Pam Bondi Fired as Trump Promised BIG News on the Iran War… Delivered NOTHING (ft. Marc Elias)

Summary

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Raging Moderates: Pam Bondi Fired as Trump Promised BIG News on the Iran War… Delivered NOTHING (ft. Marc Elias)

Podcast: Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Guest: Marc Elias, election lawyer and founder of Democracy Docket
Date: April 2, 2026
Host: Vox Media Podcast Network

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the current chaos and escalating lawlessness in the Trump administration’s second term. Jessica Tarlov and Marc Elias break down Trump’s recent primetime Iran address, the firing rumors around Attorney General Pam Bondi, rampant use of betting markets around war outcomes, the administration’s repeated attempts to undermine election integrity, and the consequential Supreme Court case on birthright citizenship. The conversation threads together how these topics all serve an ongoing project to restrict democracy and disenfranchise American voters—especially as public approval for the administration craters and the stakes rise ahead of the midterms.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Trump’s Anticlimactic Iran Address & White House Disarray

[02:08–03:49]

• Tarlov prompts Elias for his reaction to Trump’s highly promoted primetime address about the Iran war. Both agree the speech was incoherent, lacking substance, and more a poorly stitched-together mashup of old Truth Social posts than decisive leadership.
• Elias: "Why did he need a primetime address for that?" [02:50]
• Tarlov notes the disconnect between Trump’s claim of U.S. energy independence and surging oil prices, with markets reacting negatively to both his words and actions.

Memorable moment:

• Elias: "It's either really bad staff work or a president who is much further gone than we think, or some combination of both." [04:23]

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2. Betting Markets and Insider Knowledge on War Outcomes

[04:45–07:20]

• Tarlov discusses the bizarre and troubling prevalence of significant bets wagered on PolyMarket and other prediction platforms regarding the timing and extent of escalations with Iran.
• Elias: "When you see these really weird, large, oddly timed bets, in a shockingly large number they tend to pay off...don’t ignore the likelihood that people with knowledge are taking financial advantage." [05:40]
• Tension between attempts at regulation and the government’s inability to get anything done, with regulators, especially at DOJ and SEC, hamstrung.
• Notable side story: Exposé of Pete Hegseth's financial advisor betting (and surprisingly losing) on war—raising further questions about the reliability and ethics of those in Trump’s cabinet.

Quote:

• Elias: "He may be the dumbest cabinet official in a cabinet with a lot of dumb people. Or…Trump doesn't trust him with real information." [07:06]

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3. Pam Bondi Rumors, DOJ Flailing, and Authoritarian Drift

[07:20–10:59]

• Reports circulate that Trump wants to fire Attorney General Pam Bondi and possibly bring in Tulsi Gabbard—not because Bondi has gone too far, but not far enough in targeting Trump’s political enemies.
• Elias (on Trump’s dissatisfaction): "She’s pretty aggressively misusing the Department of Justice to go after Donald Trump’s political opponents. And he doesn’t think it’s far enough." [08:17]
• Signs of a flailing White House: ongoing tariffs hurting the economy, SCOTUS interventions, sagging poll numbers.
• Elias: "I do worry that we are still in the early innings of this administration and Donald Trump is searching for an Attorney General who will more efficiently and effectively ignore the facts in the law and go after people Trump doesn't like." [08:23]
• Tarlov observes a growing "crescendo" of panic as the administration's legal and electoral walls close in, leading to ever more desperate and lawless measures.

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4. Executive Orders and Lawsuits: Voter Suppression by Design

[11:09–13:58]

• Trump’s recent executive orders (EOs) on mail-in voting are more drastic after courts struck down earlier efforts; this new EO directs DHS to create the “master list” of eligible voters and ban USPS from carrying certain ballots.
• Elias: "He is essentially saying that he is gonna have the Department of Homeland Security create a master list of all eligible US Citizens to vote and that he will send these to the states, and the states may only send absentee ballots to the people on the list." [12:53]
• Concern that Trump’s ultimate motive is to control the electorate by “picking who gets to vote” under the guise of election security.
• Tarlov is alarmed by the “McCarthy-esque” nature of compiling lists, especially in light of Trump’s publicly posted “Dear Pam” letter instructing Bondi whom to prosecute.

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5. Supreme Court and Birthright Citizenship: Legal Arguments and Consequences

[18:04–22:09]

• The discussion moves to the Supreme Court’s skepticism of Trump’s attempt to nullify birthright citizenship.
• Elias, a Supreme Court veteran: "If you're the lawyer for the United States...the one thing you have to make sure to tell [Gorsuch] is that it's not going to negatively impact Native Americans because he cares enormously about Native Americans." [19:12]
• The government flubs its answer, undermining its own case. Elias predicts a resounding defeat for Trump ("at least six votes" against him, maybe more) in the eventual SCOTUS decision.
• Elias: "I don't see a world in which Donald Trump winds up winning that case and I think that he knows it." [21:35]

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6. The SAVE Act, “Election Security,” and the Real Voter Suppression Agenda

[22:24–29:54]

• Audio of Senator Ron Johnson sets up a critique of the GOP’s argument that foreign “birth tourism” justifies dramatic voter restrictions.
• Elias: "The only thing that Donald Trump right now...is giving him and Republicans the tools to disenfranchise millions of American voters." [25:11]
• They connect how the SAVE Act’s proof-of-citizenship requirements, alongside legal attacks on birthright citizenship, would allow Republicans to systematically question and remove vast numbers of voters, especially women whose names have changed and those without ready documents.
• Elias: "If you don't have birthright citizenship, a birth certificate doesn't prove citizenship." [26:17]
• The current legal, legislative, and administrative offensive is traced back to Trump’s original “birtherism”—denying the validity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

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7. Federal Voter ID Laws: Distinctions, Arguments, and Real-World Impact

[29:54–37:51]

• Tarlov: Clearly distinguishes between voter ID and citizenship requirements, pushing back against the claim that Democrats oppose all voter ID.
• Elias: Focuses on Republican efforts to shape the electorate, especially through restrictions on which IDs are accepted. Disputes over student IDs, elderly voters, and the ability for nursing home caregivers to vouch for residents.
• Elias: "If we wound up in a world in which Republicans wanted to have a serious discussion about ID...I'd be happy to have [that conversation]." [33:54]
• Practical complications: Even "Real ID" in most states doesn’t prove citizenship; few Americans have easy access to original birth certificates; and vital records offices are under-resourced and slow.
• Tarlov relates her own experience: "It took me three trips to the DMV to get my real ID because I have two middle names...and I had to go pouring through my mom's files." [36:24]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Marc Elias: “He is essentially saying that he is gonna have the Department of Homeland Security create a master list of all eligible US Citizens to vote…” [12:53]
• Jessica Tarlov (hypothetical on Trump as podcast guest): “If we did that, Scott would definitely demand to be there and he would just explode and it would be so ugly and I would just be sitting there like this.” [15:27]
• Elias: “If you don't have birthright citizenship, a birth certificate doesn't prove citizenship.” [26:17]
• Elias: “Donald Trump's entire political career was based on the idea that birth certificates don't actually prove citizenship.” [28:23]

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Episode Structure with Timestamps

• 01:32 – Introduction of Marc Elias and episode themes
• 02:08–03:49 – Dissection of Trump’s Iran address (plus audio clip: [03:36])
• 04:45–07:20 – Betting markets, insider knowledge, and cabinet oddities
• 07:20–10:59 – Bondi firing rumors and DOJ authoritarianism
• 11:09–13:58 – Voter suppression executive orders, litigation, and the “master list”
• 18:04–22:09 – Supreme Court oral arguments on birthright citizenship—analysis and predictions
• 22:24–29:54 – SAVE Act, proof-of-citizenship, and “birtherism” legacy in policy
• 29:54–37:51 – Voter ID, practical obstacles, state requirements, and why most Americans don’t have the documents they’d need
• 36:24 – Tarlov’s personal story about documentation struggles

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Takeaways

• Ongoing Pattern: Trump administration exploiting chaos for more drastic electoral and legal maneuvers, with civil rights and fair elections in the crosshairs.
• Throughlines: Executive actions, legislation, and SCOTUS cases all connect back to a centralized goal: narrowing the pool of who can vote, with echoes from the “birther” movement.
• Marc Elias: Remains confident about legal victories but deeply concerned about the rising “authoritarian tool” turn as political fortunes wane.
• Jessica Tarlov: Provides on-the-ground media and personal insight; increasingly alarmed at normalization of anti-democratic actions.
• Notable Dismantling: The difference between common-sense voter ID laws (widely accepted) and the draconian, targeted barriers being advanced in the name of security.

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The Bottom Line

This episode of Raging Moderates delivers both alarm and clarity, exposing how the administration’s latest moves—from war posturing and primetime nothing-burgers, to ever-more sweeping attacks on voting rights—are connected not by policy, but by a relentless drive to entrench minority rule and sidestep accountability. Marc Elias’s legal knowledge and dark humor, paired with Tarlov’s real-time reflections and pushback, make this a must-listen (or must-read) for anyone wanting to understand the deeper stakes behind America’s latest political battles.

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Transcript

[Podcast Host 1]

You can tell a lot about a person by their accent. I really do say I pog my

[Podcast Host 2]

cat and have a yacht. Everyone around here says, like a coffee and dwog.

[Jessica Tarlov]

We're so attached to the way that we sound because it tells a part of the story of who we are.

[Podcast Host 1]

Your accent decoded. That's this week on Explain It To Me. Find new episodes Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Henry Blodgett]

Wharton Professor Ethan Moore says that with AI, his students are doing a semester's worth of work in just a couple of days. In Malik's classroom, AI is required. I'm Henry Blodgett, and this week on Solutions, I talked to Professor Malik about how he's radically transformed how he teaches and how he continues to test the boundaries of what AI can and cannot do. Follow Solutions with Henry Blodgett to hear our conversation.

[Mark Elias]

I think the most chilling thing about

[Jesse]

the Bondi story is not that he doesn't like the fact that she handled the Epstein files in that I actually agree with him. Maybe I dislike the way she handled the Epstein files in a different direction than him, but that is not the chilling part.

[Mark Elias]

The chilling part is she is not

[Jesse]

aggressively enough pursuing his political opponents, and

[Mark Elias]

she's pretty aggressively misusing the Department of

[Jesse]

Justice to go after Donald Trump's political opponents.

[Mark Elias]

And he doesn't think it's far enough.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Jessica Tarlov, and today I'm joined by Mark Elias, one of the country's top election lawyers, the top election lawyer in the country and the founder of democracy docket. Mark, welcome back to the show.

[Jesse]

Thanks for having me on.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Absolutely. This is perfect, like super bowl timing, actually, to have you join the podcast, though in the Trump era, it feels like maybe the super bowl of fighting them in court is like every day

[Mark Elias]

where the other team, by the way,

[Jesse]

periodically the coach of the other team just sort of like wanders up and down the sidelines, like yelling at clouds, yelling at clouds.

[Jessica Tarlov]

And still getting paid billions of dollars, which also links to your work. If you aren't already. Please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page to stay in the loop on all the political news. I want to start with the primetime address. You watched the 20 minutes I did. How did you feel?

[Mark Elias]

What was that like? Literally, what was that like? You know, I am accustomed to the

[Jesse]

rambling, hateful Donald Trump, but then there's like the we put a teleprompter in front of him and make him be really boring Donald Trump.

[Mark Elias]

And last night was just kind of

[Jesse]

like the he just was incoherent.

[Mark Elias]

Why did he need a primetime address for that?

[Jessica Tarlov]

Well, there, I think that some interns stitch together a bunch of truth social posts, basically. And I should not have aspirations to, like, actually get something new and coherent or that, like, moves the country forward or a real policy position from the President. But when they were leaking to the press yesterday, you know, these are the four goals, like I thought, okay, we're going to hear it's two to three weeks left the Stone Age line, and maybe there'll be something substantive. But I'm sure the networks are looking around at themselves saying, obviously we had to take it because Brendan Carr is going to come and assassinate us. But, like, I delayed Survivor 20 minutes for this, actually. Let's watch a clip of it.

[Donald Trump (clip)]

We're now totally independent of the Middle east and yet we are there to help. We don't have to be there. We don't need their oil. We don't need anything they have. But we're there to help our allies.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Totally independent of the Middle east. Oil just hit $113 a barrel, up 13% just today alone. We don't feel that independent from the Middle East.

[Jesse]

No.

[Mark Elias]

And like I said, I just as a crowd, you know, I've been around,

[Jesse]

you know, presidents, presidential candidates, House and Senate members, a lot of politicians.

[Mark Elias]

Was that loaded in the teleprompter? Like, literally, like what? Right. Exactly. It was like, like, who did someone write that and then go home and be like, you know, you're not gonna

[Jesse]

believe I wrote this amazing speech for the President of the United States and

[Mark Elias]

that's what it was. I mean, it's incoherent. We're independent of the Middle East. Gas prices are skyrocketing, the markets are reacting negatively. But we're here to help. I mean, it's just. It's either really bad staff work or a president who is much further gone

[Jesse]

than we think, than we understand, or. Or some combination of both.

[Jessica Tarlov]

I've been fascinated by the betting markets or prediction markets aspect of this. And I brought this up on the Five yesterday that the same Poly Market wallet that had $500,000 on exactly the moment that we were going to first strike. Iran has 800,000 on a ground invasion. A, do you think we are heading for the ground invasion? And B, are we ever going to be able to regulate what's going on here? I know that there are bills, you know, Chris Murphy has a bill about this, but the people who are supposed to doing the regulating are having to quit because it's impossible to get any work done in this doj in this sec.

[Jesse]

Yeah. So, you know, on the, on the betting markets, I mean, if you bet, to use a unfortunate term, on the

[Mark Elias]

insider knowledge you, you usually want. In other words, like when you see

[Jesse]

these really weird, you know, large, oddly timed bets, they, they in a shockingly large number tend to pay off. So, you know, I would, I would, I'm not going to tell anyone to engage in the betting markets. But, but don't, you know, don't, don't, don't ignore the real possibility or likelihood that there are people who have knowledge who are then, you know, who are then taking financial advantage, the betting markets. Look, I think there has to be some kind of regulation of this. I mean, states have anti gambling laws or regulate gambling for a lot of good reasons. And I understand that the betting markets think that they have found some loophole to that. But if that's the case, then I think honestly there needs to be further regulations. It's a crazy way to let the government run where you can have people who have, you know, some type of insider information, bet on things like War and Peace.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Yeah, I mean, I, I understand, you know, odds of Jesus's actual resurrection and things like that are fun for people, but the War and Peace and also that, you know, there was a big expose about Pete Hegseth financial advisor making a big bet, but they actually lost. And I'm like, how can the Secretary of Defense be the one person who didn't end up profiting from the war that he seemingly controls?

[Mark Elias]

It may tell you two things about Pete Hegseth.

[Jesse]

Number one, that he may be the dumbest cabinet official in a, in a cabinet with a lot of dumb people.

[Mark Elias]

But number two, it may, it may

[Jesse]

indicate that actually Donald Trump doesn't trust him with real information.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Both are really bad for our status quo as we are engaged in a war that he is seemingly has some degree of control over. From the Pentagon at Mar a Lago. I'm sure you saw the Times report that apparently Pam Bondi might be on the chopping block. And Tulsi Gabbard, two key figures in your world and your work. Do you think that there's truth to that and what do you think the implications are?

[Mark Elias]

Yeah, look, I think the most chilling

[Jesse]

thing about the Bondi story is not that, you know, he doesn't like the fact that she handled the Epstein files in that I actually agree with him. Maybe I dislike the way she handled the Epstein files in a different direction than him. But like, that is not the chilling part.

[Mark Elias]

The chilling part is she is not

[Jesse]

aggressively enough pursuing his political opponents and

[Mark Elias]

she's pretty aggressively misusing the Department of

[Jesse]

Justice to go after Donald Trump's political opponents.

[Mark Elias]

And he doesn't think it's far enough.

[Jesse]

I do worry that we are still in the early innings of this administration and Donald Trump is searching for an Attorney General who will more efficiently and effectively ignore the facts in the law and go after people that Donald Trump doesn't like.

[Jessica Tarlov]

It does feel like there's a flailing happening now that like the first year of the administration, I didn't think as much. We should note it's one year since Liberation Day today. Obviously the impact of the tariffs has been disastrous for the economy. And you know, SCOTUS pulled him back a bit. But in general, if like the last few months, and certainly with the war, it's feel, it's felt like a flailing crescendo, I guess, like that the polls are catching up with the reality on the ground for Trump. Are you sensing that as well? And do you think that means that they are just going to go hyper lawless because they have nothing else to do and they're staring down the barrel of losing the midterms?

[Mark Elias]

Yeah, I think that you put your

[Jesse]

finger on my biggest concern.

[Mark Elias]

You know, normally when you have politicians

[Jesse]

who are not popular, when you have presidents who are not popular, what it does is it causes them to moderate. Remember the triangulation, that concept of triangulation from the Clinton era? Right.

[Mark Elias]

That was nothing more than saying, like,

[Jesse]

look, when you're not popular, what you need to do is find the midpoint between Democrats and Republicans and try to create policies that are essentially popular with both sides or try to play the two sides and you look like you're in the middle. That's sort of politics 101.

[Mark Elias]

The problem with Donald Trump is that

[Jesse]

he, I think, views his unpopularity as a lack of constraints.

[Mark Elias]

In other words, that if he's not

[Jesse]

popular, what it means is that popularity is no longer the metric by which he is going to gauge himself, successful or not. So I think what it means, he is much more likely to undermine free and fair elections. This fall we just saw him issue a blatantly unconstitutional executive order. I think it means that he will flirt much more seriously and dangerously with the misuse of federal agents, whether they're ICE or CPV or whoever around the elections. We've seen him say he wished he'd seize the ballots after the 2020 election. And we saw him seize ballots related to the 2020 election in Fulton county and subpoena his Department of Justice subpoenaed them in Arizona.

[Mark Elias]

So I think we're actually.

[Jesse]

I think him being unpopular actually is much more dangerous to the midterm elections than if he was moderately unpopular like

[Mark Elias]

he's normally, but he would then be like, oh, but I'll just gin up

[Jesse]

my base and I'll go to rallies. I think that once he loses faith in that, as he doesn't moderate, he actually just looks for a more authoritarian tool.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Yeah, I mean, worse for me because I have to watch the rallies, but probably better for us if he's having a great time in rural Ohio, you know, with a bunch of die hard MAGA fans, because that, you know, 25% of the base is definitely still there. I know that you've brought a lawsuit now about his latest mail in voting eo, which he signed a couple days ago. Can you talk about what's going on with that case and. And in that world in particular?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah.

[Mark Elias]

So look, this is a very dangerous

[Jesse]

inflection point in our democracy. Donald Trump in 2025 issued an executive order last year saying that he was going to change some of the rules related to voter registration. And I represented the Democratic Party and we sued and we won. And the outcome of that was a federal district court order in which the judge said, in very plain terms that the President of the United States plays no role. Okay. That's the ruling of the court. No role in regul. And by the way, that accords with the Constitution, which says that states set the time, place and manner of elections subject only to Congress's legislative override. And there is nothing in any part of the Constitution that gives the President any role in this area.

[Mark Elias]

We thought that maybe that was the end of it. You know, he had taken his shot

[Jesse]

and he had lost. But no, he came back now with a new executive order, which even Republicans, you know, not on the record, but Republicans are whispering, is just bonkers. I mean, it's just fucking nuts. I mean, he is essentially saying that he is gonna have the Department of Homeland Security create a master list of all eligible US Citizens to vote and that he will send these to the states. And the states may only send absentee ballots to the people on the list

[Mark Elias]

that his DHS provides them. I mean, it's a.

[Jesse]

And then the Postal service is gonna ban the postal Service from carrying mail

[Mark Elias]

in ballots under certain circumstances. He doesn't have the power to do

[Jesse]

any of those things. None of them.

[Mark Elias]

But he is doing it because if

[Jesse]

he can create the master list of

[Mark Elias]

who can vote and who can't vote. You know, Jessica, I have a feeling

[Jesse]

I know which list you and I are gonna wind up on. I think I have a pretty good idea of what list a whole lot of Democrats are gonna wind up on.

[Mark Elias]

And if you don't believe that, like, just look at. Read the Dear Pam, the Dear Pam's

[Jesse]

Truth social of a few months ago when he told Pam Bondi, you know, who to go prosecute.

[Mark Elias]

So look, this is very dangerous.

[Jesse]

We file a laws on behalf of the National Democratic Party as well as Senator Schumer and Leader Jeffries. And I have every expectation we're going to win. But I also have every expectation that this is not the last effort that Donald Trump will engage in. He's not like, you know, a rule of law kind of guy. You know, if he loses, he doesn't say, okay, I guess I can't do that.

[Jessica Tarlov]

He does not take defeat well. And yeah, I remember that Dear Pam letter. I think that was the one that we thought had to have been a private dm, but that he just put it out there because he is 80 years old and those things kind of happen even if you're the leader of the free world. So I'm very nervous about that. Not only the kind of McCarthy list of folks like you and me and, you know, outspoken Republicans do. I don't think it's just like a Dem versus Republicans, just like it's.

[Jesse]

Outspoken Republicans probably are in worse shape.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Yeah, well, sorry, Bulwark, that's worse for

[Mark Elias]

you not to hijack your show, but I've been meaning to ask you, do you have his phone number? It seems like everyone, everyone's got his phone number. Have you ever just like picked up the phone and called the President?

[Jessica Tarlov]

No, I haven't. I mean, I definitely, I could access it easily. And you know, my, my colleagues are in seemingly pretty decent, constant communication with him. But I was thinking about it because last week he called into the five and he said a lot of insane things like it doesn't matter if the Iranians have food and water because Dana Perino is hotter than she was in 2016, which I think was probably the most like Trumpian hideous moment. But he was then shit talking me and I was like, should we just invite him on Raging Moderates? Like, is that because he would probably love to do it because he's not going to have to answer any or he won't answer the questions. And then I thought, if we did that. Scott would like, definitely demand to be there and he would just explode and it would be so ugly and I would just be sitting there like this. So, no, I have not. I don't have access to the phone number right away, but I could text someone and get it. Do you want. Should we call them together?

[Mark Elias]

That'd be amazing.

[Jesse]

We could do a whole episode of

[Jessica Tarlov]

Raging Moderates where, like Stream where we're just calling him. We should do it at like 3am when he is having a Diet Coke and watching a replay of the five and just like really get him juiced up. Okay, let's take a quick break. Stay with us.

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Hi, I'm Brene Brown.

[Adam Grant]

And I'm Adam Grant.

[Brene Brown]

And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop, a podcast that's a

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place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling and questioning.

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It's going to be fun. We rarely agree, but we almost never

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disagree and we're always learning.

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[Narrator/Host (Explain It To Me)]

There's basically been one guy in Republican politics who's argued for regime change in Iran for years and for America to take a proactive military role in making it happen. Ambassador John Bolton, President Trump's former national security adviser. But now even Bolton says Donald Trump is messing it up.

[John Bolton]

As far as we can tell, he did. No preparation of the opposition actually inside Iran. No coordination, no effort to see what they would do, no effort to support them, to provide resources, money, arms, if that's what they wanted. Telecommunications. Just no coordination at all. And they don't seem prepared for it.

[Narrator/Host (Explain It To Me)]

How Trump lost the Republican Party's biggest Iraq Warhawk today. Explain every weekday and on Saturdays too.

[Podcast Host 2]

In 1984, Apple launched maybe the most consequential computer ever. It was not a good computer, particularly. There was actually a lot wrong with it. But the Macintosh had all of the right ideas about what computers would become and it kind of changed everything. This week on Version History, our chat show about the best and worst and most interesting products in tech history were telling the story of the Macintosh and why, again, despite not being very good, it managed to change everything. Anyway, that's version history on YouTube and wherever you get podcasts.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Welcome back. So birthright citizenship and this links to voting as well. I want to get your general take on how you thought yesterday went. I mean, granted, my feed is curated in a certain direction on days like this, so I was seeing all of the government's fuck ups. I guess more than if he landed any great points. But it seemed like Justice Roberts was extremely skeptical of the argument the government was making. I don't know how anyone shows up in front of Neil Gorsuch and doesn't think they're going to be asked about Native Americans. It feels like someone posted like, oh, I'm going to interview the Cookie Monster. Do you think the Cookie Monster might ask me about cookies? Oh, no worries. I don't have to think about cookies at all. Like, that's Gorsuch and Native Americans. What did you think of how it went?

[Mark Elias]

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that.

[Jesse]

I walked down the hall to one of my partners who had clerked on the Supreme Court afterwards, and I'm like, look, I've. And I. And just so folks know, I've argued now five cases in the Supreme Court.

[Mark Elias]

And, you know, you go in with

[Jesse]

a game plan of what you're trying to do for the whole court, and then you go in with a game plan of what you're trying to do with individual justices.

[Mark Elias]

If you are the lawyer for the United States and you are trying to

[Jesse]

say that you are going to disenfranchise and strip essentially citizenship from wide swaths of the population, the one thing you

[Mark Elias]

need to know about Justice Gorsuch, who otherwise could be your friend, right? I mean, Justice Gorsuch is one of the most conservative justices on the Supreme Court. He is usually in the three that when we refer to the three most conservative, he's one of those three. The only thing you have to make sure to tell him is that it's not going to negatively impact Native Americans because he cares enormously about Native Americans. So, you know, like the Solicitor General's sitting there or standing there asked by Justice Gorsuch, you know, does this affect Native Americans negatively? And the right answer, John Sauer, who's the Solicitor General, is no, they're definitely citizens. Like, of course they are definitely citizens. Like, they will never negatively never be impacted. But instead he hems and haws and says, I need to think about it. I'm thinking, dude, you don't got votes to spare. I mean, like, you know, how did it go? It went really badly for the President. I mean, you know, like, you always with the caveat, say you can't predict

[Jesse]

anything for sure just based on the questions. But honestly, there are a lot of arguments where you can predict a lot

[Mark Elias]

for sure based on the questions. And this was one of those arguments. I mean, there are at least, as

[Jesse]

I counted, at least six votes for the President to lose.

[Mark Elias]

If you put a gun to my

[Jesse]

head, I'd say there are eight votes for the President to lose. I think Justice, Justice Alito was solidly or seen by his questions to be in the side of the President.

[Mark Elias]

Beyond that, it was a rough sledding.

[Jesse]

I mean, I think Comey Barrett was just. Comey Barrett was pretty hostile. The chief was hostile. I think Justice Kavanaugh was looking for

[Mark Elias]

a statutory off ramp. But that statutory off ramp would still

[Jesse]

rule against the President. It would just basically say we don't need to decide as a constitutional question

[Mark Elias]

whether or not there's birthright citizenship.

[Jesse]

As a statutory matter.

[Mark Elias]

There is.

[Jesse]

And so until Congress changes the law, we don't need to address this.

[Mark Elias]

So that would still be a loss for the President. And frankly, Justice Thomas was not an

[Jesse]

easy one for the President's side either.

[Mark Elias]

So could it be seven two? Could it be eight one?

[Jesse]

Yeah, I think probably. Could it be six, three?

[Mark Elias]

Sure.

[Jesse]

Maybe at the worst for our side, it's like five, four, with a couple of justices saying who actually don't dissent. It's like five, two, two. Where two of the justices say we don't need to decide the constitutional question because it's a statutory matter, there's birthright citizenship. But I don't see a world in which Donald Trump winds up winning that case. And I think that he knows it because as you know, he afterwards has been criticizing the Supreme Court.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Yeah, he has a particular celebration dance, which I won't do for its profanity. But that truth social post afterwards was not the. This went well for me. It was like, Leonard Leo, why did you recommend these jerks, by the way?

[Mark Elias]

As to your feed, I have to imagine you have probably the most interesting feed because yes, I suspect you follow

[Jesse]

a lot of the same accounts I do. But I think as a professional matter, you probably have to also follow accounts.

[Mark Elias]

I definitely don't follow.

[Jessica Tarlov]

No, it's definitely true. It's like the night and day, which is a known problem about like blue sky. Right. Where everyone like on blue sky. I'm a conservative. It's like wild. You know, they're like. But yes, I do have a blue pilled and a red pilled feed because I need to be able to predict what also my colleagues are going to say and like, what their sources.

[Mark Elias]

You probably know more about what Jesse

[Jesse]

Waters thinks than I will ever know.

[Jessica Tarlov]

That's a safer place for you, I would say. And probably results in lower therapy bills, though I don't know what you see on A legal basis is the stuff of nightmares. Like, I can deal with, you know, people making points about how real men don't use straws or eat ice cream cones. But this, the stuff, the trenches that you're in is so disturbing. And one of those key planks, and it links to the birthright citizenship case, is something that Senator Ron Johnson said this morning on Maria Bartiromo show. And I want to play the clip and get your reaction to it.

[Adam Grant]

The plate. Let's make sure that we can, again, save this country, secure our elections, you know, secure our board. You know, I was disappointed. The Supreme Court, the justices there, I mean, this is using the Constitution, you know, it's not a suicide pact. And unfortunately, the justices, they may, maybe their ruling will be on the law and on the Constitution. But you have to look at the bigger picture here. What is happening with China, with the tourism, birthright citizenship, tourism. This is going to destroy this country, creating all these millions of voters that will obviously not be voting in the best interest of America. So we have to understand exactly what the left is doing, what Communist China is doing, and we need to act now to prevent that.

[Jessica Tarlov]

All roads lead to the Save America act. And this obsession with election security, with no cases of fraud, what do you think that means for your work and for our elections? To hear Ron Johnson saying that?

[Mark Elias]

Yeah, first of all, I think if

[Jesse]

you parse what he said, he says

[Mark Elias]

maybe the Supreme Court will rule on

[Jessica Tarlov]

the law, but they shouldn't do that.

[Mark Elias]

They shouldn't do that. They should rule instead based on Chinese

[Jesse]

tourism, where they come to the United States and have babies. Right. So they should set aside the Constitution and rule on that basis.

[Mark Elias]

So I got bad news for the senator.

[Jesse]

I think he reads the court the way I do, which is that they're gonna rule on the law and the Constitution and that is gonna hand Republicans a defeat.

[Mark Elias]

But I think, Jesse, you have drawn

[Jesse]

the line that I think too many people are missing, which is the connection between the Birthright citizenship case and the SAVE act and the Save America act, which is the only thing that Donald Trump right now about, which is giving him and Republicans the tools to disenfranchise millions of American voters.

[Mark Elias]

And the reason why I think it's

[Jesse]

important to tie that to the Supreme

[Mark Elias]

Court decision is we keep pointing out,

[Jesse]

I keep pointing out others, that one of the big losers in the SAVE act would be people who have to prove their citizenship, including, for example, married women whose birth certificates don't match the name that they currently use. And so we talk about that as a captive.

[Mark Elias]

Well, how do you prove citizenship in this country? There are only two documents that really

[Jesse]

prove it other than naturalization papers. Okay. Number one is a valid US Passport. The second is an original or a certified birth certificate.

[Mark Elias]

But here's the thing, Jesse. If you don't have birthright citizenship, a birth certificate doesn't prove citizenship.

[Jesse]

Oh, right.

[Mark Elias]

And so that's why these two things happen.

[Jessica Tarlov]

I didn't even think about that. I mean, I knew about the passport and the birth certificate, but not the birthright citizenship application to it.

[Mark Elias]

Correct. Right. Like, it all of a sudden allows challenges based on citizenship that where you're just presenting a birth certificate.

[Jesse]

Because now all of a sudden, birth

[Mark Elias]

certificates don't prove citizenship.

[Jesse]

Right.

[Mark Elias]

The fact that you were born in

[Jesse]

the United States and a hospital filled

[Mark Elias]

out a form doesn't mean anything. And, you know, if you don't believe that that is where this is going, just how did we come to know

[Jesse]

Donald Trump as a political figure? Like, obviously, you and I are from New York. We, we understood him to be sort of a grotesque character of the city in the 80s and the 90s, but how did we come to understand him

[Mark Elias]

as a political figure? It was saying when he said that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. And what happened when Barack Obama produced his birth certificate? What happened when the state of Hawaii said, this is his birth certificate? Donald Trump said, it's not real. Right. So you have to understand that in the MAGA movement, for Donald Trump and

[Jesse]

his supporters, compromising and undermining birth certificates as proof of citizenship is part of

[Mark Elias]

the critical thing that they want to do. Because once you've taken those off the table, now they can make judgments, their

[Jesse]

own judgments, as to which birth certificates

[Mark Elias]

are real, which birth certificates aren't real, which ones count, which ones don't count. And we will be having that fight as the next fight as a way

[Jesse]

to disenfranchise voters who they simply don't want to participate.

[Jessica Tarlov]

I feel silly that I didn't even think about that. Like, they were both evil track things. But I didn't make the connection as to what it would do for the Save America act or whatever their next iteration of this was. That part of Project 2025.

[Mark Elias]

Project 2025 doesn't make the connection I just made.

[Jesse]

I think to understand the reason why I make the connection, a, you know, it's the area of law I practice in, so that that, you know, is a focal point.

[Jessica Tarlov]

You're paid to make that connection. Yeah.

[Mark Elias]

But the second is, though, Jesse, I

[Jesse]

was very deeply involved at the time in fighting against the birther lies that Donald Trump was telling.

[Mark Elias]

And again, Donald Trump has never. Donald Trump's entire political career was based

[Jesse]

on the idea that birth certificates don't

[Mark Elias]

actually prove citizenship, and it was aimed at Barack Obama. But that is where you wind up with the justices hearing this birthright citizenship case. It is where you wind up with

[Jesse]

the SAVE act proof of citizenship requirements and the limited number of ways to prove citizenship. And it is where to go back

[Mark Elias]

to the executive order and the lawsuit

[Jesse]

that we have filed.

[Mark Elias]

It is why the idea that Donald

[Jesse]

Trump has landed on as the key central tenet of this voter suppression plan is that the Department of Homeland Security will compile a list of who they believe are eligible U.S. citizens to vote.

[Mark Elias]

Like maybe you could ask some of

[Jesse]

your conservative friends on THE five.

[Mark Elias]

I am old enough to remember when

[Jesse]

it was conservatives who said they do not want the federal government compiling a list, a master list, of all the citizens in the United States and giving the federal government that power.

[Mark Elias]

Well, that's what Donald Trump wants to do. And he wants to be able to do it because he wants to be able to call balls and strikes, not just between people who have birth certificates

[Jesse]

and don't, but within the category of people who do have birth certificates.

[Mark Elias]

He wants to be able to say, these ones, I don't trust. These ones, I don't believe.

[Jesse]

I think the state of New York

[Mark Elias]

is run by communists. So none of the birth certificates under Mayor Mandami's administration that are issued by

[Jesse]

the city of New York will count. Right.

[Mark Elias]

Like, this is what he did with Hawaii.

[Jesse]

And I'm telling you, it's what we're going to get here.

[Jessica Tarlov]

I have kind of a, maybe an annoying question, but on voter ID because, like, it's very clear, Save America act, that's not a voter ID bill. I have been saying that on air. And, like, honestly, they get pretty quiet about it because I think they understand the difference, even though they continue to use the language interchangeably, to be like, Democrats are against voter id. And I say we're not against voter id. Tons of states have voter ID laws. Jim Clyburn has been out there saying, we're for voter ID. That's not what this is. And over 80% of Americans, no matter how you vote, believe in some voter ID to be able to cast your ballot. What is the argument against a federal standard or even just 50 states having some requirement for voter ID at the polls? And I mean, my line in the standard, like if you can buy a gun, you should be able to use whatever you showed the person at a, you know, a gun show or a private seller to be able to do that. But like student IDs, driver's licenses, et cetera. Like, can you explain that to me?

[Mark Elias]

Sure.

[Jesse]

So, you know, I'm only going to speak for myself here. Like, I, I litigate a lot of voting cases. I don't litigate that many ID cases. I litigate ID cases only when what they are trying to do is really pick and choose in a way to shape the electorate in, in, in unfair ways. So oftentimes what I'm litigating is where they are targeting particularly student IDs.

[Mark Elias]

And even within that, it's usually where

[Jesse]

they're targeting state issued student IDs. And this bill, for example, does that. Right. The Save America act as it began. By the way, I wrote about this on democracy docket. If you go back and look at the history of the SAVE act, it began as a message bill that Mike Johnson threw together because Marjorie Taylor Greene was going to, had filed a motion to vacate the chair that she was going to force a vote on. This is back in 2024. And he runs down to Mar A Lago and does a press conference with Donald Trump and gets his blessing. And in exchange he says, I'm going to put forward this bill on proof of citizenship. It had no ID requirement. The ID requirement doesn't come until the Save America act, which is earlier this year. So its lineage isn't a voter ID bill either. And in that bill it actually says you need state issued photo id. Except no state may allow the use of, of state issued college and university IDs. And so I strongly object to that because

[Mark Elias]

if Florida can issue an ID

[Jesse]

and it's issuing it through its university system, I don't understand why that's any less secure than any other ID that

[Jessica Tarlov]

the state of Florida.

[Mark Elias]

So here is where I land on the ID thing.

[Jesse]

The question is, what work is the ID doing?

[Mark Elias]

If the ID is simply proving that

[Jesse]

the person standing in front of you is the person they claim to be, then I think there are ways to solve that, including with ID laws. Like, I think that there are ways to make sure that when Mark Elias goes to vote, the person standing in front of him is Mark Elias.

[Mark Elias]

But what quickly this devolves into on the Republican side is proving a whole

[Jesse]

bunch of stuff other than that.

[Mark Elias]

So I'll give you an example.

[Jesse]

Just yesterday I sued Ron DeSantis over their new Voter suppression bill.

[Mark Elias]

And in his signing, when he was doing his signing, he said, we are removing college IDs. Again, state issued college IDs. We're removing these from the list because they don't prove residency. In other words, it doesn't prove these students are residents of California.

[Jesse]

I'm sorry, of Florida.

[Mark Elias]

Well, but here's the thing. Like, ID at the polls isn't supposed to prove residency.

[Jesse]

It's just supposed to prove identity.

[Mark Elias]

And you know what else doesn't prove residency, Jesse? A gun permit. You know what else doesn't prove residency? A U.S. passport.

[Jesse]

Right.

[Mark Elias]

Go look at your U.S. passport. Your U.S. passport doesn't have your address on it. It just says you are a US Citizen. It's simply identifying you. And so if we wound up in a world in which Republicans wanted to

[Jesse]

have a serious discussion about id, where

[Mark Elias]

we were just talking about how do

[Jesse]

we make sure the person standing in

[Mark Elias]

front of you is the person they say they are, then honestly, that's a

[Jesse]

conversation I'm happy to have.

[Mark Elias]

But then, for example, you wouldn't say that a driver's license from another state is not sufficient. Why wouldn't it be sufficient to prove id?

[Jesse]

Right.

[Mark Elias]

Like, does Florida not believe that the Texas driver's license proves that the person

[Jesse]

standing in front of them is who

[Mark Elias]

they say they are? Like, there would be an opportunity, for example, for people in nursing homes.

[Jesse]

This is something that, frankly, the folks on Fox talk about all the time. So I want to address them head on.

[Mark Elias]

They're like, why does, in Minnesota, why

[Jesse]

are nursing home workers allowed to swear out an affidavit that says that the person who is voting is someone they care for and is who they say

[Mark Elias]

they are, that's a perfectly acceptable form of id. I mean, who would know the identity of the person better than their caregiver if they are elderly and don't have a driver's license? I mean, I think what the folks

[Jesse]

at Fox and conservatives are really saying is they don't think really old people in nursing homes should be allowed to vote.

[Mark Elias]

Which is fine. Just say that. But don't say it's about id, because, like, there's no doubt that the resident who, like, lives in a nursing home,

[Jesse]

that their nurse knows what their identity is.

[Mark Elias]

And if they're swearing out an affidavit

[Jesse]

that says, I know Mr. Jones, I've

[Mark Elias]

cared for Mr. Jones for seven years, and this is Mr. Jones, there's no reason why that shouldn't be sufficient. So it's gotten very much tied up

[Jesse]

in a Lot of misinformation by the right wing. And I would love to put an end to that.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Yeah, I would love that too. And I also, I mean, the amount of groups that are targeted by either voter ID laws or citizenship laws, because there is the distinction, which I'm glad that you made, who are traditional Republican voters. Blows my mind. I mean, you talk about the married women, old people, like, where is a Republican victory without old people? And you know, they are still high off 20, 24 with getting such a big chunk of the 18 to 29 year old vote. I said they vote at college. Right. Like you, you know, you're from wherever you go off to University of Wisconsin at mad. Guess what? You want to vote in Wisconsin, but you can't because you're not from there or you didn't bring your documents with you because who's, I mean, honestly, whose mom still has their birth certificate like that? You know, in the laminated sheet, I use this example on air. It took me three trips to the DMV to get my real ID because I have two middle names. I didn't even change my last name, but my, my documents didn't match and I had to go pouring through my mom's files to find my original birth certificate.

[Mark Elias]

Right. And so people understand There are only

[Jesse]

five states in this country that a real ID can prove citizenship.

[Mark Elias]

In 45 states in this country, a

[Jesse]

real ID does not prove citizenship. So when Republicans say it's not a problem because just have a real id, driver's license, unless you are in one of the five states that borders Canada.

[Mark Elias]

Jesse, I have no idea why.

[Jesse]

There's probably a fascinating backstory why it is the five states that border Canada

[Mark Elias]

have this allowance to prove citizenship. But understand that if you're in Alabama

[Jesse]

or Mississippi or Florida or Texas, your

[Mark Elias]

real ID does not prove that you are a citizen. It may prove that you are a

[Jesse]

legal, that you're legally in the country,

[Mark Elias]

but if you're a visa holder, you can get a real ID in most states. And so this is really just a

[Jesse]

lot of shell game in order to disenfranchise voters.

[Mark Elias]

Because to your point, Jesse, like, like,

[Jesse]

look, I was born in New York City. My wife was born in Ithaca. We did a little bit of experiment and we're like, okay, what would it take to get a original or certified copy of a birth certificate?

[Mark Elias]

And I'm not here to hate on

[Jesse]

the state of New York. I mean, I still love New York,

[Mark Elias]

but the vital records offices, which you

[Jesse]

probably know from having kids, these are not fast moving organizations.

[Mark Elias]

This is not like, this is not like you go to a website and you put in credit card number and

[Jesse]

out comes a document.

[Mark Elias]

This was a multi week or I think months long exercise.

[Jessica Tarlov]

Mark Elias democracy docket. Everyone has to subscribe. This was perfect. Thank you for your time.

[Jesse]

Thank you.

[Jessica Tarlov]

All right, before we go, a reminder that not only is Raging Moderates five days a week, we're now available on Substack. Subscribers get ad free episodes, which I know everyone loves, live streams and a place to connect with me and Scott and the rest of the community. Find us@raging moderates.prof.gmedia.com and we've been nominated for a Webby. I told you this yesterday. I'm telling you and today and I'm going to tell you tomorrow. We're super psyched about it. In the news and politics section, head to vote.webbyawards.com and cast your vote. We also have the link in the show notes. It is complicated. We are telling them that it is complicated. They are making it too hard to vote. Vote like Republicans. That's all for this episode. Thank you so much for joining us today.