The Ricochet Podcast - The Democrats-Only Love Motel

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

Conservatives are set to celebrate another year of invigorating Supreme Court decisions. Ricochet's old pal John Yoo even goes so far as to suggest that we can finally get back to business. He and the gang go through the big ones of this session: Race-based affirmative action, religious freedom for both practice thereof and freedom of speech; then on to gerrymandering and more.The boys also discuss foreign fires, fireworks and drafting with ChatGPT.

I was in France. You have to pronounce it like that. France. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Read my lips. No new answers.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long. He's back. And Peter Robinson. I'm James Lileks. And given the whole SCOTUS bonanza we've had this week, there's only one possible guest we need, and that is John Hughes. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Well, it's a very sad day.

In the majority opinion, they basically whitewashed, whitewashed the Constitution in a way that basically says that we were right all along. America is a nation that can be defined in a single word. I was going to put him in a foot... Excuse me. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 648. Two more to 650, which is probably as meaningless a number as 648.

But here we are. I'm James Lilacs, and here is Minneapolis. Rob Long's back in New York, and he's been in France. Peter Robinson will be trembling along in just a minute here. But while we're waiting for Peter and waiting for our guest, John Yoo, who will tell us everything we need to know about SCOTUS World. Welcome back, Rob. And how was France? The last we see.

We see it's in flames. You know, it's just entirely in flames. So you got singed on the way out. There's Peter. It's funny when stuff like that happens. Often when things happen in a foreign country, especially France, which is bewildering and a little bit different and

has their own weird thing going on. If you're in the United States, you think, what does it even mean? What does it even mean that these guys are marching around in yellow vests and talking about a 23-hour work um but we know what this means this is just a this police stop that went wrong and um they lied about the shot a kid and they lied about it and so but the demographics are different are they not than the than the yellow vests yeah oh yeah obviously yes but i guess what I should mean is that this just feels like, okay, there that we've had this. And what I think is

interesting about it is that we, we, I mean, I hate when people do that. So I, and here I am doing it, but when I, uh, think about the sort of the George Floyd, the umbrella term I'm using George Floyd's umbrella term for all that stuff um i think of it as like quintessentially typically uniquely american that this is something that happens in the melting pot of the nation with the history that we have and um turns out it's not so that that's my only takeaway from from the paris riots i mean when i was there i got a lot of questions and i think i did an interview or two with some journalists because they were obsessed with the writers strike um because

it seemed to them that americans had innovated a new thing to strike about and a new group to go on strike and i think the french had a hard time accepting that that there were that americans have invented and uh discovered a new. But they haven't yet. So there's a lot of curiosity. What does that mean to go on strike? What do you do? They really want to know the details of the writer's strike. So I expect that here they'll be like, yeah.

You mean there are moments when writers do work? Well, no. I think they're familiar with that. How can you tell they're striking? The job of a writer is to sit around and not write and look constipated. Exactly right. Interesting. Peter, welcome.

And you are in California. I am in California. You have not been hit by the haze and the smoke that is covering the country here. For once, for once, we are so used to having the wildfire haze and smoke in the middle of the summer that I have to say the principal reaction of us 40 million californians is to look at the rest of the country and chortle a little bit thank you for chortling yeah because we always point to you and say ha ha which we don't know we're we we sympathize christian people in the middle of the country there precisely but our weather person in the paper said um of the fire

of the smoke and the rest of it this is what climate change looks like and smells like. Climate change. That's why. Not poor, strange management of their forests in Canada. Not their tendency to just let things burn. Not the fact that they've had arson. No, it's climate change. Because what isn't?

But no, you've got to. So what is the news in California? We were just talking about Rob in France, where I assume he had delightful gustatory experiences, because why else would you... Yeah, pretty much. Okay. The news in California... Actually, the news in California... I have a friend who's a member of the Directors Guild, and he explains the strikes to me as follows. The Directors Guild are the grown-ups. He's a member of the Directors Guild. And he explains the strikes to me as follows.

The Directors Guild are the grownups. He's a member of the negotiating team, actually. And they go in and they sit down with the studios and they come up with a plan and they don't yak it. They just get it done. And indeed, they signed their deal. I think it was the middle of last week or so. And then SAG, the Screen Actors Guild,

and above all the Writers Guild, whine and mope and stage protests and get a lot of publicity. And then they finally come in some weeks later and sign a deal based on the deal that the Directors Guild signed. And this has happened over and over again, I'm told. This year is different. And this year is different, at least in part, because this is all the form of a question to you, Rob, because of artificial intelligence, AI. And the studios have decided that AI is already useful. They will still need writers, but they might not need such big writers' rooms. They might not need junior writers. And here's why. So, my friend gave me an example. He's one of the things you might assign to junior writers. You've got a premise for a sitcom, and then you assign the

kids in the room to come up with three or four different endings. Just see how might the plot go, how might you end it. And AI can do that already. I mentioned this to son number two, and he called up ChatGBT and assigned it to write a scene in which Donald Trump and Joe Biden play ping pong. And 40 seconds later, there was 500 words on his screen, which I have now seen. It was not ready for SNL. Lorne Michaels would not have bought it. But you know what? It had a sense of pacing. It tried some humor. And you could just sort of see the way this could go. And it really could be bad for junior writers. Question mark, Rob. Well, I have a theory that if you're a writer and you are worried about AI, just how bad are you?

Like, that scenario, I guess, could work. It's just never going to be as good as a bunch of funny writers in a room coming up with stuff the ai is don't write jokes and so so far um and the idea of like separating it all into scenarios and you ask chat gpt to come maybe it would work i don't know but that just seems like actually more work than sitting in a room with your team and the fun of it and coming up with stories and you know you can write half a story in the in the room if you're if you're good right and so part of the problem is that's what i mean it's like if you're not good i think i think ai means is you guys will do this if you if you're if you're if you're a good writer it's going to make you slightly better because you're going to use it and the studio is not

going to use it for you you're going to use it the studios don't want to develop they don't want to do any of that so i think they're out of that business. If you're a great writer, it's going to give you superpowers because you're really going to be able to run a bunch of different versions at once and see how they all play out. And it'll be an interesting writing prompt that I even I use now. How do you use it? Give us a couple of examples of how you use it right now. I haven't used it in dialogue, but I've used it in prose when I don't want to do any research and I don't really want to know any of the information.

I just want to kind of get what happened and I'll just write the first three sentences and just say, finish it for me and it'll finish it for you. I never use that. I don't really use the sentences of the language, but I definitely use the way it lays out events and sequences in a way that's very very um logical and easy to understand and so it kind of gets out of you wait a minute so it's out of your own way we're already in the third we're already in the third verse of in the year 25 25 by zagger and evans where rob long is just in a chair hooked up to a bunch of tubes dictating some ideas to

machines which write it all for him well maybe i just i just think that when you when you reduce all that stuff to just the output you know you're what you're going to get is something boring and when people don't do this thing i mean the the old there's only one rule of show business right don't be boring and i've never seen anything the ai's done that hasn't been boring maybe they'll come up with one i don't know but i have i am in the director's guild as well so i would i would differ with your director friend this way the directors have are traditionally the grown-ups in the room they are traditionally the ones who do the research right there's been a traditionally a huge overlap between the director's interest and the writer's interest it's not quite the same

thing now especially as term especially in terms of working conditions this is very boring people who are not in show business but i'll do it anyway the director the directors guild categories of employment are really really strict and well defined the first ad first assistant director on any set movie or tv does the thing the second assistant director on any movie or tv set does another thing the director does a thing people the upm who's also the director's guild does a thing these are really specific categories writers are like well are you they have different names that are traditional names like story editor and co-producer and supervising producer but the story editor doesn't edit any

stories and the supervising producer doesn't produce any doesn't supervise any production it's just titles for levels of writer the problem is that what you need to know now if you want to be a useful member of the writers guild or you want to be successful members of the writers guild or you want to understand what's going on is you need to know math and writers just

don't know math and so there's a huge amount of stuff i read now for the writers guild that i'm just baffled as to how they got to two plus two equals you know f like the completely wrong categories that they're blending the word residualism doesn't mean residual anymore all that stuff so they they are um they are intractable and um and and way way behind on understanding how the business is going to change and i think this the actor screen actors will probably make a deal probably in a week um because traditionally actors do what the directors tell them to do. John Potthorst gives you a call and says, Rob, Rob, Rob, you promised me your copy for the next issue five days ago. And Rob says, oh, oh, yes, yes, of course, of course.

You hang up, you write three sentences and then say, chat GPT, finish my commentary column. Really? Is that sort of the way it works? And then you go back and read with chat GPT? It's usually if I have a paragraph or two and you're writing prose. I write idiosyncratic essays that have very little to do with truth or reality or journalism. I am not a journalist. I am not interested in facts.

I don't like, I think facts are boring. i like what i think about facts so i want to voice help you with that stuff it doesn't every now and then you have a paragraph where you have to lay out what happened and when oh i see and and you're trying to like and like and you and you can start it and it will sort of finish it in all sort of and and i always do it on a separate you know you do it on a separate document and then you can kind of see oh this is the way this is how a computer brain logically laid out a sequence of historical or you know financial events and then that's a good way to do it because i understand it's really for clarity more than anything else for me because i write my sentences are two paragraphs long i use semicolons and dashes constantly.

I'm incredibly, incredibly bad in that. And it's sometimes hard for people to understand. Because you're taking dictation from your head. And I get that. And that's how I write too. But the thing that I'm loathe to do

is to do that thing that you just described. Because I find that going in and taking a look and finding my own way to say something that I may not understand or seems that going in and taking a look and finding my own way to say something that i may not understand or seems a little boring makes me a better writer it makes me work as opposed to just falling back on my tics and and uh ingrained skills well you see you like work and rob has a different approach

work he says i've known you both for a long time now and i see where we disagree here the two of you i'm out yeah when it comes to work the nation's leftist commentators are working overtime over the last couple of days because there have been three decisions that have just rocked them all back on their heels and uh we need to pack the court it's a rogue court it's illegitimate it's been taking money from special interests. All these things Biden should absolutely ignore everything that they're doing. The states should ignore. The court should be canceled. All of that stuff, etc. If only Ruth Bader Ginsburg hadn't. this way and we're you know we could talk about it here we could plug it into our own little chat gpt things but why when we have a walking talking embodiment of uh intelligence the likes of which machinery could never hope to emulate and that would be john you it does pain me to say that this time we actually need john do you know how painful it's been i've been listening to you guys and i couldn't say anything because you muted me yeah well how did you get how did

you get chat gpt to mute me automatically um because it's it's it's sentient now and is making wise decisions for the rest of humanity uh you know those computers that kirk always argues with until they smoke and then they shut down well this, this is like that, except we're going to let you roll because you are, you know, the Berkeley guy, American Enterprise Institute. You know, you got your credentials up the yazoo, as they might say in some other places. You know, he's on Powerline. He's got that other Law Talk podcast. What really matters, though, is when he comes here and talks to us because he loves us more

than anybody else. All right. What do we got got let's start with um should we start with the freshest one the last one out the door the last grenade they kind of rolled before they headed out for the summer or which one do you want to address is the most consequential scotus decision of our times well the most consequential one of this year was yesterday with the affirmative action case. Right. I think for the Roberts court, this is the second most important opinion other than the Dobbs case from last year. If you think about what conservative lawyers and judges have wanted for the last 50 years, it was to overrule Roe versus Wade and it was to end affirmative action. It's almost as if the conservative legal movement has finally achieved most of its agenda. It only took a half century.

But John, does that mean you're more or less done now? Well, there's always new things to talk to Richard Epstein about. Okay, so can you give us... Today, actually, you saw the other cases where the conservative court is still pushing forward. One is religious rights. And that's very controversial.

Conservatives actually are very divided about how much to protect religious rights. But today, the court said that a religious internet wedding planner did not have to do same-sex weddings if out of her legitimate and good faith religious belief. And then the other case today was the cutting back, stopping, actually not cutting back, completely blocking the $400 billion Biden student loan cancellation. And that's the other area where this court's going to still keep going, which is trying to figure out a way to rein in the bureaucracy.

AP characterized the website designer decision as another blow for gay rights, which I think is an interesting way of framing the issue, as opposed to... If somebody had declined to make a website for nazis i don't think that the ap would be saying in a blow to racist rights wow they would be hailing it as something else this is a matter of compelled speech right this this is a matter of the of the state's view on things being mandatory in in in freedom. So, the phrasing on this is always going to be suspect and perhaps not surprising. And guess what? I have no question there, so I'll shut up and Peter, you can go on and ask a good question. James actually made an excellent point there, which is one thing that the religious groups

successfully did, and they started doing this about 20, 30 years ago, but you're really seeing the culmination in the last five years. And I'm not sure very religious people would agree with this. They kind of converted themselves from a religious group to a free speech group. So now, instead of saying, they still say, you're restricting our right to have freedom of religion under the First Amendment. But then they also say, and we have a point of view as like a free speech right that's that's different and they've been winning a lot more lately because they're able to say we also are just saying what we believe as if you know any group in society has a right to say what they believe regardless of whether it's religious or

not and they've been getting i think they begin more sympathy from people and from judges because they've made that switch i know we're talking about we're talking about the website case but i i also want to go back to affirmative action but the website case first just just clarify because i always get this wrong if i run a liquor store and i say i don't sell to gay people that That's a violation of something, right? Is that bad? You can't do that. I bake cakes or decorate cakes or make websites or do a kind of a service and say, listen, I don't, I don't. I mean, the people doing that aren't saying they don't sell or serve those people.

They're saying they will not create a public product for those people. They will not be their ghostwriter, in a sense, either on the web or on the top of a cake. Is that fair? Yeah, and that's where a lot of people are conflicted. Because you could say, if you're a store and you open yourself up to the public, you're a store, and you open yourself up to the public, or your hotel, you open yourself up to the public, then the law says you have to basically not discriminate against anybody who comes in. So you can't say, I run the Rob Long Democrats Only Love Motel. Although that sounds like a great sitcom, doesn't it?

It would be a great business. Right. You got to let in Republicans and Democrats. You have an obligation when you open a business to open it to everybody. Now, the distinction the court made, and you may not be persuaded by this. There's a lot of people dissent from this on the court and the scholarship, but they'd say, the court then says, okay, so if you go into the baker's place and you buy the cake, he has to sell you the cake. You can't force him, though, to write what you want on the cake. He said, that's my artistic. And the court kind of draws the line around there between your right to open access but then the right of the business owner

not to right not to have to say what he doesn't want to say not to be your ghostwriter which i kind of agree i i don't quite understand i don't guess i don't understand the argument against it because it hurts the wrong group of people the same people who are saying that the baker should be forced to write something on the cake that is contrary to their own personal beliefs are the same people who will try to get you drummed out of your job or academia if you misgender or use the wrong pronouns or you have a hateful idea, which is dissent. I mean, this is the disconnect that I don't get, is on one hand, they want the state to compel people to say certain kinds of speech, and on the other hand, they are absolutely incensed if people say something that they find abrades their own delicate sensibilities.

And here's the interesting thing both James and Rob's questions raise is, after this case, before this case, I would not have thought this was a serious claim. But now I could see someone saying, well, in in the workplace you can't make me use your preferred pronouns anymore because i don't believe in three four or five different genders right right so i for religious good faith religious reasons i refuse to use the vocabulary that my employer is trying to impose on me that might be the next set of cases or it should be because saying artistic somehow gives a carve out that i don't think should be there doesn't i mean if the artistry

or whether or not it's aesthetic is irrelevant what matters is compelled speech and that's what the left has been trying to do for a long time is to frame and just and contort the words so that if you do not utter these proper phonemes that you are guilty of a whole raft of harmful, violent, etc. things. You're a phonemophobe. All right, so I guess I understand. But that feels to me as the way it has been limbed by James Lilacs, to use a legal term, but I know you like John Yoo.

That seems to me, as you described, like unbelievable red meat, almost a hometown buffet times 20, a banquet of McRibs for future Supreme Court cases. Yeah. This feels to me like that. This area is going to be like this is the overture to the world's longest concerto for courts in 20 years 25 30 years in the future trying to figure

this part out right yes and this is uh to extend the method this is the overture before the opera starts because there's so many but part of it's because of what you guys are talking about if the other side let people alone right they didn't try to say the reason this happened was because colorado passed a law trying to force right bakers wedding planners to accept everyone who comes in and to have to do these websites or put on the frosting on the cake with the messages for people they disagreed with and for causes they disagreed with. So I think if the other side would step back a little bit, they won't start generating all these permanent Supreme Court precedents, which they're going to be very upset with.

And the chances that the other side will step back a little bit are... Counselor, may we go to affirmative action? Yes, please. I'm just going to give you a stack of questions and let you deal with them, as you may. Rather than kind of let you talk and then come in with... All right. Can we do them one at a time? Because I can barely remember what Peter says 10 seconds after he says you might thank you very much you know you could take notes there

john yeah i was clicking around last night and you were you appeared on every single outlet that i clicked on john you must not have slept last night you were on cable television so much okay it was i was calling i was telling my friends i hate to say, but I was getting critiqued by some friends. So I said, that's just what you, for the first time in history, that's what you call the Asian victory lap. Okay. I'm going to get in so much trouble for that. Three questions. Question number one.

Can we agree that this was the Chief Justice at his best? No attempt to play politics, beautifully written, passionate, forceful, logically unanswerable, as best I can tell. Two, I'm going to give them all to you, John, right now. John Ligato Okay. I'm writing them. Peter Robinson Was there, did it leave too much of a loophole? Of course, colleges and universities may continue to consider essays and personal

experiences, and your alma mater, Harvard, instantly released a press release saying that if applicants discuss the effects on their lives of race, we will, of course, take that into account. That's a loophole, I think. Maybe not. Well, you'll tell me. Three, the military was specifically excluded. Now, I can't quite figure out the grounds for saying that taking race into account in hiring or application admission decisions is unconstitutional, but the military gets to do it. John? So, first, I think this is Roberts' greatest opinion. It was, as you said, it was very forceful and strong he has overwhelming disdain for university professors like me, university administrators, deans, particularly college administrators. He almost

calls them all liars. He says, basically, you told us this stuff almost over 20 years ago that you needed diversity to have better teaching, research, and so on. And he says, there has been in the last two decades absolutely no proof that that is true. And he says, this is almost the exact words, he says, we're no longer going to take your word for it. That's not legalese. That's pissed off. So, that's one thing is just how forceful he was, almost angry that he felt the court has been manipulated by universities. So I thought it was a great, and also he's very direct and responsive to the dissent. He could have ignored Justice Jackson and her 1619 Project dissent. I recommend you read it because now we have a critical race theorist on the Supreme Court.

It's that bad, is it? Oh, it's a... In fact, she basically prompts Justice Thomas into saying that she herself holds racist beliefs. It's really an extraordinary exchange. I haven't seen anything like it in 50 years of Supreme Court opinions. But what Roberts' main achievement is to say, let me show you how the Constitution is colorblind. Let me show you every time the Supreme Court has thought it was doing good by deviating from that, like Dred Scott, which upheld slavery, like Plessy versus Ferguson, which upheld segregation. Every time we did it, it was a disaster for the country. And so, we've done it a third time for admissions, and we're going to stop. We're going to close that loophole off, and now we're just returning

to a single, easy-to-understand principle. We have a colorblind Constitution. So, I thought it was, I don't think Roberts is ever going to do better than this. It's all downhill for him now. Or you, John. The two of you need to hang up right now, but we'll come to that in a moment. think roberts is ever going to do better than this it's all downhill for him now or you john the two of you need to hang up right now but we'll come to that in a moment we'll come to that i'm still young enough to get on the court see this is what we you gotta you're gonna really scare the left just say look you could still put john you on the court this is not over um the second the loophole yeah that's not gonna happen i don't really think Why do you think you wrote that book about Donald Trump called Defender of the Constitution? Yeah.

Pre-January 6th. Anyway, on the loophole. The loophole question. Yes, the loophole. Actually, this is, again, something he did because of the dissent. So the dissent actually tried to say, okay, here are the 10 ways college admissions officers can still cheat. Really remarkable. They tried to find loopholes in the decision. That's what the dissent did, right? And one of them, and lay them out for college admissions officers.

Right. So this really ticked Roberts off. So he basically said, he actually says, the last place you should look for legal counsel is the losing dissent in a Supreme Court opinion. That's really harsh. I thought it was a great line. But then that's why this provoked what people are calling a loophole, which is not, which is where he says, look, obviously, college students are going to put in their essays, oh, I overcame some barrier because of my race, or my race inspired me to write about the works of Martin Luther King. It's not possible for the court to police any of that. But what the court instead said is, but if you use that race as a proxy for he's automatically in or she's automatically in, that's unconstitutional. If you look at their race,

just like you might look at their income or their lack of education opportunities that's different then you're still treating them as an individual not a member of a group that might still be okay but then they say but we're going to be vigilant we're going to be watching you to make sure you're not cheating okay on the third one about the military this has been totally i think exaggerated by the left because they can't find anything in this opinion for anything that looks like sunlight. So there's a footnote in the beginning of the opinion that says this opinion doesn't address military academies because no one sued them. So we're reserving that for tomorrow. So I already had a friend of mine in the conservative legal movement who said, oh, we're going to sue the military academies next year now.

So, I think this exception is not going to last very long. And if you were the dean of West Point or Annapolis, you should change your admissions program before it gets sued to the Supreme Court. And I said, look, this is why the court would do this, because can you imagine the Supreme Court saying, oh, it would be OK to have racial quotas for promotions in the military to a major or colonel? The court would strike that down right away. So why do you think they would allow those in military counties to say, we're going to have quotas for Black and Hispanic officers and lower ones for Asian and white officers? I can't think this court would agree with that. OK, so i jet lagged so i got up early today and i read the newspaper and i read um the decisions on in the affirmative

action case and they're like really good they're like riveting that's like a lot of drama in there but the one thing i was struck and i just this is now cultural not legal so i'm going to ask you a larger question i was struck by the difference of opinion between katan katanji brown jackson and clarence thomas that the two black members of the court have a very different view and so i did a little wikipedia and i and i and i mean no disrespect to katanji brown jackson i'm what i'm about to say i could be said about me in spades but she in the the word they kept using in the in the decisions is adversity that adversity can count adversity is something that all colleges can look at

uh two-parent family katanji brown jackson raised in Florida, born in D.C., father was a prominent lawyer, was then the chief counsel for the Miami-Dade School Board. Mother was a school principal. She went to Harvard. I'm sure she had adversity in her life. We all do. But when you compare that to, say, the Clarence Thomas story, single-parent family raised by a grandparent in poor, rural Georgia, a lot of adversity there. If you are the admissions officer for a Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, one of those candidates, applicants, has adversity in, you know, truckloads, and the other

doesn't. Why should both of them get preferential treatment over, you know, goody-two-shoes gay student John Yoo? Because that's really what is at the heart, right, of this case. I don't understand why my shoes are goody too but i don't even know what that means so you know rob actually it's you were a student you know you were yeah what do you get other than a's are their grades below a that's another mom i know they're not asian asian victory lap but actually asian victory lap is kind of funny because we're supposed to be humble so asian victory lap is just i don't know what an asian victory lap would be just

whatever the victory lap is it doesn't clock in at much of a speed so this is um this point that rob is making is actually not just cultural, it's legal, kid, a black kid in the suburbs, get a benefit of racial preference over a poor white kid in inner city or a race explains everything, which I think is, that's why I'm quite serious when I say Justice Jackson's dissent is a 1619 Project dissent. She says this is justified because all of American society is fundamentally racist and produces these long-term permanent, she says, permanent oppression of blacks. And Justice Thomas, or I think the six other justices in the majority who say, there's nothing wrong with having preferences based on socioeconomic class. That's the other thing people don't realize. This opinion only says you can't use race. If you still wanted to have a better society and do social engineering, you can do it based on geography or poverty, right? Whether your kids

went, you know, your parents went to college, that's all still allowed. In fact, I think this court would uphold those in a second. So, you really, so Rob Swin is, it shows that there's this difference between people who believe that government can do things based on class, but people in the dissent. And I think a lot of my colleagues and a lot of university professors and teachers in K through 12 who think race explains everything. Right. But if you were, I mean, I'm going back to those two people and I'll shut up, because it seems to me that's the crux of the argument is that Clarence Thomas was born in 1948 and Katanji Brown-Jacks was born in 1970. And when clarence thomas was born he didn't have indoor plumbing and didn't have a father he had a father the father left early he didn't have

any of the things that you need to get to yale except probably a grandmother who's on him all the time and his own native brilliance katanji brown jackson is a little bit more like you know frankly the rob long story like she kind of like she story. She's born okay. She did okay. She's a child of the post-civil rights era, by any definition. So it seems like one side is clinging to the privilege, and the other side is saying, no, no, done, over. And I don't see where this ends. I don't see where this ends i don't see where the if you have the oldest guy

saying you don't need these set asides the one guy who robbed really could have used them frankly and then the other person who didn't really need them claiming them i mean how can most americans certainly most asian americans look at this and not think that the system is rigged against them. Yeah, I agree. In fact, Thomas says it's worse than that even. He says that having this view that the younger minorities have, look, there are plenty of Asians who support racial preferences, which I find mind-blowing. But just as Thomas says, it's not just that you're trying to get benefits for yourself. You are adopting an ideology that is destructive to young people. He says this in his opinion in response to Justice Jackson.

You are trying to convince all young black children that you are permanent victims and that nothing you do is a result of your hard work and as you said rob your natural talents that everything you suffer is because of racism and therefore everything any benefits you get is because of race he says that as though that's supposed to sting as as though he's unmasked at their argument. That's exactly what they specifically explicitly say, that you are in this position simply because of, I mean, intersectionality and identity politics requires the reduction of everybody down to this. They'll admit it at first.

So, I mean, you're right and he's right, but it's, you know, I don't think this is a mortal blow to their self-image. It's like, yeah, of course, that's exactly what we believe and it's baked into the bones of the american system now the one thing i think is different between say last year and dobbs and this year is that in this case uh i think for these reasons i think the great majority of american people agree with justice thomas i think the polls show something around two-thirds of the american people including a majority of the minority

groups, think that the government shouldn't use racial preferences. So, I think Katonji Brown Jackson's dissent and this whole 1619 project, maybe this is the turning point, I hope. Maybe this was this crazy ideology invented at the universities that's been let loose on society and maybe this court is now not ending it but it's the beginning of the end so uh john did you did you find it striking at all that on all three of these big decisions that have come down in the last couple of days affirmative action the student loan forgiveness case, and then the cake case, the wedding cake case.

Wedding planner. Wedding planner case. Thank you. The three liberals all voted in the minority, meaning it, I guess, well, no, I'm putting this as a question, but my own, just, you know more about this than I do, but it struck me that they're becoming, that was almost transparently political. We just can't permit, we just can't do this. The arguments are very weak. Katenji Jackson-Br Brown is arguing politics from the

New York Times. And I guess I was surprised and disappointed that now a correct, straightforward understanding of the Constitution, and as far as I can tell on the student loan matter, nobody, including Joe Biden, actually thought what he was doing there was legal, and yet you still have three justices of the Supreme Court saying, no, no, no, no, if the president does it, we're not quite sure how that's legal, but somehow or other, there's a deli, somehow it's legal. And just straightforward constitutional interpretation is now politicized. The left has somehow or other pledged itself to sheer power identity politics in a way that it had not before. Am I wrong?

Which I may very well be. Well, I'm not sure you're wrong when it comes to these sort of core issues like abortion, affirmative action. I think their views on this are really hardwired into liberalism i mean whatever you want to call it progressivism not liberalism small l but i think progressive just can't because they have whole structures of thought and policy built around abortion built around right affirmative action social engineering based on race. So, this is my hope. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm too optimistic. But my hope is once the court gets over these central fights that have been going on for 50 years, right? Baki, which created racial preferences, is from the 70s.

Roe versus Wade is from the 70s. These are fights that have been going on for 50 years. Now, maybe if they're settled, the court can get down to regular business. So, while everyone's talking about affirmative action, talking about the student loan program, the court's been unanimous on things that I think have a lot of common sense. They decided a case yesterday about the religious postal worker. You know, what's his name from Cheers? Not Norm, the other guy. Cliff. It's like as if Cliff were a religious Catholic, right?

So, Cliff didn't want to deliver mail on Sundays. And so, the post office basically punished him. And the court unanimously said the post office should just give him some other kind of work at the post office on the other days to make up for not working on Sunday. That's unanimous. The other case I'd point out again. Wait a minute. Who delivers mail on, who gets mail on Sundays? What is this?

Oh, yeah. 1927? No. Where you got two, you know, you got it twice a day and then once on Sundays. I have never, never known Sunday delivery. Could be. We just, we just don't include Minneapolis. Oh, that explains it.

Could it possibly be actually no actually no it's actually amazon that's what i was gonna say it's the post office that's what i was gonna say it's one of those things that they're doing their subcontracting for amazon and so that adds another little eye-opener to these things anyway do go ahead and then here's actually the other one is a minnesota case i'll throw it out there too where they were unanimous everyone agreed them common them. Common sense where Minneapolis took the condo of a 92-year-old grandma because she hadn't paid her taxes, sold it, kept the tax money, but then kept the rest of the money, too. Again, 9-0, that's a taking of property. So my hope is the three Trump justices added to Roberts, Thomas, and Alito has produced now the supermajority that can finally resolve these cases that really have bedeviled our system for 50 years.

Now we can get on to new business, and maybe you'll see the tensions recede rather than get worse. That's my hope. Guys, let me ask you about the student loan thing. We all know that we had an amnesty when it came to immigration, that it didn't settle the issue forever. It just meant that people said, hmm, well, if I can have one of those, I'd like to get into the next one. And so they'd come here and stick around and hope for a law. If they had passed the, if they said that the Biden loan forgiveness was okay, that's great. That's a good idea. We're going to say it's constitutional because it's a good idea and people

like it. And ergo it's constitutional. If they had done that, there would have been absolutely no effect whatsoever on people taking ridiculous amounts of money to get ridiculous degrees because they'd figured another one was down the road. So now that they have, now that there's no forgiveness, could this possibly be the beginning of the pointless expensive miserable cultural addiction this country has to believing that a college degree

is a somehow certification of one's ability to do anything in the world and it's the basic most you know minimal thing that you have to do to participate is this the beginning of the end of the whole college mystique and the return to something perhaps that's more useful and grounded? In other words, I mean, you can wrap up everything we're talking about and saying that actually, if you want to help these poor kids who grew up in adverse circumstances and have lived experiences to tell about it, don't send them to Harvard, send them to an electrician school or a plumbing school where they can actually make a difference and make some money. Anyway anyway just the end of college as we know it well you're seeing the

changes already in what people are majoring in so i think you're seeing now the lowest number of majors in the humanities you know like english professors are wondering why no one's showing up in their classes i'll tell you here at Berkeley, we just created the first new college in 50 years, and it basically is data science. And I think it already has the most majors in the whole university. And people are not majoring in history, English. Maybe this is good for humanity. I don't know. But, you know, people... Yeah, it doesn't sound bad. I wouldn't mind if fewer people are majoring in English and history if history and English were part of the basics for getting a college degree.

In other words, in order to get that degree, even if it's in STEM, we've got to see that you've sat in a class and gotten basic rudiments of civic education and history and English and the rest of it. So you come out of here a well-rounded individual, but no, it doesn't. Yeah. My point is just like the market is responding and students themselves are choosing to go for more practical subjects. Now, even when they go to college there, you know, they're going for things like data science for STEM fields, not for the liberal arts, which I'm sure the four of us all majored in.

Can I just change the subject for one thing? Yeah, I hear you. Sorry, I got it. Which we haven't talked about, which the gerrymandering case was from two weeks ago. Allen versus Milligan. Is that it? Yeah. The one from Alabama. The one from Alabama. So the court the court again the conservatives on the court said you're the alabama the redistricting or redraw the redrawn map that the alabama state legislator did is that this is not subject to just to state judicial review. Do I have that right? Not quite.

What do you mean, not quite? The Supreme Court basically said we're not going to overturn that map, even though when you drew the map, you took race into account. So some people think, oh, that's a contradiction with yesterday's decision saying you can't use race so this is where so there's a i could give a political explanation for this or a constitutional explanation the political explanation is i think after last term with dobbs and the second amendment cases um i think that i think chief justice roberts and the conservatives say there's only so much we can do any one year. There's only so many apple carts we're going to turn over.

And so if we're going to strike down affirmative action, if we're going to strike down Biden's student loan program, we're, and again, I think this is just Roberts and Kavanaugh, but primarily Roberts, he's basically, we're going to leave a law, the Russell law, alone. And so the court has for many years allowed considerations of race in drawing congressional districts. And so conservatives are upset with Roberts because they're saying, how could you do that? This is inconsistent. You shouldn't allow the use of race here either. But I think Roberts just said, we're just going to leave the way we've been doing business here

untouched. I think a lot of conservatives think it's wrong and unconstitutional to use race even when you draw congressional districts. And then the question is even how do you do it? I mean, you're making the worst stereotypical judgments of people based on their race when you pack them into different districts assuming they're all going to think and vote the same way um but my view is the court just didn't have enough you know political and intellectual capital to do it it just seemed it just seemed consistent with the earlier decision or the later decision now i mean i know that was earlier this month so later this month um and maybe i get this wrong um limiting the um state court's ability to

review election maps drawn by state legislators so in a sense it's consistent in the sense that they're sort of allowing the state the elected state representatives a lot of seems to me a lot of leeway properly it seems to me in deciding how elections are organized run conducted in their states is that so it is consistent in that way or am i yeah you know so again i think there's a short term and a long term. This is Moore versus Harper you're talking about, which is whether state legislatures alone have the right to draw districts or whether other parts of the government can change them, like the governor or, in that case, the state Supreme Court. So I think the short term, again, is, I think Roberts, you know, who in both of these cases joined with liberals on the court to, you know, basically reach a liberal outcome. I think he just didn't want to fight on that many

fronts at once. And particularly in that case you may you may know that a lot of um pro-trump people who think the election was stolen wanted the outcome to be different in that case because the parallel provision also says state legislatures decide how you choose presidential electors. And so if you remember back to December, January 2020, Trump's legal advisors were telling him that the state legislatures could ignore the popular votes in places like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Georgia and just choose the electors themselves for Trump. So I think the politician in Roberts thinks, look, the more important issue in the long run is striking down affirmative, is racial preferences, is stopping this, is seizure of the power of the purse by the president. The longer term picture is exactly

as you say, Rob, and Rob, I welcome you. I encourage you to join the ranks of legal scholars, because this would be a great law journal article, actually, that I think has been missed, which is... See? I can say blunder to the truth. Now, these two cases, plus there's an earlier case that says the court's not going to get in the business of trying to draw districts. And then there's an earlier case called Citizens United, where the court said, we're not going to try to decide how much you can contribute to campaigns. I think that the court is getting out of the business of trying to oversee elections and politics. You can see in the opinions, there's

this view, politics is a dirty, messy business. Judges have no place trying to get involved and clean up democracy. So we're just going to pull out of the field. Again, this was a great progressive project, if you think about it. The progressives are the one who wanted to have, they teach courses called the law of democracy, the law of politics. And they were trying to push the courts into basically being the supervisors of elections and politics and political parties. And I roberts and the conservatives are gradually leaving the field so not bad i mean look if you don't like if you don't like the way your districts are drawn you don't like the way your state elections are held you don't like any

of that stuff vote the bums out that's how america yeah don't go to the supreme yeah they're saying don't come here to the supreme court anymore rob will soon be submitting an article to the harvard law review but check it i think he's going to have chat gpt john we have to let you go not because we have to actually but we're just kind of talking you know we're done with you so you know because we could do this gentlemen always a pleasure to provide legal advice for free. We will see you at our favorite kind when it comes to yet another victory lap for John, you right there. Right. Thanks, John. See you guys. Thanks, John. Talk to you. Happy fourth, John. Yes. Happy fourth. Rob, we got about three minutes here before you have to take off. And I

believe that you right at this very moment back from France, jet-lagged, are eager to tell America that they, too, can meet Rob Long in person if they come to New York for a one-on-one, right? Yeah, sort of. I mean, if I'm here, absolutely. But you can meet each other on a one-on-one because if you really want to take back America, people are going to have to get together, grassroots level, and that reminds me of Ricochet meetups. So why not start by getting together with some smart, like-minded people for drinks or several drinks? Join Ricochet, and we have meetups, scheduled meetups in Winston-Salem July 14th through 16th, in Portland, Oregon July 18th, so a lot of them are coming up in the next couple weeks,

German Fest meetup in Milwaukee July 28th to July 18th. So a lot of them are coming up like next couple of weeks. German Fest meetup in Milwaukee, July 28th to July 30th and Cookville, Tennessee, Labor Day weekend, September 1 through 4th. Look, we have members all over the country. If these dates or times

or places don't work for you, just join Ricochet, throw up a post, say how about a meetup here at this time and people will show up because Ricochet members like to come to a part

and you may say join ricochet why what what exactly is in it for me why i just go to the site and read it well that's because in the member feed you have things the likes of which you have never seen before on the internet okay maybe you have but they're not as good they're not as varied they're not as well gary mcveigh just had a thread the other day he has these great threads about hollywood and hollywood history and televisionVeigh just had a thread the other day. He has these great threads about Hollywood and Hollywood history and television and the rest. He had a thread about Destination Moon, the movie that brought into a George Powell and Fritz Lang and Buzz of conversations. And you know what? It's my favorite place. And I write a lot of stuff for there that I don't post to the main feed because I just like to keep it amongst ourselves. And it's fun. So go there.

Join. It's cheap. And your life will be changed. Peter, what are your plans for this 4th of July expanse? I'm going to say something that's hopelessly old-fashioned and I will be accused of sexism. My plans are as usual. I wait for Mrs. Robinson to tell me what we're doing. That's sexist?

It's tactically wise. Tactically very wise. Yes, indeed. Rob, are you getting out the grill and putting on your Kiss the Cook bib? Oh, are you cooking? Well, the family will be gathering. Father will be gathering at the beach. And what we usually do... Which beach? Nantucket? Long Island?

Nantucket. Nantucket. I have to be very careful. What I did... I don't know if I broke federal law. I don't know if I broke state law. I drove quickly out of the New York state and out of New Jersey state into the first hundred yards of

Pennsylvania where you can purchase fireworks and i bought a bunch of those to shows to let off in an undisclosed location which i will not tell anyone because it's illegal and my mom hates it and everyone hates that i do it but i do it every year and it's uh it's part of the thrill is of course is not getting arrested but i plan plan to have the cops show up. I plan to blame my nephew who's a, you know, strapping a 17 year old football player, but he's also very nice. International waters. Yeah. I don't know what the Buckley thing with it. Yeah, exactly. I, uh,

I wrote one of my columns this week for the newspaper. I had, I gave it over to my dog to explain why fireworks are bad and why we should stop doing them. And I thought just for fun, I'm going to use Photoshop Beta's new generative AI to create a bug, a photo illustration of my dog to replace mine in the newspaper in the style of the newspaper. And I did a really good job of it too. So my dog is taking over to explain why Rob and his fireworks loving people are the worst. I love them. I love them. My neighbor actually does what Rob does, but gets industrial grade stuff. So we have displays that are just extraordinary. But when it comes to the rest of it, I'm just going to throw some brats on the grill. And that's a problem because I'm out of

gas. So I'm looking at trichinosis here down the line. Fourth of July, so soon, as my mother always said, after this, it just seems like the summer's over. It runs through your fingers like water. But she's wrong, of course. We've got two big, stern, brawny months standing in front of us before the fall. July is great. Hot August, as we know, is this big bulwark against the fall, against the winter, right? So I always think until the cicadas stop droning and I realize that it's getting cooler and the days are getting shorter. But why? Why think about that when we can luxuriate in three great victories of the Supreme Court, a renewed sense of American optimism, the 4th of July as ever. On we muddle, on we go, on we stride, on we march. And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet.

I say 4.0 for now, but 5.0 is right around the corner. You'll want to join now so you can get in on the fun. Gentlemen, happy fourth. Happy fourth next week, boys. Happy Fourth of July. Ricochet. Join the conversation.