← Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
The Myth of John Roberts vs. Donald Trump
01:04:21
This end of term, the Supreme Court is focused on its own power, not the president. That may be a mistake.
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- [00:00]
A
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B
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C
You have a story about the reasons why we should go back to what you view as the original meaning.
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B
It is an Overton window case that should be seen as such.
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D
Nobody should say, hey, look, they're putting Trump in his place. He's really not a king.
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E
If this were set as a precedent, it seems to me just thinking big picture, what goes around comes around.
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D
The occasional lurch toward the middle is not going to trick us into thinking that the court's gonna heal itself.
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B
Well, it's a new world.
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E
It's the same constitution.
- [03:19]
B
They have created a monarchic view of the presidency by their own hand.
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D
These are the cases where the court is absolutely making him a king and allowing him to consolidate so much power in the executive branch and specifically in the person of the president.
- [03:44]
B
Welcome to Opinionpalooza, the name that we have bestowed upon the last few weeks of the Supreme Court term and the chaos it unleashes upon us all. On this week's show, I am joined by my co host, Mark Joseph Stern. Hey there, Mark.
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D
Hi, Talia.
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B
And Mark's going to be sitting right here next to me in the amicus cockpit for the next couple of weeks in an effort to land this constitutional biplane on a landing strip someplace by sometime, hopefully around the end of June. That's the plan.
- [04:19]
D
In the next few weeks, we will be bringing you expert analysis from advocates, scholars and the smartest court watchers. Slate plus members will also have access to bonus episodes we'll be releasing when the biggest decisions drop. Now is a great time to become a member. Go to slate.com amicusplus to make sure you don't miss out.
- [04:37]
B
And as we launch ourselves into this last month of the Supreme Court term, we wanted to sit down and talk to each other about the big themes that have emerged over the last nine months at the high Court. We've come to think of the events emanating from 1 1st street as a kind of a three ring circus.
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D
In the first ring, we have the merits docket. Those are the cases that have made their way to the Supreme Court in a fairly conventional fashion, percolating up through the court system dyscotis.
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B
In the second ring, there's the shadow docket. Cases the justices decide are just too urgent to be briefed and argued and reasoned in court, but instead can be dealt with in an emergency posture in the middle of the night if necessary.
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D
And then we have the third ring of the circus, the growing lecture series/tv interview/law school appearance docket, where the justices trade barbs and stake positions that are so far outside the four corners of an opinion that they have their own zip codes.
- [05:36]
B
And I think the reason that we've chosen this three ring circus metaphor, Mark, is to make a point about how so much of what the Supreme Court does is about showmanship and appearances and controlling public perceptions of what happens at the court almost as much as it is about the docket itself. And we always urge listeners at this time of year pay a lot of attention to the man, men and the women behind the curtain, because even when they're in front of the curtain, there is really a lot happening that is not being produced for public consumption. It's really important to understand all that stuff if you want to get the full picture of what the court is up to. That said, I think we're going to start with the merits docket, the first ring, which is very much front stage. There are some really, really consequential cases on the merits docket this term that we have to pay attention to in the four weeks ahead and beyond. Some of them have already decided, some are still pending. So maybe, Mark, let's start with what we already know has happened on the merits docket just to locate us in time and space.
- [06:42]
D
So in case anyone has somehow forgotten. To recap, I think the biggies that we've gotten so far on the merits docket are the tariffs decision striking down Donald Trump's global tariffs under an emergency powers act that did not in fact authorize them by a 6 to 3 vote. The conversion therapy decision holding that it very likely violates the First Amendment for states to protect LGBTQ minors against so called conversion therapy by restricting professional counselors ability to try to change someone's sexual orientation or gender identity during their working hours for money. That was an 8 to 1 decision with just Justice Jackson dissenting. And then of course we have Calais, the decision we are all still living with day to Day, where the supreme court by a 6 to 3 vote, gutted what had remained of the Voting Rights act and allowed for states to declare open season on black and brown communities and gerrymander them into oblivion so long as the state raised some kind of pretext for doing so. Like that they were really more concerned about creating more districts for Republicans than discriminating on the basis of skin color. And the result of that has been just a huge windfall for the GOP over the last month and helps the GOP in its bid to keep control of the House and has really kind of turned a lot of our voting rights doctrine on its head by saying, oh no, no, no, no, no. Black people don't deserve power. Congress can't give black and brown communities power and representation. In fact, it is racist against white people for Congress to try to protect political representation for black and brown voters. And it is the job of the Supreme Court to make sure that those white people can maintain their white supremacy in voting by allowing states to enact the most racist maps imaginable.
- [08:33]
B
And we've got a little bit after this week, of the merit stock. It has come down, but a lot is still to come. And so let's focus in on what is to come. And I think we probably have to start with birthright citizenship, Mark. And before we talk about how that's gonna go and how it went at argument, let's talk for a minute about what the issue is.
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D
This is the case challenging Donald Trump's executive order attempting to strip birthright citizenship from the children of undocumented immigrants, as well as immigran, who are here on a temporary visa, like a student visa or an H1B. And this is, in my view, the biggest case of the term, in large part because it defines who gets to be an American. You know, we fought a civil war over that question. We decided that individuals who are born in this country are American. We enshrined that into the very first sentence of the 14th Amendment. And now Donald Trump claims he can repeal that guarantee just by issuing an executive order, not even passing a new law through Congress, just reinterpreting the laws as they already exist. And this is just a challenge for the court's legitimacy across so many fronts. I want to be clear, if the court gets this right, it doesn't mean that we can all breathe a sigh of relief and say, oh, the Roberts Court is good now. It's totally legitimate. It's totally nonpartisan. But this is like the minimum that the Roberts Court has to do to continue to call itself a court is shoot this down. Because, of course, we already have all of this clear history and text that points toward Trump being dead wrong, that shows that a parent's immigration status just doesn't matter as long as an individual was born in the United States on American soil. We also have, in this case, a real challenge to originalism as the Supreme Court practices and as the conservative justices sort of tout it. Because after Trump tried to take away this guarantee, a small number of highly partisan scholars or pseudo scholars, basically MAGA law professors, tried to develop these theories to justify Trump's actions and to kind of butcher and manipulate and rewrite the Settled history of Bernie birthright citizenship to create room for Trump to take it away. I think that came out during arguments. I suspect the court will get this case right, but at the end of the day, we cannot be sure of anything with this Supreme Court. And it is troubling to say the least, that at least a few justices seemed interested in entertaining the bogus arguments cooked up by these MAGA scholars.
- [11:05]
B
You're making a couple of important points and I just want to chunk em out for a second. The first point you're making, I think the essential point about birthright citizenship is that this is an Overton window case. Like, this is a case that is inconceivable. It's historically inconceivable, it's textually using any methodology anyone could ever use. Put aside a handful of, as you say, just fanciful late to the party scholars who tried to invent a theory for why. Oh yeah, no, this has always been there. We just missed it. So it is an Overton window case that should be seen as such. So if and when the court gets it right, it's not that this is a moderate court, it's that this is an insane case. And Mark, you and I have talked about this. In fact, we did a whole, you know, special series on originalism in a deep, profound way. This is a case that if originalism still means anything other than we got the power, this is an easy case. So let's listen to Elena Kagan sort of staking that out in oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case.
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C
You have a story about what? About the reasons why we should go back to what you view as the original meaning. And given the long history of this country's understanding about birthright citizenship, what would it take? What do you think it should take to accept that story in terms of the magnitude of the evidence that we would need to see in order to accept this revisionist theory and in order to change what I think people have thought the rule was for more than a century.
- [12:53]
B
So, Mark, what's she trying to say here?
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D
I think she is trying to throw down the gauntlet and say, look, this is make or break, right? Sure, you can devise these kind of half baked arguments for why, oh, this wasn't really the history like you said, Dalia. Oh, it's, it's been there the whole time. We just never saw it. But at the end of the day, the whole point of originalism is supposed to be that history is legible, that it can point us toward correct answers that are clear and cannot be dislodged by a bad faith actor who comes along and says, oh, I found some obscure treatise that proves that everybody was wrong the whole time. That is what the bad guys are doing in this case. That's what Trump is doing and his administration. That's what the scholars supporting him are doing. And I think it's really interesting that John Roberts, chief justice, who has a lot invested in originalism because he often draws on it, kind of came back and tried to defend the methodology. And a different exchange. Let's take a listen to that.
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F
Media reported as early as 2015 that based on Chinese media reports, there are 500, 500 birth tourism companies in the People's Republic of China whose business is to bring people here to give birth in return to that nation.
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E
Having said all that, you do agree that that has no impact on the legal analysis before us?
- [14:15]
F
I think it's, I quote what Justice Scalia said in his Hamdan dissent, where they had where like their interpretation has these implications that could not possibly have been approved by the 19th century framers of this amendment. I think that shows that they've made a majority mess. Their interpretation has made a mess in the provision.
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E
Well, it certainly wasn't a problem in the 19th century.
- [14:36]
F
No. But of course, we're in a new world now, as Justice Alito pointed out to where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a, a child who's a U.S. citizen.
- [14:44]
B
Well, it's a new world.
- [14:45]
E
It's the same Constitution.
- [14:47]
D
Let me just say he practiced this in the mirror. I agree with our friends at strict scrutiny, like he came ready with this line, but I will acknowledge it's a good line. And it is what originalism at its best promises, which is that even if the administration has change and the circumstances have changed and now people can fly to the United States and have children in the United States and get them passports and then fly home, which is something that happens actually quite rarely. And for some reason, the Trump administration is like deeply upset about it no matter what. If you've got a problem with that, you've got to change the Constitution because the Constitution itself hasn't changed. I think that's going to be the gist of his opinion. I do think he'll write this one. I do think it'll be a lopsided majority, but it will be interesting, interesting in quotes, to see how Thomas and Alito, who were the skeptics during oral arguments, try to contest that when they love to be Mr. Originalism in cases where the history allows them to be hideously cruel about the death penalty or restrict freedom of speech or rule against LGBTQ rights or women's equality. In all those cases, they're like, it's the same Constitution, and the people who wrote it hated women. And now they're gonna be like, might be the same Constitution, but there's been a secret escape hatch for Donald Trump all along, and we just found it.
- [16:01]
B
Yeah. And here's John Sauer, the Solicitor General, arguing the case for the administration, quite literally turning originalism on its head and saying, but everything's changed. I mean, it's all changed now. There are all these new conditions, therefore, we should take all that into account. And as you are saying, this is another Overton window proposition where the Chief justice has to say, well, things may have changed, but the Constitution is the same, which is just a way of calling out the Solicitor General for completely abandoning what's supposed to be a kind of core principle. And I think we also talked a lot when this case was argued about the degree to which John Sauer seems to kind of somersault into oral arguments, convinced that he has five votes for whatever nutty thing he says. This was a case where it was very, very clear, I think, that he was taking for granted votes that he did not necessarily have at the court, and that, in fact. And I think this is important, you always hear, oh, an oral advocate can't really win a case, but. But they can lose a case. And this was an example, I think, of watching justices actually bristle at the things John Sauer was saying at oral argument.
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D
I think he is overpraised as a Solicitor General because he wins a lot of cases, but he wins them because his arguments are aligned with what this Supreme Court conservative supermajority wants and, like, where it wants to go. And I don't think you can judge a Solicitor General solely based on win count. I think you can judge them based on if they lose cases. And it seems like they maybe left some votes on the table, and this may well be one of those issues.
- [17:34]
B
While we're on immigration, can we talk on temporary protected status? Because this was a late addition and I think a really, really important case that didn't get the attention it warranted.
- [17:48]
D
Yeah. And in part because it has implications for a lot of people, millions of people, cumulatively, who are on temporary protected status now. So there are a bunch of people from various countries who enjoyed temporary protected status under President Biden. When Trump came in and when Kristi no came in to run the Department of Homeland Security. She tried to terminate a number of those TPS guarantees early. And this is a case challenging her ability now, her successor's ability, to prematurely end tps, and also challenges the court's ability to even review that decision. The Trump administration's argument is that it's just unreviewable, and I don't know how these are going to turn out. I think there's a sliver of hope for the immigrants because the Supreme Court doesn't like being told that it doesn't get to review a decision like it loves to be the final decider. And I think it rubbed some of the justices, even on the right, the wrong way to be told, oh, you don't even get to touch this. I also think the statute doesn't allow the Trump administration to do what it did here, this early termination, without notice, without any justification, just saying, oh, this tps, it was here today, it's gone tomorrow, and now you can be deported. That's not how the statute works. It's not how it's ever been used in its decades of existence. And I think that really counsels against this creative rereading. But at the same time, this court doesn't really like tps. And it has previously allowed for the Trump administration to prematurely end TPS for some Venezuelan immigrants. It has allowed the Trump administration to summarily deport immigrants who previously enjoyed lawful status. It's not a great court for immigrants. And that is also true of another case related to immigration, the green card case, which didn't get a lot of attention, but has some major implications. And this asks whether somebody with a green card can have their lawful permanent resident status taken away at the border if they leave the country and then return just based on suspicion of a crime. Not that they've been found guilty of a crime, not even that there's clear and convincing evidence that they committed a crime, but just based on suspicion of a crime. And if the Supreme Court agrees with the Trump administration in this case, then it would be a huge blow to green card holders because it would mean that anytime they left the country and came back, the government could say, oh, well, we think you committed this crime, so you're thrown in legal limbo and you're going to be deported. Again, not sure how the justices are going to decide that one. I think there's some hope for a good decision, but this is a court that really favors the interest of the powerful, of corporations, of billionaires, of conservative Christians, over the interests of the most vulnerable, especially immigrants facing unjust deportation. And so you've got to start from the assumption in all of these cases that the conservative supermajority is going to be pretty skeptical of the immigrants claims.
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B
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- [23:43]
E
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B
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- [24:02]
E
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B
And Mark and I are back with our OpinionPalooza kickoff rundown. One of the things that I think is the key to understanding this term is where are the justices aligned with the President's agenda? And I think you've just made a pretty convincing case case that on a lot of immigration issues, the Court and the President can be a circle. And birthright citizenship is going to be tricky for that reason, because as you said, it didn't appear that the Court was receptive to John Sauer's arguments. A place where they are very aligned is this issue of executive power. And this was a big, big term for the court to kind of in some sense live with the reality that they have created a monarchic view of the presidency by their own hand time and time again, as we've covered over the years. And now they have a president who thinks he's the king. There's a series of cases and also shadow docket determinations that force the court, I think, to live with the reality that they created and handed to Donald Trump on a platter.
- [25:30]
D
And this is one reason why if the court does strike down the attack on birthright citizenship, nobody should say, hey, look, they're putting Trump in his place. He's really not a king. Because these are the cases where the court is absolutely making him a king and allowing him to consolidate so much power in the executive branch and specifically in the person of the President. Right. And just to run roughshod over all of these checks and balances that Congress has tried to enact to prevent a monarchical or authoritarian president from abusing his power. And the Supreme Court is just almost entirely, with an exception that we'll talk about almost entirely aligned with Trump on this stuff. So these are the cases about Trump's ability to fire executive officials, heads of various agencies here, including the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations board. And for 90 years, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can protect these officials from termination by the President. And we have lived with some independence for federal agencies like the FTC and the nlrb, and it has served us well. Just to be clear, the President always does at some point get control over these agencies. He gets to appoint his people, he gets to appoint a majority, he gets to pick the chair. But there have been members from the other party who sit on these commissions who are able to ring the alarm about abuses of power, about misconduct, about misreadings of the law, who are able to write dissenting opinions and reports and try to put some kind of check on the President's use of these agencies, agencies for his own desires. And I also think that the sort of bipartisan makeup of these agencies has kept them, you know, not entirely free from politics, but it's allowed them to have this buffer from the White House, from the political headwinds of the day and try to do what Congress has instructed them to do. In the case of the nlrb, to protect labor right, to protect unions, in the case of the ftc, to protect competition, to fight against monopolies. Corporate capture is always a problem. And when the agencies have some independence, they have a guard against that. And Trump has just taken that away. Right. So Trump came into office and he started firing members of all of these different agencies, including the two I mentioned, even though almost a hundred years ago, in a case called Humphreys Executor, the Supreme Court unanimously said that the President did not have this power to fire the heads of agencies. This Supreme Court let him do it over the shadow docket. And then finally this term, the court heard oral arguments in one of these cases involving former FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. And it's very clear that the Supreme Court is going to overturn that 90 year old decision, Humphreys Executor, and allow Trump to fire these agency heads. I find this to be the hardest issue to get people excited about because, like, yeah, they're bureaucrats. Most people never know they exist. Most people don't pay attention to them. But if you look at the way that Trump has, for instance, wielded the FTC and the FCC against his perceived enemies, he has captured these agencies and used them for corrupt and partisan ends. I think you can see what the real threat is here. And we're watching it come true right now. And so when the Supreme Court does overturn Humphreys executor and completely restructures our federal government, concentrates all of this power in the President that Congress did not want him to have, takes away Congress's power and enumerated power in the Constitution to create and structure these federal agencies. Right. We should be very worried.
- [28:54]
B
Yeah. It's interesting because I think you're exactly right about the ways in which these agencies feel to so many of us like obstruction, distractions. We're not really sure what they do. There's just a whole bunch of letters and people that we don't know. And so maybe, you know, they don't matter or maybe what they do should be completely at the whim of the President. But let's listen to Brett Kavanaugh making the real politic point at oral argument where he's like, wait, so a future Democrat could wield all these powers in really unseemly ways too? Head scratcher. Let's have a listen.
- [29:33]
E
If this were set as a precedent, it seems to me just thinking big picture, what goes around comes around. All the current president's appointees would likely be removed for cause on January 20, 2029, if there's a Democratic president or January 20, 2033. Once these tools are unleashed, they are used, used by both sides and usually more the second time around. And I think that's what, that's what we have to make sure we're again, that can't drive the decision necessarily. We have to be aware of what we're doing and the consequences of your position for the structure of the government.
- [30:18]
B
So it's important, Mark, to understand that even the justices who are on the conservative super majority of the court really do, I think at some sense understand that this imperial presidency that they have constructed might someday not redound to the benefit of the Republican Party or Donald Trump.
- [30:40]
D
But let's talk about why Kavanaugh's making that point. And it's because that was in the one case where the conservative supermajority was like, wait a minute, this could be dangerous. And it could actually be dangerous for us. This is in the Lisa Cook case, right? Lisa Cook is a member of the Federal Reserve. Donald Trump tried to fire her her over these bogus charges of mortgage fraud. There was some kind of very, very minor paperwork error. It was not fraud. And the Supreme Court allowed Trump to fire all these other commissioners. Right. And heads of agencies, but didn't let him fire Lisa Cook from the Fed and held the line. And I think during oral arguments, we just heard a snippet of it. It became very clear that Kavanaugh and Roberts and probably Barrett are going to continue holding the line and stop Trump from firingly speaking. Cook, just to spell this out clearly, if Trump can fire Lisa Cook, he can fire any other member of the Fed. He can take control of the Fed, meaning he takes control of the central bank and monetary policy. And he can do whatever he wants with a whole bunch of monetary policy, including interest rates, which history tells us when a president gets to do that, he usually sets off either hyperinflation or a recession or both. And the conservative justices know that and they don't want it to happen. And they're, in my view, looking at their 401ks, they're looking at their kids colle funds or their grandkids five 29s, and they're like, wait a minute, maybe it would be bad if we let Trump tank the economy by seizing partisan control of the central bank. So we shouldn't let that happen. And hey, I'll take it. I'll take the wins where we can get them. I'm glad that it looks like the Supreme Court is not going to let Trump fire Lisa Cook or any other member of the Fed. But there is no justifiable constitutional distinction between the Federal Reserve and every other agency that this court has allowed Trump to take control of. I know that they say, oh, there's this special historical pedigree and it has this unique structure and it's been sanctioned by history. It's nonsense. It's complete nonsense.
- [32:37]
B
So we talked about Calais, and that has been a massive earthquake in the way we think about election law and the way we have to think about the upcoming midterms. But there's a bunch of other things going on that are also incredibly consequential in terms of how people vote and how people are going to vote vote very soon.
- [33:00]
D
And I'll just flag two of them. One is the Watson VRNC case, which asks whether states can count ballots sent through the mail that are sent by election day, postmarked by election day, or scanned by election day, but arrive shortly thereafter. Late arriving ballots. Just to be clear, 30 states allow for these ballots to be counted, red and blue states alike. Mississippi is the state whose policies are being challenged here. So this is not just a blue state thing. Hundreds of thousands of ballots every federal election arrive shortly after election day and are still counted under these state laws disproportionately. These ballots come from members of the military who are serving overseas rural communities, especially in places like Alaska, where they are quite far flung and individuals might need some extra time for their ballots to arrive because of spotty mail service. And in this case, Republicans are asking the Supreme Court to nullify all of those ballots, to overturn all of those states law, and to essentially disenfranchise everybody whose ballot arrives late, even if it wasn't their fault, even if there was a mail delay and they sent their ballot on time or days early, and for whatever reason, it didn't arrive at the election office until just after the election. This case scares me because it's a sleeper case, didn't get a ton of attention once again, but it could disenfranchise many, many people. At a minimum, could create real chaos in election administration in the upcoming midterms by forcing more than half the states to educate voters on this new requirement that ballots have to arrive by election. And this is maybe the weirdest thing. There is no federal law that says ballots have to arrive by election day. This whole dispute is completely made up. Congress has considered those laws. Republicans have proposed them. They've never passed. And so the entire legal argument here is that simply by establishing an election day, a federal election day, Congress implicitly prohibited states from saying, okay, ballots that are sent by that day can still be counted even if they arrive shortly thereafter. Oral arguments didn't go great for the good guys in this case. I still lean toward Roberts and Barrett maybe doing the right thing in part because if the theory here is correct that there's only one election day and all the ballots have to be cast on that day, then early voting is also illegal. And I don't think that this court is quite ready to embrace that. But this will be closer than I would like. And again, a very clear flag that the Supreme Court is not favorable toward voting rights. And then you mentioned there's also, like this issue in the background, the campaign finance. The Supreme Court is almost certainly going to allow very wealthy people to funnel massive sums of money directly to candidates by going through political parties, basically giving money to political parties, allowing those parties to give it to candidates or spend it in coordination with those candidates. And that's just gonna be another Citizens United type decision that benefits plutocrats and drowns out the voices of everybody else.
- [35:51]
B
And Mark, there are so many other cases that are still pending, and we'll talk about them as they Come down. We're also talking about a clutch of decision that were issued on Thursday over in our bonus episode this week. Sign up to listen to that@slate.com amicusplus but we would be remiss if we didn't also talk about trans athletes for a minute because this is also an incredibly, incredibly important case that we're waiting for a result to come down from the court as we speak.
- [36:19]
D
These cases ask whether states can prohibit transgender women and girls from participating in school athletics on the women's team from primary school to high school to college. The question is whether those laws, which didn't even exist a few years ago but have now been enacted in most red states, violate Title 9, which prohibits sex discrimination in education or the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. And just to get a sense of how arguments went, maybe let's take a listen to this Justice Alito question.
- [36:50]
F
Looking to the broader issue that a
- [36:52]
E
lot of people are interested in, there
- [36:55]
F
are an awful lot of female athletes
- [36:58]
E
who are strongly opposed to participation by trans athletes in competitions.
- [37:06]
F
With them. What do you say about them? Are they bigots? Are they deluded in thinking that they are subjected to unfair competition?
- [37:18]
D
They. That pretty much captures it. I think the court is very clearly going to rule against these athletes and it's just going to be another blow to trans equality from a court that has abandoned transgender Americans in their time of greatest need. Really, when the Trump administration is so dead set on obliterating them from public life, taking away their rights, taking away their healthcare, it will be very, very tragic to see the court allow this tiny number of individuals who are participating in sports to be excluded from sports as well. But that's pretty clearly where we're headed.
- [37:48]
B
So we've talked a lot about the thing we said we were not gonna focus on, which is the first ring of the circus, that sort of smattering of incredibly big ticket cases. I do think we have to talk about the second ring. We do need to recognize that for almost every big ticket decision that happens in court briefed argued with a meaningful sink your teeth into it opinion, there's something happening at 5 o' clock on a Friday, sometimes in three sentences that we are left to try to deconstruct as though we are reading entrails. And I think it's just incredibly important to hold those two realities together, that there is, as you said, a mass produced circus which is pay attention to this. There is also just sausage being made, particularly the first half of the term. Can you talk about what has happened on the emergency docket, the shadow docket it this term thus far.
- [38:53]
D
So I'll just briefly run through these because I feel like for each of them we spent an episode tearing our hair out and crying our mascara down our cheeks. Dalia but so far the Supreme Court has allowed for ICE and CBP to engage in racial profiling during their immigration raids. It has allowed for the Trump administration to impound funds that were appropriated by Congress in direct violation of the Constitution. For some reason the Supreme Court just lets Trump refuse to spend money that was appropriated. It has allowed for the Trump administration to implement an anti trans passport policy that forces trans people to list their sex assigned at birth on their passports in the face of a mountain of evidence that this was extraordinarily dangerous to trans people forcibly outed them. It was harmful for security because individuals were presenting a sex on their passport that didn't align with what they looked like. Supreme Court didn't care the court basically struck down or blocked a California law that prevented schools and school teachers from outing trans kids to their parents without those kids consent and said that it violated parents unwritten unenumerated rights to raise their children by keeping them in the dark about their children's gender identity, even if outing those kids to their parents could cause immense harm to the children because the parents held anti trans beliefs. Court didn't care the Supreme Court cleared the way for Texas to use its racially gerrymandered congressional map in the 2026 midterms, even though there was once again a huge amount of evidence that the state had really targeted black and Hispanic communities and divvied up Texans by race in order to draw a map that favored Republicans. The Supreme Court allowed the map to be used. It blocked a lower court decision that had required New York State to redraw one district to make it more diverse and ensure that that district will remain very Republican. And then there are just a couple of decent decisions on the shadow docket that again, we shouldn't give them too much credit. But the Supreme Court did block Trump's attempt to deploy the National Guard in Illinois as part of the immigration crackdown. And it did block a lower court decision that attempted to halt the prescription and mailing of mifepristone through telehealth services. The court said without explanation that mifepristone could remain available through telehealth and could continue to be made mailed for now. And so medication abortion is safe for now. But we all know that after the midterms the Trump administration will very likely crack down on mifepristone. And so we might view that decision on the shadow docket as a sop to the Trump administration to save it from a very politically unpopular blow against abortion rights and less like the court protecting reproductive freedom in any meaningful way.
- [41:43]
B
Two things I want to pull from what you just said. One is if you think about the merits docket and the ways in which we talked about, what are the big issues that the court keeps aligning with Donald Trump? You just recited them again, right? It's immigration, it's voting and voting rights, it's trans rights, and a maximalist view of an imperial presidency. So for every merits case we discussed at length, there are shadow docket cases that, with a few exceptions, where you have courts getting, you know, way out over their skis. For instance, in the mifepristone case, we have the court holding the line, which is, oh, we do this in secret and we do this in public. We're gonna greenlight what the president has turbocharged. And it does lead to, I think, this other point you and I have been talking for many years, I would say, Mark, about the magic trick that John Roberts always does at center ring is you do it smart, small, you get people accustomed to it, and then you do it big, right? In cases over the years, we've seen that pattern where if you make a tiny tweak and you prepare the country, then when you do the big thing, it's less of a surprise. And it almost looks like, oh, this flows logically from when the court did it in a lesser way. In some sense, the shadow docket has become the way you do that, right? You seed the ground on the shadow docket and then you say, oh, well, this is the law now. That would. Which used to take four or five years, right? You do it small, you wait a couple terms, you do it big, you can do it within the same term now and make it look as though it is inevitable or inexorable. And it does lead me to this question that I really wanted to dig in on. As we think about this interplay between the emergency docket and the merits docket, which is we know that John Roberts, his one great gift is that he is the master of pr, he is the master of optics. And it does appear that after the huge, huge outcry around the fast paced and how questions were being decided on the shadow docket, right. Trump wants something. That's the emergency. We're not going to think about harms to the parties. We're just going to assume the President is always harmed. There has been a pumping of the brakes on deciding big existential questions on the shadow docket, and I'd love to have your thoughts on why it is that the court, at least as of this moment, seems a little bit less apt to decide everything everywhere all at once on Friday nights at five o'. Clock.
- [44:32]
D
Well, I have a very cynical take on this, which is that it's less that the court has learned a lesson or become more solicitous to or lower court judges who are struggling to deal with all these unexplained shadow docket orders, or that the court is trying to guard the Constitution against Trump more vigorously than it was. I think the court just already got done a huge amount of what it wanted to get done, particularly in terms of giving Trump what he wanted. Right. You know, Trump came in and he had all of these crazy ideas with incredibly expansive views of executive power driving them again, impounding federal funds, refusing to spend them, firing executive officials, rewriting immigration laws. And the Supreme Court issued all these shadow docket orders, clearing the way for it to happen. And so it's happened. Trump's takeover of the federal government is largely complete. Like he is the king now, except when he wants to fire members of the Fed for some reason. And so I just don't think that the court has needed to issue nearly as many shadow docket orders because Trump came in with this shock and awe campaign and the Supreme Court allowed it to achieve its objectives. The other piece of it is that for a while there was this tussle between lower courts and the Supreme Court where the Supreme Court would issue a shadow docket decision that seemed to, like, overturn decades of precedent without explanation. The lower courts would say, I think that we still have to follow that precedent until it's formally overruled. Like we shouldn't favor a cryptic and unexplained Supreme Court shadow docket order over a decades old precedent that seemingly binds us. And then the Supreme Court scolded them for it, spanked them for it, said, how dare you lower court judges continue to apply the actual law. You should be reading our minds and guessing what we want, and more or less like what they want is for Trump to win. And so I think we have seen lower courts become more pliant and compliant with the kind of Trump Supreme Court dance of allowing the imperial presidency to just concentrate more and more power. Fewer lower court judges are interested in standing up to Trump because they are understandably afraid of getting brutally smacked down and even openly criticized and slandered by the Supreme Court's conservative super majority.
- [46:43]
B
More in a moment with Mark and me after some words from our sponsors.
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G
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Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. Max $100 per month. See terms at Venmo Me Stash terms. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank. Na. Let's return to my conversation with Mark Joseph Stern about what to expect this opinion palooza. If you think about the conversation we were having a year ago, Mark, and the conversation we were having in the fall, which was this. Is it a constitutional crisis yet? Is it a constitutional crisis yet? That's no longer a conversation we're having about the Supreme Court. And it's not that we're not in a constitutional crisis. It's that the court has really, I think, very deftly, deftly in quotations, managed the appearance that the court and the president and the lower courts are in an overt conflict. And that's not because it stopped happening. It's just because it's been stage managed out of existence. It does raise for me what I think is the really chilling issue of post Calais and voting rights. And I think we have to talk about it because, as you and I keep saying to each other, to reckon with what the court has already done to election law and could do with the midterms barreling down upon us. And what it has really done post Calais in the shadows, all of it is a harbinger of where this court could go in the coming months, coming into November.
- [49:27]
D
And I think this folds into what you and I were just talking about scolding lower courts, right? Because for years the Supreme Court has invoked the so called Purcell principle, which says that courts, federal courts particularly, should not intervene in election disputes too close to an election. And the Supreme Court has said that even like 10, 11 months out from a general election is too soon for federal courts to change election laws or meddle with voting rules because it could cause administrative chaos and voter confusion. And then the Supreme Court drops Calais in late April in the middle of a redistricting war, while many, many states directly affected by it, including Louisiana, have ongoing primaries under maps that are suddenly either unconstitutional or questionably unconstitutional, or could be changed in racist ways under Calais to benefit from Republicans. And doesn't mention the Purcell principle whatsoever. Right. And so this was like a bomb that just went off in the middle of this cycle. And so now we've seen states like Louisiana, like Alabama, suspending their primary elections, rushing to try to draw new maps to redistrict black representatives out of existence to carve up black and brown communities so that they don't have fair or equal political representation. And the court wasn't just happy to drop Calais in late April, it rushed out the judgment and the mandates, which means rather than wait the traditional 32 days for a Supreme Court decision to become effective, it made it effective almost immediately. And so it allowed for these red states to go after black communities post haste and again, completely disregarded all of the Supreme Court's warnings to lower courts about doing exactly this, about intervening in the middle of an election. And so it really is one rule for all of the lower courts and a completely different rule for scotus. And it's very, very difficult to take the Purcell principle ser anymore because after years of spanking lower courts for trying to protect voting rights too close to an election, for saying that there is a racist map or unjustified voting restrictions months out from an election, this Supreme Court drops a bomb on the Voting Rights act in the middle of an ongoing election and then expedites its decision so that Republicans can take advantage of it as quickly as possible, it is really, really ugly. And I just think it lays it bear both the racism and the partisanship that are driving Calais and its aftermath. You know, this Supreme Court just thinks that racial minorities have too much political power and it wants to speed run the attack on that power to re entrench white supremacy. In a lot of these states, there
- [52:07]
B
is a story that is in the court's interest, which is Supreme Court vs. Donald J. Trump. Right? And Donald J. Trump likes to pander to that story by, you know, rolling around on the floor and having a tantrum when he doesn't get his way, say, on the tariffs case. And I want to really think through what part of that story is true and what part of the story is just serving the interest of the president. So it looks like where the Venn diagram of the court's conservative supermajority aligns with what Donald Trump wants. Full steam ahead, right? You just go, and. And then we see that in a handful of cases where the court pushes back on Donald Trump's sort of sweeping prerogatives, it's to affirm its own supremacy. Right? The court is not splitting the baby. The court is splitting the baby and giving both halves of the baby to torture the metaphor to itself. And so what the court really keeps doing is not just reaffirming maximalist views of executive power for democracy, Donald Trump, but reaffirming its own maximalist power to be the decider at the end of the day, A my question is, is that sound right to you? Is that a fairly good statement of where we are right now? And more to the point, by giving Trump so much of what he wants so often, and by doing so, by overturning precedent or deciding something on the shadow docket, does the court, in fact create kind of an emboldened Donald Trump that imperils its own ability to someday, maybe hypothetically, actually say no on an important decision in the future because it's squandering whatever authority it actually has to say no.
- [54:07]
D
So I do think that's an accurate description of the dynamic right now. No matter what the court's defenders in public try to say about how. How, oh, it's, you know, doing its job so well and valiantly. I absolutely agree that in the places where it draws the line, it's almost always to defend its own prerogatives and power and to remain the decider in our system. And I do think that there is a real danger here that if the Supreme Court keeps giving Trump so much of what he wants and then just draws the line from time to time on those cases that genuinely threaten judicial supremacy, and I think birthright citizenship is a classic example of this. Tariffs is another example. They're playing a dangerous game, and they are very much risking Giving Trump such an assumption of victory that when he does lose, he might just not accept it, you know, and he might just say, what power do you have to enforce this decision against me? I'm gonna go ahead and keep doing it. And I think we got a little taste of this dynamic in the issue around firing executive officials, where the Supreme Court let him fire all these different members of independent agencies, and he loved it. And so then, even though the court had warned, by the way, don't go after the Fed. Please don't go after the Fed. We don't want you to go after the Fed. They have to stay independent, fire everyone else. Trump says, eh, I'm going to try to fire a member of the Fed. Right. He could not stay within the one line that the Supreme Court drew for him in the sand. And I think that should concern the Republican appointed justices more than it evidently does, because, you know, I guess they think, well, we ended up taking that case. You know, we'll rule against him. It'll all be fair. Fine. But like so much of law, so much of what Trump wants to get done is decided in the lower courts, and a lot of it doesn't wait for the Supreme Court to schedule a merits argument and issue a decision months later. It's happening minute by minute. This is a president who just pushes ahead as quickly as he wants. And so, you know, if there ever comes a time where the Supreme Court thinks that Trump is aggressively abusing his own powers and really, really, really thinks he should be stopped and, you know, plans to a district court that's trying to stop him, I'm not really sure that the Trump administration will abide by that district court, and I'm not sure that it will adhere to the Supreme Court's eventual decision against him. We have seen this administration defy lower court orders over and over again. We have seen the Supreme Court reward the Trump administration for defying those orders over and over again, it is getting a taste for defiance of court orders. There is no clear reason to me why that should stop with the Supreme Court and why, if eventually the administration won't just say, hey, it worked all these other times, it should work this time. And I would say keep an eye on the Lisa Cook case for this, because even though the court's probably gonna say, you can't fire her for this bogus reason, maybe Trump will come up with another bogus reason. He opened a nonsense criminal investigation into Jerome Powell even after the Supreme Court made it clear that he wasn't allowed to mess with the Fed. This is pushing into pretty dangerous territory for the court and its own power and prerogatives. And so this kind of smug and arrogant assumption that, oh, even if we let Trump defy lower courts, he'll always abide by our decisions. I just think that that is very contestable. And if I were a justice, I would be far more concerned than these six conservatives seem to be that Trump is just going to decide, they've made me a king, so I'm going to act like one.
- [57:31]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's the classic predator response. Yes means yes, and no means try harder or try in a different way. And the court continues to conduct itself as though Trump is a rational actor that will hear a no for a no, and then we really will have a constitutional crisis. Except, as you say, Mark, the court will have squandered what capital it had to say no and to have it be taken seriously. So it is a dangerous game. I know you and I try very hard to steer clear of the guns, but I guess we do have to talk about one component of the gossip, which is, holy cow. By any measure that I can understand, this third ring of your circus has been off the hook this year in terms of multiple leaks and leaks about really, really substantive issues like how the shadow ducket was born. All of this signals to me. The backbiting, the giving speec speeches. Justice Thomas just railing on progressives getting a pass. Justice Gorsuch giving a book tour that includes advice for conservative students who feel put upon in the world. I mean, this is all for a court that stakes all of its public legitimacy on the fiction that we're all super good friends. This has been hella bizarre this term. And again, I'm not super interested in the gossip portion of it. I am interested in the ways that it signals an internal system failure. So beyond just the intramural like, and he said. And then she said. And then she said she was sorry, but he didn't say he was sorry. Like Punch and Judy stuff. Is this important and what does it signal to you?
- [59:26]
D
It's important because it shows just how vile the vibes are behind the scenes and just how furious the justices are with each other. And they can tell us all they want, that they're a family, that they're friends, that they have lunch together and talk, talk about books and whatever. They are really mad. And I think it's clear that the dynamic behind the scenes has shifted in a meaningful way from when you and I started covering the court, even from just a few years ago. And, like, there are deep grievances, and they don't even necessarily divide neatly into liberal, conservative, though I think that is the main divide. But I also think there are these interpersonal grievances, like Justice Sotomayor calling out Justice Kavanaugh for, you know, not knowing anything about day laborers and how awful it was be to be racially profiled and abducted by ICE when you're trying to get some work done so you can feed your family. I mean, there are profoundly deep rifts on this court that can no longer be papered over. They're spilling out somewhat in opinions, but more so in the third ring of the circus in these public talks. And I just think the time has come, the time has passed to retire the talking point that they're all friends who can disagree without being disagreeable. Like, this is not Scalia Ginsburg anymore. These justices are not getting along. This is not the model of amicability that for so long, everybody pretended it was like, this is something very different. And it's hard to read the tea leaves. It's very difficult to know, like, oh, did the conservatives lose a big case? And so some of them are pissed about it. I can't say exactly what it augurs, but it just does tell us that this has become functionally behind the scenes, a very different court from even 10 years ago. And the way it operates now is not on the same sort of basis of deep civility and mutual respect that we always heard Justice Kennedy talking about, Justice Ginsburg talking about. Like, there is profound hostility behind the scenes. A lot of it is downstream of some of these leaks, of the Dobbs leak in particular. A lot of it is just that the Court is actively asserting itself as the decider for Trump's agenda. And some of the justices are understandably quite upset about that. We'll see where this goes. If Roberts could try to impose some restraint on his colleagues, I'm sure he hates all of this. But the reality is, for many of these Justices, the gloves just seem to be off. And it's very difficult to know how the Court could kind of reverse any of this when once the justices get a taste of how good it feels to kind of smack around your colleagues in the public a little bit, I really doubt that they're gonna stop.
- [61:56]
B
It is. It feels like a kind of cri de coeur from inside the Court, almost across ideological lines, from every quarter of Justices who just feel like it's not enough now to confine the bad feelings to the four corners of an opinion or A dissent. It, it needs to be said aloud in front of an audience. It needs to be said on national television. It's very different from the I have stuff to say and I want to talk to the three elves. I want to talk to the law students. No, this is different. This is not just I'm special pleading with law students to find my way of looking at the world to become their ideological path. This is much deeper and it signals a sense that the justices have deep and bitter strife and resentments and they cannot find a place to put it. And unfortunately that means it's coming into our earbuds and it's showing up on YouTube and the inability to corral that for the good of the court is incredibly telling now more than ever. But I think we need to end on this question of what's going to be done, because you and I have a long time animating theory in our conversations, which is it's not going to work on the last day of June to shrug our shoulders and say so sad. Too bad. Robert's Court is what it is and those justices may just sit there for the next 20 years and, and we'll live with it for a few days. After Calais came down, I think you and I noted that the outrage was palpable. It was very directed purposive toward court reform, term limits, meaningful conversations about we do not need to live in thrall to this court as currently constituted. And I was just looking at the polling today, the American public seems ready for 18 year term limits, like they're ready for the kinds of structural meaningful reform you and I have been talking talking about for quite some time. And having just run through the cases that are coming, it's not clear to me we're gonna get that reaction again in the next few weeks. Maybe I'm wrong. It feels to me as though the rest of the term might look a little bit more like terms from a couple years ago. Is the supposed normalcy of the rest of the the term going to send us back to the status quo? The kind of wish casting that, oh, look, this is a 333 court and it's just entirely moderate and temperate and like super sorry about Calais, but by and large they acquitted themselves. Okay. Or is there some possibility that we have crossed some threshold where the discussion about court reform, the discussion about the legitimate legitimacy of the court has broken containment now and it gets bigger over the summer and bigger again into the fall?
- [64:43]
D
What I will say is that I really believe at some point over the last few years, the Supreme Court crossed some kind of invisible threshold after which it would no longer be able to save itself by throwing out an occasional sop to the center. I don't think that a handful of moderate decisions, a handful of decisions against Trump is going to do anything to really staunch the tide of court reform and the push for either term limits or expansion or an enforceable ethics code or something to try to put the court back in its place. And, look, the court reform movement is a big tent. There are people who just want term limits. There are people who want 13 justices. There are people who want no Supreme Court at all. But, you know, we have reached a point at which even moderates like Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona is saying, expand the court. We have reached. Reached a point where every single term, there are these odious decisions like Calais, that really take power away from Congress in a way that I think is truly an affront to the Constitution and disturbing, because it is difficult to see how we undo the damage without reforming the Supreme Court. Like, you know, a bad decision interpreting a statute the wrong way is one thing. A bad decision interpreting some constitutional provision one way, it's not great. But what we have here is a consistent pattern of the Supreme Court preventing Congress from legislating pursuant to its own constitutional authority to address major issues including Jim Crow voting discrimination and ongoing racial discrimination in redistricting. And, again, like, it's hard to lay out a path to fix that, to fix a decision like Calais without reforming the Supreme Court. And so, yeah, look, the. The conversation will always ebb and flow depending on what the court has done lately. But I just think there's a FL now where you have a critical mass of voices who are saying we've got to do something. And the occasional lurch toward the middle is not going to trick us into thinking that the Court's gonna heal itself. And I don't know where we go from here. You know, we haven't even gotten to the midterm elections yet, but I think we have reached that point of no return. And the Supreme Court should not be operating the way it is, frankly, which is under the apparent assumption that not nothing will ever change, that it will never have to face serious reform. Absolutely. John Roberts and his conservative colleagues dismiss this threat. Absolutely. They think that they're never going to have to face down real regulation and reform from Congress. That's clearly what they believe. And, hey, maybe they're right. But I think there is a significant enough chance by this point that they are wrong, that they should not be acting so smugly assured that they will never have to face any meaningful consequences for the way that they have arrogated powers that are not there and butchered the Constitution and the laws of the United States.
- [67:30]
B
And I think it's a useful reminder, Mark, of another animating principle of our conversations in this show, which is if you sideline the district courts and you sideline Congress and you arrogate this immense power to decide all things to yourself, all of those entities, it's true, become weaker. And we are living in that reality right now. But it doesn't have to be a forever thing. And any one of those entities with meaningful repair can turn that around. And I think you've also just answered this question that I've had all term, which is why this speed, why the court is acting at this rocket velocity to achieve that which used to take four or five years, you know, to plant some new idea or to overturn some new crucial, long standing, century old precedent. And now the court is out there, you know, with little like rockets on the back of their skates, going so, so, so quickly. And I think you're right. I think it's a useful reminder that this needs to get done now, that there is some sense of urgency, of timeliness that is forcing the court to act, act in a really accelerated fashion that we didn't used to see. And whether that's because we have midterms coming, whether that's because the threats on the other end of midterms are palpable. Right. Because it's no longer, oh, you know, maybe this will happen, maybe it won't. The public appetite for some kind of reform, I think, isn't going away. And so what you're describing is a one way, ratchet right not only to arrogate power to itself and to kneecapping entities that used to check and balance the court, but also an understanding that as the stakes get higher, the court has to move faster. And I think that's a theme we want to watch in the coming weeks.
- [69:36]
D
I couldn't agree more, Dalia. And as insulated as the justices are in their own ivory towers, I have to imagine they can hear the angry villagers down below and they might stick their fingers in their ears, but they are there and they are, are not
- [69:48]
B
going away from my angry village to yours. Thanks, Mark.
- [69:52]
D
Thanks, Dalia.
- [69:54]
B
That's all for this episode. But amicus members Mark and I are hopping on over to the Amicus plus cigar bar, which is now festooned with
- [70:03]
D
opinion palooza regalia in this week's bonus episode. We are picking over four decisions we got from the Supreme Court this week that, while not blockbusters, are still a climb of very significant rulings in terms of criminal justice and a rare win for workers from this court.
- [70:20]
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Visit slate.comamicusplus to join us by becoming a Slate+ member. You support our work, get ad free listening and paywall, free reading@slate.com, and all through OpinionPalooza. You'll get exclusive extra episodes and access to a members only end of term Q and A.
- [70:38]
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You can Also subscribe to Slate.com/ directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Our bonus episode is available for you to listen to right now. We'll see you there.
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And thank you so much for listening and thank you so much for your letters and your questions. Keep them coming. We are reachable by email@amicusatslate.com you can find us@facebook.com Amicus Podcast. You can also leave a comment if you're listening on Spotify or on YouTube or rate us and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sara Burningham is Amicus's Supervising producer. Our producer is Sophie Summergrad. A huge thank you to Joel Meyer for his help on this week's episode. Hilary Fry is Slate's Editor in chief, Susan Matthews is Executive editor, Mia Lobel is executive Producer of Slate Podcasts, and Ben Richmond is our Senior Director of Operations. We'll be back with another episode of Amicus next week. This episode is brought to you by the world's leading ESIM brand, Airalo. Summer travel season is almost here and as gas and airline prices rise, there is one travel cost you can save on this summer thanks to Airalo in international data. If ESIMs aren't on your radar, my family have used them. They're incredibly easy and affordable. Airalo offers ESIM packages providing Data in over 200 destinations and is trusted by over 30 million travelers worldwide, including both my husband and me. With Airalo, it's one less thing to worry about. Search for your preferred package, activate your ESIM and you're online the moment you land. Plan no hidden fees and no wild roaming charge. Surprises Travelers using Airalo can save on average over $70 on a one week trip compared to traditional carrier daily fees. We enjoy travel more when we can stay connected and with Airalo, wherever you go, you can use your phone the way you do at home, from maps to dating apps, helping you to unlock the most authentic local experiences, break free of the tourist trails and can really connect with the places and the people you visit. Just make sure your device is unlocked. And of course, Airalo keeps you connected to everyone back home. Because Airalo partners with top local carriers for the strongest, most reliable connection, you can live stream your whole trip to your hordes of adoring fans or just your mom. Get unlimited data this summer@airalo.com that's a I R a L O. I don't know about you, but I like to keep my money where I can see it. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like keeping my money as well. After years of overpaying for wireless, it is okay to get fed up with crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees and free perks that actually cost more in the long run and to switch to Mint Mobile. Stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been. Mint exists purely to fix that. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at 15 bucks a month. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Bring your own phone and your own phone number. Activate with an ESIM in minutes and start saving immediately. No long term contracts, no hassle. Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium premium wireless service from mint mobile for 15 bucks a month. If I had needed this product, this is definitely what I would use. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans@mintmobile.com amicus that's mintmobile.com amicus upfront payment of $45 for 3 months 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month new customer offer for first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.