernel of truth to it. The point he's making on the public stage is that we should think very seriously about not

abiding by court orders. And I think Rubenfeld had to understand what he appeared to be endorsing in that tweet in a way that is wildly dangerous. You can't divorce the statement by JD Vance from an earlier statement he made when he was running for senator from Ohio, where he said that he would advise President Trump

that if the courts did not rule in his favor, he could simply do what Andrew Jackson did and say, you know, let the chief just, let him enforce his decision. I mean, that is sort of the broader context in which this entire exchange is occurring. So what irks me is like they are equating to very different things and suggesting like a false equivalency, right, and conflating easy cases in both directions, right, and suggesting there's some gray area here.

Also the martial thing that just annoys me because it's like did you not read the rest of the story about how Andrew Jackson eventually came to the court and the federal government's defense when South Carolina attempted to nullify federal law and basically said, as president, I have a duty to enforce federal law and it would destroy the union, right? If officials could just be like,

oh, I'm gonna veto nullify that federal law. Like, again, read a book. Okay, so to make things better, White House Press Secretary, Caroline Levitt entered the chat. Now, before I take questions, I would like to address an extremely dishonest narrative that we've seen emerging over the past few days.

Many outlets in this room have been fear-mongering the American people into believing there is a constitutional crisis taking place here at the White House. I've been hearing those words a lot lately. But in fact, the real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges and liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump's basic executive authority.

We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law, and they have issued at least 12 injunctions against this administration in the past 14 days, often without citing any evidence or grounds for their lawsuits. This is part of a larger concerted effort by Democrat activists and nothing more than the continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump. Bless her heart. Okay. First of all, Caroline, we weren't even in the room.

Like we're the ones constantly saying we are in the throes of a constitutional crisis and we are, and we weren't even there. So she's listening. She's listening, obviously. Friend of the pod, Caroline. But yeah, this is what that is. This is a genuine constitutional crisis.

I'm glad she recognizes. I'm glad someone recognizes it. Also, now you have a problem with forum shopping after Judge Matthew Kesmerek? Girl, come on. We've got the receipts. OK. Also, the idea that judges have cited no evidence or grounds,

again, do you read? Did you read the letters? No. The answer is clearly no. All right. OK. So that's all I'm going to say about that. Yeah.

Also, 12, that's it. Consider the denominator. Yeah. Also, 12, that's it. Consider the denominator. True. Yeah. Strict scrutiny is brought to you by Skims. I have to wear real professional clothes, but I'd always rather be in yoga pants, sweatpants, and jammies.

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be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcast in the survey and be sure to select our show in the dropdown menu that follows. ["Skims Best Intimates"] you that follows. So we have maybe 10 or so minutes remaining. So in the last part of the show, we wanted to take a few minutes to talk about an important through line in some of the administration's

orders and actions, which we have talked about individually but haven't pulled together, which is the view of sex and gender that emerges from some of these moves. And in some ways, the question almost answers itself, which is, of the view of sex and gender that emerges from some of these moves. And in some ways, like the question almost answers itself, which is like, what do the Doge bros think about women having power and autonomy? But let's unpack just a little.

Spoiler alert, it's not good for you ladies. So there was an insane story that didn't get enough attention about the commandant of the Coast Guard. Commandant. Commandant of the Coast Guard. Commandant. Commandant of the Coast Guard. The first woman to serve in that role and the first woman to lead any branch of the armed forces.

So of course, within 24 hours of inauguration, the administration was determined to remove her in the most sadistic fashion. Citing DEI. Right. The then acting DHS secretary issued a statement disparaging her leadership and excessive focus on diversity equity and inclusion policies. And then it got worse. So she was summarily fired.

She was given a 60-day period to find new housing because she was living in Coast Guard quarters. And then about two weeks later, according to NBC, she was thrown out of her living quarters with just three hours to pack up her life because again, the president wants her out of quarters, according to the NBC report. This is the contempt that the administration seems to have for women in military leadership positions and I'm not even getting into the fact that they nominated Pete Hegseth

to lead the Department of Defense. Yeah, so or consider how they have justified some of their announced policies. So when HUD Secretary Scott Turner announced they were halting some enforcement actions, those protecting trans people, he said, quote, we at this agency are carrying out the mission laid out by President Trump when he signed an executive order

to restore biological truth to the federal government. This means recognizing there are only two sexes, male and female. It means getting the government out of the way of what the Lord established from the beginning when he created man in his own image," end quote. I'm going to say something that will probably get cut from the episode.

I don't even think Sam Alito needs to read the articles on PornHub anymore. He can just read the news. That's staying in. Leave it in. Yeah. That's staying in. Sweet.

So, you know, and just the fact that there are so many utterances and writings along those lines that the kind of fire hose of news has sort of so overtaken us we haven't stopped to appreciate is just really stunning. So we just kind of want to point out a few other things. So one, that there's a claim that these efforts that the administration has taken to eliminate literally all legal protections for transgender individuals, and it seems essentially try to erase their very existence,

they claim all of this is necessary to protect and defend women. So literally, the first part of the title of one of these anti-trans executive orders was quote, defending women from gender ideology extremism. So let's actually ask how committed the administration appears to be to defending women. Not so much, I think.

So there are two things to mention here. One, I don't think they're necessarily interested in defending women? Not so much, I think. So there are two things to mention here. One, I don't think they're necessarily interested in defending women. But more importantly, the constitutional scheme that we have been living under since 1996 with the United States versus Virginia, and maybe even earlier with Craig versus Boren, the 1970s sex equality case, basically says that the government cannot make policies in

order to protect women, that that is a species of paternalism rooted in sex-based stereotypes about gender roles. And the fact that we're even talking about protecting women, that like the federal government is issuing executive order after executive order in defense of women and this kind of paternalism gives us the very distinct feeling that the very bedrock principles of constitutional sex equality are under threat. And if you were confused about that, just consider some of the language in the Dobbs opinion

that didn't get a lot of attention because they were too busy rolling back the right to an abortion. In Dobbs, Justice Alito says that there is no root for the abortion right in equal protection. And he goes all the way back to Goduldig, a case where the court said pregnancy discrimination is not sex-based discrimination because not all women get pregnant.

It was the 70s. There were no women on the court. There were other cases since then. 1996, United States versus Virginia, 2003, Hibs. And they ignore all of this. And then of course, Justice Alito says that women are not without electoral and political power. So apparently we aren't because we need defending.

So there's a real inconsistency here, and everything's up for grabs. And to be clear, right, like these anti-trans moves are obviously horrific for transgender women. Like that is really clear and needs to be underscored. But it's also the point that Melissa's making is that cis women, all women, like a lot of this policy making is very, very bad for women at large.

And the view that women need protecting from government policy is one that, if taken seriously, would roll back over half a century of constitutional equality jurisprudence in ways that, again, I think have been a little lost in the shuffle given the fire hose. So in turning now from this high-level observation to some substantive initiatives, we

wanted to just tick through a few that we haven't had a chance to mention but that are quite important. So the Department of Education rescinded Title IX guidance that stated NIL, that is name, image, and likeness payments must be proportionate between male and female athletes so women can be paid less. And the administration has been disrupting federal funding

for rape crisis centers. So state-level organizations reported they weren't getting CDC funding. The Federal Office on Violence Against Women removed funding opportunities, ways to apply for grants from its website. They've been blaming deadly airplane crashes on the presence of women in the workforce.

A memo from NSA leadership listed some banned words, words not to be used on websites, and internal network pages, one of those words, feminism. This is a government. The real F word. Exactly, a government of broligarchs and patriarchs. So that was a lot. There is some cause for celebration.

So we don't want to leave you with the idea that we're just a bunch of Debbie Downers, gloom and doom. We want to celebrate some things. And today, Thursday, the time we're recording, we got word from Washington about a new confirmation. And we wanted to mark this new addition to the administration with a toast. And you already are groaning, so it

seems like you know what I'm going to say. Yes, Robert F. Kennedy was confirmed today as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. DEI for brain worms. And we are going to mark this occasion, not with champagne toasting the end of the administrative state, but with raw milk, people. Raw milk. That's right. We're going to do it by chugging some milk.

Raw milk. It is. It is. This milk is pasteurized. It is very, very pasteurized. Yeah. Great. To that gentleman.

Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Are you really going gonna drink this? I'm an oat milk girlie myself. I'm gonna leave this here. Same.

Delicious. Right. So I also brought a bear carcass that because I rushed here from the airport, I wasn't able to dispose of. So after the show, we're gonna drop this bad boy off at Central Park. Luckily, it's very close by. Very close by. OK, so all of this is a lot.

Again, we want to be a little more upbeat. So I'm going to ask my co-host, how are you finding hope amidst all of this? I mean, I think it's hard but important. So I think that honestly, the resignations today at DOJ were really an important moment, I think. I think that seeing people stand up,

even at personal cost, to what they think is outrageous, unethical conduct that can't be squared with the rule of law. I think that, you know, the courage is contagious. I think actually that that really was important and I'm glad that it happened today so we could kind of try to process it a little bit in real time with all of you.

So that's one thing. Leah? Ooh, this is a hard one. So I appreciated a post by a of the pod guest of the pod Sherrilyn Eiffel on her sub stack in which she said like I see a lot of statements along the lines of no one is doing anything but that's not true there are people doing things and if you are doing things like you see them too and that has partially been my experience and I appreciated that. So I'm taking

solace in the fact that I believe that children are future and it's not just a song. Middle school students at a US base in Germany walked out of school in protest when Secretary Pete Hegseth came to visit. Right on kids. I'm also cheered that there are high school students around the country, including here in this room tonight.

We'd love to say hello to Dr. Rachel Halper's Supreme Court class and the feminists of Trinity who are back there too. They are doing the work, learning about the Constitution, learning about Supreme Court cases. And the fact that they are pitching in and doing this work right now is huge. So that's giving me hope. And the fact that Lee is going to dispose of this bear carcass.

Moments of levity like that. That and Noah's body. That's not going in. Okay. All right. This is all to say that we are in the midst of a genuine constitutional crisis. Do not lose sight of that. Do not let them gaslight you into believing

that it's not true. This is the moment. And one day we'll ask ourselves, do we do in this moment? And that's serious. These are tough times. Hang in there. If you're even a fraction of as incensed as we are about all of this,

please make a phone call, donate some money to organizations doing this litigation, support journalism by subscribing to the places who are doing great investigative work like ProPublica and Wired, and keep listening to Strict Security because we'll keep pushing this stuff out. We will be back next week and hopefully we will continue to keep lighting a fire under ourselves and all of you. So before we are back next week, a few notes from this week. Elon Musk's Doge Gang just got slapped down by a federal judge,

but not before infiltrating the Treasury first. If you're wondering how we let billionaires hijack the government, tune in to the newest episode of Assembly Required. This week, Stacey Abrams unpacks how Musk and his cronies carved out unchecked power and what we can do about it. With Wired editor Leah Feiger, they unpack Doja's grip on the Treasury.

And then I joined Stacey to answer big questions like is this even legal? And got to actually get some tips from Stacey's experience heading up the minority in the Georgia legislature and what a party that isn't in control of a chamber but still can flex some muscles can do. So I thought that was a great conversation. Listen now to stay informed and get practical steps

on ways you can fight back. You can search for Assembly Required wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. And if you're looking for more essential conversations, tune in to Pod Save the People where organizer and activists Dorae McKesson along with Kaia Henderson and Miles Johnson bring a sharp take on news culture and social justice Focusing on the stories that too often go overlooked this week

They dive into how an AI program wrongfully jailed an innocent man for 17 months and what that means for the future of justice Listen to pod save the people every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. So someone on Goodreads wrote in a review that they were reading this book lawless and didn't realize that it was Leah Littman from Strict Scrutiny or that she had a book. And I feel like this is a failure on my part. I do have a book coming out, Lawless,

How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. And also it relates back to Mojo Dojo Casa House. There is a Mojo Dojo Casa House reference in the very first chapter to it. So if you would like to hear the equivalent of my pimply virgin edgelord, friendless libertarian, Doge-Bro reads, but for Supreme Court justices, you should pre-order it now. And again, it is called Lawless, How the Supreme Court Runs, Unconservative Grievance, Fringe

Theories and Bad Vibes. As RuPaul said, never be afraid of a shameless plug. Strict Scrutiny is a Crooked Media production hosted and executive produced by Leah Lipman, me Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw. We are produced and edited by Melody Rowell. Michael Goldsmith is our associate producer. We get audio support from Kyle Seglen and Charlotte Landis. Our music is by Eddie Cooper and production support comes from Madeline Herringer and Ari Schwartz. Matt DeGroote is our head of production and we are very grateful for our digital team, including Joe Matosky. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. You can subscribe to Strict Scrutiny on YouTube to catch full episodes. You can find us at youtube.com slash at Strict Scrutiny Podcast. If you haven't already,

be sure to subscribe to Strict Scrutiny in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. And if you want to help other people find the show, please rate and review us. It really helps. And a special thanks this week to Sophie Eisenstadt, who shepherded this entire live show.