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- [00:00]
A
Hello and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen D. Rook. Happy 250th birthday, America. A lot has changed since our bicentennial in 1976, let alone 1776. But one thing has basically remained the same. Almost the same percentage of Americans today say they are interested in commemorating our country's semiquincentennial. As said, they were interested in commemorating our bicentennial 50 years ago. But that top line number masks one of the major trends of the past 50 years. So is it good data, bad data, or not data? We're going to get into it. We're also going to look back at a blockbuster term for the Supreme Court, during which the Justices wrestled with, among other things, how powerful the American President is. While we're checking in on the branches of government, we might as well stop by Congress. This Congress has gotten a reputation for being dysfunctional and unproductive. But there's been a flurry of activity recently before lawmakers head home for summer recess. But will Trump accept yes for an answ, at least on housing? Lastly, we've got to get to the latest round of New York Times Senate battleground polls. We have new high quality polls in North Carolina, Maine, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, and Alaska. I feel like Oprah. You get a high quality poll, you get a high quality poll. We also have a new political typology survey from Pew suggesting Americans are not nearly as divided as our 5050 stalemate makes it seem. So here with me to cover all of that, which is basically a run through of where we are as a country on our 250th birth is Gabe Fleischer of the Wake up to Politics newsletter. Welcome back to the podcast, Gabe.
- [01:36]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [01:36]
A
Galen, how are you feeling on America's 250th birthday?
- [01:41]
B
I'm feeling good. I was at the Great American State Fair last night, so I've already been celebrating. It was.
- [01:47]
A
What were the highlights?
- [01:48]
B
You know, I loved, I thought to me that the number one highlight was the Guam tent was great. They had great music, they had snacks. Guam, they were, they were partying out in Guam. But it was, it was. I had a really good time. I've seen a lot of criticism of it, but I, I had fun. I was with some friends just kind of bopping around the different states and I, I enjoyed it.
- [02:04]
A
All right, a rare shout out to Guam on the GD Politics podcast. We love it. Let's dive in. Marquette's June national survey found that 57% of Americans say they are at least fairly interested in the commemoration of our SIMI quincentennial. Almost identical to a Roper poll ahead of the bicentennial, which was 61% of Americans saying they were at least fairly interested in in our commemoration. Fantastic. A majority of Americans care that our Democratic Republic has survived for 250 years. But where there was essentially no partisan gap in 1976. So 66% of Republicans say they were interested. 63% of Democrats say that they're fairly interested. Interestingly, independents back then were the least interested at 56%. Today, there is a significant partisan gap. So Republicans are 33 points likelier than Democrats to say that they are interested in commemorating our country 250th birthday. Gabe, there's a lot to unpack there. But top line, is that good data, bad data or not data?
- [03:10]
B
I think it's good data. I mean, I think it's interesting for sure. I mean, obviously, I guess. I think both the takeaways that you noted are interesting. I think there has been a sense at least that I've seen from some of the commentary that the 1976 bicentennial did get a lot more interest and attention and there was a lot more people kind of engaged with it than there's this one. And so that kind of refutes that, which I think is interesting finding. And then I think the partisan takeaway that you mention is certainly interesting. I think it's not shocking. We see a lot of different findings where you ask people how the economy is and it's pretty much if a Democrat's in office, Democrats love the economy and vice versa. If Republican presidents in office, if you just ask people how they're feeling about the country, how they're feeling about the future of the country, whether the American dreams live. All these questions track so tightly with partisanship. So I think it's not a shocking finding to see. Maybe a similar thing is going on here.
- [03:59]
A
Yeah, to me it was good data, but perhaps insufficient data. Right. Like I want to understand what's going on underneath all of that. Is this based on reactions to Trump specifically, or are Republicans more excited about the American Project broadly? And it could also be a little bit of both that gets us to that 33 point gap. I mean, this reminded me of polling that I've seen on abortion where, you know, we also have basically 50 years of polling on that. You don't see that much change over time. But you see the parties effectively sorting into the two camps that we now have where in the Democratic Party basically everyone thinks that abortion should be legal in most cases. And in the Republican Party, it's a little more mixed, but more people than not believe that abortion should not be legal in most circumstances. And so while it looks like the trend lines are continuing apace, as soon as you look under the hood, you see that America has changed an awful lot over those 50 years in terms of how much we have sorted ourselves.
- [05:06]
B
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And I do think it is an interesting question. Is this a Trump specific phenomenon or. I mean, we also, we do see polling that predates the Trump era that does suggest, you know, Democrats feel less patriotic fealty to the country than Republicans. I remember being at a Democratic event a few years ago, an event for, like, young Democrats, and being so struck. I remember there was a speech speaker that kind of asked for a show of hands. These are very engaged young Democratic activists, but not necessarily from the left wing of the party, asked who here would describe themselves as patriotic? And I think a hand went up out of 100 people or something. And that's just an observation that's always stuck with me. And I think it is true. I mean, I was at the Good American State Fair, like I said, I was also last week covering Trump's speech on the National Mall. And Trump speech was obviously highly partisan. But before that, there was different music performances and speeches and stuff. And I have to be honest, I was sitting there thinking, if there was a President Kamala Harris presiding over this, what would it look like to see a Democratic president really out there presiding over a festival of patriotic sentiment? And at least at this one, there's a lot of country music and patriotic songs and shows of military force, definitely things that Democrats are historically less comfortable with. And I think it is an interesting question of what's going on under the hood of maybe even beyond Trump, what, what shifts they might be.
- [06:26]
A
Yeah. Marquette asked how proud respondents are of our country, and we see a similar divide to the one that you've just described. So 88% of Republicans say that they're proud. 49% of Democrats say that they're proud. And then the age gap is exactly what you mentioned. So amongst 18 to 29 year olds, 48. So less than a majority say they're proud. Amongst 60 plus, it's 76% say that they are, are proud. And like, this is a poll that is still conducted in the Trump era. So if we were, again, if we had a President Kamala Harris right now, how different would that be? Like, I think it is both. I think it's a reaction to Trump. And I also think it is more than a 50 year long history of Democrats being a little more skeptical of the idea of patriotism, American force in general, like you just mentioned. So overall, a majority of Americans excited to commemorate our 250th birthday. And we are going to get back to the question of those divisions in American life a little bit later. If this sounded depressing, hold, hold tight. Cause there is some optimism coming. But let's talk about scotus. So since Monday's podcast, we've had decisions in the final four cases of the term. The Supreme Court lifted spending limits on political party coordination with candidates, upheld state bans on trans athletes in women's sports, and rejected Trump's interpretation of birthright citizenship. Gabe, you were at the Supreme Court on Tuesday when all of this drama happened and some extra drama surrounding a sort of reported and then retracted retirement of Justice Samuel Alito. We'll get into that drama. But first I just want to let you share your key takeaways from the term, some of which you shared in your newsletter this morning.
- [08:11]
B
I did, yeah. I mean, I think my, my key takeaways and obviously what I was reading about this morning was kind of what I think has been kind of the dominant theme of this Supreme Court term, you know, going from October 2025 to here in June 2026, which has been kind of the relationship between Donald Trump and the Supreme Court and this, I think kind of awkward dance that, you know, the president and the Supreme Court justices, obviously a third of whom he appointed, six of whom were appointed by his party, this kind of awkward dance that has been kind of going on between these two branches of government, obviously for, for many of the 250 years of our history. But I think arguably never more so, or at least it's been a long time since to, to the degree that we've seen under the Trump presidency. And I would say, you know, my, my top line takeaway that I talked about in the news morning is that I do think you see a pretty clear pattern, at least in kind of the Trump related cases before the court and the non Trump related cases, which is that when Trump kind of has hewed to kind of the principles of the traditional conservative legal movement, he's generally been quite successful. Obviously. I think the most consequential of those is you mentioned the decision in Trump v. Slaughter which will let the president kind of fire independent agency officials or officials that agencies that we've historically kind of looked at as independent, you Know which, which ties really neatly into to, you know, this kind of project of a unitary executive theory that conservative legal minds have been pushing for decades now that many of the justices on this court have, you know, really kind of came up in the conservative legal world when this was kind of percolating and becoming a more prominent theory. And so you see the same thing when Trump's trying to hewed to those sorts of totems of the conservative legal movement, whether it's, you know, a lot of the rulings on kind of just strictly kind of border security and immigration will get into birthright citizenship, but just in terms of enforcing immig law, in terms of, you know, his. We've seen over the course of this term different policies relating with the president and transgender Americans. Obviously, we also saw not related to Trump, but the case on transgender, you know, women and girls playing sports in schools. And we also saw, you know, a campaign finance, like you said, that kind of cued to a pretty conservative bent. But the, but there is when, you know, obviously, as we know, this is not a president who has, in at least his attempts, you know, attempts to enact policy as kind of hewed only to conservative legal orthodoxy. He's also really tried to step beyond and expand the powers of the presidency in ways far beyond, you know, what conservative legal theorists have talked about for a long time. You talk about, you know, restricting birthright citizenship, firing governor of the Federal Reserve. Obviously, earlier in the term. We saw, you know, sweeping tariff powers. We saw him try to deport people without really due process, using the Alien Enemies act on all of those much more sweeping and much more kind of Trump specific uses of executive power, he pretty much lost each time. And each time you saw the three liberal justices, John Roberts, the chief justice, and then at least one, if not two of his own appointees kind of rebuking him on those kind of more extreme, aggressive uses of power.
- [10:59]
A
Yeah, we actually both talked to Sarah Isger, who is the editor of SCOTUS Blog Me on the podcast you as part of the newsletter, and she tries to make this argument that the Supreme Court is not as ideological as it seems. And I countered with the dynamic that you just laid out there, which is it is still highly ideological when it comes to the conservative divide, conservative liberal divide, as say, imagined by, you know, George W. Bush or something like that, which is the period during which so many of these justices came up. It is the thing that makes it look more heterodox is the fact that Trump himself is not a conservative, as we've understood the word for a long time. So do you see it that way, too? That, like, part of what makes this court look not so ideological and sort of ready to rebut Trump is that it's just that Trump himself is not a conservative a lot of the time.
- [12:00]
B
I think that's exactly right. I think, yes. I think Donald Trump is not pushing a conservative legal project. And so these judges who he literally picked, you know, in accordance with the conservative legal movement are not, you know, where he is. It's not. It's a conservative court, but not a MAGA court that he might want. I think the key kind of distinction here is, I think similar to what you're saying is this is clearly not a partisan court. A partisan court would be, look, okay, we have a Republican president in office. When a Republican president wants to do something, we're all Republican appointed justices. We're gonna say, yes, if it's a Republican president and no, it's a Democratic president. That's clearly not what's going on here. So we know it's not a partisan court, but is it an ideological court? I think that argument is a lot more in its favor. Not necessarily that they're looking at party lines, but they're clearly. And this isn't. You can, you can be cynical about this or not, and I think both explanations are fair. You could cynically say they're just trying to apply their own political beliefs, or you could say they have conservative legal principles that they believe in that they're kind of applying, at least hopefully, you know, neutrally, no matter who's in office. I think a good example, you know, when you look at the unitary executive theory and cases like Trump v. Slaughter, where the president was trying to remove independent agency officials, you know, there's been a lineage of cases over the last few years where the court has really advanced with that kind of project of letting the president fire more and more independent officials. The maybe first one in this kind of exact lineage would be a case called Seal, a law which was under the first Trump administration involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But the second was a case Collins Vllen, and that was during the Biden administration. It allowed Biden to fire the kind of Trump appointed head of the fhfa, the agency that Bill Pulte. Pulte is the head of now, the federal head, Federal Housing Finance Agency. And so that's like, I think, a good example that you can kind of point to where you're like, okay, a partisan court would not have let Joe Biden Fire, you know, a top housing regulator because he was a Democrat. But ideological court might say, no matter who the party, who's in office, we believe in kind of the conservative legal effort to, you know, try to expand the powers of the presidency over the executive branch. And therefore, you know, we're going to let Biden fire the head of the FHFA and let Trump fire the head of the ftc. And that's certainly ideological, that, that there is a very clear ideological project that's behind that. But it might not be partisan if you're letting presidents of both parties do it.
- [14:14]
A
Right. And I think if you spend time reading Partizan Media on either side, you will see that no partisans are happy with the court at this very moment, which maybe gives credence to your explanation. But I think one of the reasons that folks are cynical about this court is its seeming lack of deference to precedent, or at least compared to past courts. Is that a fair critique of this court?
- [14:40]
B
I mean, according to the political scientists and kind of legal experts who have looked at it, it's not. You know, there was a study that was published a few years ago. I believe Lee Epstein, who's at WashU, was one of the professors on the study. And they basically looked at kind of each iteration of the Supreme Court, looking at each chief justice, you know, over time, show the Roberts Court, the Rehnquist Court, the Berger Court, and so on, and they found the Roberts Court was no more likely to overturn precedent than previous courts. I think it is kind of one of those things where we kind of, for, for a long time, it has been the norm that you kind of see one or two precedents per term, perhaps overturned. And obviously those get a lot of attention and with good reason. But. But the data does not suggest that it's any more likely. You know, we did see just yesterday, literally as I was sitting in the court, we saw Humphrey's executor, which was the precedent on independent agencies, get overturned in Trump fee slaughter, and then also a case called Coll Dorado, too, which got overturned in the campaign finance case about party committees. And so that is two precedents in one day, which obviously, on one hand, when you're literally sitting in the court and you're like, oh, my gosh, you just saw two precedents fall at once. But if you do take a step back and look, at least the professors who have studied this have found that the Roberts court, I believe, is actually slightly less likely than previous courts to overturn precedent. But it's a fairly Stable couple precedents of terms.
- [15:56]
A
We haven't talked that much about the party candidate coordination case on this podcast. It's largely being considered as a win for Republicans, and that's in large part because that case was ultimately brought by J.D. vance and others. But of course, the Democratic Party can now also spend and coordinate as it would like with its own candidates. Why exactly is this even given that, more of a win for Republicans than Democrats?
- [16:26]
B
Yeah, so this case, just so people know, is kind of about limits on kind of coordinated expenditures. You know, kind of how much money can a, can a campaign committee spend in conjunction, you know, strategizing with a candidate themselves? And obviously, as some of your listeners might know, candidates you'll have access to, you know, much friendlier rates when they're trying to advertise on TV and radio and so on. And so kind of will give party committees a piece of that pie as well when they're working with candidates. And exactly like you said, yeah, this case was brought by the NRC and a few other Republican candidates, including our now vice president. But all the party committees will have equal access to it. But, but the answer is really that the Democratic Party committees are really in just much worse financial shape than the, than the Republican Party committees, you know, at the last report, you know, and this will apply to all, you know, the rnc, dnc, rscc, dscc, you know, the House Senate committees as well. But the RNC, as of last report, had $125 million cash on hand. The DNC had $15 million in cash on hand and was $18 billion in debt. So you kind of just see the imbalance of, in theory, if you had both parties having, you know, put equal resources, funneling equal resources into the party committees, there would be no advantage to the Republicans that party committees would have access to these kind of, you know, to these limits going away. But, but just the reality is that, that the Democrats kind of let these party committees really kind of fester. And particularly the DNC was saddled with a lot of debt after the Kamala Harris campaign, and they're just in a lot worse shape. Doesn't mean, you know, five years from now that could change. There's nothing stopping the Democrats from changing that. But at least as we stand right now, that, that, you know, the, the immediate advantage is going to the Republicans who just have a lot more money stored up in those committees.
- [17:57]
A
And on the flip side, Democratic candidates have, as of late, been better at fundraising, and so would have, if in the status quo before yesterday, would have better access to those cheaper rates. But now all of that RNC money can also be driven towards those better rates for advertising and the like. I mean, the other thing that it potentially does here, which is interesting for political scientists to contend with, is, in theory, it should strengthen political parties. And one of the criticisms of the direction that we moved in as a country is that we have extremely high rates of partisanship polarization, but the parties are very weak. And so people just feel very much like they belong to a team. But then that team has actually very little say in terms of what kind of candidates it fields or what policies or values it stands for. And in theory, these stronger parties could marshal funds according with their values more effectively than just, you know, an upstart candidate here, an upstart candidate there, riling up maybe the most activist or most partisan part of the party and, you know, winning primaries and the like accordingly. I don't know if that will play out in practice, if this will actually strengthen parties, but if it would, there are some political scientists out there who would say that's not such a bad thing.
- [19:12]
B
No, that's exactly right. And a great book for people to read on this is the Hollow Parties by Daniel Schlossman and Sam Roosevelt. And they attack that exact idea that you're talking about. Not just that we have weak parties and strong partisanship, but looking at who has kind of flocked in to replace the weak parties. And the answer on both sides is this kind of network of interest groups we can think of. I think all of your listeners will know, we can think of whether it's Emily's List in the ACLU on the left, or places like. Like the Heritage foundation or, you know, like CPAC on the right.
- [19:42]
A
You know, there's all these sorts of prosperity.
- [19:44]
B
Exactly, exactly. There's all these different groups. And. And clearly we can see the direction that our politics have gone. When you have politics anchored not by kind of parties that are literally just trying to win for their candidates, but. But interest groups that are trying to steer their parties in specific ideological directions versus the more kind of ideology neutral kind of party committees. And we know kind of the effect that that's had in our politics. And we know, you know, to speak of a lineage of Supreme Court cases, they've clearly been, you know, of cases over the years that have strengthened the kind of fundraising abilities of a lot of those interest groups, you know, 501C4 groups and super PACs and so on. But, but, but with Colorado, too, the decision I was talking about before you know, that that we're still kind of constraining the the, the party committees. So this is kind of, again, kind of one more case that kind of continues kind of an ongoing project, but perhaps in a way that, whereas kind of the earlier kind of links in that chain had really kind of gone to the effect of of helping these kind of interest groups that have clearly both kind of polled, you know, the, the left to the left and the right to the right, you know, maybe could kind of funnel more resources to the party committees that that are kind of a little bit more, at least historically, kind of been stabilizing the forces within both parties.
- [20:52]
A
When you think about the most significant rulings of this term, what comes to mind?
- [20:58]
B
I mean, I think it's interesting because I do think we have a.