The Young Turks - Abuse Of Power

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Trump Throws Himself Under The Bus During January 6th Hearings | Feds RAID Home Of Trump-Friendly Former DOJ Official | Arkansas Law Punishes Citizens For Expressing Their Political Opinions | Supreme Court Shocks The Nation By Striking Down NY Gun Law Ana Kasparian and Jessica Burbank discuss on The Young Turks. Watch LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET. http://youtube.com/theyoungturks/live Hosts: Ana Kasparian And Jessica Burbank *** The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET.  Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey ▶ https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt Watchlist with Jayar Jackson ▶ https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA #TYT #TheYoungTurks #BreakingNews Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. We're going to be able to be. Welcome, everyone. You're watching TYT. I'm your host, Anna Casparian. And as you guys have noticed, Jank is out. He's been out all week, but we have Jessica Burbank filling in today for the first hour. Jessica does great work for us over at Rebel HQ. She also hosts the power panel on Fridays quite often. And I'm really happy to be able to do the show with you today, Jessica. Thanks for

joining us. Yeah, super happy to be here. So there's a lot in the news to get to, yes, Yes, we will be talking about the Supreme Court ruling in regard to gun legislation or gun laws, I should say, in the state of New York, which of course is going to have a ripple effect across the country. We're also going to talk about how our First Amendment rights have now been violated by the courts. And I'll explain why the BDS movement is a big part of that story. In the second hour, we'll lighten things up. Turns out that J.K. Rowling got into a little bit of trouble, if you want to call it that. She felt, prey to a hoax and thought that she was going to interview an incredibly important person, and it didn't end up happening the way she expected. So we'll get to that later in the second hour when Ida Rodriguez will join us. But before we get to all of that, I wanted to start off with the January 6th hearings, which wrapped up not too long ago, at least today's hearings. And there's a lot to get to. A lot of stuff broke that I want to discuss. So let's get right to it. You also noted that Mr. Rosen said to Mr. Trump, quote, DOJ can't and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election.

How did the president respond to that, sir? He responded very quickly and said essentially, that's not what I'm asking you do. What I'm just asking you do is just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressman. The person you just heard from was the former acting deputy attorney general, Rich Donahue. And he explained how Donald Trump tried to use the DOJ for his own purposes, particularly in overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election. And he continued to do so even after his attorney general William Barr quit his post in response to Trump attempting to overturn the results of the election. Now, let's watch what else Donahue had to say during

the hearings that took place today. Let's now put up the notes where you quote the president. As you're speaking to that, he said the president, the president said, just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest of me and the Republican congressman. So Mr. Donagher, that's a direct quote from President Trump, correct? That's an exact quote from the president, yes. So Trump basically tells the DOJ, listen, homeboy, all I need you to do is tell the American people that there's something fishy going on with the elections. It's corrupt. And then all my lap dogs will spring into action, meaning Republican lawmakers, and they'll do the rest on my behalf, essentially dismantling our electoral process,

giving a massive middle finger to tens of millions of American voters who cast their ballots for Joe Biden, just that's all you need to do. Just announce that it's corrupt and my henchmen will do the rest. And luckily, you have top level of within the Justice Department telling him no, we're unwilling to do that. In fact, there was an Oval Office meeting in which these high level DOJ officials threatened to quit if Trump carried out one of the actions he was planning to carry out. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. But before we do, I think it's also important to note that these hearings are starting to make it more and more clear that the Republican members of Congress who played a role in this bad behavior and essentially

undermining the election might be the focus of the hearings and maybe might even face some consequences for it. And I'll explain why in just a moment. But here's one of the moments that really caught my attention. This is after Donahue had made it clear that Trump wanted the DOJ to carry out this kind of messaging to overturn the election. Let's watch. Because people haven't done their jobs. Durham and Barr will deserve a big notation in history when it's written of the rise and fall of the United States. If they don't clean up this mess, clean up the fraud, do your jobs and save this little experiment in self-government. Again, I joined my colleagues in calling on Attorney General Barr to immediately let us know what he's doing.

We're already working on challenging the certified electors. And then what about the courts? How pathetic are the courts? January 6th, I'm joining with the fighters in the Congress, and we are going to object to electors from states that didn't run clean elections. is left undefended if we accept the result of a stolen election without fighting with every bit of vigor we can muster. The ultimate date of significance is January 6th. This is how the process works. The ultimate arbiter here.

The ultimate check and balance is the United States Congress. And when something is done in an unconstitutional fashion, which happened in several of these states, we have a duty to step forward and have this debate and have this vote on the 6th of January. So when Trump communicated to top level officials in the DOJ that all they needed to do was announced that there was corruption in the election and that the Republican congressman will do the rest, what you just watched is exactly what Trump was referring to. And to add a little more weight to that argument, it should be noted that several of those Republican

lawmakers later asked for pardons. And that was a part of this hearing as well. Those Republican congressmen include Scott Perry, Louis Gohmert, Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, and Matt Gates. Notably, Paul Gosar was not listed there, and neither was Jim Jordan. But why would you ask for pardons unless you engaged in something that can get you into a lot of legal trouble? Jessica, I want to bring you in because I have found these hearings to be persuasive. You know, I kind of went in pretending to be someone who didn't buy what the hearings were supposed to sell us. And I've been kind of surprised at how well they've been carried out. What are your thoughts? Honestly, yeah. Just being able to see the inside of what was going on throughout the days of the

insurrection, I think has been huge. Because for so long, we've had people say, you know, we've got to complete an investigation before we come to any conclusions about what happened. or if we see, you know, Donald Trump getting charged for a conspiracy around, you know, an insurrection. And now we're at the point where they've actually done a pretty good job, compiling this evidence and presenting it in a way so that it's understandable to the public, right? These aren't just documents that the committee is overlooking themselves. They've really done good work to make, you know, diagrams of everyone who was sitting in that room with Donald Trump. So we can really imagine what happened. And I think it's super

For interesting that now people are saying, okay, they're not making recommendations to the DOJ about criminally charging Trump. And I think we would all like to see that happen. But let's keep in mind that right now, there's a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia looking at the evidence that's there to see if Donald Trump should or should not be criminally charged. And that's happening at the same time as these hearings, which I'm pretty hopeful about. Well, I mean, you bring up a good point about what's taking place in Georgia. I've learned not to be hopeful about anyone in a position of power ever being held accountable in this country, but I also want to be proven wrong. So I hope you're right, I'm wrong. But the other thing I wanted to mention is that the,

I would argue, most powerful component of these hearings is that we're hearing from people who were appointed and obviously supported by Donald Trump during his administration. So during today's hearing, there was testimony from former acting attorney general, Jeff Rosen, former acting deputy attorney general, Rich Donahue. And then there was also testimony from former assistant attorney general Stephen Engel. And really, there was only one member of the DOJ who was willing to do Trump's bidding. And he was essentially someone tasked with environmental issues within the DOJ, who had absolutely no experience, let's say, leading the DOJ. But when these officials refused to carry out what Trump demanded of them, he wanted to

essentially replace them, right? Replace the acting attorney general with someone named Jeffrey Clark, who would essentially be another one of his lap dogs. And Jeffrey Clark, based on the evidence we heard today, was very active in assisting Trump in overturning the election. Luckily he failed, luckily he failed. But some of the most shocking names have been named in these hearings in regard to like who stood in the way of Donald Trump.

People like William Barr, other Trump appointees within the Justice Department. And it's good to know that that exists. But I think these hearings are also important because it really does set the tone for what could be possible in the future. Right? So if there aren't criminal, if there isn't criminal prosecution of the individuals involved, that will further emboldened other bad actors in the future to just engage in a power grab because what do they have to lose? It's not like they're going to face any criminal charges. Yeah, exactly. I think it's super interesting to think about what would have happened

if they took a few extra steps. And it's not interesting in the good way, right? It's kind of a nightmare to imagine that we could have had this authoritarian right wing leader take hold of power. What if the electors went through and cast their ballots? What if the state legislators did what they were asked to do? What if he did make Jeff Clark the acting attorney general because he said that he would tell the general public, hey, we've got to investigate this. Something sketchy happened with this election. Thankfully there were people who were close to Trump who were saying absolutely not we cannot do this because I think the alternative would have been, hey, now we have an actual successful coup in this country. And the way that

Democrats in Congress were acting when this was going on, they didn't really have a strong sense of urgency around mobilizing to stop the coup from happening. Thankfully, Mike Pence actually was stepping up and giving some pretty direct and strong orders, as we heard about in this hearing, that hey, we cannot let this coup happen. We've got to get the military out here. We've got to get get everyone out here. But if you think about what could happen in the future, if they were a little bit sneakier, this could have been a coup. And that's really scary. And that's going to emboldened the next person that comes to office of the likes of Trump. And I mean, in some ways we're already

seeing the Republican Party put into motion certain, you know, electoral advantages for themselves, right? Through state voter suppression laws, you know, making it incredibly difficult for people who typically would vote for a Democratic candidate to be able to do so. they're also setting in motion all sorts of conspiracy theories to make people question whether or not the individuals who do participate in our elections can legally do so. You know, white replacement theory, the notion that undocumented immigrants are being brought into the country to participate in our elections, even though they don't have the legal right or ability to do so. The list goes on and on. So while I think it's important to hold those who engaged in this behavior accountable, it's also important to look at what the, like what got us to this position, what got the country to this place in the first place, right? Because if we just think that it's about Donald Trump and nothing more, I think we'd be mistaken. There's a lot more to this than one administration full of bad actors. Yeah, that's absolutely right. I think if we think about the electorate and what's happening now,

they're being fed a ton of propaganda so that they're ripe for the next demagogue that comes along, but also we're having all of these folks appointed to positions of power who are judges who would probably rule in favor of someone like Trump if they came in office again. So they're really creating ripe conditions to do this again. Yeah, you make such a great point there. You know, they've taken hold of the judicial system, which we're going to talk about later in the show. It's terrifying and you need a strong opposition party that actually values democracy and values fighting to do the right thing to kind of counter that, to kind of hinder what we're seeing the

Republican Party engage in as we speak. Well, I want to move on to the second component of the hearings that caught my attention. And it focuses mainly on Jeffrey Clark. So let's do it. Today was yet another day of January 6th hearings. Of course, this is the investigation carried out by the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riots on January 6th. And one of the focuses of today's hearing was on a DOJ lawyer by the name of Jeffrey Clark. And he was essentially an individual within the Justice Department who was considered to replace the acting attorney general because he was one of Trump's henchmen, one of Trump's lap dogs, one of the individuals who was attempting to overturn the

election on behalf of Donald Trump. Now luckily there was enough pushback from other officials within the Justice Department to prevent that from happening. But I want to start off with this video that shows how, you know, Trump met with Jeff Clark through Republican Congressman Scott Perry. In the video, you're gonna hear testimony from a DOJ official about what Clark's role was, what he was trying to accomplish, and what the impact would be. Mr. Donahue, on December 28th, Mr. Clark emailed you and Mr. Rosen, a draft letter that he wanted you to sign and send to Georgia state officials. You testified that this could have, quote, grave constitutional consequences.

Mr. Donahue, can you tell us what you meant by that? Well, I had to read both the email and the attached letter twice to make sure I really understood what he was proposing because it was so extreme to me. I had a hard time getting my head around it initially. I thought it was very important to give a prompt response rejecting this out of hand. And there were, in my response, I explained a number of reasons this is not the department's role to suggest or dictate to state legislatures how they should select their electors. But more importantly, this was not based on fact. This was actually contrary to the facts as developed by department investigations over

the last several weeks and months. Did Mr. Clark continue to push his concept in the coming days? He did, yes. That last part's really important because even after discussing this with former acting attorney general, a deputy attorney general, Rich Donahue, the individual you heard testimony from there. After he was told, there is absolutely no weight behind what you're saying here, and under no circumstances will we carry out this alternate slate of electors garbage, he still continued pushing. Again, on behalf of Donald Trump to overturn the result of

the results of the 2020 presidential election. And wouldn't you know it? Turns out that the FBI raided Jeffrey Clark's home today. He's outraged about it. But I think there was enough testimony and enough evidence in the hearing today, Jessica, to show that he deserved to have his house rated. He absolutely should be investigated. And I'll give you more details about that rate in just a moment.

But at first, I want to get your thoughts. Yeah, absolutely. Every other legal mind that was in the room with Donald Trump when they met for like two and a half hours, essentially talking about are we going to replace the attorney general, not because, you know, someone was refusing to investigate this. They had already investigated this and found in the data that there was no evidence of fraud. And so this was Donald Trump asking the DOJ to operate based on his will, not really by through any due process. There wasn't anything that was found that they were refusing to pursue or investigate. He just wanted to find someone who would do

whatever he wanted them to do. And Jeffrey Clark was like, yeah, I'm your guy. And it kind of makes sense, right? He's an environmental lawyer. A lot of times people who are environmental lawyers do good work, but oftentimes they also do work for oil companies, right? If you imagine what his career was like, he was probably doing whatever was necessary for people with money and power. It's probably how he spent his entire career. And the DOJ rating his home is huge. This means that there's something in his house that would prove evidence he committed a crime or Donald Trump committed a crime. So let's talk a little bit about that FBI raid this morning, because first, it's worth

noting that he did in fact promote conspiracy theories within the Justice Department, such as that Chinese spies use thermometers to tamper with U.S. voting machines, according to internal emails made public in a Senate Judiciary Committee 2021 report. There's more, though, in the days before January 6th, Clark helped Trump devise a plan to oust then acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, by the way, one of the people who pushed back against Clark and Trump quite aggressively, placed himself atop the department. So he would be the head of the DOJ, the acting attorney general, and have the DOJ intervene in Georgia to set aside its voting results in order to sway the state toward Trump. As I mentioned earlier with the whole sham electors nonsense,

that they tried out in other swing states where Trump lost. Now, let's get to that notorious January 3rd meeting. So as CNN reports during this dramatic January 3rd, 2021 Oval Office meeting, Rosen, his then deputy Richard, his then deputy Richard Donahue, and the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Stephen Engel, all threatened to resign in protest, which ultimately, by the way, convinced Trump not to place Jeffrey Clark as the head of the DOJ, which is kind of shocking, but I guess at that point Trump was backed into a corner because it's not just a few high level

DOJ officials who are like, look, if you do this, we're going to quit. Everyone who was spoken to within the Justice Department said that they would quit. And that would be a bit of a crisis for Donald Trump. He realized he couldn't do it. And at one point, he actually asked, you know, Rosen, all right, well, what are you going to do if I, you know, are you going to fire Jeffrey Clark? Because at that point, Jeffrey Clark was his subordinate. And Rosen's like, that's not up to me, that's up to you. And Donald Trump's like, nah, I'm not going to fire him. So he remained in the DOJ, but keep in mind, there isn't much time left in this administration in the first place. Yeah, it's crazy to imagine just like being in the room with this group of guys as they're

having these conversations and maybe Trump was swayed by all of them saying, this is an awful idea. You're proposing that if you, you know, appoint Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general. At that point, Donald Trump was like changing attorney generals like he's changing his socks, right? It would have been like three within a month, which is insane. You can't do that with public officials. But in any case, they're like, hey, his first act as attorney general, he just stated would be to be committing a felony. This is criminal behavior. And I think at some point, Donald Trump had to be a little bit scared, right? He's lived a very privileged life. He probably can't even imagine being in a jail or prison cell.

Oh, definitely not. I mean, I don't, I think even today, he's so entitled and thinks he's so above the law that he would never expect to see the inside of a prison cell. But, you know, since you mention how, you know, it was announced during this meeting that on his first day, Clark would commit a felony, I thought that the testimony coming from White House lawyer Eric Hirschman was interesting. So this is what happened with that testimony. So Trump White House lawyer Eric Hirschman said Clark was repeatedly clobbered over the head during the meeting. He said that he explicitly told Clark that he was breaking the law according to his videotape deposition with the committee. Effing a whole, congratulations, you just admitted your first step or act you would

take as attorney general would be committing a felony, Hirschman said. He's a colorful fellow to say the least. He likes to use strong language and I always appreciate anyone who does so. But it's true and it's important to hear this testimony, not just from Democratic lawmakers, right? Because I think that what they have to say is immediately going to be discounted by potentially independent voters or obviously Republican voters to hear from members of Trump's administration, White House lawyers who served under Trump say these things is important. Even if it doesn't convince people who are ultra maga chuds or whatever it is, that's fine. But you need to have a clear historical record of what really transpired.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you have Republicans all over the place saying this is kangaroo court, it's partisan, the Democrats are just doing this. But you have really high level people that were in the administration that were super critical of what Trump was trying to do, which was steal the election. And all of these guys were super mean to Jeffrey Clark. And they had some really funny one-liners where, you know, they were like, oh, just go back to your office. We'll call you if, you know, there's an oil spill. Because Jeffrey Clark had no experience, you know, investigating criminal cases. He had never been on one. So how could you appoint this person to be the DO, the attorney general and run the DOJ. You really can't. But this is the position Trump was in

and it was a desperate one where there was no one, but this one person who was, you know, not that high up in the DOJ, but was in the DOJ that was like, you know, maybe I'll do what you ask me to do. But this was not someone who had an understanding of what was going on or had any experience investigating things like elections. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, that does it for our coverage of the hearing today. We're going to take a brief break. And when we come back, we've got a lot more news to get to, including what a federal appeals court has decided in regard to our First Amendment rights. And later, we'll of course talk about the Supreme Court's ruling on gun laws in New York, which will have an effect wherever you live. So let's take that break,

and we'll be right back with that and more. Welcome back to the show, everyone, Anna Casparian and Jessica Burbank with you. Jessica does content for us over at Rebel HQ. Jessica, where else can the audience find your work? Yeah, well, we're on the power panel every other Friday now, but also I'm on TikTok a lot when I'm not banned. And so you can go over to TikTok. Dude, you know, I love TikTok, but I've noticed certain things get censored as like sensitive content when it's really not sensitive content. Like I feel like TikTok's a little

more sensitive to say the least. But you got a bunch of like teenagers on it. So I guess that might be a good thing. I don't know. But why did you get banned? Yeah, there's never a good explanation. So that's the thing is they'll just sort of take a video down, or say it violates community guidelines, a lot of my stuff about CIA intervention gets taken down, which is pretty suspicious. But I think there's also like a bunch of in cells that just mass report and it gets content flagged and TikTok just responds by taking it down. Totally. My favorite, you know what, let's let's talk about this later if we have time. But it's amazing what these guys will do just to make themselves feel better about how sad they are.

But anyway, let's move on. We've got a lot more news to get to. Actually, I wanted to read one more super chat real quick. This is from Rodney Fong, who says, have presidential candidates be fully vetted by security clearance checks, mental health checks, by the electoral college, include testing with pertinent subject exams, leadership, management, history, political science, sociology, psychology. All right, like, I mostly agree with you. I think we need to do a far more vetting.

And look, this is where I think the press fails us because the vetting is supposed to happen in real time before the American people during these debates, during the reporting about the presidential candidates. But I mean, we've all seen what presidential debates look like. And some of those questions are ridiculous. A lot of subjects and topics get completely ignored. So I hear you. I also don't want to go crazy and expect, you know, every president to be an expert in psychology and stuff like that, because that would actually limit the pool of people who I think would be qualified, but just might not have that specific expertise. That's why they've got advisors and stuff. All right, well, let's move on to how free speech is actually under threat. And I'm not talking about people getting kicked off. of Twitter, specifically talking about the government punishing you for your political speech.

Lawmakers in Arkansas passed a law requiring that state contractors not pledge to boycott Israel. So this is the BDS movement, which is of course controversial considering the United States government and its undying, unwielding, unyielding support for, uh, Israel, but states started passing certain laws that would punish individuals or companies if they signed on to the BDS movement. So in response to that, Arkansas decided, look, if you're getting any type of government contract, government money, state government, particularly, and you are possibly pledging to boycott Israel, we're not cool with that. So we're gonna need you to sign a document indicating that you pledge not to boycott Israel. Now that ended up being

controversial for a number of different reasons because we're literally talking about the government punishing you for your speech, which seems to be a pretty clear violation of our First Amendment rights, regardless of how you feel about the BDS movement. And so this ended up making its way through the courts. And the big news today is the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has reversed a two to one decision last year by a three judge panel of the court that found the requirement to be unconstitutional. So let's pause for a second. That means they reversed the ruling indicating that the Arkansas law was unconstitutional. So now they're upholding that law, which means that the state of Arkansas can punish you by refusing to give you government

contracts or any government money if you are practicing your political speech in being part of the boycott movement or the BDS movement. So here's more on why this case made it to the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. It actually started with the Arkansas Times, a paper in the state that ended up being asked to sign that pledge and they refused to do so. Yeah, it's interesting. The Times is Arkansas's left-leaning magazine. It's free. The publication survives on ad revenue.

But this revenue stream is being threatened by a 2017 law that says state contractors have to sign a loyalty pledge to Israel. Could you explain to me from the beginning how that happens? One of our biggest advertisers and the oldest advertisers is University of Arkansas. Plaskey Technical College. And so in November, the marketing people who we've worked with for years said, you know, this purchasing director is requiring us to get you to sign this. And, you know, at first I just sort of lost it. And but this time it just kept coming. And finally I said, well, there's not going to be a signed pledge. The college buys ads in his paper with state money, making Leverett estate contractor. You refused to sign it. Yeah. And what did that cost you? Well, so far about $15,000.

$15,000, which might not seem like a lot of money for any type of organization, including a newspaper, except this makes up about 10% of their revenue. They receive 10% of their revenue through the state. And again, it's through various organizations who buy ads on the paper that appear on the paper and they use state money in order to purchase those ads. So in this case, it was a university that typically would do advertising in this paper. So I wanna be clear that the paper does not support the BDS movement, but they also don't support the government punishing Americans for whatever political speech or any speech they engage in. They found not to be

constitutional, which is why they took this to the courts. Now, as I mentioned, the appeals court has reversed a lower court decision which upholds this Arkansas law. The ACLU has noted that they will take this all the way to the Supreme Court, where unfortunately I'm not hopeful considering the ideological activism that we've been seeing so far from these conservative justices. Jessica, I wanted to get your thoughts on this. It really feels like it's a deliberate decision to limit free speech when it comes to criticism of Israel specifically in our country. You know, I wonder would they have had the same ruling if, you know, this was about blocking people who want to boycott corporations in China. And I kind of feel like we wouldn't have seen this happen. And it's really weird to me to see like Arkansas and Israel in the same headline and have, you know, the attorney general of Arkansas saying things like, you know, Israel's been an ally of ours. It's kind of like you guys know each other. Like, why are you making decisions about this? And it's even weirder when you look at the appeals court.

ruling when they're saying, you know, that this actually isn't an expression of, you know, speech or political speech. This has to do with commercial activity, which, you know, is under the purview of the states. And we're really states writing our rights away. And to juxtapose this with I think Citizens United is super interesting where they're saying that, hey, political spending from corporations and other groups is free speech. It's like, are you serious? We essentially have a political industrial complex where there's an industry around elections. This is not free speech. Is that commercial activity now, too? Is this going to set a president that allows us to overturn citizens united on this same rationale? It's insane to me that these two rulings can exist

in the same justice system. Well, you know, what I'm actually very curious about is what happens if there is some lefty organization. I mean, I don't even know if this exists, but let's say a very well-to-do lefty organization that has some money to burn. And they decide to spend, who knows, an insane amount of money supporting an organization that helps to, support the BDS movement, right? So can the state then punish that corporation? And if it does punish that corporation, how does the corporation only have, you know, personhood and speech rights when it comes to corrupting a politician on pretty much every, every issue you could imagine, but it doesn't apply to this very specific issue.

Like, it just doesn't make any sense. So I'm curious to see how the Supreme Court, you know, know, figures that out or squares that circle, whatever. We'll see how that plays out. But, you know, you mentioned some of the support, like what you've been hearing from individuals who have supported this Arkansas law. And I actually want to go to the next video because it features one of the state lawmakers who sponsored this legislation. And I think it's important to hear what his reasoning is. Let's watch. It's hard to trace the origin of these anti-BDS laws. But they seem to be the result of coordination between lobby groups, some lawyers, and pro-Israel legislators like Bart Hester, state Senate majority leader,

lifelong Republican, and dedicated Christian. He sponsored the Arkansas bill. There are other states that have sponsored bills like this, and they're strikingly similar, almost word for word, like Texas, Louisiana, and I'm wondering basically who's behind authoring these bills. No one came and pursued me to author this bill, but whenever you just you're going to do it, you start researching what other states are doing if it's working. You know, you always, I like to check with groups like iPad. Long-bendy Twizzlers candy keeps the fun going. Keep the fun going.

See what their thoughts are and if they've got any what we call template legislation that seems to be working for him. Yeah, that's sure, sure, that's what happened, right? That he out of nowhere as a right wing Christian in Arkansas decided, hey, you know, I'm curious about this BDS movement thing. Let me go talk to APA. Let me go out of my way to talk to APAC. I'm researching this issue.

No, APAC came to you. I mean, as they do, they engage in lobbying of lawmakers, both on a state and federal level. And that lobbying comes with campaign donations, of course. That's how lobbying is done in this country. And the fact that they're so effective in convincing state lawmakers, and now the federal courts, that it's unacceptable to practice your political speech, if it hurts the feelings of a foreign government that this country is incredibly supportive of, it's insane, the whole situation is insane.

Absolutely, absolutely insane. I mean, APAC is here exercising their First Amendment right of free speech with their money in politics, lobbying members of Congress at a local level, which is just, it's such an absurd situation. But you can't if you want to boycott Israel. And you're right that it actually doesn't really matter if you want to think about this on a deeper level. It doesn't really matter if you support the BDS movement to see that this is a really dangerous precedent. But it's not really new for things like this to be happening in the United States. Like when South Africa was under an apartheid regime, the United States was supporting the government that was in power at the time for a very long time when we had a ton of civil rights groups, you know, calling for for divestment from South Africa and the regime there and the United Nations had condemned what was going on. And it took a really long time before our government came around and actually supported ending apartheid in South Africa. And we're kind of on a similar trajectory, I would say with what's happening in Israel where there are a lot of groups in the United States that are paying attention to what's happening there. And they want to speak up. And if you think back to what was going on in South Africa

and you think that, of course, you would condemn it. Maybe you wouldn't if you think about where you are at with what's going on in Israel. And I think it's interesting to look at the parallels with that political movement, what was going on at the time. And when the United States eventually came around. And it's really going to take. getting money out of politics to have more people understand what's happening with the apartheid in Palestine by Israel. Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. Just two more things I want to mention, and then we'll wrap this up. Let's go to graphic two here, because Judge Jonathan Cobes, who's with the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, explained his reasoning here for upholding that

Arkansas law. The law only prohibits economic decisions that discriminate against Israel, Because those commercial decisions are invisible to observers unless explained, they are not inherently expressive and do not implicate the First Amendment, which I think is a ridiculous line of thinking. It's ridiculous rationale for this decision to uphold the law. And I want to just go to what the First Amendment specifically says. What is the wording in the First Amendment? You need to know what it says in order to really evaluate. that line of thinking from that circuit court of appeals judge, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or bridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peace peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. I don't know about you, Jessica, but I mean, I've read that over and over again to see if there are any exceptions, particularly exceptions pertaining to whether or not your speech is public enough.

Apparently our free speech isn't really free unless we're shouting it from the rooftops. It's insane. Yeah, the way they've been writing these bills, I think about the don't say gay bill as well, where it's just vague enough that it can apply in every scenario. You can argue that this law applies in every scenario. And we've even seen that start in Florida where they say, you know, You can't talk about, you know, LGBTQ issues in grades, you know, K through third grade or whatever it was. Or other ages where it's deemed inappropriate. Who's to say what's inappropriate? That should be in the law.

It should be very specific. Instead, it's subjective so they can apply this law at will. Well, let's take a break. And when we come back, we're not done with the courts. We're going to go to this country's highest court and talk about the impact they're having on our already laxed gun legislation. in this country. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the show, Anna Casparian and Jessica Burbank with you. It's been a heavy show and it's about to get even more heavy with an update on a Supreme

court ruling pertaining to gun laws. So let's do it. Let's have a discussion. The right wing Supreme Court has decided to strike down New York's nearly 100 year old gun law that would essentially make it very difficult for anyone to engage in concealed carry in public spaces. Now this is a law that's been around actually more than 100 years and the idea is, hey, let's limit the number of guns in public spaces and keep people safe. But the Supreme Court has ruled that that's a violation of the Second Amendment, because of course, when you have right-wing ideologues taking hold of the Supreme Court, they're going to carry out right-wing ideology. They're going to be right-wing activists, and that is what we are seeing

today. So let's get to the details on this. The court, first let's just talk about the impact of this. It's the widest expansion of gun rights in in America over the last decade. So when was the last time we saw this kind of expansion? Well, the court in 2008 recognized for the first time an individual's right to keep guns at home for self-defense in a case from the District of Columbia and also in 2010 applied that right to the states. Now the ruling was of course divided, today's ruling was, among the conservative justices and the majority and the liberal justices in the minority. The six three ruling with the court's conservative justices in the majority and liberal justices in dissent struck down New York state's limits on carrying

concealed handguns outside the home. The court found that the law enacted in 1913 violated a person's right to keep and bear arms under the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment. Now, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion in this case, and this is what he argued. He argued, quote, we know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. The New York restriction is unconstitutional because it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms. And what he's referring to there is how the law in New York was written. So there are some exceptions to the law. But the only exception is if you can persuade the state government that you need to engage in concealed carry because there is a very specific threat that you need to defend yourself against.

And so that burden, that standard is a very high standard. It's intentionally high because they wanted to limit the number of guns in public spaces. But at this point, what has become increasingly clear to me, Jessica, is it doesn't matter what law you pass to limit guns, what law you pass to protect citizens from things like mass shootings. When you have ideologues serving on the Supreme Court who will carry out exactly what they were put there to carry out, right? Policies that would broaden or widen the rights of the right wing while screwing over everyone else. So they're going to do it. And that's exactly what they've been doing on a number of different cases. Yeah, that's exactly what's going on here.

As someone who uses guns, this law makes perfect sense. I mean, you need to have a gun if you're under violent threat. The only reason I've ever wanted to learn to use guns, handguns for public safety is because there are crazy people who love to have guns who are extremely violent. And I've come under violent threat. This is more about self-defense than it is about the Second Amendment. People are much safer if everyday people can't go in the street with guns. The Second Amendment is about the right to bear arms to have a well-regulated militia. Bro, the militia's not meeting in the wagments.

Like you don't need your gun every day in public. And so it's absolutely absurd what Republicans are doing. And if you think about the due process, right? Someone in law enforcement would have to determine, yes, you know, you're under a certain threat, you're allowed to have a gun to protect yourself in public. The due process they have to go through to determine that is not so different from the kind of due process that was happening under stop and frisk where law enforcement had to make a determination, you know, is there a crime being committed here? Republicans did not care about that.

They did not care that law enforcement could apply that law at their discretion and racially profile people and stop them on the street. But they care about this because it's about their power. It's about their right to have guns. And it's really unfortunate that now they have a majority in the Supreme Court and this ridiculous hypocritical logic is now becoming law in the United States. That's right, because if they're striking down this law in New York that will have a ripple effect and other states that have similar laws, and there are as many as six, including California, by the way, will now essentially have, will not be able to continue implementing that law. Now, the commissioner for the New York Police Department says, everyone hold your horses,

nothing is going to change immediately. In fact, let's go to the last graphic here where she says, if you have a premise permit, it does not automatically convert to a carry permit. If you carry a gun illegally in New York City, you will be arrested. And so I think it's really up to the coming days to figure out how these changes will be made. But one other thing I wanted to note is that, while you have these justices make the argument that no, I mean, these standards are too high, people shouldn't have to meet these special standards in order to carry a gun in public spaces. They did acknowledge something very specific in their decision. The ruling acknowledged that the states can prohibit guns in sensitive places, sensitive places.

And that such prohibitions can likely go beyond what is historically considered a sensitive place. such as, oh, wow, what are shocker courthouses and legislative buildings? But why? Why? Am I, I'm not allowed, I mean, I'm allowed to practice my First Amendment rights in a courthouse, right? Or in a legislative building, right? Why should it be any different when it comes to the Second Amendment as the Supreme Court sees as, you know, with almost no restrictions? It's amazing because it's like, look, we want to protect Second Amendment rights, even though it's very likely to harm people. But we want to make sure we protect ourselves and insulate ourselves from that harm. That's what I got from that acknowledgement from

Supreme Court justices. Yeah, it feels very much like we are the ruling class. We're going to, you know, you can have your rights, but you can do it over there. Just keep voting for the people that are giving tax breaks to corporations that we get dividends from and will be great. That's really the vibe we get from this kind of a sentiment. And by the way, that's the other part of this. And I'm glad you mentioned corporations because while this conservative Supreme Court is certainly conservative on social issues, one of the main reasons why the conservative justices were nominated and confirmed is because their number one priority is,

upholding and protecting the interests of corporations. And in this case, we're talking about gun manufacturers, which of course were represented by the NRA in this case that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. NRA is overjoyed. I'm sure because they think that this is just a great expansion of their gun rights, but also because they're delivering for the very people who are paying them to do the lobbying they engage in.

in the weapons manufacturers. So it's a great day for corporations, a great day for all the individuals who worked really, really hard over the last several decades to install these justices who would implement socially conservative policies or protect them at least

while simultaneously looking out for the best interests of corporations over the best interests of the American people. All right, well, we're out of time, unfortunately, but I do want to want to take a quick break. Jessica, thank you so much for joining us. Check out Jessica on Rebel HQ and regularly on our Friday power panels. And yeah, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

our work listen ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon