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C
Hey everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark. And I am joined by Andrew Egger, author of Morning Shots and friend of the program, Kyle Cheney from Politico. We're here to talk about the slate of Supreme Court decisions that happened today. This morning, it's Monday. We have about four more big ones. We could talk about those later. But yeah, so today's big decisions were Trump, which is about the ability of the executive to fire heads of independent agencies. Trump got a big victory on that one. We're going to talk about that in a second. We also had the issue of Lisa Cook's firing or attempted firing, I should say, from the Federal Reserve Board. Trump was told he cannot do that. He maybe do it in the future. But for now, they did not give her enough time to defend herself to justify firing with cause. We'll get into that in a second. And then this one's Kyle's bread and butter. It's about mail and voting and whether or not you can count votes that arrive after election Day. And this one, Trump did have a loss. That and some E. Jean Carroll stuff that we're going to talk about in addition. But look, let's start with the expert, which is not Andrew. Let's start with Kyle. Like what's the big like 30,000 foot takeaway here from these decisions?
- [02:12]
D
I mean, we're all bracing for. You mentioned this already, birthright citizenship. But I think, to be honest, you know, look, Trump, I think to me the takeaway is the Supreme Court is going to rule in Trump's favor on a vast majority of these executive Power questions. But they are not invested in the Trump project, the sort of MAGA project of reinventing the presidency in Trump's image the way he wants. And so that's why things like, you know, mail in balloting is something that's existential to Trump. It's part of his identity since 2020, at least about you can't have a legitimate election if you count votes after election day. The court didn't buy that as a legal matter. But also again that like, just like with the tariff ruling, they're just central to Trump's identity. They ruled against him there. They are not like lockstep with him on these things that are very personal to him.
- [02:58]
C
Yeah. And I do want to get back to, but I did notice instantaneously another truth post from Trump being like, okay, we got to do the save act has to happen now. And online people going nuts with Amy Comey Barrett again because she cast the deciding vote here on the 5 to 4 vote. Andrew, let's talk quickly about Humphrey's executor, which is the Trumpy slaughter. So basically court says, yeah, you can fire the head of the, not the head, you can fire the Democratic appointed commissioner of the ftc. It's within the executive's authority. And they said that the, the 80 year old sort of practice of giving deference to the independency of these agencies, that had been basically standard for a while now. They, they went out of their way to say no, that is invalid. And in fact I think Robert said if, and if there's any lingering element of Humphrey's executor, which is the thing about giving these independent powers to the agencies, that's null and void. It's over. Which I thought was sort of on a fundamental level. And if you're talking about real world impact of these rulings, maybe Kyle's right about the mail and stuff, that's, that is, we can have debate about that, but I think this one has the capacity to kind of reshape governance going forward.
- [04:06]
E
Yeah, and Kyle gestured at this a second ago, but this is, I, I think it's, I think it's inaccurate to say the Supreme Court is taking marching orders from Donald Trump on all these things that Donald Trump wants. But this particular kind of thing is the kind of thing where we have seen that this Supreme Court, this conservative Supreme Court and this particular president have a lot of synergy with what they want to do because it has been sort of a growing thing in conservative legal circles for a number of years now. To talk about this, this unitary executive, to talk about the idea that, that this system we've had over the past hundred years where Congress sets up these quasi executive institutions and just by statute basically vests them with different parts of executive power and says the president's not allowed to touch them. Conservatives have been arguing that's just unconstitutional on its face. These are powers that belong to the president in an executive capacity, and he has to be able to, you know, basically bend them to his will, which is great for Donald Trump. Donald Trump loves bending anything and everything to his will. He never met anything that he didn't want to bend to his will. So when he's in charge of the executive branch and wants to do that with all these agencies, he and the Supreme Court have, have been very simpatic on this stuff.
- [05:16]
C
Let me, let me push a theory of, and you could tell me how stupid this is in. Andrew, you take this first. Is this not like, in a way, what, you know, obviously Democrats don't appreciate ruling, but in a way, doesn't this allow some sort of freedom? Because these agencies are going to be stocked with Trump appointees. Right. And when the next Democrat comes into power, assuming we have presidential elections and we get another Democratic president, they're going to want a clear house. And now this gives them a free hand to do so.
- [05:46]
E
Yeah, I think I'd be interested in what Kyle has to say about that. But for first blush, for me, I just think this is part of the sort of demise of what we're seeing of the idea of this sort of independent, technocratic, you know, professionalized career people getting into some of these executive branch roles. And that can cut both ways, right? It can. It can. It basically says if you're, if you're empowering a Republican president, you're empowering a Democratic president, too. Now, there are plenty of Republicans out there who would take that trade, who are basically saying, you know, the whole problem here is that we have set is not that we've like, made these guys a bunch of Democrats necessarily, but that we've set these things outside of the political process when it comes to, you know, presidential elections and things like that, which then they would argue that basically tilts things Democratic in the long run because it's staffed by a bunch of, you know, educated technocrats who, who tend to see things the way the Democrats see things. But yes, you're right. I mean, this does potentially free up a future Democratic president to do the same sort of slash and burn clearinghouse that Trump has tried to do, although hopefully on somewhat less, less flimsy pretexts.
- [06:50]
C
Well, you got, yeah, you got a little bit of regulatory whiplash here. But Kyle, is that a fair read?
- [06:54]
D
I think so. And to me, I think a sort of historical perspective here, which is it's kind of interesting that this is the week, you know, J.D. vance decided to say let's reevaluate the Nixon sort of legacy because a lot of these independent so called agencies were vestiges of the Watergate era. These were things that were put in place to sort of be checks on their internal checks on the executive things that were insulated from political pressure because there are certain functions that people want the gut in the government to be insulated from political pressure. I don't think anybody would argue that they shouldn't be for the most part some of the functions we're talking about at these agencies and yet the Supreme Court is essentially dismantled in a series of rulings. But especially with this one now, it's the capper is like there really can't be these, this insulation. You can't, you know, inspectors general aren't insulated from political pressure. Other, you know, you know, the office of special counsel that polices political inter, political actions by executive branch officials can't be insulated from that kind of pressure. And now this is just sort of the end, the, the end point of that trajectory.
- [07:54]
C
And then you add, but that's a good point because tomorrow, and I have no idea what this case is about so I'm going to pretend like I know. But there is a big campaign finance case coming tomorrow, right?
- [08:02]
D
Oh God, that's that, that's one that's also out of my purview. But yes, there is.
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C
Okay.
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D
Right there, there is a long trajectory of removing, you know.
- [08:11]
C
Well, that's also a post Watergate. Yeah, these are all post Watergate reforms where it's like we have to actually get a, our hands around the idea that money is a pernicious influence in politics. And all those post Watergate reforms around campaign finance have basically been ripped away. And I suspect that's going to happen tomorrow.
- [08:27]
D
And to Andrew's point too, like this is, you know, the, the post, the project of this Supreme Court. It's not a Trumpian project, but it is this sort of post Watergate project of pulling back from that like the reaction to Watergate. This is the reaction to the reaction to Watergate and you know, other, you know, decades long reform. So that is sort of the, the path. And as, as Andrew said, this is a sympatico a lot of what Donald Trump wants, but it's not exclusively what Donald Trump wants.
- [08:54]
C
All right, so then we get to the Fed case and, and this is where sort of we should have a longer conversation because while the Supreme Court held that there is executive authority to go over these independent agencies, basically remake them as you want because it's within the power of the executive, they did have a, an extraordinary carve out for Fed independence. And they literally said in the ruling. So there was a 5 to 4 ruling. Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh and Jackson, along with Chief Justice Roberts, who rule that Donald Trump cannot fire Lisa Cook in this very specific incident. And as I read it, Kyle, they, they are very, they're very deliberate about saying she did not have the right or she didn't have the opportunity to push back against firing for cause and that you have to give her a chance to see this. And then they have this. I'm going to read what's on the screen. In this extraordinary case, we've had the benefit of not only the amici but oral argument, but months of internal consultation and deliberation. We see no reason to leave the public in limbo or to sow doubt as to the status of one of our nation's and world's most important financial institutions. This doesn't seem like sort of a, I'm not a lawyer, but this doesn't seem like a, sort of like a, this is the text of the Constitution, therefore we have to abide by it type of reasoning. It's basically like, hey, the Fed kind of matters a lot and we know it and we have to be careful with the Fed, which means they didn't feel like they had to be careful with the ftc. Right. So how do they get a. I just, it doesn't make sort of logical sense to me that there's a through line here. I mean there are suggested through lines, but not legal through lines.
- [10:36]
D
Yeah, I mean they, this is their sort of go to is like historical practice and precedent. They, they, I mean they go back to the founding essentially with this and there's been seeds of this in several other rulings. You know, that the Fed, the Federal Reserve is a vestige of sort of the First national bank back in, you know, the founding era and that, that makes it a unique institution in the history of the country. That and the stability of it is uniquely important beyond what other institutions. Even beyond other institutions. So they are carving. And they said they. That line that you flagged was part of their explanation for why they did this in a case decided in an emergency posture. Why they essentially got to the heart of it instead of letting this sort of pend even further in the lower courts because they want to resolve this conclusively, that the Fed stands apart in their mind.
- [11:28]
E
Can I add one quick thing to that? Because it's not, correct me if I'm wrong, Kyle, but my reading is that it's not just that it's really important in all of these things and really old, but also that it has existed as a, an independent body for all of this time. So it's not just that the institution itself has this long historical tradition, but it is also, you know, it. The Fed's independence long predates Humphrey's executor, long predates, you know, any of these, like the FTC or, or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or any of these other, you know, ones that have been stood up later. And I don't know, like, I, I see the argument that, like, they're just kind of trying to arrive at different outcomes and just getting there. But, but, but, but I, I do, I think there's something to that. Right? I mean, I, I'm not ready to just sort of throw. This is just them, you know, dressing it all up nice and trying to figure out how to let Trump fire anybody who's not about to destroy the country. Right. I mean, I think there's something to this, this argument, basically this historical argument that like Federal Reserve independence is as old as the Constitution and, but it's not.
- [12:29]
C
The Fed was created in the 1910s, so why would that be around long enough? The historical, I know the first bank
- [12:37]
D
predecessors, they consider that the precursors or the predecessors of the Fed. And so that's how they, that's how they get there. I mean, I think, you know, in some ways it's an implicit acknowledgment that there is good reason to have certain functions of the government be independent. But it does create this tension. I mean, it does create this tension with the idea that the executive is supposed to be one president who gets to control the executive branch, not, you know, not necessarily in a unitary executive sort of way, although that's mostly what the justices believe or at least endorsed over time, but at least in the sense that it's a little bit, there is something a little bit off about having some executive of some agency out there saying, well, the President wants this and I disagree, so I'm not going to do it. How that. Where, like, what branch of government is that person in then?
- [13:22]
C
Okay, well, let's do a little trivia for you wizards here. What year was the Fed created? Andrew, could not Google you.
- [13:29]
E
I don't know. I do not know the answer to your trivia.
- [13:30]
D
The 1910s.
- [13:32]
C
I gave you the decade 1913. What year was the FTC created?
- [13:38]
E
Don't live.
- [13:42]
C
1914. I mean, what is that? Was that an important year? The.
- [13:47]
E
The point that they make is that there is a tradition of independent central banking in the United States dating back, not necessarily that exact institution, but you are right. You are right.
- [13:59]
C
I was. I'm done with you. They're not done with Lisa. Right. Like, they're gonna. It's because I saw Bill Pulte, who's now both still running the Federal Housing Authority and also our DNI being like, I still believe that. Here it is. As I've repeatedly said, I believe Lisa Cook will be indicted for mortgage ride. Again, this is our DNI, just, you know, casually on Twitter at 1023, watching Skoda's blog like the rest of us. But it. I mean, they're still going to go after. So it doesn't strike me that we've resolved the issue of Fed independence here. It just seems like they punted. Unless I'm misreading this, Kyle.
- [14:34]
D
I mean, look, you saw what happened to the Jay Powell investigation. That. That imploded on itself because of how transparently retaliatory it was.
- [14:43]
C
Right.
- [14:43]
D
So I think DOJ would be a little bit shy about, you know, you know, going after Lisa Cook for. For, you know, nonsense reasons. That said, if she's indicted, that. That changes the for cause analysis of maybe removal.
- [14:58]
C
Yeah. If you're cynical about it, you look at this and you're. Let's say you're the president. You really want her out. And you're very cynical about this. You then sort of try to start the clock for her to be able to defend herself. And then you say. And then you give it another go and you say, okay, we hit the benchmarks that SCOTUS wanted, and now she's been fired for cause. And then you just go through this whole rigmarole all over again.
- [15:18]
D
What I found is important there, too, though, was they said she needs a chance to defend herself, respond to the allegations against her, and then we can decide whether for cause was legitimate or not. So they didn't say, well, then just because you set up a sham kind of fake process to make the. Give the appearance of due process at the end of the story, because I think that was raised at the lower courts, was. Well, they could just pretend to give her due process even though they know what the outcome is going to be. But the court here said, well, we would, we would analyze it after she gets that chance to respond. And so I think there was some sense that they could decide that maybe something was still a sham and not legitimate due process.
- [15:54]
C
Right.
- [15:55]
D
Later on, too.
- [15:57]
C
Well, one of the, and one point I want to make here about this is not conspiratorial and it's not original, frankly, because I've, I've seen it elsewhere, but like, there is, the through line here is not necessarily legal, but it is financial. Right. So business really wants a sort of lax ftc, but they want stability at the Fed. And this court, whether you can say it's deliberate or not, has traditionally sided with moneyed interest, corporate interest. They seem to be not in the pocket, but their disposition is towards, you know, that type of, you know, strong corporate governance. And you can see it too, with the campaign finance stuff as well. Again, I'm not trying to be conspiratorial about it, but it is, Andrew, something to note that in this case, it did align like that.
- [16:44]
E
Sorry, I'm talking my mic off. No, I totally agree. And like, I'm not, I'm not saying people are crazy to make these connections. I mean, I think this is part of the reason why John Roberts has spent so much sweat over, over how to approach the Trump era, because he understands that it is an extreme, like, credibility challenge to have one branch of the government just so off the chain and just sort of rampaging and, and, and throwing so many controversial cases at the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court then sitting here trying to, you know, not throw the baby out with the bathwater, not trying to, like, just block him on every single thing he does just because it's him, but also understanding that anytime they do cross him and anytime they don't cross him, they create these giant credibility concerns for themselves with some group of the public or other and him and him trying to shepherd all that stuff through. Like, I, I completely understand the sort of pull of, of these arguments, even if I don't buy all of them myself.
- [17:39]
C
All right, let's do a quick ad read and then I want to go deep on Kyle's baby, which is Watson, VR and C, which is about mail and balloting. But first we got to do a little message from our sponsors. So this message is brought to you by Soul. If you need to pick me up or a wind me down or something in between. Soul's mood gummies have perfectly balanced formulas designed that to keep you in. They frankly keep me level. Soul is a wellness brand that makes delicious hemp derived CBD and THC designed to make feeling good simple, including on big SCOTUS decision days. Soul's new mood gummies have precise dosing, clean ingredients and formulations designed for predictable effects so you can choose how you want to feel while staying in control solo. Three mood gummies to fit any moment. Uplift for an energizing daytime boost. Could use that right now. Mellow for relaxing and winding and balance for an easy anytime vibe. I'm a big balance guy this summer. I've been taking the mellow gummies. No, that's not right. That's in the script. I've been taking the balance gummies, folks. A great way to take the edge off that actually helps me fall asleep easier and really unplug. Make today a good day and get yourself some soul gummies. Right now, Seoul is offering our audience up to 30 off their entire order. Go to getsold.com and use the code billboard takes. That's getsoul.com promo code. Bulwark takes for 30 off. All right, well look, do you guys get your soul gummies in during the break? Yes or no? No.
- [18:59]
D
Okay. Till after birthright.
- [19:02]
C
Okay. All right, Kyle, give us the backstory on this, on this decision. What? Just like walk the audience, handhold the audience through this.
- [19:13]
D
We're talking about Watson, right? Mail in balloting. So, I mean, to me, this is an issue that I'm interested in for a number of reasons. It's an interesting legal issue, but also one that is, like I mentioned before, kind of central to the Donald Trump Persona, which is this idea that states for decades now, but have many states, dozens of states have agreed that ballots can arrive after election day, mail in ballots, so long as they are postmarked by election day. And that's just been an accepted part of the fabric of our elections for a very long time, but one that Donald Trump decided he was against because he blamed, I'm not even sure he blamed late arriving ballots. He just blamed slow counted ballots, even ones that were submitted on time for his defeat in 2020 and claimed that they were fraudulent without evidence. And then has applied that to particularly these late arriving ballots that are accepted in, I think 30 states. And the court said essentially he's wrong, that a Mississippi law that allowed ballots to arrive up to five days after election day, again so long as they were postmarked by election Day, is perfectly legitimate. And if Congress wants to change that that Congress can. But there is nothing inherently unconstitutional or improper about that kind of a post election day receipt of ballots.
- [20:37]
C
Well, confused me about this again, as someone who's just paid like limited interest to the specific. I know the big issue I've been paying a lot of interest to. But Mississippi, it's like a Republican state, right? Like, if they believe in the Trumpian project that this is all fraudulent stuff and that you shouldn't be able to do this, why didn't the state legislature in Mississippi change law?
- [20:57]
D
I, I have to actually, you know, refresh my facts on this. But they may have a Democratic secretary of state. I may be wrong on that. But they occasionally have had some Democrats at the state level beyond below, beneath the governor's level. But I, I do think, I mean this is for many states. Like I think Alaska is one of them too, a very Republican state. But they have relied on mail in ballots and they have very complicated systems that sometimes, you know, where ballots take time to arrive. And, and so what's interesting about the court having to decide here that I mean pre. They just call it a narrow question. I think it is a narrow question is what's when does an election, you know, what is an election and what is the difference between a vote being cast and a vote being received? And like when does the election occur? And so the election has to occur on election day. But that's an independent question about when the ballot is received. The votes were cast by election day. The election happened on election day or before, you know, but, but the receiving of the ballot is a separate calculus. Calculus.
- [21:57]
C
Yeah. So the decision according to the Times is going to leave in place laws, similar laws in at least 18 other states and territories. That includes Nevada and California, which are battleground districts. We should note that the decision was pretty close. It was a 5 to 4 decision, although I believe Kavanaugh dissented only in part. So it's possible that it could have been construed a different way if needed. But Trump obviously is not happy with this. Andrew mentioned that he put out his post. I don't know if we have the post. It's so long like it's like I don't even know what part to read. But let Here we go. Because this is both an audio and visual podcast in light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning voters rights and the fact that peoples he put peoples in quotes for some reason vote are not are allowed to be counted long after an election is over is more important than ever to pass the Save America act, which is one, all voters must show Voto ID two, all voters must show proof of citizenship. Three, no mail in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment or travel. He then goes on, I thought the most interesting part of this post was towards the end where he actually calls out the five Republicans that he believes are holding out on this, which she says are Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy and Mitch McConnell who says they must vote to save our country. He's beaten this drum a lot and this certainly is not going to get him to stop. Andrew, but yeah, what do you make of this?
- [23:27]
E
Well, part of this gets back and I mean the fact that you mentioned McConnell here is interesting. Part of this gets back to what you were just asking, Kyle, which is why hasn't this been a broader Republican effort for a long period of time? And part of the answer to that is because there is actually a lot of internal Republican disagreements agreement about what the, what the correct like procedure and not just the correct procedure, but which, what, what, what procedure here is most favorable to Republicans, specifically Donald Trump and you know, Mike Lindell and the whole conspiracy brain wing has this view of the country that like 80% of it is actually MAGA and there's just rampant mail in voting cheating and that if you just got the mail in voting out of there, Republicans would win forever. Everywhere there is a saner contingent of Republicans who see that it is, there's actually just isn't very much cheating in these elections at all. Very, very little fraud is actually committed. And so the question is what are the policies that we can put in place that maybe, you know, spin the thing a little bit to our favor in terms of who, who gets to vote, who it's easy to vote for. And there are a lot of Republicans who think getting rid of mail in ballots does not actually favor the GOP in the long run, especially now after this alignment we've been experiencing for the last decade or so where, you know, it's the Repub Party instead of the Democratic Party that relies more on lower propensity voters and that, you know, in theory giving them a bunch of different pathways to cast their votes is perhaps beneficial to the Republican Party in the long run. And so I think, you know, if you're, if you're looking for the point of view of a guy like Mitch McConnell on here, I mean, I would be shocked if his thinking on this were not the same as, you know, Ronna McDaniels, the former RNC chair who was a pretty big proponent of Mail in voting for as long as that was possible to say sustain publicly in the Republican Party. And you still have people in there who quietly believe that something like this would be bad news for Republicans in general.
- [25:17]
C
That's a good point because I do recall, maybe my history is wrong on this, but I do recall in 2024, Trump kind of did a 180 on mail in voting and then like was encouraging people to do it. And now obviously clearly not. Not for it. How did you catch, did you catch, Kyle, that Trump kind of blurted out that he had made a phone call to the U.S. attorney? I guess it's the acting, first acting U.S. attorney in California to talk about the Spencer Pratt mayor election. Just blurted out.
- [25:43]
D
He's like, I did not see. I'm not shocked by that. I mean, mostly because the Overton window has changed so much. That should be a shocking thing. But like that, yeah, that level of communication between the President.
- [25:56]
C
Yeah, he blurted it out at some event and I was like, oh my God, that's what got him in trouble. In Georgia where he called Brett Rafflesberger was like, buy me the votes. But he was just like, yeah, I called him and I don't want to discuss this stuff.
- [26:09]
D
I mean, those are the kind of things that if there were ever some, you know, prosecution brought, they would highlight that and say this is a vindictive, selective prosecution. Oftentimes they say, well, you have no evidence the President actually directed anyone to do anything, but here you actually have an acknowledge. That makes it a lot more complicated to explain. I'm sure Trump, you know, will say, or maybe he didn't, you know, direct him to do anything. And, but, but no, I think he
- [26:35]
C
said, I think he said, I asked him to look into it. He was just like, yeah, it was all the subtext was the text.
- [26:42]
D
Yeah, do a filing near us in California. But, you know, I, I think that he has to recalibrate. I mean, I don't know if it'll recalibrate. I mean, he doesn't, you know, the, the correct. I mean, his response to this rule, he was correct is I got to get Congress to do something. That's what the court said. You want to do this, you got to get Congress to do it. So his message in some ways is responsive to what the court said.
- [27:06]
C
But, and this is, this is again a non lawyer asking a lawyer question. But like, would if Congress were to overreach and do something. Well, let's just say Congress passes some sort of sweeping legislation, would the states be able to be like, hey, no, this is our purview to run elections as we deem fit. Like, this is just not, you know, would they sue back? Basically not.
- [27:28]
D
I mean, there are certain time, place and manner of elections is something in, that's in Congress's purview.
- [27:36]
E
Right.
- [27:37]
D
Which is why they can set the federalized election Day, you know, and, and that's why they can, they can set certain standards of things. Like, and again, that's why the court said, like Congress wants to say vote ballots for federal, for federal offices must be received by election Day. That is, that is, that is something Congress can do. They can't start getting into micromanaging certain things that state that are, you know, unique to each state. But they can do that at a federal level.
- [28:06]
C
All right, before we let you go, I know you got to go. And then Andrew and I will continue on for a little bit. And folks in the comments section, if you have questions or any thoughts, drop them. We'll try to get to them. But we got a, and this is a little bit off the bean path, not scotus, but Todd Blanche, he's got confirmation hearings coming up on after the break. What are you looking for? Like, what does the tell for you as you, as you go about covering this stuff?
- [28:30]
D
Oh, man. Well, I think his, his number one hope, I assume, is that there's not some like crisis on the eve of his confirmation hearing. Because the problem, I mean, the issue is like, you know, it could have been, it could be Epstein related. I think he's going to face a million questions about that and uncomfortable questions in his relate his conversations with Ghislaine Maxwell, the anti weaponization fund and January 6th related things. Although Thom Tillis, who was a big critic of those issues, seems to have been softened a little bit toward Blanche on that. But those again. So if there's some development, I think that's his biggest threat is the, the unknown, the thing, the thing that's going to break, you know, like a Bill as Sally type thing you just mentioned with talking to Trump on the eve of his hearing. And that could cut in a whole bunch of different ways. And some of these rulings you're getting now, I mean, it's going to be good fodder for how the administration responds to some of these things, you know, right when he's coming up for his hearing.
- [29:29]
E
All right, man. Well, Kyle, one thing before you go, which is. Sorry, Kyle, I know you got this. I just do you see it seemed like a couple of weeks ago or maybe. Yeah, a couple of weeks ago, there was like this hardening Republican opposition over stuff like that anti weaponization fund that was such a big deal until they dropped it. Do you see some of these senators who might have been getting ready to dig in their heels over something like that, buying the Trump administration's like, actually, we decided, you know, you guys were right. No harm, no foul. Do you think that they will require real convincing here, or do you think they're kind of back to their normal posture of, you know, seems like a fine enough guy to us.
- [30:07]
D
That's a great question. I mean, I think with Tillis being sort of the weather vane on that, I think it does seem like there's a softening that they're not holding Blanche responsible for this endeavor or at least saying that, like, his comments on it were good enough to. And I mean, you know, there's nothing within court that said they couldn't ever backtrack on it. And they. They have made clear they think they have the power to issue settlement checks to whoever they want under the existing statute. So I think unless you get someone to swear that they'll never use any existing authority ever to pay someone that people that. That Congress doesn't like, it has to be kind of open. But it does seem like there's been sort of the off ramp has worked for now.
- [30:48]
C
Amazing. Just take my word for it. All right. Kyle Chaney. Hey, man. Thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it. I know you got a lot of work today, so we genuinely are grateful for your time. Folks can check out his work at Politico, and he's a frequent. Not a frequent enough, by my taste, guest here at the. Okay, thanks, buddy. Take care. Andrew, stick around for a second. All right, so let's talk a little bit more about Blanche. I think he's gonna get confirmed. Tillis has been like, basically, I'm okay with it until this is the one that matters here. So I just think he's gonna get confirmed, which seems a little crazy to me because of the weaponization stuff, but also because of the Epstein stuff. He was the one who got Ghislaine Maxwell the cushy little gig or cushy little transfer. So, you know, I don't know. It seems wrong to me.
- [31:37]
E
Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, I think, like, I wouldn't be shocked if these guys sort of rediscovered their opposition and held his feet to the fire, But I think there's a few things that will prevent that. One is, I think that they do, rightly or wrongly, see this guy as sort of a normie in bed with Trump. Like they are, right? I mean, like they are the kinds of people who have found it politically expedient to go along with Donald Trump. They're not giant cranks in their own personal capacity. And they don't see Blanche as one either. They have been, some of these guys have been sort of astonished at how far Blanche has been willing to go, but it is ultimately the same kind of accommodation that they have all made. And if they were, if you, if, if, if they were to reject Blanche, it just throws open another possibility of getting like a true crank in there. And again, I don't think this is like a good argument. I think, you know, we have seen over and over again that these sorts of people who have come into it for mercenary reasons, come into Trump's sway for mercenary reasons, can do just as much damage, maybe even more. Sometimes the true believers, at least the true believers, they have their, like, trip wires and they have their third rails. When you see people like Marjorie Taylor Greene who are willing to burn that because they were in it for reasons of conscience before, and when that gets scandalized, then they're out. These other guys are already going against their consciences from like the minute they get in. So it's not like Trump usually gives them an order that they're like, oh, well, now I'm, now I've decided to turn up my nose at this one because they've been squishing their consciences down all along. That said, like, the other thing with these, these senators is like, I don't think that they're necessarily getting back in line fully like they used to be. I just think that we're kind of seeing how flimsy and sort of limp wristed and weak this, this kind of Republican opposition is turning out to be. Where it's like, it turns out if something is really intolerable, they will put their foot down until that intolerable thing is at least whisked out of their direct field of view. And once that happens, they do not learn any permanent lessons about Donald Trump and the way he conducts business and the way that he's the kind of guy who would try to inflict this on him. They're just like, boy, am I glad that that anti weaponization fund is no longer, like, being asked of me to comment on every day in the Senate basement. Boy, am I glad that I don't have to make a big stink about that anymore. And I'm going to go back to as much of a defensive posture as I can get away with until the next one comes. And I guess I'm glad that they're doing that. I guess it's better than what it was before. But it's not as much better as maybe people like us would have hoped.
- [34:03]
C
No, you bring up such an interesting point, which is, you know, the sort of, you know, fire hose of controversy has that effect where it's like the weaponization fund, if you remember, like two, three weeks ago, seemed all consuming, right? It was. It was all consuming.
- [34:17]
E
Well, it was like the craziest fucking thing he's ever done. I mean, like, maybe not had those guys storm the Capitol, but like, it was, it was.
- [34:23]
C
But this was an extension of the. This was an extension of the storming of the Capitol. It's nuts. And now we're like, okay, yeah, but that's been settled because they gave us a, like, you know, what a piece of paper said.
- [34:34]
E
They're not doing it. They're like, my fun's not happening.
- [34:38]
C
But we, but the thing is, we've also moved on to other things, which is like, you know, and some of them are silly and some are real, but like, what's happening in Iran, obviously quite real. The Reflecting Pool, I think it's a legitimate story, but it's not on the same level as the weaponization fund, you know, so there's. But that is the side effect of this, you know, fountainhouse of controversy that happens with Trump. Going into comments, Merga Troy sp asks, wait, did SCOTUS actually do something good? Well, I guess it depends on your view of good. But in this case, I presume you mean that did they rule against Trump and. Yeah, they did. They ruled twice against Trump. One in Lisa Cook case, one in this mail in balloting case. And the conventional wisdom is that tomorrow we will get the big birthright citizenship case. And the conventionalism is that, well, we're definitely getting the birthright citizenship case tomorrow because tomorrow the Supreme Court has announced his last day of opinions. The conventional wisdom is that they will rule against Trump tomorrow in that case. There are a couple other cases on the books. Two. Two, I believe, involving transgender athletes and one involving campaign finance. So we'll see how those go. But, you know, I think Kyle's point, which I think is valid and we can chew on for a little bit, is like, is the Supreme Court like, you know, obviously it's a conservative Supreme Court. No one's denying that. But are they, Are they showing flashes of occasional independence? Yeah, I think so. Tariffs, probably. Birthright citizenship Lisa Cook, you know, that's not nothing, right?
- [36:04]
E
No, it's not nothing at all. I mean, these are some of it's like what Kyle was just saying on the mail in voting stuff. This is stuff that is core, core, core to Trump's view of what he needs to be able to deliver for his people. I mean, what was a bigger economic initiative than the tariffs which the Supreme Court slapped down, you know, unequivocally. Right. The Liberation Day tariffs, at least. I mean, like, we have seen, again, it is a conservative Supreme Court. We should not be shocked that a conservative Supreme Court is going to give wins, well, even a lot of wins to a Republican president. We should not even be shocked that this particular Supreme Court is going to take a lot of shackles off of this guy's executive power, because that's the view of executive power that a lot of these guys have, you know, independent of and preceding Donald Trump. It is, I think, in both of our view, really unfortunate that this is the moment when we're getting to decide all of this stuff where it's like, you know, we've made all these arguments for years and years, or a lot of Republicans have talked themselves into being okay with Donald Trump over the years, in large part because they're like, oh, there are always going to be people around him to kind of curb his worst impulses and, you know, he's going to have these laws hemming him in. And now we're sort of systematically going through and demolishing so many of these, these restraints. And so I totally say, like I said before, I totally get why people are like, hello, do you guys see who the President is? Why is this the moment that you're taking to do all that stuff? But I do completely reject the argument that what's happening here is that these guys are actually just in the Supreme Court's or in the president's pocket. They have been willing to go against him on giant initiatives of his.
- [37:34]
C
Put up the Megyn Kelly tweet. It's very brief. Barrett, again, wtf? That's Amy Coney Barrett that she's talking about, who's ruled against Trump on a couple of occasions. In this case, she's responding to the Watson vs. RNC ruling, which is about mail in ballots being counted after election day, assuming that they were cast before or on election day. So there is real anger. There has been some real anger on the conservative side towards Amy Coney Bear. And, and we ran an essay, I forget who was by, about anger that they're having. There's been towards Neil Gorsuch around constitutionalism. He was on a book tour and he was talking about that. So, you know, there are, there are these, you know, obviously they're not big fans of John Roberts either, which is kind of the irony here is that the two justices closest to retiring are Alito and Thomas, and they're the most reliable Trump votes on the court.
- [38:28]
E
Yeah, I don't think that is necessarily a situation. A lot of people are very excited. I mean, maybe much more astute court watchers than I myself. But, yes, the people who are the most reliable for the president consistently on basically every single one of these cases are Alito and Thomas, who are the ones who wants, who predate him. And I do think, like all our analysis, we could be sitting here in a completely different world if Donald Trump had just nominated a couple of different people the last time around. There's this weird sense in which, like his sort of devil's bargain or the Federalist Society's devil's bargain that they made with him early on that gave him a lot of his credibility with the sort of institutional conservative, right, where he's like, I'm going to pick from this, this guy's list of judges. You know, Trump has way soured on the whole conservative legal movement. He has way soured on all these guys. If he gets the opportunity to make more picks, you can bet they're going to be real lunatics who are going to vote for him, you know, oh,
- [39:19]
C
I have, I have my name.
- [39:20]
E
I mean, it's going to be, it's going to be wild, but it is this one of these weird wrinkles of history.
- [39:25]
C
There's one name in particular.
- [39:26]
E
Who's your name?
- [39:28]
C
Judge Elaine Cannon. Nicely.
- [39:30]
E
Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. Or Ted Cruz. I don't know, like, but, but it is, it is interesting that, like, because of this one bargain that he made with this group of people who think a lot like him some of the time, but a lot not like him a lot of the time, he continues to sort of like, pay for that in a way that is interesting and I think, like, good, we should be able to be happy about that. I mean, it doesn't, it's not ceding any ground to be able to say, like, this very conservative Supreme Court is still able to get in, in wedged in Trump's teeth from time to time. And that seems like a good thing.
- [40:01]
C
Nut Anders Wik asks, did SCOTUS address, address the algae issue? No. No, they did not rule on the reflecting pool.
- [40:10]
E
They're going to rule on that in. In, you know, summer of 2033. I think that they'll get around to that one.
- [40:16]
C
Okay. Yeah. All right. Any last thoughts before we call this a successful broadcast?
- [40:25]
E
Oh, from me? I thought you meant from the people. No.
- [40:28]
C
Yeah.
- [40:28]
E
Now we hit it. We got. I feel it. I feel good.
- [40:31]
C
We faked it till we made it. Unbelievable.
- [40:35]
E
When you sent Kyle off and you're like, we're gonna hang around, I was like, whoa. We're gonna hang around. Send me off. Talk to Kyle.
- [40:41]
C
I wanted to send you off, but Kyle had to go. All right. Actually, for those who really want, like, deep legal news, we do have something coming up. Up on illegal news this week, Sarah Longwell is joined by Supreme Court and American legal scholar Steve Vladic. Steve is awesome. I've been on a couple panels with the guy. Guy knows this stuff inside and out. He is the expert on this. So you're going to want to tune into that. If you like what you heard today and want to hear more about the state of the Supreme Court's rulings this week, please be sure to subscribe to the Bulwark and tune in for legal news. Folks, there's no better way to celebrate July 4th than splurging a little bit on a Bulwark subscription. So click that button. Till then, Andrew, buddy, pal, see you later, man.
- [41:24]
E
Adios. Thanks, everybody.
- [41:26]
B
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