The Conservative Push to Weaken Our Democracy

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Hi listeners, it's Leah.

On Saturday morning, I woke up to news that at 3am Eastern time, the FIFA Peace Prize recipient

President Donald the Dove himself had announced that he launched yet another war.

This one with Iran at one o'clock in the morning.

There's no pretense that these were limited strikes.

Saturday morning, he was calling for regime change and saying there might be casualties,

which unfortunately they already have been.

At the time we're recording this Sunday morning, the federal government announced that

three U.S. service members were killed in action and five wounded.

Many Iranians have also been killed in the strikes.

And we also know that the supreme leader of Iran was killed in the strikes.

The president announced this war and also seems to be managing it from his dinner club

at Mar-a-Lago.

Because of course.

We wanted to include a law spanner, both for the people in the administration who don't

seem to get it, but also for all of you, so that we can begin to call for a restoration

of some sensible constitutional and international order.

Chatting law amidst all this lawlessness might seem like rearranging deck chairs on the

Titanic.

So we are also going to talk about why it's important to do so.

And to help me with all of this, because international law is way above my pay grade, is

our expert professor Rebecca Beck-Engber of Cardoza Law School.

Professor Engber is a former counselor on international law in the office of the legal

adviser at the U.S. Department of State.

Welcome back to the show.

Thanks so much for having me back on.

Should I just introduce you as God of War now or encourage our listeners to play that

as your walk-on music, because it seems like there's a pattern here, Beck.

Yeah, I know.

I sort of fell backwards into doing more national security as someone who was sort of a bleeding

heart.

But I actually think maybe we need more of me in this field.

Great.

More of my types, not more of me specifically, but more bleeding hearts for us.

Why not both?

Why not both?

So there's much to say about the appalling brazen illegality of what the administration

is doing.

And we are going to focus on that.

But I don't want that to obscure the insane recklessness and irresponsibility of launching

a war to achieve regime change in the Middle East, since we know that always goes so well.

That will also have staggering human costs.

So Beck, we will focus on the law and law is there in part to prevent the unhinged a moral

project of war mongering.

But this sounds insane to even ask, and I'm going to do it anyways.

Why shouldn't countries with strong militaries just go around bombing countries that have leaders

they don't like?

Yeah, I'm really glad you asked this first, because it may be it sounds insane, but I think

for a lot of people, and we've seen this even in the reaction of states around the world,

if these are bad guys who have done bad things, it's good to take them out.

And to be very clear, right?

This is a monstrous regime, it's most importantly monstrous to its own people, and many have

looked forward to a day when they would fall.

But when you permit states to go around using force whenever they think it's a good idea

without strict objective parameters, like for example, the ones we have in international

law, they've come under attack and are simply repelling that attack, what you get is the

Putin's of the world saying, well, hey, my next door neighbor, Ukraine, is run by a quote

unquote Nazi government.

You need to invade and take over, or you have Pakistan, just this week bombing Afghanistan,

when you break down the international system that has been created to resolve disputes,

you have states invading one another over resources, over territory, over any dispute.

And even in those circumstances, where states have a clear objective, even a legal basis

to use force, you still can't control what happens in a war.

And so, you know, narrowly cabbning yet is important for that reason, sometimes using

force is going to be necessary, sadly, but it is lighting a flame to a haystack.

There's so much destruction.

People on both sides will die, people will be displaced, perhaps permanently, terrible

mistakes will happen, civilians will be killed, children will be killed, and when you take

out a leader and destabilize a country, especially without a clear plan for what happens next

that is organic from the people themselves, you can't put the genie back in the bottle

and we cannot know the conflagration that's going to erupt from these acts.

And so, you know, I mean, just look at the destruction that the US war on Iraq in 2003

brought on the entire Middle East, right?

Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, he was a terrible guy, and hundreds of thousands of people were

killed in the war and the ensuing chaos that followed, which continues to this day.

Yeah.

So with that kind of setting the table, let's go to the law and maybe start with the international

law angle since you gestured to it.

So a refresher about the UN Charter, which we last talked about with you last month when

the president launched military strikes against another foreign power.

The UN Charter pledged, quote, to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, end quote.

And the charter, which the United States signed, provides that signatory states must,

quote, refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the

territorial integrity or political independence of any state, end quote.

How does that cash out here?

It seems pretty straightforward.

Yeah.

This is actually a good segue from what we were just talking about, right?

Because the free for all that I just described is the world that came before.

Right.

So there's a reason states came together in the early part of the 20th century to try to

outlaw war and this culminated in the UN Charter.

So this rule from the UN Charter that states may not use force against the territorial integrity

of other states.

That is a bedrock rule of the modern international system in my view.

And that prohibition on using force is not absolute.

It has two very narrow exceptions.

So states may use force if there is a UN Security Council resolution authorizing them

to do so, obviously not in question here.

And if they have been the victim of an armed attack and are acting in self-defense to

repel it.

And that also includes the collective self-defense of another state that has suffered an armed

attack and has requested help.

So there's been some chatter of anonymous officials.

People will get more color by the time this plays talking about some imminent threat.

And so I want to be clear about what imminent means and why it even comes up in this context.

So I said states can use force in self-defense if they're the victim of an armed attack.

They can use force that is necessary and proportionate to repel that armed attack.

They can also use it to repel an imminent armed attack.

So you don't have to wait until the bombs that have already fallen, right?

But an armed attack is the focus of the equation.

And that sometimes gets lost in this concept of imminent, which people throw around sort

of casually.

And necessary and proportionate are also key rules.

So in 1991, for example, when the US and several states went to war with Iraq again, or

before the 2003 war, on behalf of Kuwait, so a rocket invaded Kuwait, the US and many

states go to war to push Iraq out of Kuwait.

The UN Security Council authorized our limited use of force to push Iraq out of Kuwait.

And the coalition did that.

And that satisfied both the UN Security Council resolution and their authority to act

in this collective self-defense.

And so the use of force needed to cease at that point.

They couldn't say, oh, well, we had self-defense, so everything goes.

We can do everything.

Now we can bomb Baghdad or unseat Saddam.

And so coming back to this, there has been no armed attack here, right?

There has been no armed attack that we are responding to with necessary and proportionate force.

There have been attacks in the past, of course.

But we are not responding to those who cast for not trying to repel those attacks with

these actions.

Yeah.

So as we noted last time when we were talking about the war against Venezuela, the administration

seemed to have taken the position in that instance that the federal statutes, governing

the FBI, somehow authorized the president to conduct law enforcement operations by force,

including military strikes on foreign countries.

That was just extremely odd and baseless.

And they also argued that somehow superseded the UN Charter, or maybe that the charter

was binding, but not enforceable against the president.

So at least as of the time we are recording this update, there doesn't even really seem

to be a pretense of the administration gesturing to the UN Charter, or explaining how the

strikes on Iran might be consistent with it.

Is it better or worse that they're not even trying at this point to pretend it's consistent

with the UN Charter?

Yeah.

And in that, the Venezuela operation, the OLC memorandum that you mentioned, they kind

of admitted in the memo itself that they didn't have such a justification.

So this is a question I've been mulling for ages, honestly, and I'm kind of on a few

minds on this.

So I certainly think it's better for government officials to have some felt need to comply

with law.

Yeah.

I think that itself is constraining.

And we tend to think of the requirement that you provide legal justification and explanation

as itself a disciplining mechanism, certainly if there's any shame involved, it would

work that way.

But it is also true that sometimes legal argument, legal ease can sort of cloud things for

the public, and for Congress, frankly, who are the people who are supposed to check

the president.

So often, you know, when the administration says it has some secret legal memo that explains

everything, just you wait, everyone sort of focuses on that rather than what is self-evident

before their eyes.

We know what the administration's view is.

We know because we know from the dog that does not bark.

We know what they do not have, that they do not have some smoking gun that would give

them legal justification.

And so sometimes I worry that the provision of some kind of legal mumbo jumbo might be

clouding things and allow Congress to say, oh, well, they have a theory that they can

act without us.

So in a world where the president doesn't appear to care at all about law, and perhaps

more importantly when he's surrounded by people who themselves don't seem to know the value

of law or even surrounded by people who don't seem to know the value of responsible decision-making

processes, then I'm not sure that just throwing words on a page is, in fact, working as a

disciplining process.

And maybe it's better to just have the mask totally off and let people see exactly what's

going on.

But that only works if there's a reaction.

If the president says, I don't care about law and everyone just shrugs, that's kind of

my worst case scenario.

Yeah.

And it seems like we are trending quickly in that direction since we had the attack on

Venezuela.

He doesn't experience real consequences for the last bad thing and then does a worse thing,

right?

And this is also just the lesson of the second Trump administration.

Like they got away with a lot, no consequences.

And so they're back at it even worse.

So since you brought up Congress, let's shift to constitutional war powers where, again,

I would remind listeners that the Constitution gives to Congress the power to declare war.

Now, it's long been understood that, of course, the president can respond to an immediate

or perhaps imminent invasion.

Past presidents have also argued that power justifies the preemptive uses of force against

imminent attack.

And still back at light of what Jack Goldsmith has called the permissive promiscuity of

past executive branch interpretations of their war powers.

This still feels like an escalation to me beyond those past practices and theories.

Is that fair?

Yeah.

No, I think it is an escalation beyond those past theories.

I think in many respects, the government has sort of been picking from all the different

examples of places where past administrations have perhaps stretched things or used interpretation

to try to take things just a step further, and they've sort of combined them all at one

and thrown them at the, well, to see what sticks.

I mean, yes, the Constitution gives Congress the power of decisions to go to war, and also

a host of other war-related powers like raising and, you know, armies and funding and regulating,

right?

And the president is just the commander-in-chief, but it was also understood at the founding

that the president could repel an attack on the country.

And you could think about how hard it was to get Congress to sort of congregate back

then, right?

And then they wait for everyone to rally the horses before you could defend the country.

But in the meantime, Congress has given the president a standing army.

Presidents have used force in more expansive ways.

And executive branch lawyers have created a theory for trying to explain this constitutionally.

And this is part of what I'm saying might sort of create a, you know, a cloud thinks

for Congress a little bit because they hear that they've got this theory.

And so the theory is that the president can use force when it's not war in the constitutional

sense.

And they've long looked at all these factors like the nature of the operation isn't a targeted

strike or as it puts on the ground.

Is it regime change?

That was usually a factor in favor of thinking it might be war in the constitutional sense.

Are soldiers likely to be injured or killed?

That's also going to be heavily in favor of congressional involvement.

And so even if they haven't in past context thought, well, maybe the first strike doesn't

look like war, if it's going to escalate into war, if it's likely to escalate, then that

is also a real factor.

And we know all this because I'll see writes this up in Nemo's, which it sometimes publishes.

And they actually did publish one immediately after the Venezuela operation.

And if it's Monday when you're listening to this, I have a piece out on this today on

just security, but it's relevant to the Iran operation because it's the only example

we have really right now on how this administration lawyers were powers or whether it lawyers were

powers.

And I want to be clear, these Nemo's are just the president's lawyers views on the president's

powers, right?

These are not ratified by courts, which almost never see use of force cases.

These are not ratified by Congress.

And OLC tends to think of itself, right?

Because the courts never see these questions, OLC tends to think of itself and present itself

as if it's like the Supreme Court of the executive branch.

But you know, obviously it's not an independent branch, right?

These are lawyers working for the president, but there's also a very less obvious way that

it doesn't operate like the Supreme Court, which is that lawyers don't tend to enshrine

the times they say, no, right?

Courts will say, no, you can't do this, and then we know that's a red line, right?

But OLC doesn't tend to write the red lines and more powers into Nemo's.

They don't say this is legal, but this isn't legal.

Instead, you're going to see we have X, Y, and Z factor here, but we don't have A, B,

and C. And so now it's lawful.

And then in our next case, we have A, B, and C, but we don't have X, Y, and C, right?

And so it's lawful.

And now we've got, in the Venezuelan memo, we've got A, B, and C, and X, Y, and Z.

In each of these, we have examples in the past where A, B, and C were lawful

or when X, Y, and C were lawful, we're going to throw it all together.

And so while it's true that I don't see a justification even under OLC precedent,

what Jack Goldsmith has called the promiscuously permissive OLC understanding of article two,

I love that line.

I understand what he means when he says that he doesn't think it's effectively

constraining and maybe wouldn't be in this context, even though I do think this is radically

a radical departure for what's coming before.

And again, not a theory ratified by courts or Congress, and at odds, in fact,

with how Congress itself has explained its view of when the president can use force.

Since you brought up the courts, I did want to remind our listeners of this moment

from the oral argument in the terrorist case that seemed to preview the administration's

views about their war powers and what Congress can or has done.

You can hear it here.

Justice Gorsuch will be asking the question.

Can you give you a reason to accept it, though?

That's what I'm struggling and waiting for.

What's the reason to accept the notion that Congress can hand off the power to declare

war to the president?

Well, we don't protect that again.

What do you do?

You say it's unreviewable.

There's no manageable standard.

Nothing to be done.

And since we are a Supreme Court podcast, I did want to note that the court isn't blameless

in all of this, even though they don't often get these cases just to take one concrete example.

There was what's called a legislative veto in the War Powers Act, the law that provides

a framework for United States uses a force, including by the executive when Congress enacted

that law.

It said Congress could pass a resolution to withdraw troops and strikes if they disagreed

with the president's determination that there's an emergency warranted calling for the

use of force.

And the Supreme Court struck down the legislative veto in INS versus Chauda, handing

more power over to the president and influencing the allocation of authority between Congress

and the executive branch.

And if you're interested in this aspect of the separation of powers, our friend Steve

Flattick, one first has a great post on this at one first, and then Josh Haifetz, a professor

at Georgetown, has an article forthcoming the Chauda presidency that goes into this

more.

So I do want to return to how or why this is an escalation, and I think it is an escalation

both with respect to the scope of the attacks and also the justification's plural for them.

So on the scope, when Trump announced the attack on Iran, he described it as a, quote,

major combat operations in Iran, not a small operation that wouldn't amount to full out

war in the constitutional sense.

And that feels like an expansion from past president's preemptive uses of force.

Is that fair or somewhere in the specter of possible?

Yeah, I mean, there are so many examples of the president and this administration using

whatever language feels right to this particular audience that is often entirely at odds with

their legal theory to the extent they have one.

So to the extent, you can imagine the extent there are lawyers in there who both believe

in the president's agenda and law.

You can imagine they're just sort of pulling their hair out every time it speaks.

But you know, just in the Western hemisphere, you've got the president claiming Venezuela

has invaded us for the purposes of evoking the alien enemies on it.

You've got him saying we're at war with drug cartels for the purpose of blowing up suspected

drug traffickers at sea.

And then you've got him saying it's not hostilities so that he can get out of war powers reporting.

And then when he actually does start a real war on the same basis, invading Venezuela,

capturing its head of state, then the administration claims, well, no, that's not a war.

So then you could do it all without going to Congress under the, oh, we'll see, not

war.

It's like a Schrodinger's war.

It's both war and not war, just depends on, yeah, the context, right, depending on

what you're trying to do and whatever will get you the most power.

So to your point here, yeah, you can't have major combat operations and say that's not

a war, nothing to see here, Congress.

This is exactly the kind of scenario Congress would or at least should want to play a role

in determining, right?

And in fact, getting dragged into Vietnam without sufficient information or sufficient ability

to weigh in and the resulting carnage was exactly what prompted Congress to come together,

work across party lines to pass the war powers resolution to try to reset the balance

in the first place.

Yeah.

So I also want to talk about the justifications and how I think the purported justifications

they've been throwing out are another escalation in addition to the escalation in scope.

So Trump made noises about Iran being days away from building a nuclear bomb that could

reach the United States and also that he was concerned about the, quote, freedom of the

Iranian people.

Now, the former claim on Iran's nuclear capabilities just seems to be false.

And these are, of course, different justifications.

It doesn't even seem like they bothered to settle on a rationale.

They were saying different things to different outlets on the very same day.

And on the specific justifications, you know, on the first, in addition to it just being

a lie, they were claiming all of last year they had destroyed Iran's nuclear capabilities.

You know, Saturday morning, they still had up on the White House website, a post that said,

quote, Iran's nuclear facilities have been obliterated and suggestions otherwise are fake

news and quote, you know, another kind of mark against the unitary executive branch,

it seems, our unitary executive theory.

And on the second theory, you know, it's unclear if, you know, successfully removing the

Supreme Leader will bring into power a regime that wouldn't try to continue to develop nuclear

weapons and murder protesters and repress the people.

I mean, Reuters reported that a CIA analysis suggested more hired liners would ascend to

power.

So these are also part of why this struck me as an escalation, just like the transparent

moving target of the justifications and how not tied or related to this combat operation,

they seem to be.

Right.

And none of those are, of course, illegal justification.

But I'll just add that this question of humanitarian intervention, right, to the extent that's

somehow part of the mix, they're sort of nodding at that.

This is this longstanding question of whether states can use force to stop significant

human rights abuses, genocide, crimes against humanity.

This is a live and extremely fraught question.

You'll notice that it wasn't one of the exceptions I mentioned to the prohibition on using

force.

And states have been banding about what to do about this for a long time.

And as a legal matter, the, the thing to do about it is to, to go to the UN Security Council

and get a, get a, get a, an unscored, but of course, for important reasons that were built

into the system, it's, it's extremely, you know, difficult to do that.

But I'll note that even under the most good faith of circumstances, even when states

do come together, multilaterally, get a UN Security Council resolution, have legal

grounds to act, things can go and have gone wildly wrong.

Yeah.

It's not, it's just not that easy for states to sweep in and make good government happen,

even with the best of intentions.

And as a policy matter, the most significant argument against crafting an exception for

humanitarian intervention is that it can be used pretextually.

So for example, you know, Putin falsely accused Ukraine of genocide as part of its justification

for its attempts at territorial expansion.

So there's no question, as I said, that this regime in Iran has been a monstrous one.

But I also don't really see a pro-human rights agenda as a cornerstone of this administration.

And I don't, I just don't believe that ensuring human rights is part of the plans that they

have drawn up to the extent they have drawn up any plans, or that it's going to be a component

of any plans they have going forward.

Yeah.

So on this justification, moving justification that they are just throwing out, I mean, honestly,

it seems to me they are like a half-new cycle away from just saying we did it because the

Dow, the Dow is at or below 50,000.

I mean, this is just how ludicrous it all is because the president also truth out that,

quote, Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump and now faces renewed

war with the United States.

So maybe a third justification is election denialism, which just puts layers upon layers

of illegality on it in addition to layers and layers of BS, because I can't even keep track

of who supposedly interfered with our elections, Iran, China, Venezuela, the radical left.

And we started out with policy and went to law, and I want to get back to the question

I previewed at the beginning, which is the does this matter question?

What's the point of discussing whether these strikes comply with international law of

the Constitution or federal statutes when it just seems like the administration and, you

know, at least some other countries just don't seem to care?

Yeah.

I mean, this is really important.

Jack Goldsmith had this piece over the weekend saying law doesn't matter, right?

And now to the extent what he was saying was the debate over whether OLC could justify

this under its ever-expanding legal theories is still and not particularly useful, I don't

disagree there.

But to the extent he means that legal debates over war powers are empty, you know, what's

his own solution?

His solution in his, in that piece is for Congress to step up and do its job and constrain

the president.

Well, why is it Congress's job?

Why do we even say that it's Congress's job, right?

Why can Congress constrain the president?

It's Congress's job because of the law and because the Constitution says so.

And in the public law space, whether we're talking about international law or the Constitution,

there's no overarching decider, there's no cop that shows up at the door and halls off

the United States to jail or the president, right?

Public law is enforced through the reactions of other states on the world stage.

And domestically, it's enforced through the actions of other actors like Congress and

the public, which is exactly what he's proposing to happen.

So the question, I think, for all of us should be, you know, as a matter of international

law, do we want to live in a world where there are neutral rules that govern where states

can rely on the promises that they make one another?

Where states don't accept the use of force as a tool for policy?

Or do we want to revert to that world where states could just use force where they please

resolve disputes or grab resources or territory?

Do we feel safer in that world?

Because it, you know, like I said, it wasn't that long ago that states came together, you

know, to ban the use of force as a tool of policy.

The UN Charter is just 80 years old, give or take.

These rules require careful, tending and vigilance, less than all fall down.

And on the domestic side, without law, without insisting on a role for Congress in the courts,

we've got the entire national security state, the intelligence community, DHS, the FBI,

the standing military, unimaginable weaponry, wildly increasing surveillance power.

In the world of AI, God only knows, all of this funded by trillion dollar annual budgets

from Congress, all of it in the hands of one man, one man.

Does that make any of us feel safe?

And so I'm more afraid right now of the lack of reactions by Congress, by other states.

It's not the violations of the law themselves that are going to ultimately bring the system down.

Any legal system is going to have to account for violations and be able to survive those violations.

What's going to bring the system down is a failure to respond.

And for violations to become expected and commonplace.

And so that, I'll just, I'll just end here, but that is on all of us.

There should be no more, who cares?

You know, he's going to violate the law anyway, so what, right?

That kind of nihilism is just self-fulfilling.

If you want to have a system that is ruled by law and not by one man's wins,

then you have to care when it is violated and you have to fight for it every single day.

So, since you brought up automated weapons, I do just want to kind of take stock

about what has happened and what we have seen.

Because it kind of seems to me like the Neocons kind of wanted another war,

because Venezuela wasn't enough for them.

They like seeing the strikes on the TV.

Thought Venezuela war was cool, so they did another.

And this isn't exactly law, but I can't help but pause over just the

grotesque specter of everything we have seen and will be seeing.

We have a Fox and Friends former host and guest running a war from a private club for

millionaires, a war that has already killed U.S.

service members, many Iranians, and provoked Iranian retaliation in the region that has

killed even more people.

This is happening on the heels of a fight between the Secretary of Defense,

slash Secretary of War crimes, and Anthropic, an AI company,

when Anthropic wouldn't give the federal government access to their automated war

bots to use for strikes.

And Uncle Drunky was so upset, he declared Anthropic a threat and interrupted their

supply chain, and then open AI jumped into the fray.

And the Wall Street Journal reported that the federal government was indeed using

cloth in intelligence assessments.

And this is all after we were assured that the Manusphere's opposition to Kamala Harris

wasn't about misogyny or misogynoir.

But just about how men didn't want to go off and fight reckless wars.

And the Manusphere was obsessed with this idea that Kamala Harris would send us into

wars and Trump wouldn't.

That was part of many people's cover stories.

I mean, JD Vance had an op-ed, you know, in 2023 that said,

Trump's best foreign policy not starting any wars.

And it was transparent bullshit and utter misogyny that got us here,

like two in attack that includes an air strike on a girl's school that reportedly killed 85

students. Like that misogyny helped bring to power a president who literally launched

a military strike against a girl's school.

And that is one of the images that at least to me will be most associated with these attacks.

And the violence and depravity related to and resulting from the misogyny was just very hard

for me to miss in the first 24 or so hours of this entire thing.

Beck, you said you wanted to end it on it all being us, but I'll also give you any final thoughts

or last words.

Yeah, while he's watching all of it in like a baseball cap from Marlago, it is grotesque.

I mean, you know, I'm just sitting here kind of devastated and fearful.

I'm worried about the people of Iran.

I'm hoping that they can take control of their country and live without fear of either

totalitarian rule or bombs from above.

I'm worried about the broader region.

I'm worried about the state of the world going forward.

And I'm thinking a lot about what we can do.

You know, the rules-based order that we've been living under for just about a century was

or less than a century was far from perfect, far from perfect.

But I do want to live in a world that is governed by the rule of law and not by the whims of

tyrants or for that matter by AI.

And so, you know, we have to figure out together how to learn from and improve upon what we have

done, right? I think it is nihilism to say everything that came before that this is no different

that because states have violated the law before, this is no different than that.

Because politicians have sometimes, you know, lied or politicians have sometimes stepped over

the rules that this is no different and it's all we can ever expect, right?

I think we have to figure out how we have to figure out what we can take from what we had,

what was good, what we need to improve upon and just, you know, figure out how to move forward

together. Well, thank you, as always, back for joining, especially on short notice. We greatly

appreciate it as I know our listeners do as well. Because the parallels to 1984 have to be heavy-handed,

the president truthed out, quote, the heavy and pinpoint bombing will continue uninterrupted

throughout the week or as long as necessary to achieve our objective of peace. Yep,

bombings will continue until there is peace. And now for our regularly recorded episode.

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code strict at checkout for 15% off. Hello, and welcome back to strict scrutiny,

your podcast about the Supreme Court. And that's lowercase, based on a complete lack of respect,

as the president indicated in a truth social post complaining about the Supreme Court.

Anyways, this is strict scrutiny, your podcast about the lowercase, Supreme Court,

and the legal culture that surrounds it. I'm your host for today's episode, Leah Litman.

For the first part of this episode, I'll be going through legal news with the wonderful Chris

Geidner, who runs the indispensable outlet, lawdork, that we often reference. We'll cover different

developments in the in cell, fratboy administration, including allegations of sexual misconduct

in the Epstein files. I'll also be talking to Chris about some of the journalism he's been doing

that has brought to light, different aspects of the administration's misdeeds. This episode is

kind of going to be a love pod to independent journalism, and an FU to the right wing.

Brologues take over of the media, but I digress. Chris and I are also going to talk bad decision

season, then goings on at the Supreme Court last week, including oral arguments and opinions.

Then I'll be joined by Mark Elias, who will talk with me about how all three articles of

government have trained their sights on democracy and upcoming elections. But first up, legal news.

And as promised, I'm joined today by guest host Chris Geidner, who runs the incredible

lawdork sub-stack. Welcome back to Strixpert, Nikris.

Hello, Leah. We were kind of talking before this got started about this wonderful world we are

living in. So thank you for joining me to help me process this last week of that wild, wild world.

Of course. Yeah, there is never a dull moment, and I was saying last night,

Thursday night, that it was one of those days that it wasn't even the best laid plans that got

held awry. It was literally any laid plans that got taken off the off the dock yet. Indeed.

I could stand to live in boringer times, but such as it is, we have a lot to cover.

So the first chunk of legal news we're going to talk about is basically how I think we are all

being governed by some weirdos of the manosphere. And one example is the latest Epstein files

scandal, so several outlets reported and then representative Robert Garcia, ranking Democrat

on House Oversight Committee confirmed that the Department of Justice seems to have excised

and declined to disclose material in the Epstein files that included an interview with a witness

who alleged that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her when she was a minor. Reporting on those

admitted documents, initially came from Independent Journalist Roger Salenberger. Again,

Independent Media. We heart you. My parent to Independent Media comes on the heels of news that

Paramount is apparently the winning bitter for Warner Brothers, the company that owns CNN. Paramount

is also the entity that took over CBS and facilitated the barri-wisification of that once great outlet.

Paramount is led by Larry Ellison and Larry Ellison's large adult son, some Uber Trumpers who also

now control TikTok. Basically, they're building a right wing media empire that runs the risk of

stifling great journalism. I'll get back to the Epstein example in a bit, but Chris, what's the

role of Independent Media in this era of manosphere media? And yes, I include barri-wis in that,

the woman literally made a prime time show into a whiskey hour and has made an entire career out

of telling powerful men what they want to hear and ensuring that everyone else, not them, is the

problem. Yeah, no, it is alarming and continues to snowball in terms of where the problems are

and who they're affecting. And I think that Independent Media, there have been a lot of

discussions this week. There will certainly be as this paramountification of the media landscape

continues. And I think that like the examples that we have seen from Independent Media's

like Roger, who you mentioned, my work, Marissa Cabas, there are a good number at this point

of journalists who are working independent of a large newsroom who can bring out a lot of important

work. I do think in there was some discussion that I had on Thursday night online that there are

limits to that. And I think that we don't want to lose the fact that like it would be very bad if

we don't have big newsrooms that can do big in-depth investigations that have deep pockets to protect

their recorders both abroad and like now in this era from lawsuits at home that are able to do

deep dive investigations. I mean, I remember like you know me from back in the golden days of

bus speed. And I mean, we would literally, the investigations team would be able to spend time and

money on allowing a journalist like Chris Hamby who was great is great to like go off and spend

six months working on one story. And obviously I couldn't do that if I go more than two days without

publishing. I feel like my head's gonna explode because I'm not giving my readers the latest news.

And so like independent journalism can do a lot. And like, I mean, I was at the Supreme Court this

week. I was in front of Judge Lamberth, not in front of sitting in the gallery. Thankfully,

I wasn't in front of Judge Lamberth. But I like the day after the Supreme Court was done with its

arguments. I was in front of Judge Lamberth watching him dress down a Justice Department lawyer.

And like, there was no other journalist there. I was the only journalist in the courtroom

before Judge Lamberth on Thursday. And like, that's because I know that my readers care about

and are expecting me to care about what's going on with trans prisoners who might be a doubly

unimportant character in some media outlets. Yeah. But back to this story that independent journalist

Roger Solenberger broke, you know, the decision of materials implicating the president from

the Epstein files released to the public, you know, on its own, that would be bad. But there are

other clues about this specific interview and witness that make this even worse. So the FBI

reportedly interviewed this person multiple times. So this wasn't something or someone just

immediately dismissed as not credible and written off. And the accuser included a similar

accusation in a lawsuit filed in 2019 against Epstein. So Chris, you know, we have been treated

too slush, subjected to Epstein and Epstein files now for weeks and months as DOJ has blown

the deadline. Why is this latest revelation a big deal? I mean, I think it's a big deal one because

it is Trump, right? This is this is actual direct Trump-related information. It's not a oh,

these are his friends, which again, it is its own damnation. But like this is an actual Trump

accusation, which is similar and is particularly like a sexual assault allegation and not even sort

of the allegations that have led to significant changes in the careers of people like Kathy Rumler.

And like the allegations there were, I mean, with Kathy was more about like advising him. And with

Brad Carp was essentially about being too close to him. And I think that what we're learning

is that there is a lot of there there. And as it becomes more difficult for the people who have

been saying there's nothing there. To argue that we're actually starting to see consequences

because it is it is very clear that this was not something that Epstein was doing off by himself.

It was part and parcel of what those around him knew was going on if they were not actually

involved in. And as more evidence comes out, we're seeing that. Yeah, I can't wait for that

Supreme Court shadow-docket order that says no consequences period, but this consequences

good thing. So the next bit of news is a step removed, but in my mind, still related to the government

by the manosphere of the manosphere and for the manosphere vibe of this administration. And that

the video scene around the world of FBI director Cash Patel forwards that should never be strung

together, living out his frat bro sports ball fantasy of partying with athletes, celebrating the

U.S. men's hockey teams, gold medal in the locker room with the team. And during the celebration,

the protector of women sports himself Donald Trump got on the phone with the men's hockey team

via Cash Patel and invited the team to the state of the union address and joked that he'd have to

invite the women's team as well or he'd be impeached as you can hear here.

Women's team declined the invitation and instead hung out with Stanley Tucci would recommend.

Chris, what did you say? Right exactly, right? Like, would prefer.

But what do you make of this like Cash Patel Donald Trump phone call episode?

I mean, it works poorly on so many levels that it's hard to know where to dig into.

Like, I mean, this is the continuation just of the corruption of the administration.

The self-dealing, the this is we're governing to get what we want. But then on top of that,

you do have this like, you have this like, we're going to kill woke element of this.

Right. And by woke, they mean women and other people too, but yeah.

The responses of the women's team have been great. The responses from women outside of the team

from Abby Wombach from Megan Rapinoe have been just fantastic. And then on like a final level,

it is this like, the desperation of the administration. Like, yes, some of these things and this

like fits in with my like broader like, we don't realize how good we are doing element of this moment.

Like, they are desperate. Like, they know they're losing. They know what they're doing is unpopular.

And like, they they literally believed that like the in for them was becoming a part of the men's

hockey team winning. And like, unfortunately for the men's hockey team, they kind of went along

with it. And I think they they they ruined so much goodwill as everybody's been not even jokingly

saying like coming off of heated rivalry. Like, there was this like moment for hockey that

the people were carrying the game last night, right? Like, I've been going to hockey more regularly.

I read all of heated rivalry. I watched the entire series. And they're just pride nights.

Um, like, I I wasn't able to go to the capitals.

Pride night because I had something else that night. But like, I was even aware I Chris

Geidner was aware of it and would have been there if I didn't already have, I mean, admittedly tickets

to theater. But that aside, right? I outgained pride night. But like, I like two of my best friends were at

the Philly Pride night. Like, I mean, like, yeah, this was like a moment for expanding the

universe of hockey in America and Canada. And like the the US men's team sort of played along with

like, even if they weren't a part of and clearly some of them are. But like, even if they weren't

a part of, they played along with it to be a celebrated in this moment. And I get it. Like,

yeah, you you won the gold medal and won the president of the United States to congratulate you. Like,

I get why like instinctually you think like, that's fine. But like, you know that don't do not

accept the congratulations. Yeah, do not congratulate and do not accept. Yeah, you know that he's

going to use you. Yeah. And he did and tried to and successfully somewhat use them at the state

of the Union even. I mean, sad, but also caveat, I'm sure at this point, if you if you're going along

with Trump's shenanigans completely. And because there are many fronts to the war on women,

I wanted to draw attention to a moment from the Senate confirmation hearing last week for Trump's

nominee for search in general, wellness influencer slash maha aficionado. Casey means not a

licensed doctor never completed her residency. But you'll hear Senator Patty Marie speak first

in this clip. You call birth control pills. I'm going to quote a disrespect of life. And you

said, Americans quote, use birth control pills like candy. You also claim contrary to established

signs that hormonal birth control has quote horrifying health risks for women. There are decades,

decades of evidence showing that every one of these birth control methods is safe and effective.

So I wanted to ask you help me understand should women trust the FDA, which approved all 18 methods

of birth control after a very rigorous look at the evidence. Or should they trust your statement

that there are horrifying health risks to birth control, which contradicts that evidence.

Thank you, Senator Marie, for your question.

I'm curious if you're aware of what the side effects of hormonal contraception are.

I'm curious if you are with the FDA that went through all of these. I'm speaking about

particular women that can be heard if there is not informed consent about their medical history,

their lifestyle exposures, and their family history. I want those women, and I know you do too

to be able to have a thorough conversation with their doctor and know whether they are

higher risk for side effects when describing that as one thing. But seeing on, you know,

different shows that birth control pills are a disrespect of life is very different.

I believe I am passionate about women's health. And I think it is disrespectful. People

who do women trust like candy is very different than what you just said.

We prescribe a huge amount of hormonal contraceptive, and I do not believe most of those conversations

have informed consent because of the pressures that doctors were under because of our broken

health care system. I want what's best for women as do you. I mean, what is there even to say?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, the best thing that I can say is to say nothing.

Yes, it speaks well as the man on.

Like, literally, men need to be saying less this week. I mean, but obviously it doesn't matter

even if it's women. Right. I mean, it's just it is part and parcel of what RFK,

junior, is is doing to the public health system in America to, I mean, like to research in America

to and with that global research. I mean, like, in addition to sort of the, like, I mean, I

obviously still get all of my Ohio news alerts. And like, there's like, it wasn't even the,

it was truly one of those moments, even for me and with how closely I'm paying attention to

things that like, I saw second measles in like a news alert this morning. And I thought it was

case. It was second measles outbreak in Ohio this year. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's where right now,

we're not even like counting by the case for news alerts. And now we're going to, we have a,

like, birth control skeptic who is most likely going to be the surgeon general. It's, I mean,

it's, it's horrifying. It's another example of like the Senate, just like, abdicating its

responsibility to the American people, to the structure of government, to James Madison's

basic beliefs about what this, this constitution he was setting up would do. But here we are.

Yes, here we are. And where we are, we have a few more pieces of legal news before we step back

and talk about how we ensure legal news is news. And before we get to bad decisions, spring training

season. And the first is more news out of Minnesota. So despite the drawdown of Operation Metro

Surge, that is the administration's mass deployment to federal immigration officers, people on the

ground in Minnesota and independent media and journalists and local media still continue to

report a lot of contacts with ICE. And despite the alleged tone shift, the administration still seems

intent on causing as much harm as possible to and terrorizing the people of Minnesota as much as

they can. The latest in this attack comes from the lips of JD Vance. So we're announcing today

that we have decided to temporary, temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are

going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligation

seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money. Chris, because JD went to Yale,

can you loss blame to him why this withholding almost a quarter of a billion of dollars in

Medicaid funding from the state is wildly illegal? I mean, it's so illegal. Like they go through

no process. They go through like this is one of the the most clear well regulated systems for

funding outside of social security that we have. And they they just like declare at a news conference

with with Dr. Oz standing behind them that this is going to end like we don't even get to like I'm

not even getting to the the impoundment of it all. And outside of that, it's so unpopular. You

are making lives more difficult overnight for not just for the poor people that you don't care

about. Right. But for the other people who go to those hospitals who are going to be impacted,

to the the nurses and doctors and even hospital administrators who you love. Right. Like if you

didn't love our immigration enforcement, wait until you see our defunding of hospitals and

medical care. Right. It's like it's just it's another example of this like lashing out. I mean,

honestly, whenever JD Vance is in charge of something, it is something that they've like

ordered me is thinking at this point, like early on, I was thinking that they were putting him out

for the unpopular things. At this point, I actually think that he's just so stupid that these

are things he's in charge of. And he keeps just choosing bad directions to go with them because

it's just so often like how could you decide that this would be the way to go forward with

this attack on Minnesota? It's not going to work. It's going to like anything as soon as litigation

is there, if they actually even go through with it. Like that's the other thing. Like how much of

this is like a press conference that yes, it turns out you don't even do it. Right. They really

want to feel like no, but to the extent they actually try to implement it. Like there's going to be

litigation. It's going to be stayed. They're going to be held up in court. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So

with drawing Medicaid funds, wildly illegal statute says certain processes have to be followed.

They didn't follow those. Right. Statue doesn't authorize the president just to rescind funds or

freeze them, whatever he wants, a separate federal law prohibits him from doing so the Empowerment

Control Act. And then there's a whole tenth amendment. You're not allowed to coerce states,

right, by threatening all of their federal funds to do something unrelated anyways. But I think

they are partially emboldened at least to threaten this because the Supreme Court blocked lower

court decisions that had halted their efforts to freeze other funds, you know, through the Department

of Education, the National Institutes of Health, and elsewhere. Strix Gurdney is brought to you by

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There are some other pieces of news I wanted to acknowledge that are also in my view cases where

the court's hands aren't entirely clean. And the first is the absolutely horrific death of

Neural Amin Shah Alam, a nearly blind refugee who fled ethnic persecution in Myanmar,

and Customs and Border Patrol dropped the man who didn't speak English,

couldn't operate a phone, couldn't communicate, and was blind in one eye and could see only three

feet in front of him out of the other at a closed coffee shop five miles from his home on a cold

wintery night. And he was found dead several days later, the mayor of Buffalo where the man,

a father, lived, blamed federal immigration officers for his death,

agree. But I also don't want people to forget who let the administration continue to deploy.

It's crazy, excessive and aggressive roving patrols of immigration officers stopping people

based on their apparent race and ethnicity, even if they are refugees who aren't to be removed.

And that of course is the Supreme Court. And I just wonder if Brett Kavanaugh would call this a

brief encounter where a man was promptly released. Yeah, it's it's horrific. And I do think like

I've been doing a lot of work on the refugee specific aspect of this and some of the really

aggressive ways that they're looking at trying to essentially buy into like it's literally a like

let's back into Donald Trump doesn't trust Biden says he doesn't trust Biden's vetting of

refugees. And so let's back into a policy to like essentially starting the the literal policy is

starting January 20th, 2021. Any refugees have to be reverted and like trying to say that they

can detain those refugees while they're being reverted. That's being litigated in Minnesota

because that's where they first tried to implement that. But this is sort of a combination of

the Kavanaugh stop of it all with the this like not just disregard but like disrespect for the

purpose of refugees like yes. And it's just it's it's lawless and defensive.

The second Supreme Court related piece of news is that as we are waiting for the court to issue

its decision about the validity of laws banning transgender athletes from participating in sports,

Kansas adopted one of the most evil anti trans laws in the country. This one reports to invalidate

driver's licenses and birth certificates of transgender cancens who changed the gender markers

on those documents, although a letter went out suggesting maybe it's not invalidating those

documents immediately, but it literally prohibits driving wild trans law also bars trans people

from using restrooms that align with their gender identity. But I personally can't wait for the court

to tell us that there's no history of discrimination against trans people and therefore no reason for

courts to look closely at those laws. But now shifting to the topic of legal news generally,

I mean the pieces of legal news we just touched on Chris really relate to some issues you've been

on the forefront of kind of diving deeper in. And so I wanted to talk with you about journalism

in this era and the stories that do or don't come to light and how. So at law door, you know,

you've been breaking some news that it really hasn't been covered or has been overlooked elsewhere.

And one thing you alluded to is the case involving medical care for transgender inmates. So can you

share like what law dork was able to report and find an uncover there and where that case stands?

The January 20 executive order that Trump issued on day one that was known generally as the

the like definition of sex executive order also contained provisions directing the Bureau of

prisons to essentially act on that. And so really starting I believe the first lawsuits were

actually filed in January. Yeah. Challenging and attempting to stop Bureau of prisons efforts to

transfer trans inmates to discontinue medical care for trans inmates to discontinue being able to

get items from the commissary that would be infitting with their gender. And they had those cases

going forward. And they all got assigned to and consolidated before Judge Royce Lambert who

is a Reagan appointee has been on the bench for nearly 40 years. But as as I'm sure many strict

scrutiny people know is also a guy who is very comfortable aggressively looking at the government

and the government's actions. And he has blocked a lot of that. And one of those cases that sort of

take in the lead is a class action case. And there is one person who has regularly been a witness

in submitting declarations for that Grace Pinson and had been presenting evidence that she was

being retaliated against. And on February 19th at a hearing, DOJ's lawyer there basically had no

information responding to that retaliation. Lambert was a little upset and was like when the DOJ

lawyer said there's no evidence of it. He said there actually is there's a declaration it's

uncontroverted by you. You've not even looked into it. And so he issued a protective order saying

no more retaliation against witnesses in this litigation. Literally starting the next day

Grace Pinson in a prison in in North Carolina started getting further retaliation.

She had a visual strip search that was very invasive in front of mail guards. She had her legal papers

taken and thrown into another cell that had feces on it. She reported in her declaration that some

of her legal papers she had to throw away at that point. She was supposed to be moved and that was

held off. And then the lieutenant at the facility literally told her I don't give a fuck what the

judge says I do what I want. And so the lawyers was not into that. The lawyers immediately went to

court filed a motion for a show cause order for civil contempt to in violation of that February 19th

Lambert came back within like 12 hours set a hearing on Thursday morning for 230 p.m. Thursday

in person hearing. And I went to that hearing and DOJ still didn't have facts. Lambert was not happy.

He basically said you still don't have facts. You can say what you want but I'm looking for facts.

That argument time went so badly for DOJ that when the ACLU of DC lawyer got back up he made an

oral motion on the spot for a TRO to protect the image to protect Pinson including I mean he did

go aggressively far and said to to immediately move her to a halfway house which is where she's

supposed to be moved but then in the alternative for them to make a detailed plan for how they are

going to be protecting her against retaliation. And he then went back to chambers. He granted the

show cause order. He asked for the name of the warden which DOJ initially didn't know which offended

him further. Like he was like this particular prison has been at issue. It's the issue of

the show cause motion and you still don't know the name of the warden. And so he came back with an

order order to show cause ordering DOJ naming all of the people including naming the warden

that they need to respond by Tuesday. And then partially granting the TRO saying they need to

have a detailed plan to protect Pinson and her former roommate. And then is going to have the

show cause hearing next Wednesday. And we will await that. So that was a great breakdown of

where things stand on that case which again is really flown under the radar. And you know the other

case that I had wanted to highlight you know your involvement in is the litigation concerning

the administration's new policy about detaining refugees that we had talked about previously

on the show and that you alluded to earlier. And in that case you know you at Waddark were actually

able to break and share you know the new policy before other outlets were. And you actually

kind of became involved in the litigation by like filing requests for the information that I'm not

mistaken. We tried we filed a motion to intervene in the case for the purpose. A habeas cases

immigration, habeas immigration cases by default under federal rules are not on the public

filings aren't on the public docket. And you have to like literally get them from the courthouse.

And only judges orders are on the public docket. We filed a motion to get those opened the the

magistrate judge tonight are request because he said you can get them from the courthouse which

is ridiculous and like you saw judges in all the alien enemies act cases once the supreme court

required them to go to habeas almost all of the judges in those cases converted those to being

open because the rule the federal rule that says that they're by default not public filings

does say unless the judge orders otherwise. So we tried to do that but in the course of doing

that I became involved in the case and so it lawyers are aware of my interest in the case and

I'm able to get the documents more quickly. And yeah no I reported that overnight and it is a very

aggressive it's a reading that has not been the reading since the Refugee Act of 1980 became law

that basically when you become a refugee eventually you adjust your status to lawful permanent

resident and essentially what the the new policy is is that if you've been here for more than a year

and don't adjust immediately on day 366 they can detain you. Yeah and you can't immediately have

your status adjusted like the next day so it's basically requiring detention you know for that

that period which is part of what makes it so so horrific like you get a year and then you're

indefinitely detained. They claim that if they're not allowed to indefinitely detain people and

yet they also make clear that it's it can be more than 48 hours and so it's a bad argument

it's under consideration at the district court and I'll be I'll be I'll be following it as it

moves forward. I do think like one of the since this is independent media day one of the like

really great things that independent media can do and does do successfully is draw attention to

cases that other people aren't paying attention to and like honestly like literally sometimes

once it becomes a thing that other people are paying attention to I can move on and I can start to

pay attention to other cases but like and so this was a case like all of a sudden I was writing about

the Washington Post was stealing my work CBS news was stealing my work they might have something

in common I don't know what it is but then all of a sudden at the hearing I noticed that there

were like nine other publications on the hearing and so like that is a real it is a true

advantage even if it is like like just like self-interested media like that independent media can lead

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so now let's shift to talking about bad decisions spring training season so the supreme court heard

oral arguments last week not in any big ticket cases but still going to bring you up to speed

on what they did here and then we'll talk about their decisions so last Monday at the court was

Cuba Day and if you like Melissa are in your john slattery season you could watch dirty dancing

Havana nights to get with the program which lacks the abortion backstory of the original but does

feature a young Thiago Luna in addition to john slattery anyways on Cuba Day the court heard two

cases Havana docs versus royal Caribbean cruises about the meaning of the Libertad act and specifically

which United States nationals are authorized to sue for claims that their property was confiscated

by the Cuban regime can anyone sue a defendant who trafficked in property or does a plaintive have

to show that they'd still hold the property but for the expropriation in which case that might

bar claims like the one here where the plaintive had a lease hold to a property that has since expired

that same day the court also heard exon mobile versus corporacion cimex about whether the helms

Burton act abrogates foreign sovereign immunity of Cuban instrumentalities or whether the plaintive

seeking to sue instead have to satisfy an exception under the foreign sovereign immunities act

the president for his part participated in Cuba week by at the end of the week floating the

possibility of maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba once we could very well end up having

a friendly takeover of Cuba back to this Supreme Court case which generated this week's clip

without context something i just started during the terrorist episode which you can hear here

so i'll try that one now last week the court also heard enbridge versus nestle which is about the

30-day deadline to remove a case from state court to federal court if a case is filed in state

court but could have been filed in federal court in many instances the defendant has the opportunity

to take that case from state to federal court but they're supposed to do so in 30 days this case

is about whether case can still be removed after the 30 days are up there's one moment where it

seemed like the justice says we're a bit bored with this case oh we're asking you to do is to declare

that the presumption applies that it hasn't been rebutted by the clearest command and to reverse i

mean it could be an opinion that's 160 pages less than the tariffs opinion last week well if well

that's certainly a goal to aim for i felt very left out in the tariff

just the sort of my art didn't write and i didn't write opinions but if maybe we'll have a chance

Chris how scared should america be that samoledo had his feelings hurt

yeah i i don't think we need to worry about it i i think it was weird to have such a

a technical case it was the only case that day and i think that just they were sort of like

they knew they weren't going to go long with this argument it's not like this was going to be

a two and a half hour argument and so like yeah like even even even samoledo can make a joke

had a little fun like that that was what i thought i was like wow this is the day that even

samoledo is making a joke i don't know if this is like the groundhog being afraid of his shadow or

what exactly this is a sign of but yes you're right a rare example so staying on theme week you

know this last week was also apparently michigan week the court heard pung versus isabel county

michigan about how to calculate the value of something here a piece of property taken by the

government to satisfy an alleged tax debt so the former homeowner alleges the house taken to

offset the debt was sold for way below market value and therefore constitutes a taking a property

the homeowner says the issue is the difference between the sale value and fair market value

the solicitor general's office the federal government are viewing on behalf of neither party said

court should consider the fairness of the sale process not like the difference in prices and

michigan is arguing the sale value as the value is the value i read the justices as pretty skeptical

of the homeowner's position in part because foreclosure sales often go for less than fair market

value on the other hand the justices or at least some of them did feel like something was unfair

or wrong here as you can hear here i want to echo with justice corsage said i mean it seems like

there was some real unfairness to your client i mean frankly reading the briefs it sounds to me like

this tax assessor was like inspectors of air but it was even worse because john vell john hadn't

stolen the bread i mean you didn't even you didn't even know the tax one notable moment was

the following clip well in this case with the tax debt of about twenty two hundred bucks they

could have been the peloton bike that was in the house you think a peloton bike today is worth

two thousand dollars well if you go on facebook marketplace and you try to sell a peloton bike

today for two thousand dollars i don't think you're going to be very successful

this raised a really important question Chris is justice leader on peloton and if so what would his

handle or user name be it was this weird moment because it was awareness both of peloton and

facebook marketplace facebook like this discussion i think facebook marketplace makes more sense

don't you think like martin and san more than old i think that's where she gets her flag making

right exactly yeah listeners we invite your ideas for his peloton handle i'll just throw out a few

pelotonito i don't know if he if you wanted that one or they're going fast like pergonia but they're

going fast yeah um but again we welcome suggestions so now we got some opinions last week from

the court here too none of the high profile cases but cases that still could be quite consequential

and so one opinion was in hay and celestial group versus palm quest and there the supreme court

unanimously how that if a party is mistakenly dismissed from a case the parties dismissal can't

cure the court's lack of jurisdiction basically federal courts have jurisdiction power to hear cases

where there's diversity between the parties the plaintiffs are citizens of one state and the

defendants are citizens of others but in order to hear the case there has to be what's called

complete diversity i.e. no defendant can be from the same state as a plaintiff here one defendant was

but the district court dismissed that plaintiff from the suit albeit improperly and the supreme court

said that doesn't cure or fix the jurisdictional problem and therefore the case still has to be

dismissed we also got the opinion in geo group versus menacal case i know you've written about

Chris so do you want to tell us what the court decided here yeah i mean that this was a case

that's been going on since 2014 and the which which in and of itself is is sort of the issue

alleging essentially forced labor at the geo group's facility in Colorado and the lawsuit had been

going on when there was originally a class certified geo group appealed to the 10th circuit they lost

they went back and then there was this argument that came out of a a case from the forties that

that they were claiming that they had derivative immunity and that because of the fact that

they were a government contractor that they have derivative sovereign immunity

and because of that when they were found to have acted outside of their authority and thus illegally

and not getting the immunity that they should be able to appeal it right away as well and that is

the the limited area where the government where where anybody can appeal in the middle of a case

and the interlocutorial appeal and the case got to the Supreme Court the the 10th circuit

said no you can't do that this is a defense not an immunity and then it went to the Supreme Court

and Justice Kagan had the opinion for the court and she said the same thing and she said look at this

this is the an immunity is saying it doesn't matter if I did it I I don't need to answer for it

whereas a defense is saying I'm excused from doing this and she said that the difference between

that does matter for these purposes of if you can appeal in the middle of a case because a defense

you should have to you can go through court and just go through the full case and because of that

the the the people on Geogroup side were not just the private prisons it was also the chamber of

commerce who was saying no no no all government contractors should be able to invoke that and

essentially what it was was an argument for private contractors to be able to act like the government

and avoid accountability drag out litigation and the the Supreme Court luckily nine

oh said no that's not the case so two other decisions from the Supreme Court last week one

was in Villa Rial versus Texas where the Supreme Court held that a trial court's directive that

an attorney over an overnight recess not discuss the defendant's testimony with the defendant which

was again going to span the recess did not violate the sixth amendment guarantee of effective

assistance of council the Supreme Court made clear that the defendant wasn't prohibited from talking

to his lawyer or conferring on topics including sentencing just a solido and Thomas wrote concurrences

cosplaying as an originalist alito noted that at the founding defendants weren't even allowed to

testify because they weren't viewed as competent so nbd and Thomas joined by gorsuch wrote separately

because they didn't like all the guidance that justice Jackson's opinion for the court supplied

and then the other case is maybe another potential sleeper and that's postal service versus

Conan and here the Supreme Court held that the United States retains its sovereign immunity immunity

of the kind Chris was explaining just now but it retains its sovereign immunity for claims that

arise out of the intentional non-delivery of mail under the federal tort claims act the law

that allows you to sue the United States sometimes so the FTCA waves the United States immunity

for lots of claims but not for claims arising out of the loss miscarriage or negligent transmission

of letters or postal matters and the Supreme Court said miscarriage and loss can include intentional

non-delivery and therefore you can't sue over that this opinion with five to four

justice so to my or wrote the dissent for the three democratic appointees plus Neil Gorsuch

Chris I thought this was kind of a scary ruling to come down before the midterm elections

like what if Trump's postal service just doesn't deliver ballots how real is that or is that

even a concern? Mark Joseph Stern, our friend of friend of both of ours wrote a good piece about

etsylate about this his point is this takes away a tool that discouraged bad acts

and I think that that's right I also think though that litigation about the non-delivery

of mail is never going to fix anything that's going wrong and so I think it is

more it's more I think a sign of like the unfortunate like people were confused about why

Gorsuch was descending I think this fits because you and I both know that so do my or and Gorsuch

have come together a lot on moments sometimes when it's just the two of them in opposing

overreaching of government powers and so this I think was it was actually I think great to see

Kagan with the the three of the other three of them in in saying like no no no we don't want to

expand sovereign immunity yeah that was great well so on that note about elections stay tuned for

my conversation with Mark Elias about how the manosphere is trying to mansplain its way into

a talker seat and listeners stay tuned until the end of the episode to hear Chris and my favorite

things for this segment I'm delighted to be joined by Mark Elias chair of the Elias law group

and founder of democracy docket an independent media outlet in an era where we really need

independent media welcome to the show mark thanks for having me so today we are going to be talking

about how articles one two and three have their sites set on our democracy we can go quickly

over article one congress because as congress isn't doing that much besides rolling over but they

are considering the save act the house past it and the senate is considering it mark briefly what

is the save act and what would it do for elections okay so the save act is actually a confusingly

several different laws so we're actually the one that everyone is talking most about now is the

save america act Donald Trump insisted that america be added to the second iteration because he

thought save alone was not sufficient so it's like save up so the save america act would

basically do four things number one it would impose a very strict photo ID requirement for

on every state so it would tell them both what what photo IDs they must use but also what photo

IDs they can't use so for example the bill specifically bans any educational institution IDs

from being used so even if you have the University of Michigan or the University of North Carolina or

you know pick your state university where the IDs are issued by the state itself those could not

be used period so that's the first part of the bill the second part of the bill is what they

refer to as the proof of citizenship requirement this requires people to prove that they are citizens

in order to register to vote people that may sound like a simple thing it's actually quite a

complex thing to prove citizenship essentially there are only two documents to prove citizenship in

the united states one is a us passport a valid us passport our current non expired and then the

other is an original birth certificate or a birth certificate that has been obtained a certified

copy that has been obtained by the state that is also much harder to get than many people think

because many people don't have their original birth certificates and ordering them and getting

in a raised seal version from a state is not simple also I would remind the audience that if anyone

thinks Donald Trump is just going to accept any old state's birth certificate as the state of Hawaii

which issued a birth certificate to Barack Obama and of course Donald Trump came to political

for the state of Minnesota which he's just attacking left and right I mean you know correct

right and so the whole birth or conspiracy was him denying the validity of birth certificates plus

as you know Donald Trump is right now in the Supreme Court trying to say that birth certificates

actually don't prove citizenship in the birthright citizenship case so that's the second part of

the law that would also disenfranchise tens of millions of women who've changed their last name

when they got married because their birth certificates wouldn't match the name on their final

ID part of the war on women many different fronts correct the third provision of this would

require the purging the regular purging of names off the voter rolls using a what has been

described by pretty much everyone is a flawed database at the federal government level and that

would be you know yet another set of challenges that voters would face because of course if they

were moved by a flawed database in Washington DC good luck to get added back onto the voter rolls

that is of course the save act as congress is considering it but Donald Trump actually puts a

put a slightly different gloss on it in the state of the union and Lee I think that's important

because this was in his prepared text so this is not like Donald Trump just kind of like riffing

off the top of his head this is what the White House thought that was in the save act they added a

couple of things number one proof of citizen to actually vote which would mean that paperwork not

just to register but to actually show up each year every time you vote it and then the last thing

which you know didn't get a lot of attention but Donald Trump in the state of the union also said

that the save act would ban mail-in voting except for a very narrow class of people who either have

disabilities or sick or in the military yeah um unclear if congress would just roll over and allow

the president to declare what's in laws they enacted but I guess we might be about to find out

it's not actually in the text this is the thing that's got to be very confused it's like

literally you're gonna love this mark they're gonna love this it's a challenge

Mike Johnson will be like oh no it's there it's just an invisible ink

exactly exactly well now that we've already kind of gone on to article two which is bleeding into

article one uh let's talk more about what article two is doing so the Department of Justice filed

something like 28 anti voting lawsuits in the first year of the second Trump administration

many of these are fringe unhinged bunk you might have expected from Stephen Miller's organization

america first but now it's coming from DOJ can you give us an example or examples of that and what

it means for DOJ to now be the one filing these yeah so um you're exactly right actually um the

Department of Justice uh has now filed 33 uh oh wow yeah the Department of Justice literally

added five more in the middle of the night like literally late last week uh they decided to sue

five more states including four Republican states uh for Republican controlled states for access

to their voter files so you're right like there these are these are both high volume um and also

meritless so it's uh it's the perfect it's the perfect Trumpian combination yeah do a lot of

things at once all of which violating the constitution right yeah so look um the biggest class

of these cases are efforts to obtain access to sensitive voter data held by the states so every

state maintains a list of every person who's ever registered in the state every person's ever

voted in the state and it's quite detailed information like it would say for example like where

you first registered to vote whether you moved whether you voted in an election or skipped the

election whether your register is a Democrat or Republican it has obviously your address your name

your social security number your date of birth so like the the opportunities for identity theft are

you know abound yeah but then it has you know like I said it has partisan information about whether

you're a Democrat or Republican it has information whether you're active Democrat or an active

Republican or not like for example you voted in every primary or just some of them do you skip

midterms or not right a critical piece of information that if you were trying to target voter

suppression knowing who's likely a Democrat it who votes in midterms versus a Democrat who doesn't

vote in midterms super important information it it includes whether you voted uh in mail or by

person whether you voted early or on election day whether you voted at a precinct or a vote center

right whether you've ever had your ballot challenge whether you ever cast a provisional ballot

whether that ballot counted or not right there's like a lot of different permutations to this data

whether you use your social security number or your driver's license to choose when you

as an identifier when you registered it's a it's a wealth of information and it is the foundation

of what states need to ensure that lawful voters can vote and no one else can

and it is also the foundation of what if you wanted to run a massive voter suppression program

or a disenfranchisement program or contest the outcome of an election it is exactly the kind

of data that you would need so that is that is the bulk of the cases they have filed now they have

also uh strangely enough got involved in um a couple of redistricting cases i know this will

shock you yeah i know this will shock you but they're big big fans of the texas map not big fans

of the california map they should know to block the california map yeah yeah yeah no completely

shock and we'll get you to the developments you know in the supreme court and the courts and what

they are doing by way of the midterms in a bit um but just a little bit more an article two mark if

you don't mind so you know we've talked a little bit about how the FBI seized election materials from

fulton county on this podcast um you know i think a lot of people are worried about this world where

DOJ FBI DHS and ICE are basically acting as extensions of the trump campaign during the election so

can you talk a little bit more about what that might look like or if people are concerned what they

should be doing yeah people should be very concerned you know this is very reminiscent for me

frankly um from 2020 because in 2020 you know around March of 2020 um i started warning about the

problems that we were going to have with people voting absentee uh in large numbers with the

really at the beginning of the pandemic and by the summer i was pointing out that Donald Trump

was saying things about the elections that were not normal for president to say and then of

course in the postal you know and a lot of people discounted that they thought it was alarmist

they thought that we were like exaggerating it and that but you can remember all the commentator

commentators who said you know of course the useful trend to the power exactly oh i remember

i remember my friend he was a little time to process exactly he's just working it out he's using

this as therapy election denialism exactly and i feel like in some respects we're in we're living in

that same progression now right which is that he he has gone through the the which is now a permanent

feature of his politics which is the let's lie about elections let's lie about the outcome let's lie

about what's going on um and he has now moved into the what i'll call the litigation phase right which

is the like using the department of justice try to get access to voter uh using the department of

justice to get search warrants right he's using the courts and you know to some extent he abides

by the outcomes i mean you probably have a better uber sense of like how much he abides by the

outcome but like at least continues to look normal ish uh in that it is things are being litigated

out in court but what i have warned people is that Donald Trump is going to continue to escalate i

mean he thought that his ticket to maintain power in the midterms was simply gerrymandering that has

not panned out for him okay then he thought it was going to be the safe act that is not panning out

for him because it's not going to be enacted then he thought that it would be these lawsuits that

they're filing well so far the department justice has lost every court case that a federal judge

has decided involving these voter files impressive impressive in many respects it's not

easy right i mean as i say to folks like it's really good for my ego because it runs up our win

loss ratio against uh you know but yeah no it's not great and then now he is though starting to say

what comes next so what is he said he has said that Republicans need to take over the voting and he

has specifically said 15 places he he has said that he wished there wouldn't be midterm elections

now there will be midterm elections but when you start to have the president i think it's amusing

that there shouldn't be midterm election that Republicans should take them over um like red flag

that's a red flag right of what is going to come so what i what i am expecting is you know you're

wearing a uh Minnesota no ice uh t-shirt soon you'll be able to as we get closer to the election

i think you'll be able to expand to the number of states on that t-shirt because i think what he's

going to do is use the federal paramilitary forces available to him and ice is obviously

one of them although not the only one and i think that's an under reported story that that actually

the the shooters in at least some of these cases in right our cdp yeah yeah yeah right so like it's

not just ice like it's uh he's got a lot of paramilitary forces available to him and i think

you're gonna see them active and it doesn't require them to be at the polls with guns it just means

that they need to cause the kind of mayhem that you saw in Minneapolis in the streets because like

honestly if you have ice official blocking off streets and pulling people over and breaking their

windows and people pulling people out of the park dragging them out of street yeah that's going to

create the kind of environment that frankly u.s citizens who have nothing to worry about are going

to be like i don't need this trouble i don't need to try to work my way through traffic i don't

need to you know wind up in a situation we're voting rather than taking me a half hour is going to

take me three hours and it's going to be like going through the gauntlet so yeah i think you're

gonna see a lot of that and then finally if that doesn't work then we're gonna see more ballot

seizures and more efforts to just overturn the results well um that is uplifting um but you know

as you know your last answer is suggested a lot of what article two is doing has been involving

the courts and because this is the Supreme Court podcast wanted to end on a lightning round of

article three and how the courts are doing things that are already influencing and will continue

to shape the landscape for the upcoming midterms in future elections so mark you already kind of

alluded to the redistricting and you know the Supreme Court's or federal courts actions on partisan

gerrymandering um how have the courts been shaping this redistricting war look i think that we don't

we don't know and one of the we don't know yet and and i'll tell you specifically but but i think

that and and this is a lesson frankly i've learned from you listening to you over over the years

and frankly in in talking to you about this like the Supreme Court and i don't know whether it's

on purpose or not i leave that to you and the experts on your on your podcast but the Supreme Court

seems to have this way of operating which is they kind of give the pro democracy forces

some win relatively early then should be followed by an avalanche of starting to be right

and like we can talk about this in past cycles but like i i was thinking about you recently um because

of course you know the the people were very very excited by justice gorsuches language at the end

of the tariff decision which is not you know of itself a voting decision but but you can read it

as like an affirmation that actually congress is the is in charge and the president is in fact

not able to do whatever he wants right so in that sense it got read as a as something that is not

just a tariff decision but kind of a broader democracy decision also just like side note

how much are they breadcrumbing us that we have to salivate and celebrate as victories the idea

that Neil gorsuch ends an opinion with the suggestion that the president isn't an all-powerful

king anyway sorry you were no i actually glad you mentioned this because i actually have made

this point i'm not quite that directly but like number one it's a concurrence it's remarkable that

you couldn't get a majority of the court for that yeah right and the second is it has this feel

and you know i don't want to digress too far but it has this feel like every sovereign

supreme court justice are like you know what i just want to write something that's not really

for like the courts are for lawyers but like might wind up on a hallmark greeting card i kind of

remember like justice Kennedy you know would occasionally do this and it felt like at the end of

this opinion like just as gorsuch was like okay i guess one more thing to say which is just going

to like fit really well on like a placard or a placard right yeah they're all aiming for this wolf

comes this a wolf line and they're never going to get it but darn it they're going to keep trying

right so look um the the lower courts have have been have been relatively strong in democracy but

there's a lot of cases pending for the supreme court i mean uh you know right now we are waiting on a

big supreme court case involving redistricting out of Louisiana um we are as as we're recording

this we're waiting on the supreme court to see whether it's going to grant relief to Republicans

in the state of new york on an emergency petition we're going to wait and see whether the

supreme court grants a cert on a voting case out of the third circuit involving um

technical errors that or technical irregularities that voters make and whether that should just

qualify their ballots like there's a lot of stuff plus the argued cases that we talked about but if

you ask me like sitting here right now you know the supreme court has basically taken hands off

it basically said i'm not gonna we're not gonna stop texas and we're not gonna stop california so

it basically said we're we're out of the redistricting emergency docket you know shadow docket

or at least with respect to those two states but there's a lot more opportunities in front of us

right stay tuned for louise aniversis calais you know the challenge about whether the voting rights

act is basically going to restrict state's ability to district you know minority voters out of

power like that's one of the ones we're waiting for hopefully can i just like take a slight issue

and challenge here yeah yeah these actually was not about section two like the only people who made

this case about section two were the justices on the supreme court yes actually didn't go to the

supreme court for them to decide whether the voting rights act still is constitutional this case went

up on a on a much narrower and different legal theory and then the court on its own like literally

on its own just announced i know actually we want you to argue this other thing which is whether

section two is constitutional yes i know and honestly i'm not sure if they are going to go that

route since they seem to be so interested or if they're instead going to like weasel through the

back door and try to do a justice elito burnavitch special where they basically rewrite the section

to redistricting tests so it's almost impossible you know for plaintiffs to actually ensure that

redistricting is representative i'm not sure i've really decided which right i think they're

going to go but i do worry we are staring down the barrel of one of those yeah i think that they

i think that um i don't know what the right you know my generation we refer to it as shepherdizing

cases i don't know if they're well at shepherdizing kisai ding right but i think that that just

the chief and probably some of the others don't want there to be a little oh you know when you

used to get a little oh if something was overruled yep you don't want that they want like a d

distinguished right they want a yellow flag not a red flag okay that's i see i have the most

the now that's the current right and but it will have the same impact right so i agree yeah i think

you're going to overturn section to the voting rights act what they're going to do is they're

going to adopt one of two tests that are going to effectively overrule the voting rights act they're

either going to say fine you can draw a you can draw district that gives minorities opportunity

to elect as long as it meets the political consideration with legislature which means good luck

you can draw a majority black district as long as it's going to elect a republican right exactly

as long as all the black voters vote republican then right you can draw it right exactly i can

just see the stepmother from cinderella saying if right i said if right like you can get that district

if uh but yeah yeah and then this other alternative is they'll say you can draw a section to

district if it so happens you drew a district that just so happens to be section two but you can't

you can't do it on purpose and that also will have the same impact so yeah that's my i think that

that's probably what we're staring down the question of timing is really what a lot of people

yes focused on is whether it'll be now um i think the court just announced uh more decisions for

next week uh more opinion days for next week uh or whether it will be the end of June

got it um so in addition to Louisiana versus cale you know we are also

looking at two other big voting rights cases that are already on the docket one is something you

already argued and that's a case about campaign finance regulation um and another is an argument

that has yet to occur and that is the case about whether states can continue to count ballots

that are received after election day so mark can you just kind of zoom out and talk for us about

the stakes of either of both of these cases yeah so they're both my they're both my cases both for

both uh both case uh more firm or involved and so i argued the campaign finance case uh in

December this would allow national parties and state parties to spend unlimited amounts of

money on their candidates in full coordination with their candidates and a lot of people will hear

this and they kind of shrugged their shoulders and say well why is that such a big deal don't we

want strong parties eyes and the system already broken and my answer to you is uh

Bert Newborn who was the head of the ACLU in New York i think for for many years once said that

Buckley-Vevalet which is the seminal campaign finance case uh from the 1970s uh he described

Buckley as a dead tree um that is being pushed on the left by justices and on the right by justices

okay and that therefore it remains standing and you know that that is true and so like yes

it's a dead tree but it is standing and if reput if the conservative justices are able to push that

over it it doesn't just open the flood of money from parties there is no way to distinguish

in the long run i mean in this case they'll distinguish it but in the but analytically the Buckley

framework will have fallen if the supreme court says that a contribution limit is unconstitutional

because once you once you say a contribution limit is unconstitutional then like everybody gets

to say their contribution limit is unconstitutional i think that'll unwrap so i just want to like unpack

that for our listeners who like aren't immersed in this area because the specific regulation at

issue in that case limits the amount that a party can give to a candidate and coordinate with

the candidate and if you say that contribution limit is illegal then you are potentially opening the

door for individual contribution limits to also be unconstitutional and there was this weird i mean

to my mind just like hair raising exchange during the argument where justice kavanaugh was asking

new old Francisco you know an advocate who was challenging the campaign finance regulation

like oh are you sure you want to actually say those other limits are also constitutional wink wink

because won't you be here challenging those as well so yeah analytically right if this one goes

then other ones potentially go as well or at least they are inviting challenges to them absolutely

and importantly for instance go refuse to rule out yep exactly we wouldn't be back challenging those

limits and here and and just so the audience understands here's why this is like kind of this just

becomes inevitable what the supreme court has said is that limiting the amount of money that people

can spend on their own independently that is subject to strict scrutiny like that is like you cannot

you cannot limit that without you know really compelling reasons and the supreme court has said

there are no basic reasons to do that contribution limits on the other hand they have upheld almost

universally because what they've argued is that making a contribution is in and of itself symbolic

speech in other words you are the speech you are engaged in when you make a contribution is

associating yourself with the candidate that you are approving of but that therefore whether the

limit is set at $500 or $5,000 or $50,000 or $500,000 legislatures get to do that because they have

to be given the ability to set those limits and it's not really impinging on your first amendment right

once you say that a contribution limit can be constitutionally held to strict scrutiny then honestly

all the limits fall because you're never going to be able to show quid pro quo corruption for every

individual who make a contribution I mean after all if you wanted to give rather than give $3,500

you wanted to give $5,000 to you know Kamala Harris's campaign you would go to court and be like well

but you know at $5,000 I'm not corrupting anyone and like that's true there's no difference between

$3,500 and $5,000 so you could just see this is just going to unravel itself and eventually the

Supreme Court conservatives will say well you know isn't this over-inclusive and under-inclusive

because it's covering some speech and not other speech and as you know for strict scrutiny that

wouldn't survive right so let's just blow the whole thing up so Mark I guess I would invite you

just for any final thoughts as we are kind of ticking through you know the different branches

of the federal government and how again the manosphere really seems to be trying to mansplain

our way into a deeply undemocratic country yeah I say two things first of all very quickly people

should pay attention to the Watson case you mentioned yes the Mississippi one the ballot received

deadline case that also will have dramatic impacts the question there is whether if the US Postal

Service takes a few extra days to get your ballot that you've mailed before the election and

postmarked before the election whether it gets thrown in the trash or whether it gets counted

and so people should pay attention to that but I wanted to end Leah on your article 1 versus article

2 analysis because it's something I'm spending a lot of time on I'm actually thinking I'm aligning

a book that I may want to write it and it's very much like in my mind because I think what I've

come to conclude is that article 1 was intended to be the most important like I went back and

reread I I was writing for democracy not going to about the state of the union and so if you look

at article 2 the very first thing in article 2 under duty of the duties of the president is from

time to time to report to Congress on the state of the union like and and and to make recommendations

to them on on things they should take up and I was reflecting on this that like the state of the

union in the constitution is an obligation of the president to show up at a time that the Congress

wants him to give his recommendations that Congress can then take her leave right and it has

transformed into this Donald Trump shows up treated like a king with pomp and circumstances and

people are having their tie autograph while Congress is there as like the the just the doormat

of article 1 so I mean I don't really have Republicans in Congress are asking Trump for permission

to do things right rather than the other way around right so my my the question I'm asking myself

and the question I'm struggling with is like how can you have our system of government

if article 1 is not just not preeminent but is actually not even not what you say they didn't show

up I loved yeah whatever whatever you're afraid like they're just like they're not in the game right

so what's the answer I do not pretend to have an answer to that big question but I'm glad to hear

you're maybe writing a book about it so we can we can work out that problem together

Mark Elias the Elias Law Group and Democracy Docket thank you so much for joining us again

listeners independent media celebration if you're not following Democracy Docket please do so

and subscribe in this era the commentary and journalism and public information is more valuable

than ever thanks so much Mark for taking time out of your very busy schedule to join us

no thank you for having me I love your podcast I always listen thank you

well that was something probably something other than uplifting I'd say but on a lighter note

let's end with our favorite things Kristi you want to go first or do you want me to go first

on favorite things I'll go first my favorite things are things that I haven't done yet okay

Jonathan Groff is going to be doing as you like it for the Royal Shakespeare that obviously

that I know you're well aware of already next summer we have Jonathan Bailey and Arya Nagrande

doing Sunday in the Park with George but more close to now I am excited to see Sam Pinkleton's

Rocky Horror on Broadway Sam Pinkleton directed O'Mari and this is his next Broadway

production and so I'll be seeing that later this spring theater is my favorite thing and I am

looking forward to exploration in DC New York and over in London I love it some of my favorite

things are also forthcoming so it totally works yes so one of my favorite things is our upcoming

live shows next week or I guess this week when you're hearing it in California I am beyond excited

I'm so excited I'm doing something I never do which is taking it easy and giving myself a break

for a few days so I can actually enjoy the California live shows yes another favorite thing is the

article I mentioned on last week's episode and that I manifested in acceptance for also looking

to the future of Chris the past advice is was accepted into Georgetown law journal I'm super excited

about that and to work with the editors also favorite things are the friends of the podcast we've

been able to have on the show while we all are traveling whether that is Steve Latick who runs

one first street Chris Geidner Lawdork Mark Elias democracy docket and independent media more

generally and so yeah that has been a really fun part of this segment and wanted to highlight

just two quick specific independent media things so Steve Latick at one first had this post the

Supreme Court it's not raining in executive power unnecessary rebuttal and corrective to this

hogwash piece be it for yourself also we at crooked media are now going to be on MS now

so we are going to be airing Saturday nights at 9 p.m. and it's going to be an amalgamation

of different crooked media shows including us so be sure to tune in for that Chris thank you

so much for joining us this week and for being our independent media icon again listeners if

you're not subscribed to lawdork you really should be as we recounted in this episode Chris is

doing really necessary work and it's so important more important than ever to support great

independent media so thanks Chris thank you Leah so much was great to join you

Strict scrutiny is a crooked media production hosted an executive produced by me Leo

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