UNBIASED - November 10, 2025: Government MAY Re-Open Soon...Here's What Needs to Happen. Plus Trump's Tariff "Dividend," SNAP Fight Continues, SCOTUS Won't Reconsider Same-Sex Marriage, and More.

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

SUBSCRIBE TO JORDAN'S FREE NEWSLETTER. Get the facts, without the spin. UNBIASED offers a clear, impartial recap of US news, including politics, elections, legal news, and more. Hosted by lawyer Jordan Berman, each episode provides a recap of current political events plus breakdowns of complex concepts—like constitutional rights, recent Supreme Court rulings, and new legislation—in an easy-to-understand way. No personal opinions, just the facts you need to stay informed on the daily news that matters. If you miss how journalism used to be, you're in the right place. In today's episode: Supreme Court Allows State Dept. to Continue Enforcing Passport Policy Prohibiting "X" Sex Marker (0:18) Supreme Court Temporarily Pauses Lower Court Order Requiring Administration to Fully Fund November SNAP Benefits; Here's What It Means and Why Things Could Change Very Soon (9:53) Government Gets Closer to Re-Opening, But Here's What Needs to Happen First (20:32) Trump Proposes Tariff "Dividend." Here's What We Know (28:52) Supreme Court Refuses to Reconsider Same-Sex Marriage (32:48) Quick Hitters: Cornell Reaches $60M Settlement with Government, Supreme Court to Answer Mail-In Ballot Question, Trump Threatens BBC with $1 Billion Lawsuit (38:08) Critical Thinking Segment (41:13) SUBSCRIBE TO JORDAN'S FREE NEWSLETTER. Watch this episode on YouTube. Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok. All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased Politics. Today is Monday, November 10th. Let's talk about some news. We're going to start with some Thursday news and then work our way to some more recent news. So starting with the Thursday ruling out of the Supreme Court allowing the Trump administration to continue temporarily enforcing its policy, prohibiting the ex-sex markers. on U.S. passports. I want to clarify at the outset of this story that litigation is not over in this case. The case is not over. Okay. Thursday's ruling basically put a lower court ruling on pause until the appellate court is able to hear the appeal. But first, before we get into what the future of this case might look like, I want to talk about how we got here. So back in 2022, the Biden administration

introduced a new policy which allowed American citizens to self-select either male, female, or X as their sex on their passport application. That policy also removed the requirement to provide medical documentation if their sex didn't match other ID documents. Now, prior to 2022, the State Department allowed passport applicants to change the sex marker from male to female or female to male if they had a doctor's statement explaining that they had undergone clinical treatment for gender transition. So the 2022 change effectively allowed any U.S. citizen to choose to self-select ex-male or female without having to provide

any sort of documentation showing that their selection matched their sex on other documents. If your license said male, you could choose female on your passport application. If you're licensed said female, you could choose X on your passport application. It didn't matter. But once Trump returned to office in January, he signed an executive order that said that the federal government would only recognize two sexes, male and female. That order also instructed the state department to require that government issued ID documents including passports, visas, global entry cards, accurately reflect the holder's sex.

So, in accordance with that order, the State Department went ahead and revoked the policy of allowing the X marker on passports. The department also halted new applications with the X marker and froze requests to change existing male or female markers to X. already issued ex passports remain valid. Okay. So this rule change applied to to applications that were pending. But once the State Department made this change, seven transgender and non-binary individuals brought suit arguing that this new policy violated their rights to equal treatment under the Constitution, violated their rights to international travel and informational

privacy and violated the federal law that governs how administrative agencies issue new rules. Before we get into how the courts ruled here, I want you to remember the hierarchy of federal courts. So you have the district courts, which are the lowest level of courts. Then you have the appellate courts, which here appeals from the district courts. And then at the very top of the pyramid, you have the Supreme Court of the United States, right? Whatever the Supreme Court says goes. So the first court that this case goes in front of is, of course, the district court. In this case, it was a district court in Massachusetts. And the district judge ended up issuing an order that blocked the administration from enforcing this new passport policy against transgender

and non-binary people who have applied for or would apply for a passport that was consistent with their gender identity. The Trump administration, of course, went ahead and appealed the court's order to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, but the First Circuit Court of Appeals actually declined the administration's request to temporarily pause that district court order. So the administration then went to the Supreme Court and asked the justices to step in. And the administration argued that the district court's order injures the federal government and that putting the order on hold would not cause any injury to the plaintiffs.

More specifically, that the order hurts the United States because it forces the government to say things to other countries that go against the president's foreign policy as well as scientific facts, and that pausing the order wouldn't harm the plaintiffs because the district court order doesn't actually require anyone to have any specific travel plans or a medical diagnoses of gender dysphoria. The lawyers for the plaintiffs, on the other hand, argue that the order needs to be left in place because the administration's new passport policy puts transgender, non-binary, and intersex people in potential danger whenever they use a passport.

He also argued that the government has never explained how passport sex markers that align with gender identity and not the individual's biological sex could possibly affect foreign relations when the challenged policy undermines the very purpose of passports as identity documents that officials check against the holder's appearance. Now keep in mind here that when a court decides whether to grant deny or overrule in order, they look at the likelihood of success on the merits. And they also look at whether a party will become injured because of an order or lack of an order. So the Supreme Court in considering whether to pause the district court's order analyzed the arguments on both sides of this case to determine which party they think is more

likely to succeed on the actual merits of the claims and whether one of the parties will experience an injury if the order is kept in place or put on pause. Ultimately, the justices ruled six to three that the administration is likely to succeed on the. the merits and that the administration will suffer an injury if the order remains in place. Therefore, the justices went ahead and granted the administration's request to pause the district court's order. In effect, what that means is the administration can continue enforcing its new passport policy until this case is fully litigated. The majority of justices essentially found that requiring a passport to show the holder's sex at birth,

does not violate equal protection simply because it differs from that individual's gender identity and that the policy is no different than stating a factual historical attribute like country of birth rather than targeting a group for disparate treatment. The justices wrote, quote, displaying passport holders sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth. In both cases, the government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment. End quote. The majority also found that the plaintiffs in this case failed to show that the administration's passport policy was motivated solely by animus, meaning the policy was not implemented due to a sole desire to harm a politically

unpopular group. Now, the court's three liberal justices, Sotomayor Jackson and Kagan, they dissented from the majority's ruling, meaning they disagreed with the majority's ruling. They would not have paused the lower court's order. And they argued that the administration had not adequately shown that it would suffer real harm if the passport policy stayed paused, but that transgender and non-binary individuals would face immediate harm if the passport policy was able to take effect. They also argued that the court's majority only focused on the administration's position and failed to weigh the human impact on affected people. So again, keep in mind here that Thursday's ruling out of the Supreme Court only paused the

district court's order. It did not resolve the core constitutional questions that are presented in this case. It did not decide whether the policy is constitutional. It simply paused the district court's order and allowed the administration to continue enforcing its new passport policy while the litigation continues. From here, the case will continue to play out through the court hierarchy that we talked about earlier. It'll go back to the appellate court who will decide the appeal and issue a decision on the merits of the case. The losing party can then petition the Supreme Court for review. If the Supreme Court agrees to review the case, it'll issue a final decision on the merits of the case and the case will be over. If the Supreme Court doesn't agree

to hear the case once the appellate court renders a decision, the case will just end with the appellate court and whatever the appellate court decides will be the final decision on the matter. But in the meantime, until this case is fully litigated, the administration can continue to enforce its passport policy. Moving on to another Supreme Court ruling on Friday night, the Supreme Court specifically Justice Jackson temporarily paused a lower court's order requiring the administration to fully fund November snap benefits. This ruling effectively means the administration does not have to fully fund snap benefits yet. This could change very soon and we will talk about why in a few minutes. But I do just want to warn you that this is one of those stories that could

change by the time this episode is out. We are very much in the middle of the court battle and we could have an update as soon as this afternoon. So I will do my best to explain where we're at as of now and set you up so you know what to expect regardless of what happens next. As we have previously discussed, SNAP funding expired at the end of October or the beginning of November. In response, several states sued the administration arguing that the federal government needed to tap into its contingency fund to help cover November. benefit payments. And last week, a federal judge agreed. He said the federal government has an obligation to continue funding SNAP. So that federal judge went ahead and blocked the administration

from suspending SNAP benefits and ordered it to either exhaust the contingency fund and pay partial benefits for the month of November or tap into additional sources of funding and fully fund November benefits. The court said that if the administration opted to partially fund benefits only using the contingency fund, it would have to pay those partial benefits by last Wednesday. Now, the administration did ultimately opt for the partial payment option using what was left in the contingency fund, but it did not issue the funds by Wednesday. So because the government failed to abide by the court's order, the district court went ahead and issued yet another order last Thursday and said that the administration now had to make the full SNAP benefit payments for

November by Friday. The court essentially was not giving the administration an option anymore. It was saying, okay, you didn't want to abide by the first order. Now you have no choice. Now you have to tap into additional funds and fully fund SNAP benefits for the month of November. So the administration, of course, appealed this ruling to the first circuit court of appeals. And it requested what's called an administrative stay pending appeal. An administrative state pending appeal is a temporary order from a higher court, in this case, the appellate court, that pauses or stays a lower court's ruling while the case is being appealed. So later that night, the appellate court says that it hasn't yet decided what it was going to do with the administration's

request for a stay, but that it would issue a decision as quickly as possible. Now keep in mind, the administration only had until the following day to comply with the new order out of the district court. So it didn't really have any time to waste. Because of that, it immediately went to the Supreme Court and asked the Supreme Court to step in and pause the lower court's ruling while the appellate court decides what to do with its request for a stay. That way, the administration wouldn't be forced to fully fund SNAP benefits by Friday. And the appellate court would have more time to sort out what it was going to do with the administration's stay request. And Friday night, the Supreme Court went ahead and granted the administration's request

and temporarily paused the district court's order while the appellate court decides what to do with the administration's request for a stay. I mentioned earlier that it was specifically Justice Jackson that granted that request, and this is why that is. Each justice is assigned to certain appellate districts. When an emergency application, like a request for a stay, or an injunction or an extension comes from one of those circuits, it is first directed to that assigned justice. That justice can then decide it alone or it can refer it to the full court

for a collective decision. So in this case, the emergency request came from the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which Justice Jackson is assigned to, and therefore she was the one who got the request and ultimately granted it. It's important to remember that like the passport policy case, this Supreme Court order, Friday's order, does not decide the merits of the case. It simply pauses the district court's order requiring the administration to make payment of the full SNAP benefits in order to give the appellate court time to review the administration's request for a stay. Now, some states had already begun issuing full monthly SNAP benefits before the Supreme Court's Friday order. Hawaii, Oregon, and Wisconsin, all three of those

states had officials instructing their EBT providers to process the full benefits once that district court judge had ordered the administration to make full benefit payments. And officials in California, Kansas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington also confirmed that some SNAP recipients were issued their full November payments on Friday once the district court. ordered the administration to pay up. So what I want to do here is I want to take the first break here. And when we come back, we'll talk about what happens now that some states have instructed benefits, you know, be dispersed and why the USDA is now telling states to immediately undo any steps that were taken to send full snap benefits. Listen, it's hard enough to keep up with doctors

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Yep, it's the most powerful iPhone ever, plus more peace of mind with your bill over five years. This is big. Get the new iPhone 17 Pro at tellus.com slash iPhone. and 17 pro on select plans conditions and exclusions apply welcome back before we took a break we talked about the fact that some states like hawaii oregon wisconsin california kansas new jersey pennsylvania and washington had already directed ebt providers to process full snap benefits for snap recipients before the supreme court had stepped in and put that lower court ruling on hold so what happens now well what happens now will depend on what the appellate court ultimately says about the situation and then

possibly what the Supreme Court says about the situation. And we'll talk about what might happen depending on how the courts rule in a minute. But first, I want to talk about how SNAP benefits work. So we all have a better understanding of what's going on here because you're probably wondering how states can even issue full SNAP benefits without federal funding in the first place. So whenever we talk about SNAP benefits being issued, we're talking about the states requesting that EBT processors load a certain amount onto a recipient's EBT card. Then, once the recipient goes ahead and swipes their card at a grocery store, the EBT processor verifies eligibility and approves the transaction.

The retailer's bank then gets reimbursed through a federal account called the state benefit issuance account. This reimbursement usually happens within 24 to 48 hours of the purchase. But what happens if the federal account doesn't have any money in it? because the federal government has not funded it. In that case, the transaction will fail at checkout. So SNAP recipients might see that their cards appear to be funded, but then when they go to use their card at the register, the purchase won't go through. Now, some retailers might initially accept the EBT cards, assuming they'll get reimbursed as they usually do. But if the USDA does not

fund the treasury account, those transactions cannot settle, which means the retailers won't get paid and they end up eating the cost of the transaction. And that's why we're probably seeing around the country right now, you know, retailers are on high alert. Some of them are temporarily limiting or just choosing not to accept EBT cards at all until funding resumes. Some states might try to front the cost of SNAP benefits themselves, but the USDA has already said they, won't reimburse them if they do. And it might actually be illegal for states to use SNAP benefits using state money. In fact, on Saturday night, the USDA issued a memo telling states to immediately undo any steps that have been taken to provide full SNAP benefits. The Deputy Undersecretary of

Agriculture wrote in that memo, quote, to the extent states send full, sent full snap payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized. Accordingly, states must immediately, undo any steps taken to issue full snap benefits for November 2025. End quote. So that's where things stand as of right now. Again, this is one of those stories that's changing by the day. So this is just what we know as of about 1 p.m. Eastern time on Monday. The next development that you'll hear about is whatever the appellate court decides to do with the administration's request for a stay. So just to be clear, if the appellate court grants the administration's request, the district court's order requiring full payment will be paused until the appellate court renders a final decision on the merits of the case. In other words, the administration wouldn't be required to fully fund November benefits until the appellate court issues a final decision on the matter once it actually considers the arguments presented in the case.

on the other hand, if the appellate court denies the administration's request for a stay, will likely see the administration go back to the Supreme Court and ask it to pause the district court's order while the case is on appeal. Because remember, the pause that Justice Jackson just granted on Friday was a very, very temporary pause. It's only in effect until the appellate court decides what to do with the administration's stay request. But if the appellate court ultimately decides to deny the administration's request for a stay, the administration can always go back to the Supreme Court and say, okay, look, the appellate court didn't grant our request, but will you guys grant our request? And if the Supreme Court does grant it,

then the district court's order would be paused for the duration of the litigation, just like what we saw in the passport case. If the Supreme Court doesn't grant the administration's request, though, and the request had already been denied by the appellate court, then the district court's order would become active again and the administration would be required to fully fund SNAP benefits. I really hope I made that as clear as possible. This is a pretty complex topic. So hopefully I didn't lose you. Hopefully we're all on the same page and prepared for whatever the next developments will be because like I said, there's probably going to be a new development. If not today, probably tomorrow. Okay. It looks like the government shutdown may be coming to an end. Last night,

the Senate voted 60 to 40 on a key step towards reopening the government, but the fight is not quite over yet. In order to really understand what's going on here, we need to talk about the filibuster. And for those who have been around for a while, I know we've talked about the filibuster many times. We just need to make sure we're all on the same page. So I am going to go over it quickly again. The filibuster is purely a Senate rule. The House does not have a filibuster. So in the Senate, most bills just need a simple majority to pass. That's 51 votes because there are 100 senators. But before a bill can even get to that final vote, the Senate first has to end debate on the bill. And that is where the filibuster comes in. A filibuster is basically a way

for the minority party to block or delay a bill by refusing to let debate end. Under Senate rules, you need 60 votes to break a filibuster. and move toward a final vote on the bill. So if less than 60 senators are in agreement to end debate, it doesn't, the bill just sits there. It doesn't ever get to a final vote. But if you can get at least 60 senators to vote to end debate on the bill, the bill can actually go to a final vote where it only needs a simple majority of 51 votes to pass.

The filibuster is what's allowed this shutdown to drag on as long as it has, because it lets the minority block a bill even when the majority supports it. If the filibuster didn't exist, all the Senate would need is 51 votes to pass a continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government. Given the fact that there are more than 51 Republicans in the Senate, this would have been easy to do, assuming all or most Republicans were on board. But because the filibuster exists, it's not that easy. The Senate needs 60 votes to first end debate.

on the continuing resolution before the Senate can hold a final vote on the bill. There are only 53 Republicans in the Senate, which means they would need at least seven Democrats to join them in voting to end the filibuster. The Republicans could not do it themselves. They do not have the numbers. Until now, Democrats have consistently refused to end debate and send the continuing resolution to a vote because they want the continuing resolution to include certain health care subsidies. But things kind of started to change on Friday. So on Friday afternoon,

Senate Democrats announced a proposal to reopen the government. They basically said that if Senate Republicans would agree to include a one-year extension of the expiring ACA premium tax credits in the continuing resolution and agree to form a bipartisan committee to address Republican demands for changes they want to see to the ACA, they would agree, Democrats would agree, to end the filibuster immediately and temporarily fund the rest of the government until December or January, because that would give both parties more time to negotiate longer-term funding. But Senate Republicans rejected this proposal. The Republicans said that health care policy should not be negotiated while the government

remained closed and that the government needed to reopen first and then they would negotiate policy. And that has pretty much been the Republican position since the beginning. And by the way, if you want more context as to what the Democrats were originally fighting for during the shutdown, go ahead and listen to my October 6th episode. I did a 14 minute deep dive there. That's my October 6th episode. There were essentially three things the Democrats were fighting for. But with Friday's proposal, they were essentially foregoing two of those three things and only fighting for the ACA premium tax credit extension. And as we've talked about, the past, there are quite a few Republicans that are actually on board with extending the ACA premium tax credits. Most of them just want to reopen the government first, and then they'll negotiate an extension. So that was Friday. Senate Democrats put forth this proposal. Senate Republicans rejected it. Then last night, we started hearing from sources on the hill that a group of eight Senate Democrats had reached a deal with Senate Republicans to reopen the government in exchange for a future.

vote on extending ACA premium tax credits and assurances that federal workers that were laid off during the shutdown would be brought back on. So once those eight Democrats came with that proposal, Senate Republicans knew they'd likely have the votes to finally break the filibuster. So last night, they finally overcame the filibuster in a 60 to 40 votes and can soon send the bill or the continuing resolution to a final vote, where they will only need a simple majority of 51. Keep in mind, though, that this does not mean the shutdown is over today. Now that the Senate has overcome the filibuster, Senate rules allow a single senator to force the chamber to spend up to 30 hours debating the bill before the final vote. Those 30 hours are divided

equally between both parties, and during this time, senators can make speeches, they can offer comments, they can try to negotiate small changes, or they can just try to build public attention. So even if everyone knows the bill is ultimately going to pass after those 30 hours, the Senate still has to wait for that debate clock to expire, unless both sides agree to shorten it. Now, if we assume that one senator will force debate for another 30 hours on this continuing resolution, that means the Senate might not hold a final vote on the bill until tomorrow. Then once the Senate passes the bill, let's say tomorrow, Tuesday, it has to go to the House for a vote. And I know some of you might be thinking, wait, I thought the House already passed a

continuing resolution and we've just been waiting on the Senate this whole time. Yes, the House did pass a continuing resolution earlier, but because the Senate is now changing the text of the continuing resolution to reflect the agreement that it reached with Democrats, the House will now have to vote on this new version. The Senate and the House have to pass the exact same text before it can go to the president. And that also means that if the Senate passes this new continuing resolution and the House changes even one word of it once it gets to the House, the bill would actually have to go back to the Senate and pass the Senate again. So let's play this out, hypothetically. Let's say the Senate passes this new continuing resolution tomorrow once the 30-hour debate expires.

From there, it'll go to the House. House lawmakers get 36 hours notice before any votes are called. that 36-hour notice period started today. That means the House could vote on the bill as early as Wednesday, possibly not until Thursday, depending on when all of the lawmakers are able to get to the Capitol, considering the House has been in recess for over a month. Speaker Johnson did say today, though, he is hoping for a Wednesday vote. If the House passes it, it'll go to the president for signature. The government will reopen.

But remember, if the House even changes one word, it'll have to go back to the Senate and we'll do this all over again. So the bottom line is that the Senate has finally broken the filibuster, but the process is not over. The Senate still has to wait out the final debate period. The House still has to pass the Senate's new version, and the president still has to sign it. So while last night's vote is a big step towards reopening the government, it's not reopening just yet. We are closer than we've been in over a month, but we're just not there yet. The earliest we could see the shutdown end is Thursday, but it could be later depending on everything we just talked about.

And again, just as a quick reminder, if you really want to understand what the shutdown fight has been about all along, I urge you to listen to my October 6th episode. I detail all of the democratic demands there. And then if you specifically want to learn about ACA premium tax credits and how the expiration of those might affect you, listen to my more recent November 3rd episode. Let's take our second and final break here. When we come back, we will talk about what we know about this proposed terrorist. dividend, the Supreme Court refusing to reconsider same-sex marriage, and more. Get no frills delivered. Shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with PC Express Pass. Get your first year for $250 a month. Learn more at p.c.express.ca. Welcome back. Let's talk about this potential tariff dividend.

Yesterday, President Trump posted a truth social quote, people that are against tariffs are fools. We are now the richest, most respected country in the world with almost no inflation and a record stock market price. 401ks are the highest ever. We are taking in trillions of dollars and will soon begin paying down our enormous debt $37 trillion. Record investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2,000 a person, not including high income people, will be paid to everyone. end quote now his post did not clarify who exactly would qualify for this payment or how it would be

distributed or a timeline or the legal processes involved in enacting such a policy so all we can really do here is guess the language of the post suggests a proposal to provide a payment of at least two thousand dollars to lower and middle income americans presumably funded by the revenue that the U.S. collects from tariffs on imported goods. What this payment will look like, we don't know. It could resemble a stimulus-style check mailed to households. It could be issued as a tax refund. We just don't know. Now, if this were a stimulus-style check, Congress would need to authorize the payments, and there would obviously need to be enough tariff revenue to cover the cost, which currently it doesn't look like that's the case. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant

suggested that the dividend could come via tax cuts. He said that he has not spoken to the president about this idea but that the dividend quote could be just the tax decreases we are seeing on the president's agenda no tax on tips no tax on overtime no tax on social security deductibility on auto loans end quote now besent's idea does sound a little different than what the president is proposing just from you know how his his wording was phrased in his post but again at this point we really don't have much information why is the president proposing this idea well for one, we know the Supreme Court is currently considering the legality of the tariffs, specifically whether Trump had the lawful authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act

to impose these tariffs in the first place. So this could just be a play to get more public support for the tariffs, though that wouldn't really impact what the Supreme Court ultimately decides. Another key piece of context to keep in mind is how tariffs work and who ultimately pays them. Because a lot of people think, oh, you know, let's say the UK is facing a 10% tariff. People think the UK is facing a 10% tariff, which means the UK pays the U.S. 10% to send its goods to the U.S. But that's actually not how it works. If there is a 10% tariff on goods from the U.K., American businesses wanting to import those U.K. goods have to pay a 10% tax to the U.S. Treasury. Now, when American businesses have to pay 10% more to import certain

goods, their prices go up to account for the increased cost, right? And then the American consumer ends up paying the higher prices. So while tariffs are seen as a way to make foreign countries quote unquote pay, and there are arguments for that, the economic burden actually falls on American businesses and in many cases American consumers. So that is why Trump is seemingly proposing this dividend, you know, to American consumers. It would be a way to repay low and middle income American consumers for the additional money that they are spending due to these tariffs. At the end of the day, a lot is not clear. We do not know how the dividend would work in reality. We do not know if the dividend will even become a reality. All we really know is that if it did

become a reality, higher income Americans would be excluded. But we also don't know what that income cap would even be. So there are a lot of unknowns here. Earlier today, the Supreme Court said it would not reconsider the right to same-sex marriage. Let's talk. about this for a second because back in August, I got on this mic and I said, listen, this is what you need to know about what's going on. We do not know if gay marriage equality is going to be struck down as some people are claiming. Could it be? Maybe. Could it not be? Maybe. But the Supreme Court hasn't even agreed to hear the case yet. And there were a lot of creators on social media and a handful of outlets that were trying to tell you that marriage equality was going

to be struck down. And that gets the views, of course, right? But I took the high. wrote as I do. And I said, hey, there's no clickbait here. This is what could happen. These are the possible avenues that this could go. And I'm really happy that I did that because I think a lot of you came out much more informed than you otherwise would have been listening to literally anyone else. Now, a lot of people have said to me today, well, the court overturned Roe versus Wade and the same-sex marriage case was similar to Rose. So it wasn't really fearmongering by saying marriage equality is going to be struck down. It was a real possibility. And here's my response to that.

I see what you're saying, but the context that's really important to add there is that Roe v. Wade was similar, but also very different from Obergefell. Roe versus Wade was based solely on a right to privacy, which the court has historically been critical of given the fact that the right to privacy is not explicitly in the Constitution. Obergefell, on the other hand, was in part based on a right to privacy, yes. but more so based on equal protection. Equal protection is a much, much stronger foundation than the right to privacy. In fact, after Roe was decided, Justice Ginsburg, one of the court's most famous liberal

justices, said that she wished Roe had not been decided on a right to privacy basis because it leaves the case very vulnerable to being overturned down the road. And of course, we know that it was ultimately overturned. So what I'm trying to say here is that Obergefell is similar to Roe, yes, but it's also very different in a very important way. And that is the key context that a lot of these creators and outlets were leaving out. Because if they give you that context, you might not be as scared. And that fear is what gets them their views. And I'll say this too. This isn't to say that the court definitely wasn't ever going to reconsider Obergefell. I actually said back in August that it was

certainly a possibility. But it's important to add all of the context and not just some of the context so that listeners and audiences of these platforms are as informed as possible and can come to their own opinions and feel their own emotions based on all of that information and not just some of the information. So just let this be a reminder that you might not always be getting the full story from your favorite creators and outlets, but that's why you have me. Okay. So the Supreme Court said they wouldn't hear this woman's appeal. Just to give you a little background at the woman in question, Kim Davis, she was a Kentucky County clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court's 2015 Obrugafel decision.

The couple that was denied a marriage license ended up suing Davis for monetary damages and they won. A jury awarded the couple $50,000 each. Davis then appealed that ruling to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and she argued that she should not be held liable for damages because issuing a marriage license, to a same-sex couple would have violated her right to freely exercise her religion. And on appeal, the court said, no, no, no, no, no. You were acting as a state actor here, not a private citizen because you were issuing marriage licenses for the state.

So you don't get to claim a constitutional violation like a private citizen would. You're protected by the First Amendment as a private citizen, sure, but when you're acting on behalf of the government, you are not afforded the same protection. So after that, Davis went to the Supreme Court. and she asked the justices in her petition to not only review the Sixth Circuit's decision that she's not protected by the First Amendment as a state actor, but also to overrule Obergafel entirely. She argued that the right to same-sex marriage has no basis in the Constitution and therefore it should be overturned.

Now, once she petitioned the Supreme Court to review her case back in August, the court had two options. They could either grant her request or they could deny her request. if they had granted her request, they would have eventually heard arguments in the case and decided whether there was any merit to her claims and would have either upheld or overturned Obergefell, the case that granted a right to same-sex marriage. But they didn't do that. They denied her appeal. What that means is that the court will not reconsider Obergefell and that the right to

same-sex marriage will stand. Now, importantly, if someone else were to come to the Supreme Court asking it to overturn same-sex marriage and they had, you know, assuming they had the requisite standing and there was a lawful basis for the challenge, the Supreme Court would again have to decide whether to take up the issue. But for now, the right to same-sex marriage stands and that is the end of it. Kim Davis, the woman at the center of the case, will have to pay the damages that the jury originally awarded the couple and her case is now over. Now for some quick hitters, just a few today.

Cornell University has reached a $60 million deal with the federal government to restore more than $250 million in federal funding for the school. The deal consists of a $30 million payment over three years and a separate $30 million investment in research programs that will directly benefit U.S. farmers through low costs of production and enhanced efficiency. Cornell also agreed to provide the government with anonymized undergraduate admissions data, which will be subjected to a comprehensive audit, conduct annual surveys, to evaluate campus climate for Cornell students and more. In exchange, the government will immediately

restore all terminated federal funding and close all investigations into the school. The settlement adds to the list of settlements the administration has reached with other universities across the country, including Columbia, Brown, and the University of Virginia. The Supreme Court said today it will decide whether federal law prohibits states from counting mail-in ballots that arrive after election day. The battle involves Mississippi's procedures for counting late arriving absentee ballots and the state's definition of election day. So in Mississippi, state law allows for absentee ballots postmarked by the day of the election to be counted so long as they are received up to five days after. This was a measure that was initially enacted during the pandemic and was later made

permanent. The question for the court is whether federal election day statutes preempt a state law such as Mississippies that allows ballots that are cast by federal election day to be received by election officials after that day. And last one, President Trump is threatening to sue the BBC for $1 billion. His letter to the network follows the exits of BBC's Director General and its CEO of news following a week of headlines questioning the network's political impartiality. One of the more explosive claims against the network was that it had selectively edited footage from January 6, 2021 to suggest that Trump had told his supporters on that day, quote, we're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you and we fight.

We fight like hell. And quote, as it turns out, the words were spliced from sections of his speech, almost an hour apart and left out a portion of the speech where Trump told his supporters to, quote, peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard, end quote. A letter from Trump's legal team gave the BBC a deadline of 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, November 14th to retract any false defamatory disparaging and inflammatory statements about the president and that failure to comply will leave the president with no choice but to enforce his, quote, legal and equitable rights, including, quote, by filing.

legal action for no less than one billion dollars in damages. And quote. Okay, for today's critical thinking segment, I want to switch things up a bit. Usually we go back to a particular story in the episode and then I'll ask you some questions to get you guys thinking about how you feel about that particular story and I'll challenge your opinions a bit. But today, I want to challenge you to think about media literacy a bit. So obviously we talked about the Supreme Court refusing to reconsider same-sex marriage and the way. creators and outlets used this case to spark concern and fear amongst the public. But I want to use this as an opportunity to get you thinking about your own media literacy habits. So my first

question for you is this. When a story starts going viral online, blowing up online, how do you decide whether to trust what you're hearing? And when a story starts blowing up and people from both sides are talking about it. Do you tend to click on the headlines that confirm what you already think or tend to align with your existing opinions or do you tend to click on the headlines and the stories that seem like they'll challenge you and why? My next question for you is, is it fair to call what some creators and outlets did in this case fearmongering or do you think that they were justified?

And how would you define fear mongering? That is something that I've personally been thinking about more today. And then the last set of questions is this. Do you feel like today's media landscape rewards creators and outlets who remain calm and factual and level-headed? Or does it reward those who are more dramatic and emotional? And I guess a follow-up to that would be, how can you, as a listener, or follower help shift that incentive structure. That's what I have for you today. I hope you enjoy this episode. I am very grateful that you are here. And I will talk to you on Thursday.