The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3528 - Trump-GOP's Supreme Court Rubber Stamp w/ Elie Mystal

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

It's Monday and the GOPs in Congress have been pulling all-nighters in an attempt to pass the SENR Bill and complete the largest upwards transfer of wealth in the nation's history As the legislative b...ranch works their magic math to kill as many poor people as possible the Judicial branch has been doing much of the same. Elie Mystal joins us to break down last week's slew of tragic rulings. Here's a link to his incredible work at The Nation. Elie Mystal | The Nation In the fun half we check in with Josh Hawley's emo populism, Fetterman misses a beach trip for "nothing", a Michigan State Senator distills the cruelty of the Big bad Bill. All that, plus phone calls and a whole lot more. Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors BABBLE:  Babbel.com/Majority for 55% off your subscription. EXPRESS VPN: Get an extra 4 months free. Expressvpn.com/Majority SUNSET LAKE: Use the code LEFTISBEST to save 20% at SunsetLakeCBD.com  on all their farm fresh CBD products for people and pets. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech Check out Matt’s show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon’s show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza’s music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder – https://majorityreportradio.com/

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Starting point is 00:00:00 You are listening to a free version of The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. To support the show and get another 15 minutes of daily program, go to Majority.fm. Please. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Monday, June 30th, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA.
Starting point is 00:00:42 On the program today, Ellie Mistal, Justice Correspondent and Calmness at the Nation magazine, author of Bad Law, 10 popular laws that are ruining America. Also on the program today, Senate, Republican, moves the big disaster bill into the voterama. People are calling it the worst legislation, arguably in a lifetime. North Carolina Republican Senator Tom Tillis is the first Republican casualty, slams the bill for devastating health care, announces he will not be seeking re-election. Senate reconciliation bill, also a kill shot destroying thousands of solar and wind businesses and projects. U.S. announces a date to deport nearly 500,000 Haitians after setting a temporary protected status deadline in September.
Starting point is 00:01:56 Israel steps up attacks on Gaza. bombing at least 72 people killing them. Settlers in the West Bank are rioting. Trump administration building a centralized citizen data system. And as med schools renew focus on measles and infectious diseases, no one seems to know who's running the CDC. Nearly 300 EPA, employees, half of more a sign that publicly issue a declaration of dissent about the new EPA
Starting point is 00:02:40 directives. World Central banks to meet to discuss the end of dollar domination as Trump causes a massive investment in capital outflow to EU and Asia. And lastly, Trump threatens Mamdami with federal funds to be cut off unless he behaves. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us.
Starting point is 00:03:15 Emma is out still on vacation, on honeymoon. It's been, I mean, over three days. What do you do on a honeymoon that long? nevertheless what's that yeah you go on twitter how do you i don't understand i just don't i mean um she will be back uh next monday and uh just house cleaning we will of course um be taking a friday off this week uh a lot to get to the um the senate reconciliation bill which we have been telling you about for months, weeks now, past the senators stayed over the weekend. When there's an opportunity to emiserate millions of people and enrich, very wealthy people,
Starting point is 00:04:18 these senators will go to the mat. They will give you 110, 120 percent. And they did it this weekend um they lost two votes on uh essentially moving the bill uh bill forward in other words uh ending discussion uh or cloture the two votes they lost were tom tillis from north carolina not not super shocking although um wouldn't have been the first one i guess and uh ran paul Rand Paul didn't want to vote for this because it includes a debt-sealing increase. There were other senators who were prepared to vote against it, but when they saw that it actually would kill the bill if they voted against it, they didn't do it.
Starting point is 00:05:14 Do you see Josh Hawley's emo populism that he regrets that some of his constituents are going to be thrown off insurance? I think we have a clip of that. Don't we have a clip of that? You want to fix it later of Holly? Yeah. We should. I think that's in the, but yes, we saw that.
Starting point is 00:05:30 It turns out that Josh Hawley, his populism does not run as deeply as he did when folks were attacking the Capitol on January 6th. Nevertheless, the bill, the cloture passed. That means it goes on to debate. but what um the democrats in the senate did is said that the staffers in the uh senate the secretary had to read the bill usually this is skipped but the bill is over 950 pages long and nobody had really seen it for more than 10 12 hours by the time it was voted upon And so the Democrats called for it to be read. It was read all through the night until Sunday at some time.
Starting point is 00:06:31 And then as of this morning, the voterama begins, which is essentially with a reconciliation bill, you cannot prevent amendments from being offered. And so what happens in these instances is that both the Republicans and the Democrats begin to offer amendments so that they can, Republicans, so that they can mitigate the disaster this bill is going to do politically to them, or at least that's the theory. I voted to have an amendment and it was shot down. I voted to, you know, make it possible for there to be green energy. I shot it down. I don't know that there would be any that would say that. um although i think tom tillis had a big problem with the green energy aspects of this and then the democrats uh keep adding amendments some of which are uh votes that republicans don't want to have to
Starting point is 00:07:32 take but will but at the end of the day this bill itself is so incredibly unpopular and people haven't even actually begun to feel the impact if you were thinking of thinking about putting solar panels on your house and anticipating that 30% tax cut, then you're thinking maybe, you know what, I can't afford it this year, but maybe in a year or two I can't, that tax cut is going to end at the end of this year. If you are a solar company that started up a year or two ago and thought, I'm going to be able to make this business work because the government is essentially subsidizing with these tax cuts, the rollout of this technology. If you're a massive wind farm and you were thinking
Starting point is 00:08:28 of building or you were building or you are selling products to other people, I mean, this is going to devastate thousands of businesses. If you were Elon Musk and trying to salvage your failing electric vehicle business, you're screwed. And apparently he's a little bit upset about things. But the list goes on and on. Snap cuts. Millions of people will go without food assistance. And it'll get even worse in a recession.
Starting point is 00:09:07 Here is Harry Enton on CNN. And understand, this is how badly people are perceiving this bill before they actually feel the pain itself. How do Americans feel about the big beautiful bill? Yeah, if we're talking about adjectives, how about they think it's awful, they think it's horrible, and to quote our colleague Charles Barkley, terrible, terrible, terrible, what are we talking about here? Well, let's take a look at the net favorable rating on the big beautiful bill. don't just got one poll for you, Omar. I got five of them and the net favorable rating minus 19 points Washington Post, minus 20 points Pew Research Center, Fox minus 21,
Starting point is 00:09:53 Quinnipiac University, minus 26, KFF, minus 29. You don't have to be a mathematical genius to know that when the net favorable rating of your bill is somewhere between minus 19 and minus 29 points, that it is not a positive bill, as viewed by the American public. The American public at this particular point, hate, hate, hate the big beautiful bill. As far as they're concerned, it's not a big beautiful bill. It's a big, bad bill. It is a big bad bill.
Starting point is 00:10:32 And it is amazing to me that you have mainstream media still referring to it as Big Beautiful Bill. I mean, it was such a I can't believe that worked. I can't believe it. I just started calling it. The next bill we're going to try and pass is going to be good thing, Bill. The big, beautiful Trump is King Bill.
Starting point is 00:10:57 Good Bill. You wanted it, you got it, Trump is King Bill. And also the best business man in American history bill. Of course, there's huge upward. distribution in this bill. I mean, this is a bill that is pushing $930 billion worth of Medicaid cuts and providing $910 billion tax breaks for corporations and huge upward distribution in terms of taxes across the board.
Starting point is 00:11:35 We know the vast majority, both as a. a real dollar amount and as a percentage of tax cuts go to the very wealthy. Here is a taste of what Republicans who vote for this bill know. Tom Tillis is going to go in there. He still wants to have a future in Republican politics, mind you. So he's pretending that Donald Trump doesn't understand what he's doing, that he's being tricked by dumb advisors in the White House no one's telling him the truth
Starting point is 00:12:14 and he's being fooled now listen to Tom Tillis here understand he was up for re-election in 2026 he is no longer going to be up for re-election the rest of the Republicans are basically saying this is we are going to rob the bank and we get in the getaway car
Starting point is 00:12:36 even if we lose the House and the Senate, this is going to have such a negative impact on this country. They just don't think that any of this stuff can be reversed. And on some level, they're going to be right. Here's Tom Tillis. Between the state directed payments and the cuts scheduled in this bill, there's a reduction of state directed payments. And then there's the reduction of the provider tax. they can't find a hole in my estimate. So what they told me is that, yeah, it's rough,
Starting point is 00:13:13 but North Carolina's used the system, they're going to have to make it work. All right. So what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks this promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there anymore, guys?
Starting point is 00:13:34 When the White House, the pictures advising the president are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise. And you know the last time I saw a promise broken around health care, with respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle, it's when somebody said, if you like your health care, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep it. We found out that wasn't true. Pause it for a second. Now, I just need to, because I had to live through this era, make a correction to what Tom Tillis is saying. Obviously, now, he can't get up there and say either, A, the president is a inveterate liar, which we all know is the case.
Starting point is 00:14:23 And, in fact, in this instance, he lied against the people that support him. Or B, he is a complete moron and has no. no idea what he's pushing, which, you know, arguably, they don't have to be separate things. Right. They're not mutually exclusive. But this point about you can keep your doctor if you want, private health insurance does not let you do that. Every year, I can't remember what it is, sometimes I think around now, actually, you get notice, your doctor's no longer in plan. And if you go to him, now you get like only a 25% you know, coverage.
Starting point is 00:15:13 And so when Obama said that, he should have had an asterisk next to it, you know, to the extent that private insurance lets you do that anyways, which of course, they don't. But that's their talking point. And Tom Tillis still has to go to the country club once he quits the Senate. continue back in the circle of trust like your doctor you could keep it we found out that wasn't true that made me the second republican speaker of the house since the civil war ladies and gentlemen because we betrayed the promise to the american people two years later three years later it actually made me a u.s. senator because in 2010 it had just been proposed And just anticipation of what was going to happen was enough to have a sea-change election
Starting point is 00:16:08 that swept Republicans into the majority for the second time in 100 years. Now, Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise. It is inescapable that this bill in its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the cabinet room when I was there with finance where he said we can go after waste, fraud, and abuse on any programs.
Starting point is 00:16:45 Okay. Now, the irony is the Medicaid, the $630,000 that he's talking about that are going to lose their Medicaid possibly under this, likely. They are on Medicaid because of the Affordable Care Act,
Starting point is 00:17:05 which expanded Medicaid. Now, of course, he's not going to tell anybody that, but he needed an analogy. And the fact of the matter is once kicked in and people understood at least, it wasn't so much made health insurance significantly affordable, well, certainly didn't make it affordable
Starting point is 00:17:24 for everybody who was not in the Affordable Care Act, but for everybody who was not part of the exchanges, which is about 11 million Americans, they all got an upgrade on the quality of their health insurance insofar as there was no rescission, there was no lifetime caps, there was no annual caps. That's the patient protection part of the bill, but let's not lose sight of what we're talking about here. This bill is a disaster. Millions are going to get cut from SNAP. Millions are going to get cut from Medicaid.
Starting point is 00:18:03 So much of the tiny steps that we've taken in terms of renewable energy is going to go exactly the opposite way with subsidies for oil and gas. Someone just asked, why aren't Democrats filibustering this bill? This is a reconciliation bill. It's a special type of bill that only. only needs 50 plus one in the Senate. And they got 51 votes in the Senate. There are specifics that got wiped out of the bill because of it being a reconciliation bill,
Starting point is 00:18:41 but that's what you're missing. Also, I don't know if that was a bolotai. It could have been the microphone. I think it's the microphone. I can't imagine you go out wearing a bolotie like that for your big swan song speech. I didn't know North Carolina was a Bolo type place. I associate that with like
Starting point is 00:19:00 Montana. I feel like it was the microphone. Nevertheless, Tom Tillis just basically said, just told us. The Republicans know this may be incredibly politically costly and they don't care.
Starting point is 00:19:16 They just robbed the bank and they're getting in the driveway car. They don't care. We'll talk more about this, obviously. in the fun half and tomorrow in a moment we're going to be talking to ellie mistel about the absolute crap show that the supreme court was in this term this is what you get this is what we all get a couple of words from our sponsors
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Starting point is 00:26:21 Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. Thank you. All right, we got a little bit of delay with Ellie Mistal. He'll be with us shortly. In the meantime, let's take a look at more senators talking about this behemoth of literally what could be the worst legislation in a generation talking about this reconciliation bill, which cuts taxes dramatically for the wealthy.
Starting point is 00:27:25 it distributes money upwards to the rich it cuts millions upon millions of people off of health care it cuts millions of people off of food assistance it cuts all of the subsidies that we have passed during the by administration to help wind and solar energy get a toe hold it provides subsidies to oil companies still allows for the threatening of withholding of federal funds if states pass any AI legislation. I mean, it goes on and on and on. Here's Josh Hawley, the famed Republican populist, who has been talking over and over and over again,
Starting point is 00:28:21 how he will not support a bill. bill that would cut this many people off of Medicaid. His own voters are on Medicaid. He is not going to support this bill unless it's time to vote on it. We can't be cutting health care for working people and for poor people in order to constantly give special tax treatment to corporations and we've delayed that in this bill. but it will unless we take further changes or take for the steps it will happen in future years and i have some opposed to this we if we're going to be working with us party we've got to protect working people and i just the medicate stuff here i think it's bad
Starting point is 00:29:03 okay all right and i want you to know this is not video from a year ago it's not even video from two months ago this is video from yesterday after he voted for the bill emo populism he's sad about it he's not going to support it in an emotional way yeah he's not emotionally available for it he's not he's not like if the bill comes to me and says i need to borrow ten dollars i'm going to say no but i am going to vote to um pass it into law and remind my uh colleagues that i am not emotionally supporting this bill it's upsetting to me this bill it's upsetting to me that i had to vote for this bill oh i should almost get credit for not voting for it it's i mean i i just want my constituents to know that
Starting point is 00:30:06 it was that much harder for me to vote for this because i'm not in favor of it i know all the bad things about it and then i still voted for a lot of people can vote for bills they support that's the easy way of doing it but I'm voting for bills that I don't support that's what it means to be a mighty man of valor you don't even have to play the audio sound anymore you've basically adopted the voice here is
Starting point is 00:30:37 Senator Patty Miller from a Democrat from Washington State Murray Murray sorry this is say, Patti Murray. When was this? Was this just after a past?
Starting point is 00:30:52 This is Patty Murray outlining the implication of these tax cuts. Oh, and I should also add in addition to all of the other parliamentary questions,
Starting point is 00:31:09 the Republicans unilaterally and somehow skipped over the parliamentarian in this one instance, and I don't know why there hasn't been more said about this and have decided for the first time in the legislative history of this country that the baseline numbers for the taxes that we are bringing in when this bill ends reflect the existing tax code in other words these tax cuts that we're operating under now passed in a similar reconciliation. bill 10 years ago and you cannot you cannot under the rules of reconciliation
Starting point is 00:31:55 pass any legislation that will impact the deficit 10 years out and so this bill was meant to sunset and they're pretending it's not so that the baseline of tax cuts that they're providing they save $4 trillion in their accounting. So the fact that this adds so much to the deficit is on top of another number that is almost like double that. Here's Patty Murray. Mr. President, I've been here a long time.
Starting point is 00:32:34 Not only have I been the budget chair, I am the longest serving Democrat on that committee. And in my 33 years here, in the United States Senate, things have never, never worked this way, where one party so egregiously ignores precedent, process, and the parliamentarian. And does that all in order to wipe away trillions of dollars of costs for a bill that could just be the most expensive legislation this body ever passes. Forget Senate procedure for a minute. Math, Mr. President. has never worked that way. I taught preschool, and I'll tell you, even our littlest kids
Starting point is 00:33:18 knows the difference between a trillion and zero. It doesn't take a preschooler to tell you they're using magic math, or that you can't just ignore the rules you don't like. How many times have my colleagues cried about the debt? How many times have they told me, I know you want to invest in child care, Patty, but we got to get this budget under control? But now that it's tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, suddenly the budget doesn't matter anymore. Suddenly, the rules do not matter anymore. Suddenly, a couple trillion goes away with a sprinkle of fairy dust.
Starting point is 00:33:58 To be fair, it's not so sudden. The Republicans have been acting like this for decades, literally decades. She may not remember when Mitch, McConnell said we're just not going to we're just not going to allow the president to nominate a Supreme Court justice this year we'll skip on that or when the Republicans fired the parliamentarian in George W. Bush's era to pass tax cuts this is not sudden they do this every time pattern all right we'll talk more about this later in the program We're going to take quick break.
Starting point is 00:34:44 We'll be right back with Ellie Mistal. I'm Tuchy, Tushu-choo-choo-ch-ch-jol-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-oh. And so. And so. And... Yeah.
Starting point is 00:35:46 And... ...and... ...and... We are back, Sam Cedar on the Major Report, Emma Vigland, out today for her honeymoon. Well, whatever. Also, but it's a pleasure to have joining us, Ellie Mistal. He is the Justice Correspondent, Calmness at the Nation, author of Bad Law, 10 popular laws that are ruining America.
Starting point is 00:36:51 Ellie, how's it going? Congratulations to Emma. I hope her honeymoon is going fantastically. I brought my PlayStation on my honeymoon. Oh, you did? Well, Emma brought Twitter. Right, which was awesome. I had everything I needed with my wife,
Starting point is 00:37:07 and when she was busy, just had my own entertainments. It was great. So I hope she's having a great time. I'm doing terrible, right? We are living in a kind of fascist authoritarian state with a theocratic court. And last Friday was the court's last day. And they released a slew of truly law-breaking, mind-breaking, terrible opinions. And some were worse than I even expected them to be.
Starting point is 00:37:36 You always expect the Supreme Court to do the wrong thing. But there's a degree. of destruction that they can go for and they went for the most destructive, the most chaotic versions that they could. It was really bad. I have to say that as someone who
Starting point is 00:37:53 reads a lot of folks like yourself who write about the Supreme Court and have been doing so for, you know, 10, 15 years quite religiously, I don't remember a series of
Starting point is 00:38:09 cases where the opinions drafted were considered to be so thoughty, like not even based upon made-up theories, just sort of like, you know, alighting over like their problem, just ignoring it as if like it's like, well, nobody's going to ask, you know, nobody can question me anyways. there's a there's a quality to what they're producing now out of the six that is that has a definitive like yeah exactly like it doesn't matter yeah no we are in we are in the straight culture war supreme court and what we saw at the end of the term um was the supreme court kind of it's it's the kind of bizarre oh michael corleone you know this is the day that we handle all
Starting point is 00:39:01 family business and it was just culture war decision after culture war decision where the they're not even doing law anymore, right? Like the, like the idea that, you know, there are statutes and precedents and they have to analyze them, they're, they're far beyond the pale of doing that. They are just imposing their culture war decisions upon the rest of us with, with no regard for president. And they've been doing that for a while. I think the reason why the people that you're talking about, people like me, the reason
Starting point is 00:39:34 why we're writing the way we are right now, is that for a lot of them, there was this hope, right, that the Supreme Court would be kind of the final boss of the Trump administration, that it would be the thing that would slow down the Trump administration and his unconstitutional illegal activities. Sam, as you know, I have been saying from the jump that the courts will not save us, that the Supreme Court, I've always been saying the Supreme Court was most likely to rubber stamp Trump's illegal executive actions. Now they're doing that. And now I think a lot of other people are kind of catching up to the fact that, well, perhaps you thought the court was going to help you, but it ain't. And this is what it looks like when it ain't. All right. Let's talk about
Starting point is 00:40:19 this Planned Parenthood Medicaid ruling from the other day. This essentially is a state's suing and saying that there is no right for a Medicaid patient to choose to get care from its whatever provider they have access to, essentially, who will take Medicaid. It's, um, so the thing about the Planned Parenthood case is that whenever you put Planned Parenthood in your case title, everybody thinks it's about abortion. Like everybody, and everybody kind of knows that the Supreme Court hates women, hates abortions is not going to go for it. And this case does have something to do with abortion. But this is the issue where Planned Parenthood does a lot of things that are not abortion, right? They just provide a lot of care, a lot of health care for women and their lady
Starting point is 00:41:15 parts. Like that's what Planned Parenthood does. And abortion is just one aspect of that, right? So in 2018, South Carolina, the state of South Carolina passed the law saying that you could not use federal funds that include Medicaid for at any provider, that also provides abortions, right? For a long time, there's been this thing called the Hyde Amendment since 1976 that says you can't use federal funds for abortion, including Medicaid funds. I think that's a terrible law. I literally wrote about it in my book about bad laws. I think the Hyde Amendment is terrible. This has nothing to do with the Hyde Amendment, right? This has nothing to do with federal funding of abortion, that issue is settled, settled incorrectly in my view, but settled, right?
Starting point is 00:42:00 This is South Carolina saying, now, if you also provide abortions, you can't use Medicaid funds for anything else, right? So what is that trying to do? It is trying to force medical institutions to not provide any abortion services at all, even in states where they are allowed to provide abortions, because if they do, they will get cut off in federal funding, including Medicaid, right? So that's like what's happening at 30,000 feet. But on the ground, right, in the actual case, what this was about was a woman who used
Starting point is 00:42:32 Planned Parenthood for regular gynecological services that had nothing to do with abortion. And South Carolina is saying, no, you can't choose your own doctor, right? Well, the Medicaid Act has a very clear provision that allows for freedom of choice. It says that if you are a state that accepts Medicaid funds, which South Carolina, Carolina. Like, never forget, folks, South Carolina still wants the money. They still want the federal money and they're going to do everything they can to keep the federal money. So South Carolina wants the federal money and it says that if you take this federal money in the form of Medicaid reimbursements, then you have to let people on Medicaid choose whatever service
Starting point is 00:43:12 provider they like for any medical treatment that the service provider is able to provide, right? is qualified to give, right? That is in the statute, right? But the Supreme Court says, actually, no, it's not. Neil Gorsuch, writing for the six to three majority, invented ambiguity in the freedom of choice provision of the Medicaid Act, saying that actually Congress did not intend to include freedom of choice as a right in the Medicaid Act,
Starting point is 00:43:45 even though they say freedom of choice in the Medicaid Act. It is a classic kind of version of textualism making things up as they go along, right? Like people think that textualism is the most simple way of interpreting the law because you just read the sentence and what is it common sense say. But like the whole point of textualism from a conservative side is to pretend that there's ambiguity in very clear statements when that ambiguity helps your side and pretend that there's no ambiguity in ambiguous statements when having no ambiguity. helps your side. It is a method of interpretation that expands or contracts to fit whatever the Republicans on the Supreme Court want that day. And what Neil Gorsuch wanted that day was to take the freedom of choice provision out of the Medicaid Act. And so he invented some bull crap where he said, oh, it's actually not at all clear what Congress wanted to do. So what can
Starting point is 00:44:40 we do? There is no freedom of choice for Medicaid, right? So it is about abortion, but it's not really about abortion, right? Or maybe it's the other way around. It's not really about abortion, but it is about abortion, right? Neil Gorsuch wanted to allow South Carolina to not only kill Planned Parenthood, but kill any other abortion provider in its state, and they want any wanted to take the freedom of choice away from poor women on Medicaid. And doesn't it also, I mean, my understanding is that the precedent here, in terms of the question of, Can I sue an entity that is inhibiting a federal right that has been granted to me by statute or by theoretically the Constitution? In that in 2023 in the Telvetelewski case?
Starting point is 00:45:33 I never know how to pronounce it, but yes. Okay. That case, that they made a determination that if the law said that an individual is given the opportunity to, if it was phrased in that way, because they're weird, then that right exists there. And in this instance, it is phrased that way. Like you say, they just decided we're not going to do it. But doesn't this open up the basically the Pandora's box and say that it is really also shipping?
Starting point is 00:46:09 Because I guess theoretically, you know, Planned Parenthood, I mean, although I don't know if they have the money to do this, but theoretically could like split off. Planned Parenthood is one LLC or a corporation and then women's health, you know, is another, you know, that type of thing. But this seems to undermine like chip away at the ability of an individual to say, hey, you're not following federal law. And if you're not following federal law, I'm going to sue the state for inhibiting what the feds, intended me to do. And it seems to basically eliminate that right or cut it away seriously. Yeah, you're absolutely right. So the law that we're really talking about here is the 1871 Civil Rights Act, the first Civil Rights Act. You know, most people know about
Starting point is 00:47:04 the 1964 one, but the 1871 one was the most important at the time. It is the one that we ratified the 14th Amendment in order so we could pass that. Well, law, right? The argument at the time was that you needed the 14th Amendment because without the 14th Amendment, the 1871 Civil Rights Act wouldn't be constitutional, right? So that's kind of the backstory of the amendment. And there's a section in that Civil Rights Act called Section 1983 that allows for a private right to sue when the government violates your civil rights, right? And I've explained before that if you do not have a right to sue the government when it does something to you, then the law preventing the government from doing that thing to you is not a law. It's just a suggestion.
Starting point is 00:47:55 It's just a hope, right? It's only through the ability to sue the government to enforce your rights that your rights become rights, that your rights become things that you can defend. Otherwise, the government can violate them willy-nilly. And what the court said in the Planned Parenthood case was that Section 1983 of the 1871 Civil Rights Act, this provision that allows for the private right to sue, doesn't support the private right to sue unless Congress has been exceedingly clear that a civil right exists, right? And again, if you look at the Medicaid Act, I don't know how Congress could be more clear that you have a civil right for freedom of choice of health care provider. But Neil Gorset says, oh, that's not clear enough. And so it takes away this ability, this, again, at this point, ancient ability that we have to sue the government for our civil rights. Sam, you're the first host to brought out Talbeske, which is super illegal weedy.
Starting point is 00:48:56 But another thing that that's going on in this case is that Talvesky, the case that you mentioned, that was two years ago. Yes, 2023. this court was like, actually, no, you have a private right to sue as long as Congress says you have a private right to sue, right? And then two years later, they're like, remember that president? Screw it. We're done with it. And so it's one of these like legal weedy situations where like just beyond the culture war issue about abortion and planned parenthood, beyond the legal issue of whether or not you have a private right to sue the government for violation of civil rights. There's also just at its core this,
Starting point is 00:49:37 this clown show of a Supreme Court that can't even hold true to its precedence over a couple of years, right? Because they literally settled this two years ago in Talvesky, and now all of a sudden, oh, actually Talvesky doesn't make sense. So now whether or not Congress creates the private right to sue depends on how closely they followed the Supreme Court's words in this one case. as opposed to what Congress was actually trying to do. It is a bonkers decision in terms of just its legal grounding for sure before you even get to the larger social and cultural issues around the Civil Rights Act and abortion rights.
Starting point is 00:50:24 Let's move on to the so-called birthright citizenship case, which isn't, again, directly about, it's not going to implicate birthright citizenship, I think, as much as people may be anticipated, it might. But I'm also going to say, just, you know, as a note, like, you know, we talk about that section 1983, the assault on all of the laws from reconstruction. Like, I have always considered reconstruction to be sort of like the actual founding of this country as we live it today in the same way that, like, rabbinic Judaism is the Judaism that, we we practice today as opposed to like when we had high priests and we were doing uh you know
Starting point is 00:51:11 taking a lamb and and then sacrificing on the the altar uh we're living in a reconstruction world but this court really really is trying to sort of bring us back to just like 1864 i argued sam that people who frame this court as an attack on the 20th century an attack on the civil rights era, an attack on the war in court, that's old news. The Supreme Court has won its battle against the 20th century. It is won its battle against the Warren Court. And talking about that is talking about the last war. The Supreme Court has moved on not to fighting the 20th century, but to fighting the 19th century,
Starting point is 00:51:59 to fighting the reconstruction era, to fighting what Eric Foner calls the second founding of this country. They don't like that either. They don't like the Reconstruction era either, and they have moved on to directly attacking the laws and amendments and statutes and precedents that came out of that second founding, came out of the Reconstruction era. And once again, they're winning. They're winning their second civil war without firing a shot. So we are now literally relitigating things, not that we fought about in the 1960s, but that we fought a hot war about in the 1860s and we're losing we're losing in a to this new confederacy and it feels like they're not even arguing with their way through it they're just going it's like they're just
Starting point is 00:52:48 flicking a switch essentially and saying we're just going to pluck the you know we're just hitting these switches and that's it we're not going to have to argue or create some type of like uh it i mean we're just going to turn that off we're just going to be fascinating if it wasn't so uh uh disturbing and and having real world implications. This birthright citizenship case, it's unclear to me. It's unclear to me like, does birthright citizenship still exist? Will it exist? Are there people now who are stateless or could be stateless?
Starting point is 00:53:24 And then there's this, I mean, the main order question is can a single judge issue an order to stay a law? and that to me seems unclear. Like the whole thing seems still unclear where we're at. Yeah. So you're asking a lot of questions that are difficult to answer because the Supreme Court's opinion itself was gobbledygook, right? Like you're kind of forced to guess at what they could mean because their legal reasoning was so loose and clownish again.
Starting point is 00:54:00 I'll try to answer the question this way. at the top level, if you are a child born in this country after June 27th, 2025, all right? So if you were born on Friday or Saturday or Sunday or today, whether or not you're a citizen of this country now depends more on the state or county you were born in than whether or not you were born in America, right? Because what's going to happen is that some states, most states even, will uphold. the concept of birthright citizenship, but some states will not, right? We'll have some localities, I can think of Texas as one, that probably won't, right? And so now, as you take that child who was born yesterday, literally born yesterday, and you fast forward 15, 18, 20 years, their birth certificate might not be enough to prove their citizenship, because they might not have
Starting point is 00:54:59 gotten a valid birth certificate at birth because those random local official in Texas on Sunday might have denied them a birth certificate because the Supreme Court said they could. And the way that they said they could goes to this nationwide injunction argument, right? So like the, for your listeners to understand, like an injunction is just saying that the government wants to do a thing and we decide as the court the government cannot do that, right? we preemptively decide the government's idea, law, program, whatever, program, whatever, is illegal, right? So if they had a law saying, hey, we're going to take all the Jewish journalists and kick them out of the country, right? You, Sam, might go to court and say, hey, that seems horribly
Starting point is 00:55:47 unconstitutional. I would like a ruling stopping the government from kicking me out of the country just because I'm a Jewish journalist, right? And a court might agree with. you. A court might say, yes, Sam, you're absolutely right. They cannot kick you out of the country. Now, before Friday, that ruling could apply nationwide. They can't kick any Jewish journalist out of the country just for being a Jewish journalist. But after Friday, according to the Supreme Court, that ruling can probably only apply to you, Sam. So you, Sam, went to court and you, Sam, got a ruling saying that you, Sam, as a Jewish journalist, cannot be kicked out of the country. And that's great for Sam. But what about the next guy? What about the next guy? What about
Starting point is 00:56:34 the guy living in Texas? What about the guy living in Michigan? They have to sue themselves. They have to personally go to court to sue again, this obviously unconstitutional rule. They have to personally go to court and sue from themselves again and again and again and again and again. And even if 99 of them, 99% of them win, 1% of them will lose. And then we will have a two-tiered system where some Jewish journalists are going to be kicked out, but other Jewish journalists are not. And that's how it's going to be, according to the Supreme Court, until sometime in the future, perhaps soon, perhaps by next year, perhaps not soon, perhaps in three or four years, the Supreme Court will come back in and weigh in nationwide
Starting point is 00:57:17 on whether or not Trump's unconstitutional laws are in fact unconstitutional, right? But in the meantime, there's going to be a lot of chaos and confusion and uncertainty because the courts took away this fundamental ability of courts to enforce the law against the president. And isn't the sort of the paradox here, and I can't remember if it was KBJ or Kagan who brought this up, is that let's assume that, to use your analogy, you know, you have Jewish journalists after Jewish journalists. journalists, they go, they win their cases. The government does not appeal them because they're like, look, there's, uh, I don't know, 10,000 Jewish journalists in the country or 5,000 Jewish journalists country. Um, we know they're not all going to come to court. There may be like 500 will come to court. We just won't appeal that. It will not rise to the Supreme court. I mean, it would involve essentially somebody losing that case, um, and then appeal.
Starting point is 00:58:23 so that it would rise up. And it's quite possible that if it went up to the first appellate level, the government just says, we're not going to contest. And that way, it never rises up to the Supreme Court. And we don't have a law of the land anymore for something that's in the Constitution. For citizenship, and to go back to what we were talking about in terms of the attack on the reconstruction era and the attack on the 19th century, we have tried to do citizenship. this way before. We have tried to live in a country where whether or not you were a citizen of
Starting point is 00:58:59 that country depended on the state you were living in, right? We called that the antebellum period of America. That was the slavery period of America. That was the period where as I, as a black person, if I was born in Georgia, you know, I had one set of rights. And if I was born in New York, I had everyone, right? Just depending on the on the happenstance of my birth. That way led to war. That way was so unworkable that it led to a shooting war because you cannot have a country where some citizens are more equal than other citizens, all right? We're not living on the animal farm. But the Supreme Court brings us right back to that situation, the potential two-tiered citizenship in this case. The other thing that I've heard a lot from liberals, you were talking about how the government might get around this by just not appealing adverse rulings against this.
Starting point is 00:59:53 The other thing I've heard from a lot of liberals is this idea of a class action, right, that because the Supreme Court has made everybody sue individually, what needs to happen is that everybody needs to come together as a class of affected people and sue as a class action lawsuit. You see this all the time in environmental litigation. You saw it all the time in big tobacco litigation, trying to form a large class of people to tell the government that they're wrong on birthright citizenship. that's a great idea. That's a fine legal idea that this decision leaves open as a possibility, except that you have to remember that the exact same six people who just said the government could get away with this messing with a birthright citizenship can just as easily refute to recognize and what's called certify a class action. And the Roberts court has been notorious, notorious historically in denying certification of classes for various suits, right, for various things
Starting point is 01:00:59 that are like much lower stakes than what we're talking about here. And the Roberts Court consistently denies class status to citizens. So there's every opportunity that we'll have, we'll be here next year talking about a Supreme Court decision that decertifies a class 6'3, and we'll be trying to explain once again how that allows Trump to mess with birthright citizenship, right? Because the Supreme Court, have they done it here, they can keep doing it, they can keep denying people their rights to sue the government. And just as a last point on that, Clarence Thomas basically says so in his concurrence to this opinion. Basically, don't you try the class actions, don't you try it? Because if you do, we're going to knock it down.
Starting point is 01:01:44 He says that in his concurrence. Does he have five votes for that? I don't know, but I wouldn't assume that he doesn't. And lastly, is there a scenario where, okay, I'm born in New York, but I go to Tennessee, they don't recognize, you know, birthright citizenship. Can they just, in the same way that like, you know, in the early days of marriage equality, if I got into a same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, but I go to, you know, Georgia and want visitation rights
Starting point is 01:02:29 because my partner's in the hospital. You're not married to him. Well, I am, but you're married in Massachusetts. We don't recognize that. I mean, is there a potential scenario, like, where it's just like, we're going to deport, you know, we deport you if you're in, you know, if you traveled to Georgia, even though you may be safe in New York.
Starting point is 01:02:53 Sam, that's the most likely scenario. That's the most likely thing to happen. That when you have, and again, it's like a fugitive slave law type of situation. I'm about to say, we've tried it this way before. It was called the Dred Scott decision, right? What was the whole point? What was the whole issue behind the Dred Scott decision, right? That my man went to Missouri, Missouri was a free state.
Starting point is 01:03:13 He was like, I'm free. And then they were like, no, no, no, you got to go back to, you got to. to go back to Kentucky. And he's like, well, no, I'm, I'm free in Missouri. And the whole point of the Dred Scott decision was that actually a black man has no rights, the white man is bound to respect, right? It was to take a, it was this person, Dred Scott, who did have citizenship rights where he was, could be recaptured and re-pulled back in to a situation where we had no rights simply by traveling across state lines, that there was no such thing as forever free.
Starting point is 01:03:47 That's exact. So when I'm saying it's the most likely scenario, the scenario that you outline is the most likely scenario. It is the one based on precedent in history. It is what this country has done before. So absolutely there's a situation. There's a possibility. There's a likely possibility that a person will have a certain suite of rights and protections if they stay in New York or New Jersey. But if they go to Pennsylvania, it becomes more questionable. And if they go all the way to West Virginia, they're done. All right, let's just, I want to briefly talk about this, what amounts to me, from my perspective, is a ban in elementary schools, virtually across the country, on having any gay or a bi or lesbian or trans or queer characters in books, in elementary schools. I mean, that's not exactly the ruling, but that's the sort of like, That's the de facto ruling, right? I mean, that's sort of like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the thing that's the, uh, the, uh, the, the, the, the, it's going to lead to, um, and it's not on it on it, on any other week, on any other day, um, this bigoted ruling would be the thing that everybody was talking about. Um, Alito's opinion in this case, is called Mahmood versus Taylor and involves a group of families, I believe, families who sued the school because the school used a number of children's storybooks that depicted LGBTQ people existing. That's all they were doing. They were in the story, right? It wasn't about being LGBTQ. It wasn't like, hey, let's all be gay and have sex in the clock.
Starting point is 01:05:38 No, it was just, here's some gay people anyway, onto the story. And these parents, these bigoted parents, like flip the bit. And these are public school parents. Remember, that becomes important. And they sue to force the public school to inform them anytime these books or texts were going to be used and to allow their children to opt out of any education involving those books. Well, if you've ever been in the public school or run a public school, you know that it's practically unworkable to have to clear your entire day's curriculum on a daily basis with a bunch of parents. This is in Montgomery County, Maryland, which is one of the largest public, it's a suburb of D.C. It's one of the largest public school districts in the country.
Starting point is 01:06:26 And so the ruling saying that parents can opt out of these books essentially means that these books cannot be practically used in class. And that's the top line ruling, but like I cannot emphasize enough. I literally don't have the words to fully explain how bigoted and homophobic Sam Alito's opinion was in this case. One of the books that he really has a problem. He spends most of the thing. He's not talking about the law. He's fighting cultural war issues. He's worried about pronouns. I mean, it's like if an AI chat bot told you write a Supreme Court opinion in the method of the last 20 minutes of Fox News, that would be about what Sam Alito sounded like, like an AI chatbot version of himself.
Starting point is 01:07:15 But the level of bigotry is shocking. So one of the stories that he focuses on is the story called Uncle Bobby's wedding, right? And it's just all it is is, Uncle Bobby is getting, having a same-sex marriage. And the main character, Chloe, his niece, is very worried about them having the same-sex marriage because she thinks that when Uncle Bobby gets married, thou mean less play time for her. that is the plot line of like 11 billion children's stories right it's the plot line every time the children's story about oh we got uh you got a new sibling oh wait what's that going to mean for me that's the plot line right it's the plot line of the toy story franchise for god's sakes it is a simple children's plot line but alito suggests actually no Chloe doesn't like the gay marriage but everybody else does and they're forcing Chloe to accept universal approve of this gaieness. Like that is how Alito writes his opinion. And then he puts pictures of Uncle Bobby's wedding into his opinion as if like showing the pictures. And yes, one of the
Starting point is 01:08:24 pictures is Uncle Bobby with his husband. It's like if that's going to be proof, look at the subversive horrible gay nature of this book. We have to ban it. Vergonia. It is it is off the chain bigoted. It is off the chain homophobic. And as you say, Sam, the result is in public schools, you're not going to be allowed to use these texts. And there's a particular line that I focus on in the piece that I'm writing, where he says that it's not enough to tell these people like we should tell these people, hey, if you want to instruct your kids in a world that doesn't include gay people, homeschool them, you idiot? That's what homeschool is there for. So you can control everything that goes in.
Starting point is 01:09:09 Keep your child in the attic like it was done in ancient times and leave the rest of us to our society. But Alita says, no, no, no, we can't tell them that because it's too expensive. It's too expensive to homeschooled children. And so we have to allow public schools to, so public schools have to provide kind of all of the protections for religious cuckoo for Cocopos people that a private school would provide or homeschool would provide. Again, it's an insane ruling, and it's one that you can't even justify legally.
Starting point is 01:09:44 It only makes sense if you also agree with Alito's homophobic and bigoted premises. If you don't, if you're not afraid of gay people, the entire ruling falls apart in terms of any kind of logic. This may not come as a shock to our audience, but I will be explicit about this. I don't like Christmas. I'm not a big Christmas fan. I don't like Christmas trees. I actually like Chinese dude have her on. I mean, what are my rights? I mean, it's not exactly a religious thing, although I would imagine, you know, absence by Judaism, you know, the idea of, but I certainly could make the case that it's a function of my being Jewish. I know Jews who do like Christmas, but I consider them fallen. Um, the, uh, but, but, well, where do, what's the, what's the limiting
Starting point is 01:10:48 principle here for what we can, well, you know, they can decide that a religious, uh, can decide that they need this much, so much accommodation. Their religion requires so much accommodation that, in fact, we basically have to ban the existence of gay people in elementary schools. Under Alito's opinion, you as a Jewish person could absolutely sue the school to prevent them from having any book that mentions Christmas, discuss Christmas, or even shows a tree with bubbles on it. That would be enough for you to get the book banned according. to Alito's decision. I will testify as the way I felt when I had to, like, O'Tanenbaum, the pressure on me. That would be enough under Alito's position.
Starting point is 01:11:44 A Muslim family who wants to sue because the book depicts a woman with uncovered hair, that would be enough. A Catholic family was like, oh, that woman is unmarried and owns property. Get that book out of the school. I was going to say, well. Right. There is no limiting principle in Alito's opinion. which means that the actual limiting principle is Alito's own Catholic bigotry and theocracy, right?
Starting point is 01:12:12 Because, of course, Sam, if you do bring that suit, do you think you're going to win in front of Sam Alito? Do you think Sam Alito? Do you think Sam Alito is going to be like, well, as we said in Mahmoud to be Taylor, now we have to get Christmas trees out of the school? Do you think I'm going to win if I show up to court to be like, you know, slavery and white supremacy is against my religion. So I think any mention of the original U.S. Constitution has to be banned in schools or at least my kids have to be opt out of any teachings about the U.S. Constitution. Do you think I'm going to win that in front of Sam? Do you think I'm going to win that in front of Amy Handmaid, Coney Barrett?
Starting point is 01:12:44 No. So the actual limiting principles, there is no legal limiting principle in their decision. The actual limiting principle is whatever these six bigoted, you know what, think. That's the limit. So if they are not personally offended by Christmas trees, guess what? Christmas Tree's books still on the table. But if they are personally offended by like any, anytime you have more than seven candles,
Starting point is 01:13:11 you're right, then that book with a menorah, that can get banned. It's nuts. It's nuts. All right. Lastly, I got to ask you about this because Leonard Leo,
Starting point is 01:13:26 the former head of the Federalist Society, really the one who, I should know if he was the actual head, but the one who really took it into, created it into what it is today, the one who created sort of the networking, the fundraising. He's the one who when Clarence Thomas 20 years ago was complaining about being broke and that he might have to retire from the Supreme Court because he doesn't have any money. He introduced him to Harlan Crow. And then what do you know, these guys just hit it off. And one of the benefits of being best friends with
Starting point is 01:14:03 billionaire is that he pays for your kid to go to private school. He pays for your mom's house. He takes you on private jets and takes you on vacations. It's a shame. Leonard Leo doesn't pair us all up with billionaires. It would be very fun. But he also basically chose all the justices for the Trump administration first time around. And after Trump's trade laws were, the tariff court basically said these things are bunk um trump had a fit got into a fight with leon leo we should just remind you leo was donated a billion dollars a couple years ago to start a new organization we don't know what he's doing with that money or i i'm not aware of it um and what does this mean that they're having a fight we is it going to mean something materially uh
Starting point is 01:14:59 in terms of like what we see courts do or the capacity of the Trump administration to appoint new judges? So I think that the fight between Trump and Leo is more important politically and legally for our country than the kind of real tech bros of L.A. fight between Trump and Musk, right? I'm sorry that, you know, the Trump and Musk romance is over, but the Trump-Leo connection has far more impact on our polity. Because as you say, Leo invented and created the judicial making machine that is the Federal Society. And he is responsible. All these bad decisions that we've been talking about today, Sam, Leonard Leo, is one of the two guys most responsible for them. The other
Starting point is 01:15:45 one being Mitch McConnell, of course. So if these two guys split, if Trump and the Republican political agenda split from Leo and the Republican legal agenda, it is potentially a huge rift. Now, the reason why the rift happens is because Republican judges nominated or created essentially by Lido, by Leo, and Republican politicians now all under the thumb of Donald Trump do not always agree. They aren't always working in the same way. They agree generally that, like, gay people are bad and women shouldn't have rights and black people should be shot. Like, they agree about the big ticket issues, but kind of operationally, there are real differences there. what Trump wants are judges that are completely loyal to him and will do whatever he wants.
Starting point is 01:16:41 What Leo wants are judges that are completely loyal to the Feller Society and are always playing the long game about, like I said, re-religating now the 19th century. If they are split up, one of the things that's going to happen is that it's going to take Trump longer to find a, point and confirm judges, right? Because Leo, all that's on speed dial with him, right? All of that is, all of that is standardized with him. You want a judge in North Dakota? I can get you a judge in North Dakota. Don't ask me how. I can get you a judge in North Dakota. Like, he's got a whole system in place. Now, if Trump wants a judge in North Dakota, how is he going to find one, right? How is he going to find one that's loyal to him that's going to be, and then going to find one that's going to be loyal enough to him, but also be able to pass the Senate confirmation process.
Starting point is 01:17:31 that is, yes, controlled by Republicans, but controlled by Republicans who have gotten very used to just approving whoever Leo says they should approve. What's going to happen if there is conflict? It could slow Trump down. Now, the kinds of judges that Trump will appoint that are loyal to him will be worse than the judges that Leo would appoint. Like, I shudder when I say that out loud because it's hard for me to think of anything worse than Fedsock judges, but there is something worse. And that's Trump judges, right? Those are judges that are completely loyal to Trump. They will be worse on these big-ticket issues about Trump's personal powers and his personal ability to thwart democracy in the short term.
Starting point is 01:18:17 But in the long term, the thing that Leo has done so well is that because he makes these judges basically in a lab, right? because they're, you know, a Neil Gorsuch is a test tube amalgamation made by Leonard Leo. So he knows everything that Neil Gorsuch is going to do for the rest of Neil Gorsuch's life, right? He's, he's read ahead in Neil Gorsuch's own obituary. And he knows everything that's going to happen next, right? He doesn't know everything that's going to happen with Eileen Cannon, right? He doesn't know how she's going to evolve and develop and whatever. And so while short term, Justice Eileen Cannon, terrible on all these Trump issues, I don't know.
Starting point is 01:18:56 that Justice Eileen Cannon is worse than your, you know, replacement level Leonard Leo judge when it comes to 10, 15, 20 years out. I don't know. And I do know that it takes you a lot longer to confirm Eileen Cannon because she's unqualified, because she's just a Trumpsick fan, because she doesn't have the federal society backing. It takes you a lot longer to confirm her than it does to any one of 20 people that are sitting in Leonard Leo's pocket right now. So long term, this is potentially a huge legal rift within the conservatives themselves, proving, as you know, the old adage, the revolution always eats its young. So there's, I mean, it sounds like there's two elements to this. One is that you're, you're cutting down on the network effect that exists with all the federalist judges where I'm going to go clerk for this judge. And that's the way that I move up within the context of the federalist society. And then I have the proper pedigree.
Starting point is 01:19:56 you know, Emil Bovey may just, you know, his clerk may be just the dude that, you know, was his caddy at or whatever, who knows who it is. And then it also forestalls the ability of the federal society to move law in a specific direction because it's a two, there's two elements to it, if I understand what you're saying, you know, there's the judge and then, you know, There's the pitcher and the catcher in that sense. And it's like they need to know what cases they should be looking for one year out, two years out, five years out to essentially unwind, you know, a hundred years of case law so that they can step by step sort of move this along.
Starting point is 01:20:45 But if you don't know their legal sort of like pedigree and thinking, it's harder to predict what's going to change the law in the way you want it to. I love the pitcher and catcher analogy. I haven't used it before, but I'm just going to steal it now forever. Because that is exactly right, right? There's a reason why the catcher calls the pitches, right? The catcher needs to know. Is it going to be a fastball or is it going to be a curveball?
Starting point is 01:21:11 If the catcher doesn't know, and it's a curveball, guess what? It's a wild pitch. Catcher can't react in real time to that. They have to know before the pitch is thrown. That's exactly what it's. like with Federal Society judges and test cases organized by the Federal Society, right? They have to know what pitch is coming so they can shape the law in the way that they want. And if you don't know, if you're not on the same webpage, that leaves open the opportunity for more wild pitches.
Starting point is 01:21:39 Now, again, some of them are going to be wild pitches. Some of them are just like the liberal batter is going to get beamed in the head with the fast. Like, it's not going to be pretty all of the times. But you're adding, here's what I'm trying to say. you're adding more uncertainty into the situation, right? And when you are in a fascist state, when you are in a theocratic state, when you have a court that has in a Republican Party that has everything on lockdown, uncertainty is your friend.
Starting point is 01:22:12 Uncertainty is actually a boom because not knowing if they don't know what they're going to do next, that creates then opportunities for resistance, for fighting, for, I mean, you see, Emil Bov, he'll probably get confirmed, but it's a much rougher ride than it's, than it would have been for any federal society judge, again, of the 20 that are sitting in Leonard Leo's pocket right now. So that uncertainty creates more opportunities for resistance and fight back. And to be fair, I mean, Bov, as one of the top long enforcement officials in the country and the DOJ was going to completely ignore a judge and then they completely tried to cover that all up. It's pretty extreme, but he's probably going to
Starting point is 01:23:00 get passed through. And also just want to really quickly argue that like, it is possible that with the kind of disgustingness that Trump is going to put on the court without Leo trying to shape it and smooth it down, maybe Democrats wake up. Maybe Democrats are like, maybe Democrats are like, hey, if they're having people like a meal bove on the court, maybe we got to take the court seriously. Maybe I don't know. When we get in charge, we got to expand the courts
Starting point is 01:23:29 to deal with people like, I don't know. I mean, it's always possible. Oh, Ellie. I live in the world where it's always possible that one day the Democrats will try on the courts. Oh, Ellie. It can happen, man.
Starting point is 01:23:48 That was very sweet. I am so glad that you ended that on an optimistic note. That was all right. I'll tell you something, that you could be that optimistic by the end of the interview. I feel like I've taken you to another place. I've got to have some hope, man, or else it's just that you know, you got to find some way to keep getting up in the morning. Allie Mistal will, of course, link to all your pieces at The Nation and your book, Bad Law. Always, always a real pleasure to talk to you.
Starting point is 01:24:30 And thanks again for coming on. Thanks so much for having me. All right, folks. I'm going to head into the fun half. If Ellie's going to use a baseball metaphor, he's got to understand baseball. I think he does. Oh, boy. Somebody broke the chat by putting in a massive link.
Starting point is 01:25:00 We got to somehow fix that because I have a scream. Because somebody could break it every single day and just massively interrupt our comms. Yeah. Folks, just no, no, not not. I mean, not not our our coms, but. that whatever coms with the members comes with the members folks it's your support that makes this show possible you can join the majority report by going to join the majority report dot com when you do you not only get the free show free of commercials you get the fun half and you get
Starting point is 01:25:35 the i am and the fun half and sometimes sometimes um you can break the uh chat by putting in a you know massive fake link or whatever it is probably shouldn't have said that probably not probably not also just coffee just coffee dot co-op fair trade coffee coffee hot chocolate use the coupon code majority get 10% off also when you use that coupon code majority 10% off at just coffee it breaks the chat I probably shouldn't have said that I probably shouldn't have said that don't become a member just to break our chat
Starting point is 01:26:17 folks yes Matt what's happening on left reckoning left reckoning we had a Sunday show for patrons patreon.com says left reckoning talk about Zoron's win and Peter Teal's little anti-Christ freak out with Rust out that
Starting point is 01:26:35 also I was on with the Vanguard also talking about Zoron around so check that out you can see my uh fresh sunburn from the rockaways i was gonna say i felt that's not a sunburn that's a wind rush yeah i mean you should see my back i felt i could feel myself not getting certain parts did i did i could feel myself missing certain parts of my back and there's up that'll probably be okay and uh it turns out it was not really okay so yeah all right quick break head into to the fun half.
Starting point is 01:27:11 646, 257, 39, 20, we'll take some calls after a bit. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts.
Starting point is 01:27:39 wait a second hold on for hold on for a second Emma welcome to the program hey what is up everyone fun pack no me key you did it let's go Brandon let's go Brandon Bradley you want to say hello
Starting point is 01:28:04 sorry to disappoint everyone I'm just a random guy it's all the boys today fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this? Seven, eight.
Starting point is 01:28:20 Yes. Hi, is me? Is this me? Yes. Is this me? Is it me? It is you. It is me?
Starting point is 01:28:36 I think it is you. Who is you? no sound every single freaking day what's on your mind sport we can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism i'm gonna just know what libertarians they're so stupid though common sense says of course gobbledygook we fucking nailed him so what's 79 plus 21 challenge met i'm positively clovery i believe 96 i want to say 857 210 35 501 1 1⁄3 88s 911 911 for instance 3 8400 hundred dollars nineteen hundred dollars five four three trillion dollars sold it's a zero-sum game actually you're making me think less but let me say this poop you call satire sam goes it satire on top of it all my
Starting point is 01:29:25 favorite part about you is just like every day all day like everything you do without a doubt hey buddy we see you all right folks folks folks It's just the week being weeded out, obviously. Yeah, sundown guns out. I don't know. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question.
Starting point is 01:29:56 Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks. I love it. I do love that. Got to jump. I got to be quick. I get a jump. I'm losing it, bro.
Starting point is 01:30:09 two o'clock we're already late and the guy's being a dick so screw him um um sent to a gulaw outrageous what is wrong with you love you love you bye love you bye bye

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