When Unaccountable People Come for Your Vote

Summary

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, Justice, and the Courts
Episode: When Unaccountable People Come for Your Vote
Release Date: July 26, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Slate's Amicus, host Dahlia Lithwick engages in a profound conversation with Maya Wiley, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. The discussion delves into the alarming erosion of civil and voting rights in the United States, highlighting the strategies employed by Donald Trump and his administration to undermine democratic institutions and protections.

The Abuse of Power and Impunity

Dahlia Lithwick opens the conversation by addressing the rampant disregard for rules, norms, and laws by Donald Trump and his allies. She emphasizes that their actions suggest a belief in their own immunity from accountability, particularly at the ballot box.

"They are not behaving like people who believe they will ever face accountability at the ballot box." [02:30]

Maya Wiley concurs, explaining that the core issue revolves around the protection and consolidation of power to the exclusion of the people's rights. She connects the Jeffrey Epstein case to a broader pattern of abusing governmental institutions to serve personal interests.

"At the core of this is an incredible abuse of power." [04:55]

The Role of Conspiracy Theories

The conversation shifts to how conspiracy theories have been weaponized to justify the dismantling of vital civil rights protections. Wiley discusses how narratives around a "deep state" and "Great Replacement" have been leveraged to stoke fear and justify discriminatory policies.

"They're utilizing conspiracy theories to roll back all our rights and to do it with impunity." [07:10]

Lithwick adds that these theories are not just distractions but form the foundation for policies that threaten civil rights.

"Everything is being weaponized... rooted in a conspiracy theory that they are coming to do this." [08:15]

Erosion of the Voting Rights Act

As the episode approaches the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Wiley provides a historical perspective on its significance and the ongoing battle to protect it. She recounts the Act's origins in the Civil War and its critical role in ensuring equal voting rights across all demographics.

"The Voting Rights Act... is a critical underpinning to what democracy is supposed to do." [13:30]

Wiley highlights the current efforts to dismantle the Act through measures like voter ID laws, reduced polling places, and legal challenges that disproportionately affect marginalized communities.

"We're doing it in a way that's going to primarily harm black, brown, Asian, Native American people." [19:20]

The Captured Judiciary

The discussion turns to the judiciary's role in this erosion, with a focus on how the Supreme Court and lower courts have increasingly sided against voting rights protections. Wiley describes the courts as "captured," indicating a systemic bias that undermines civil liberties.

"The court is captured. The Supreme Court is captured." [39:10]

She underscores the importance of grassroots activism and litigation in countering these judicial setbacks, emphasizing that change must come from collective action rather than reliance on the courts alone.

"We have a much larger coalition now and a much more diverse coalition now... that gives us real power even when the institutions are captured." [43:30]

The Importance of Voting and Civic Engagement

Lithwick expresses concern over the integrity of upcoming elections and the feasibility of free and fair voting amidst ongoing suppression efforts. Wiley reassures listeners by stressing the power of civic engagement and the critical role of organizations like the Leadership Conference in mobilizing voters and defending their rights.

"It's not a given because all the forces of federal government right now are being turned against us in terms of our basic ability to just show up and vote." [29:35]

She encourages listeners to recognize their power and the significance of their votes in shaping policies and holding corrupt officials accountable.

"As long as people understand what is happening, they won't allow it." [34:10]

Conclusion: A Call to Action

The episode concludes on a note of cautious optimism. Wiley reflects on historical movements that overcame judicial indifference through persistent activism and unity. She urges listeners to remain engaged, informed, and proactive in defending democracy.

"We have demonstrated that we can rise above these forces." [42:00]

Lithwick echoes this sentiment, highlighting the importance of grassroots efforts and the resilience of those fighting for civil rights.

"The work now isn't to sit back and wring your hands... It's actually not their call." [44:50]

Notable Quotes

• Dahlia Lithwick: "They are not behaving like people who believe they will ever face accountability at the ballot box." [02:30]
• Maya Wiley: "At the core of this is an incredible abuse of power." [04:55]
• Maya Wiley: "We're doing it in a way that's going to primarily harm black, brown, Asian, Native American people." [19:20]
• Ryan Reynolds: "The court is captured. The Supreme Court is captured." [39:10]
• Maya Wiley: "As long as people understand what is happening, they won't allow it." [34:10]

Final Thoughts

This episode of Amicus serves as a crucial exploration of the current threats to American democracy, particularly focusing on the erosion of civil and voting rights. Through incisive dialogue, Dahlia Lithwick and Maya Wiley shed light on the systemic challenges and underscore the urgency of collective action to preserve democratic institutions and protections.

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Transcript

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[Dahlia Lithwick]

I'm Dahlia Lithwick and this is Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts, the law, and the Supreme Court.

[Ryan Reynolds]

All of this is about power. All of it is about the protection of power. But for a single person, and that is the person that is Donald Trump.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

It is really hard to look at the ways in which President Donald Trump, his administration, and his Republican Party are willing to break rules, norms, institutions, and break the law without concluding they actually have zero fear that someday Democrats will wield all those powers against them. Put more bluntly, they are not behaving like people who believe they will ever face accountability at the ballot box. A perceived immunity from accountability of any sort ever, is finding expression in so many of the destructive acts of this second Trump administration. Last week we focused on the immigration pieces piece of that rampage. This week we wanted to turn our attention to civil rights. Now we have talked separately about the evisceration of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, the weaponization of civil rights protections against diversity in higher education and scotus, delivery of death by a thousand cuts to the Voting Rights Act. But we wanted to take a step back and try to knit all of this together in a way that educates and empowers us to think about it as a unified whole. Maya is the President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 240 national organizations fighting to protect, defend and expand the rights of every person in the United States. A nationally respected civil rights attorney, Wiley has been a litigator at the aclu, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She has also worked in the civil Division of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. I know her as a fellow MSNBC news analyst. And her memoir, remember you are a Wiley, was published just last fall. Maya, welcome to Amicus.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, Dahlia, it's always great to be with you.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Maya, as I just said above, you are here to help us understand the larger story of what is happening to civil rights and voting rights in America. But to begin, I thought we should focus in briefly on a story that has been dismissed by many folks as just spectacle or absorbed in this classic, classic mode of, oh, go ahead, pop the popcorn. Let's watch and see if this time MAGA really implodes. But actually, the daily headlines about the Jeffrey Epstein files are, I think, a story about immunity from accountability and the conferring of that immunity onto others and also the corruption of institutions that are sworn to protect Americans. And it kind of seems that between Mike Johnson shutting down Congress and Trump sending his deputy attorney general over to have a chat with a convicted sex trafficker about what she knows, it really seems as though we have reached a very chilling new low in both the Justice Department and the Republican Congress. Now just doing the work of Donald Trump's private law firm.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know, it is more than just a spectacle, but let me say why, Because, Dalia, I think you put it well, it is because it is fundamentally about protecting power to the exclusion of people, real people. That's really at the core what all of this is about. Every single thing we are going to talk about. So the core of the Jeffrey Epstein story, in my view, is to your point about accountability, transparency, appropriate transparency. Right. Let's just be clear, because victims should be protected, their privacy should be protected, they should be cherished and cared for. And our criminal justice system is supposed to, that's why we have sealed grand jury transcripts. But it's to protect the victims, it's not to protect victimizers. And so at the core of this is an incredible abuse of power. And all you have to say is a high ranking official in the Department of Justice doing a president's personal bidding with someone convicted of very serious crimes, possibly, possibly to consider where there's a way to extract a quid pro quo. A this for that, a urine prison. You probably don't like that. Look what they did with Eric Adams in New York, facing federal prosecution on corruption charges, but they wanted a this for that, on mass deportations and getting a sitting mayor to violate city sanctuary city laws to do it. All of this is about power. All of it is about the protection of power. But for a single person, and that is the person that is Donald Trump. The other side of this, though, that is really a part of this story around transparency and accountability is how we got here in the first place. They blew up lies and conspiracy theories about the deep state. It is the same kind of conspiracy theories they're utilizing to roll back all our rights and to do it with impunity, despite the fact that it violates existing law, that it violates case law precedent of the Supreme Court, that we have a majority of the Supreme Court that is complicit and that it ignores the powers of Congress both to pass laws and to appropriate funds. And the executive branch is not supposed to get to say, yeah, nah, we're not doing that. It's all the same story.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Say one more beat about that, Maya, because I think I'm following you. I mean, I think I'm following you saying that Trump talking about, you know, all the rapists that come in from foreign. I mean, every single sort of predicate, you know, that all the people who are stealing birthright citizenship, like every single one of these larger initiatives. And of course, this goes back to vote fraud, right, and stolen elections. Everything is being weaponized. And it's being weaponized, as you say, rooted in a conspiracy theory that they are coming to do this. And then you kind of instantiate all the policies, right, that are going to end civil rights. And I think you're also saying, but maybe I'm wrong, Maya, that this is a weird case in which the they and the conspiracy is actually coming home to roost and it's going after the perpetrators of the conspiracy theory.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This is a bonfire that Donald Trump and his minions created. They pulled the twigs together, they set them alight, and they've been fanning them and blowing oxygen on them for a very long time. And now they're starting to get burned by those flames. That's what's happening here. But, yes, the underlying point is my point. You said it well, Dalia. And let's consider Donald Trump, who has built his. And it's not just Trump, it's Trumpism. I don't want to make it only about Donald Trump. I mean, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, there's a whole ideological wing that is an extremist wing that has been blowing conspiracy theories about black people, about Latino immigrants, sometimes specifically Mexican immigrants, that has been using the Great Replacement theory, which is not only anti Semitic, it is the underpinning of hate against all of us who are people of color, who are transgender, who are women.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

There is a very extremist, dangerous underpinning to some of the base here that has intentionally been driving conspiracy theories of deep state of Great Replacement, and utilizing that to drive fear about our government and to drive fear in the absence of facts, that suggests things are being stolen from people who are experiencing some real pain. And I think we need to acknowledge that, right there are real problems. We do have inequalities that run to what, wealth inequality, that run to corporations being able to run rampant over people, that we're not sufficiently creating jobs, that the rent is too damn high and people can't afford mortgages. All these things are real, and things that people are experiencing are real. But this extremism underpins coming for voting rights. It underpins coming for immigrants. It underpins the building of the argument that says we should unravel the pillars of our democracy, which is what civil rights are. They literally set up the underpinnings that ensure a democracy. That's voting rights, that's inclusion, that's making sure we're looking at problems across communities, across differences, to ensure that everybody's getting an equal opportunity and that government is functioning to do that in a balanced way and that people have the ability to go to government and complain. What this administration, which is now a regime, has done is utilize the tools of white supremacy. It has utilized the tools of that organized and financed extremism to stoke fear, to stoke lies, to create and give much more oxygen to the conspiracy theories, including the deep state conspiracy theories that are, Jeffrey Epstein, that you can't trust government, so dismantle it. In fact, that we should turn the Department of Justice into a weapon to vindicate Donald Trump's personal interests. But we will defend it. You know, the conspiracy theories help defend that behavior as a way of protecting those who need protection from these conspiracies. So Jeffrey Epstein has been a part of that. It has been something that Donald Trump's supporters have been perfectly willing to utilize in the Epstein case when it was going to be something they could utilize against the Clintons. And let's be honest, those of us who want transparency don't care who is identified. The point is to get to the truth, to see whether others who have perpetrated crimes should be held accountable. It's about victims but again, this is all of a piece, and the conspiracy roots all come from the same tree, and it is one that has been bearing fruit for them. And. But it's poison fruit, and now they're getting a little taste of that poison.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

So that's probably a perfect segue to the real reason I so desperately needed to talk to you at the end of the term, Maya, which is voting rights and civil rights, because we're about to come up on the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights act, or whatever's left of the Voting Rights act, in just a few short weeks. And I am feeling a little elegiac. It didn't turn out to be the story of the Supreme Court term, although I reserve the right to think it will be next term. And I wonder if you can just talk briefly about and maybe again, framed exactly as you just framed the Epstein story as a story of something that was the crown jewel of what we thought of as equality and civil rights dismantled before our very eyes under a whole bunch of conspiracy theories and a whole bunch of grievances, some of which, I guess are, you know, to credit you deeply felt grievances. And talk a little bit about what the dismantling of the Voting Rights act, as I say, in front of our very eyes, looks like and is being felt around the country.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh, ah. This one is so painful and so dangerous to all of us, no matter who we are, no matter who we vote for or whether we vote at all. Let me start with one thing that listeners may not know. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights coalition. And we really do look like America. Over 240 national organizations representing folks of every ideology all over America, right? But born of the black liberation struggle. And one of our shining achievements was winning passage of the Voting Rights act of 1965 and every reauthorization since. So we have always seen this as a critical underpinning to do what democracy is supposed to do. And this is why I want to start here. You know, what is a democracy for? There are different forms of government, right? But what a democracy is for is the ability of people to come together and identify their problems and work on solutions. That's really at its core what democracy is. And the electoral part of that, of choosing leaders who are going to understand those demands and those problems and sell themselves on it and have us lend them our power to help accomplish those things, is what is fundamental to the Voting Rights Act. And as you know, and I think as all Your listeners know we did have to have a civil war and pass new constitutional amendments to actually create any kind of protection for the right to participate in identifying our problems as black people and demanding that they get solved. And this is important. It was never only about but meaning black people are the ones being excluded and other people of color, right? Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans. It also benefited a lot of people who were white who were having a hard time voting because there was so much will on the part of politicians to figure out how to keep black voters out or Latino voters out or Native Americans out that also hurt white voters. The reason it's so important to say that is we forget that under the current conspiracy theories and attacks. And they're not new. They are not new. What we're seeing now is a battle we have been fighting for decades and in fact for centuries, which is to battle the lies that say that we don't have a good election system, that we can't trust it, that we have to erect a barriers to the ballot box, make it harder to get there because we have to worry about its integrity and whether people aren't trying to steal elections. And I wanna tell you a story. Cause we're also coming up on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, right? At a time when we're watching FEMA be dismantled and people and those babies in Texas who are not coming home because of flooding and the inability to get an answer to a call from fema, right? When I was driving between Biloxi Gulfport and New Orleans, working on rebuilding post Katrina, right? So 2006, 2007, if you listen to conservative radio, which was the primary news source driving between those two places, what I was hearing in 2006 and 2007 is people shouldn't want health care reform. People shouldn't want, by the way, health care reform wasn't on anybody's ballot, but people shouldn't want healthcare reform because quote, unquote, illegals were crossing the border to come take your healthcare. That is part of the roots of this tree I'm talking about, right? So we've been hearing it across the board for a long time. The connection between and black people having fewer polling sites to go to and pretending that's not racism, pretending that's not an effort to say, we know how you'll vote and we don't like it, so we'll make it harder for you to vote. So we've been fighting this for a very long time. The difference, the difference now is the point, because Trumpism has been so effective at blowing oxygen onto this bonfire. What's become a bonfire of lies about our election system. It has enabled for a while now, and you've been following this so you know, for years now, the slow chipping away at those rights and the ability of states to go back to what are like the poll taxes, like the jelly bean counting, like the asking people to name every single judge in the state in order to prove they should be able to vote. Only now we're doing it on prove you're a citizen. Now we're doing it on whether or not you have to stand in line for six hours to vote. Now we're doing it on whether or not people can help you if you need help, if you have issues getting your ballot to the ballot box. Now we're seeing all these new forms of challenges, which is literally taking out tens of millions of Americans who are legally allowed to vote, who are registered to vote from their ability to vote. We're doing it in a way that's going to primarily harm black, brown, Asian, Native American people. And we're going to say it's okay because we've already vilified those folks through those conspiracy theories.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

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[Ryan Reynolds]

Correct? And saying it out loud in Project 2025, I mean, literally saying that quiet part out loud, that's the permission given by all of this bonfire building.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

So, you know, when you bring in white South Africans and you say they're refugees who are, you know, suffering, or when you say that the entire vision now of, you know, the civil rights protections at the Justice Department is going to be to protect Christ.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Not just protect them, but make sure to go and prosecute everyone else, prosecute everyone else for trying to vote. I mean, we've essentially watched this administration turn. The department within the Department of Justice, the Civil Rights Division, which was created and empowered to protect and enforce civil rights laws, is now being, it's literally being flipped on its head because Project 2025 wrote it. This administration is doing it because it benefits Donald Trump personally and politically, is to make it a weapon. It's now a sword and not a shield. In fact, this Department of Justice brought a suit in North Carolina, a sword against voting rights in North Carolina, rather than what they should be doing, which is bringing suits to protect voters. It is literally using its power to try to make it harder for people of color to vote. This is the connection to the Jeffrey Epstein story, right? Because underpinning this for Donald Trump is utilizing these lies as he did in the 2020 election. And we know from the January 6th committee with lots of evidence that he knew they were lies, that the 2020 election was stolen from him, fomenting political violence, including in our Capitol, trying to stop the constitutional process of Congress certifying the election. That is an example of where and how those conspiracy theories have been intentionally utilized. But where the Jeffrey Epstein, like, Deep State is a critical underpinning to get people there. Right? It is those Kinds of you really can't trust government. You're doing right by going up against and rebelling against government. But it's also the exact same proof point. It's like, I'm just trying to protect my ability to abuse power as a president. I'm just trying to make sure I can do what I want to do no matter what the law says. And I'm going to utilize that power, including the power of my appointments and my pen, to try to take rights away and to not only disembowel government's ability to serve people, whether that's serving them in disaster recovery, serving them in schools, or serving them by protecting them from very obvious rights violations of states like voting rights.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

It's a feature, not a bug, that if along the way, as you use government to take rights from some classes of people and confer rights on other classes of people, and at the same time you discredit entire institutions so that nobody believes that elections are fair, nobody believes that the Justice Department prosecutors are genuinely doing their job, nobody believes that district courts should have the power to grant universal injunctions. Well, that's a feature, right? Because all you're doing is sowing the ground for the sort of authoritarian takeover of all institutions, because nothing works, right?

[Ryan Reynolds]

And that is the point. And really the pattern of authoritarianism across the globe, the pattern of these bully dictator wannabes who maybe win or steal power, but then to hold onto it, know that it is the driving of division, it is the driving of wedges between people. And those wedges everywhere in this globe is the people who are the minorities, the people who are the people who have suffered discrimination, the people for whom there are already stereotypes and tropes. And then you can take everyone else's needs, even those who are not racist, by the way. I mean, not everyone who voted for Trump is racist. A lot of people voted because they wanted to disrupt government, because it doesn't work for them and they don't like it, and they believed he would do that. Now, I'm not make a comment about what I think, but there are people who voted for him for that reason and who are kind of going, wait, what? Because it's not quite what they expected. But I say that because what authoritarianism does and has done in other places which we're seeing roll out here, is drive those divisions. There's a reason Donald Trump started on day one with attacking diversity, attacking equity, and attacking inclusion and attacking accessibility. There's a reason why when a plane crash and devastates over 60 families because their loved ones have now been killed in an accident. And then he blames people with disabilities. You utilize and do all these things because it is how you tell people, don't worry about how I am destroying everything around you. I'm asking you to be distracted from that so I can consolidate my power without you complaining, so that you can think I'm doing it in service, when actually I'm doing it in selfishness. And that's the playbook. And that's what we saw. That's what we saw right after the inauguration. That's why diversity, equity, inclusion was the first thing out the box. And repeatedly, it's quote, unquote, talking about merit. You can call it whatever you want. Americans like diversity. They like equity, they like inclusion. But when what you. You don't use the words. You just say D, E, N. And then you claim it's about coming for white men who are Christian and that that's unfair so that you can unravel everything else for what is a vast majority of the country. And by the way, in the end, in the end, it also hurts white men who are Christian eventually, because tyranny will not serve them.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

I am not always at my most sanguine that there are going to be free and fair elections at the midterms and the next presidential elections. And I kind of tell myself every data point you and I have just sketched out, I said this in my introduction, seems to illuminate the fact that they don't think they're going to be free and fair elections. And we certainly have heard, you know, President Trump say, you only have to vote in this election. And now we are seeing in Texas, Right, and efforts to just gerrymander a couple of seats up out of nowhere.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Which isn't even popular with a lot of Republican voters in Texas, by the way.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Once you start really fussing with electoral systems, you know, put aside the vote suppression. You've talked about voter id, you've talked about long lines. We know that a component of Project 2025 is to restrict voting. And we know that the President has already signed executive orders.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's literally these steps are in the Project 25 explicitly. You're right.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

So I would love for you to reassure me, Maya, because I think what you said before is really central here. We need to be able to critique these moves and at the same time defend the proposition that your vote matters, your vote will matter, you should register. In other words, if in fact discrediting the idea of voting is the feature, not the bug. I Would love for you to explain to me how they're not going to just manipulate the vote out of existence before the midterms.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, I must say, they can't unless we let them. So you're right about what they are intentionally trying to do. Project 2025 said go prosecute state election officials who, quote, unquote, worked against Trump in 2020. Right. Not the direct quote, but it's explicit, actually turn the Department of Justice and the Civil Rights Division into a sword. It's explicit about that. Donald Trump personally directed Greg Abbott because his own state Republicans didn't like the idea of doing redistricting. But Donald Trump doesn't want Republicans to lose control of the House of Representatives. His, his trifecta, his ability to go unchallenged and without oversight to all these abuses of power and violations. So what does he do? He calls Greg Abbott and says, get it done. And Greg Abbott is now shoving redistricting after only four years down the throat of Texans, even though 41% of Republicans don't think it's necessary and 63% of Texans don't think it's necessary. But I'm saying this because the intention is clear. They are down two seats in the House. The Republican Party, if they can pick up five seats in Texas, they can maintain control. It's very clear. So. So that plus literally using the powers of the Department of Justice to sue states to make it harder for states to help voters to all the things trying to make over 20 million voters lawfully allowed to vote, unable to vote in federal elections because of his executive order. And now what Congress is trying to pass called the SAVE act, where that says you have to have either a birth certificate or a driver's license. I'm saying this to validate your point about. It is not a given. It is not a given because all the forces of federal government right now are being turned against us in terms of our basic ability to just show up and vote and say, who can represent us? Here's the thing. None of that is inevitable. That's why we have civil rights litigators and pro democracy litigators who are litigating these cases. That's why we have brave people standing together, uniting and saying we'll be plaintiffs in those cases. That's why we have so many grassroots groups, you know, folks in communities figuring out how are we going to organize to make sure people know how to vote, where to vote, and how are we going to create systems of support that ensure that they can. There are many other things we can be doing, but, you know, leadership conference, we're doing all those things and supporting all those things through this vast coalition. The other thing we have to remember is as long as people understand what is happening, they won't allow it. And a lot of things that we know to be the case right now is people show up to vote because of what they're voting for. Not just the act of voting, but it's because of what problems they're trying to solve. We right now are gonna see 17 million Americans potentially no longer be able to see a doctor when they're sick. Once this new reconciliation process goes through, we're going to see rural hospitals closing. We're already seeing maternal and childcare units closing down when we know that women are desperate to ensure that they don't lose those beds and services. We're seeing students with disabilities starting to get denied services in their schools. It impacts every single person in this country in some way, and people don't like it. So when they are also reminded what to vote for and how to understand where people are trying to come for their basic power to participate so they can say what they want, so that they can hold politicians accountable to what they want, whoever they vote for. We don't tell people who to vote for. We have a very powerful force. So I'm just saying this to say what we have to remind all of us every day is how much power we have and how much we agree on. Even when we're going to vote for someone different, even if we don't agree on who we're going to vote for, that power is real. It's tappable. We're already starting to see the indicators of it. I used that recent poll on Texas just to say it's not like Republicans are saying, oh, yeah, go do this. They're saying, wait, what, 40? That's a lot of Republicans saying, I don't understand why you're doing this. That's just one example. We're even seeing how people are wondering, why are people being kidnapped off the streets by masked men who won't identify themselves, by the way, making girls and women vulnerable to being raped, to people being robbed and mugged. That's not public safety. People are already feeling what happens in a government that's not serving people, but serving itself. And we have every opportunity to continue, not just to fight the administration on what's wrong, but to support people in understanding their power to do what they know is right. And that's why it is not inevitable. And I will tell you this. I'll go a step further. None of us are going to let it happen. And what we have to be passionate about is our power. And boy do we have a lot of it when we count up the majority of this country. That is not okay with tyranny.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The future of religious freedom is at a crossroads. The same groups behind Project 2025 are working relentlessly to impose a Christian nationalist agenda on the laws and on the lives of the American people. The wall between church and state is the last safeguard standing in their way. For over 75 years, Americans United has been a powerful but quiet force fighting to preserve church, state, separation, freedom without favor and equality without exception for every single American American. Americans United stands up for your right to believe and to live as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. You can take action and join Americans United today by donating any dollar amount and your support will be doubled. Join Americans United and help defend the fundamental freedoms that protect us all. Learn more and join the fight at au.org SL.

[Mark Joseph Stern]

This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

This episode is brought to you by.

[Americans United Ad]

Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The future of religious freedom is at a crossroads. The same groups behind Project 2025 are working relentlessly to impose a Christian nationalist agenda on the laws and the lives of the American people. The wall between church and state is the last safeguard standing in their way. For over 75 years, Americans United has been a powerful but quiet force fighting to preserve church, state, separation, freedom without favor and equality without exception for every single American. Americans United stands up for your right to believe and to live as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. You can take action and join Americans United today by donating any dollar amount and your support will be doubled. Join Americans United and help defend the fundamental freedoms that protect us all. Learn more and join the [e-mail] SL.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

I'm going to meet your Tigger energy with like one more lick of Eeyore energy because the player we haven't oh, come on, Eeyore.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I always liked Eeyore. Eeyore was always one of my favorite characters.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

I was not born in Eeyore, but I play one on tv. So listen, this is a show about the courts and the Supreme Court, and we haven't talked much about the courts, but I do think we have to sort of nail down there's another player here. And I want to try to kind of describe the pincer move here. As best as I understand it, Justice Department, as you've said a couple times, no longer enforcing civil rights laws, gutting the Civil Rights Division, which would have, you know, worked to enforce the Voting Rights Act. Right. So that's happening in House. We've already gone over that. But then we have the Supreme Court looking to kick the legs out from whatever remains of the Voting Rights Act. As I said, that didn't happen this Supreme Court term, although I reserve the right to think it will be next term. And then We've got the 8th Circuit sort of picking up the breadcrumb trail and saying, this is an inexorable journey.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Right.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Thanks, Justice Gorsuch. Thanks, Justice Thomas. Maybe private plaintiffs can't vindicate their civil rights under the Voting Rights Act. The court has been so complicit in this.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The court is captured. The court is captured. Supreme Court is captured. And we know we have a majority of this court that doesn't like voting rights. We know that. You're absolutely right that they're. They've already. We've got out of the 8th Circuit, the 8th Circuit basically saying, oh, yeah, no, you can't sue because you, as a person, Eeyore, were discriminated against by how the State House drew your maps or, you know, other barriers they're throwing up to you. But it's all to get all the Eeyores of the world, and that that's discriminatory. You're absolutely right. I didn't say we were gonna win because of the Supreme Court. I didn't say litigation was gonna save us. That is not what I said. I'm the person running around saying, as a litigator, as someone who litigated civil rights cases, I'm the one who's gonna say the courts are not gonna save us. But let me just say this. The cases being brought still matter. The litigation still matters because. For two reasons. One, because it can't go unchallenged. It has to expose the corruption nature of courts that are being ideological. Most courts, including courts with judges appointed by Republicans, including one of the Dissents in one of the 8th Circuit case was a Bush appointee. Some are Trump appointees saying no to some of these abuses. We need to remember that. We need to lift that up. There's nothing normal about what's happened. The court is captured, Supreme Court's captured. But I also am going to tell you, Dalia, this metaphor is not going to work. Because I can't be your Christopher Robin to your Eeyore right now, because it's just the wrong metaphor. I'll think of another one. But maybe I'm just gonna say, I'll be your Sojourner Truth. I'll be your Sojourner Truth because I'm a black woman in America. There's nothing you just described that isn't what black Americans have experienced for centuries. We've had, for the vast majority of our time on this continent as black people, Latinos, indigenous people were here long before us. They would say, ah, we get this. We know what this looks like. We've had most of our journey on this continent with Supreme Courts that were literally refusing to protect us, literally refusing to take the words and the values of the Constitution and apply it to us. But we won. Not because we had a Supreme Court. That's not how we really got here. Now, yes. Did we have the Warren Court? Yes, we did. The Warren court did the right things, but it didn't do the right things without a whole lot of wind blowing in its sails. Because people were organizing. People were working, people were demonstrating people, some people who weren't even in institutions, they were just organizing on their own. We had a movement when our very ability to live up to our ideals as a country come under threat. We come together as a people and rise up peacefully. Let me stress that when I say rise up, I'm talking about peacefully rising up to say, no, no, because it's our country. It's all of our country. So I didn't say it was inevitable. But remember what we have come from. Remember what we have risen above. Remember that while these forces have never gone away, we have demonstrated that we can. And we have a much larger coalition now and a much more diverse coalition now, and a very engaged and very large growing young demographic in this country that is not okay with this and that gives us real power even when the institutions are captured. So I'm not leaving this point, Dalia. We need Eeyore. But I am just going to tell you, I'm Sojourner True.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

I love it. And I actually love Maya. You've sort of landed us exactly where I wanted to end, which is, you know, I'm hearing echoes of Sky Paraman on this show saying we do this litigation because we are proving something. We are showing something in district courts around the country to Trump judges and to Bush judges and Reagan judges and we are winning. And that matters. It doesn't matter what the Supreme Court says. I'm also hearing echoes of Carol Anderson. You know, the people who have, have said on this show you just never stood in a line in sneakers to vote in Georgia. But let me tell you what it's like. And you bring a lot of water and you, you know, wear a fanny pack and you just bring an extra charger, like this is how it has ever been. And what I love about these two ideas coming together and what you're saying is that the work now isn't to sort of sit back and wring your hands and say, oh well, you know, the court took away the power of district court judges, or the court has conferred you near limitless presidential immunity on Donald Trump. What you're saying is it's actually not their call. And we are seeing this in district courts around the country, that we are seeing judges surprising no one more than this guy stand up and say, actually it's our call. And even after the birthright citizenship decision, it's still our call. And seeing people meet those courts where they are and be educated by them and inspired and moved. This is a kind of theory of what we're calling popular constitutionalism. I don't have a great name for it, but I think that's what you're giving voice to.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And it's not new to do that. It's not. It's the story of the first reconstruction and the second reconstruction. We didn't have the courts on our side after the Civil War. That's why it took another hundred years. Courts didn't give it to us. They didn't give it to us. They came along, they were necessary. And I won't say it's cause the Supreme Court doesn't matter, but I do agree it matters what we're doing in lower courts, but also because it helps us do the storytelling, it helps us demonstrate what is important for people to see, to feel, to be able to touch, which is exactly what's going on here. So rather than to get caught up in the distractions, to really focus on where and how they're coming, for our power to simply be citizens, that's what voting is. It's a citizenship power. It's a problem solving power. I have never seen, because I am going to go back to Texas. Because it's both where the gerrymandering is underway to try to steal the house, just steal it outright. But it's also where all these children died, all these Christian children, all these white Christian children. And people made phone calls day after day after day for help and cooking. Couldn't get it from the Department of Homeland Security, which is now becoming the largest federal agency we've ever had in the history of the country. While we're disemboweling the Department of Education, while we're disemboweling the ability of the Department of Justice to be a defender, while we're disemboweling the ability to have healthcare and for HHS to protect us from pandemics, we're watching this happen in real time. And the more we have this out of touch, we've never seen opinion ratings lower than what we're seeing for the Supreme Court. This is helping us tell a story that is helping people to see what it means in their daily lives. So the litigation also serves that purpose and that storytelling is critically important.

[Dahlia Lithwick]

Maya Wiley is President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of over 240 national organizations fighting to protect, defend and expand the rights of every person in the United States. She has been a litigator at the aclu, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She's worked in the civil Division of the U.S. attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Her memoir, remember you are a Wiley, which is the most anti Eeyore piece of writing you are ever gonna find, was published last fall. And Maya, I just, before we say goodbye, I wanna thank you because I think what you are doing in the face of what is a reflexive and maybe understandable impulse to just sit back and watch and feel powerless, is you are naming the project and what it involves. And it is not an easy project, but I think the act of naming it allows us to build it back. And I really, really am grateful, not just for this conversation, but for all the work you've done across your career to do exactly this thing which is perfect, something that has never been perfect.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, thank you, Dalia. That's something I will walk with and that will keep giving me strength. But also thank you to you because this podcast is important, your voice is important, and the way you help us illuminate these things is important. So thank you.

[Sara Burningham]

Hey there. It's co host Mark Joseph Stern to say that's a wrap. Thanks so much. Much for listening. Thank you for supporting our work, and thank you so much for your letters and questions. You can keep in [e-mail] or you can find [e-mail] Amicus podcast coming up on today's episode of Amicus plus, available exclusively for Slate plus members, I'm retiring to the Plusketeer Bar with Jay Willis of Balls and Strikes to talk about Columbia University caving to the trail, Trump administration and the disastrous confirmation of Joshua Devine to a federal court. And we'll answer a burning question frequently posed by listeners. You can subscribe to Slate plus directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or visit slate.comamicusplus to get access wherever you listen. That episode is available for you to listen to right now. We'll see you there. Sara Burningham is Amicus senior producer. Our producer is Patrick Fort, Hilary Frye 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. Until then, take good care.

[Josh Levine]

Hi, I'm Josh Levine. My podcast, the Queen tells the story of Linda Taylor. She was a con artist, a kidnapper, and maybe even a murderer. She was also given the title the Welfare Queen, and her story was used by Ronald Reagan to justify slashing aid to the poor. Now it's time to hear her her real story. Over the course of four episodes, you'll find out what was done to Linda Taylor, what she did to others, and what was done in her name.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The great lesson of this for me is that people will come to their own conclusions based on what their prejudices are.

[Josh Levine]

Subscribe to the Queen on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening right now.