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- [00:04]
Host
All right, denizens of Denver, now is the time for questions. So if you would like to approach. Oh, look at a spotlight has appeared on the microphone. Shining light. I see that. In the audience, we have the District Attorney for Denver, John Walsh is with us. Thank you to John Walsh. We put him right there in the spotlight so you can line up with your questions. And we do have a couple of rules. You have to tell us your name, and at Kim's request, we want to know your favorite restaurant in Denver, because we're looking for eats. All right, so think about what's your favorite? Like, we got to be quick here. What's your name? Where should we go to eat breakfast, dinner, lunch?
- [00:49]
Audience Member
My name is Libby. I live three and a half hours southwest in the mountains. My favorite restaurant is my house.
- [00:58]
Joyce
All right, well done.
- [00:59]
Jill
Are we there in the morning?
- [01:01]
Jeff
You're all Welcome.
- [01:03]
Audience Member
I have two questions. I'm wondering where Ms. Comey's lawsuit is in the process. And my second question is. Barb, how about those Pistons last night?
- [01:12]
Host
Hey, thank. I'll take that one. Go Pistons. Thank you. Joyce, do you know about Maureen Comey? Yeah.
- [01:19]
Barb
Maureen Comey's lawsuit has been filed. You know this is over her firing, right? This feeds back to what Jill was talking about. She gets sort of a missive from the Attorney General's office. You are being fired pursuant to Article 2, which is, of course, about presidential power. And this is part of Donald Trump's assertion that he can fire anybody who works in the executive branch anytime for good reason, no reason, or bad reason. That case, like many civil cases, will move pretty slowly. It's been filed. I think we may still be waiting on a response, so it will be some period of time before we hear more about that case.
- [02:02]
Audience Member
My name is Vicki Cowart. I was the CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. Colorado is a pro choice state,
- [02:16]
Joyce
but
- [02:17]
Audience Member
we had a shooting back in November of 2015. And I know that this administration is incredibly focused on demeaning women and reducing our rights. There is something going on about the Face act, and I wonder if you all would explicate that for us, because I think it's extremely dangerous. Not only abortion facilities, but all kinds of facilities are in danger, similar to what I think is happening at Southern Poverty. Thank you.
- [02:49]
Jill
Thank you for that. Great question.
- [02:51]
Audience Member
Olivia's.
- [02:52]
Barb
Olivia, thank you.
- [02:53]
Host
Thank you for that.
- [02:54]
Jill
And I want to mention Steuben's. I had lunch there today. Great tomato soup, highly recommend. And great chocolate chip cookies. The Face act is freedom of access to clinic entrances. And it was designed specifically to prevent violence at entrance to abortion clinics so that people could pursue their legal rights to abortion where it was legal and it only involves violence. You can't. You can protest, you can hold up signs, but you can't block the entrance. You can't touch anyone. You can't beat anyone up. You can't shoot. You can't kill all of those things. And now there's this claim that it's being used inappropriately by the Biden was used inappropriately because they only targeted people who were pro Biden. Well, the law was indicted. It was designed specifically to go against those very people. So it is. It's an absurd claim. I hope that it won't succeed. I think nothing's going to happen and that the FACE act will be upheld as being the right way to go against people who use violence to stop anybody's access to abortion.
- [04:10]
Joyce
And it's important to note that this report that came out that was commissioned by Republicans. Jill is right, obviously, that this act is not going to be used to go against many pro choice people, because that doesn't make any sense. But it's not going against pro life people. It's going against people who use force or deception to try to intimidate people who are trying to get access to reproductive care. I mean, the president has actually pardoned people who were convicted of the FACE act for pretending to want an abortion or other care, going into the center, harassing people, using things like we talked a little bit about this last week, bringing ropes or other things to block access. I mean, really, really obstructive things. So it doesn't just, you know, Republicans are trying to paint this as, you know, the Biden administration just wanted to target and criminalize being pro life. No, it was meant to protect access to health care.
- [05:12]
Jill
It's sort of part of what the Justice Department is now saying, that we can't go against anybody who's pro Christian, that the acts of Southern Poverty Law center and others are designed to take down the conservative viewpoint. And that's not what this is about. This is about violence in the Face Act.
- [05:34]
Host
First, may I compliment you on your attire? Yes, yes, it's wonderful.
- [05:38]
Tamara
Why, thank you. So my name is Tamara. My recommendation would be the muffins place right next to Union Station. They have wonderful cheese cake filling within their muffins. Exactly.
- [05:51]
Host
Put me down for two.
- [05:54]
Tamara
It's a small little place, but I would highly recommend it. My question is kind of pairing Colorado politics with some of the national trends recently. Tina Peters, one of the Colorado county elections officials, was recently her sentence was forced back to the state courts, to the first year of the state courts. And I was wondering how you, if you could expand on how this may or may not affect the national rulings when it comes to elections interference.
- [06:39]
Host
Yeah, I think I can take this one. So thank you for that question. As you all probably know, Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison for allowing people to come in and take access to voting sensitive voting information. She is an election denier and the trial judge really hammered her by giving her nine years. The appeal was just to remand for a resentencing on the theory that the court improperly took into consideration some of her free speech rights. And so it's been remanded back for resentencing. I don't know about you, Joyce, but I had cases sometimes where they said, judge, you have to re sentence this person. And they said, well, I gave you nine years last time, and you know what you're getting this time? Nine years. So I don't know that this is going to change much. I think he'll make a different record. Maybe there will be some break that will be slightly less. But I don't think like she's getting away with it.
- [07:40]
Barb
I mean, it's important to say that people should not be sentenced on the basis of First Amendment conduct. And so I expect that the judge will explain on remand that he made no inappropriate considerations the first time around and will either resentence to nine years or something very close to it.
- [07:58]
Host
Yeah, and I think it's really important that he do so because your question also asked how does this relate to what's happening nationally? And I think one of the things that we are seeing by the Trump administration is an effort to obtain that kind of voting information from around the country. It's still not quite clear to me exactly why they want this information, but I think a lot of it is just to create chaos, to sow doubt in the minds of voters so that if and when you don't like the outcome of an election, you can say fraud. And you know, so I think this is very much a part of this national strategy of getting a hold of ballots and we can say, you know, non citizens are voting or whatever it is, to just sow doubt in the public's mind about the accuracy of our elections.
- [08:44]
Barb
You know, I was with Shana Bellows, she's the Secretary of State in Maine Tuesday night. We were talking about this exact issue. And we know to some extent what Washington wants to do with this information. They want to use it to challenge voters. And so we expect that they're collecting these files from states, really, in an effort very close to the election to force voters to jump through a lot of hoops in order to exercise their rights. And that's why so many states are pushing back, not just Democratic states. And that's the point that I wanted to make. The pushback is also coming from red states because this is reprehensible. The federal government does not get to run your election. Colorado gets to run its election. Maine gets to run its election. It's the same for every state. If you're like us, you like to know what's happening to your money and keep as much of it as you can. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers seem to like keeping our money too. After years of overpaying for wireless. Now, if you're totally fed up with crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees and free perks that actually cost more in the long run and you've decided that making the switch to Mint Mobile makes sense, it becomes a no brainer. Every month you wait is money that could be in your pocket. And we've seen how quick the savings add up when you take back control of your cell service.
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- [15:00]
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- [15:03]
Barb
You said it.
- [15:13]
Chris
Hi, my name is Chris. I live here in Denver. I recommend Las Delicias Mexican food for breakfast. My question is this. The New York Times recently published, I think it was, about 20 internal memos from the Supreme Court chambers showing that maybe they've been using the shadow docket in not exactly the most good faith way. Do you predict any significant fallout, blowback, whatever term you like to use, coming out of this? It shows that John Roberts has been really very directed in his use of the shadow docket.
- [15:52]
Audience Member
Yeah.
- [15:53]
Joyce
So if you hadn't seen, it was a deep dive done by the New York Times, which the reporters there got access to the Supreme Court memos, the memos that justices pass to each other when they're considering whether to take up a case or considering a emergency docket challenge. So first of all, like the fact that the fact that these memos got leaked out of the supreme, like I've covered the Supreme Court for a long time and it was not a leaky place. It's not like Congress or federal agencies and stuff and you would get leaks or even the White House where every reporter I know has Donald Trump's phone number. It was a place that was pretty tight. So I just think that was remarkable in itself. But what it revealed was during the emergency docket consideration of a challenge to President Obama's environmental policies, one of his environmental policies, the back and forth in the Supreme Court showed, as you said, that the chief justice sort of took a role to say, no, no, we cannot allow, I'm paraphrasing, we cannot allow this challenge to go forward. We have the power and we really need to strike it down now. And that is sort of seen as the birth of the shadow docket. Now, in recent years, it has been ramped up much, much more as more people either challenged presidential policy, well, actually challenged presidential policies of presidents of both parties just brought by different ways. And the Supreme Court has stepped in more and more to now to the point that most of the challenges to Trump era policies, we can almost guarantee that they will continue be allowed to continue while the challenges are needed. One thing that I thought was really interesting and I wrote about this a little bit in my newsletter, the gavel was it's really interesting how the chief justice was so adamant that this environmental policy had to be stopped on what would become the Shadow docket in 2016. And now it seems almost universal that the Supreme Court believes that it would cause irreparable harm, as I mentioned earlier, for a presidential policy to be halted, even when it is quite likely unconstitutional or illegal. What has changed between 2016 and 2026? I have one guess. I bet you do, too.
- [18:25]
Host
Well, thanks for that question. Speaking of shadow, our shadow overlords who control everything we do, tells me that we have time for only two more questions because we know all of you, like all of us, want to go home and get a bright start to your next day. So two more questions and we see you're representing the Avalanche. You know, as a Detroit Red Wings fan, when I see that, I think goalie fight. I don't know if you remember the famous goalie fight between the Red Wings and the Avalanche, but please go ahead.
- [18:59]
Audience Member
Well, actually, my question was around shadow docket, so I'll let somebody else ask one. But a great eat is Sam's number three best green chili. Go get breakfast and steam coffee for a pastry and a cup of coffee.
- [19:13]
Jill
Thank you.
- [19:16]
Jeff
Sisters. My name is Jeff. I hail from Gunnison, Colorado, about four hours west of here. And we've yet to talk about religious freedom. Colorado is the epicenter for religious freedom cases. We just had Chiles v. Salazar blew my mind. We saw that St. Ignatius Academy in Oklahoma City lost in a 44 tie at SCOTUS. And now we have Riverstone Academy in Pueblo, Colorado. But we just found out this week now St. Mary's Parish, Catholic Parish from Denver, is going to the Supreme Court because they want to participate in a pre K program and accept the money for the pre K program. But they don't want to abide by the contract that would include LGBTQ employees. My question to you is that many of these cases are manufactured cases by law firms who go searching for these kind of cases, like the Alliance Defending Freedom.
- [20:17]
Sponsor Voice 1
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- [20:18]
Jeff
How do we fight those people?
- [20:21]
Joyce
So I will jump in here. Yes. There are groups like ADF or the Becket Fund and other groups that are religious groups. They're religious advocacy law firms that go around bringing lawsuits for the purpose of challenging civil rights protections of people like LGBTQ folks. And they do so by bringing claims, often increasingly, because honestly, to bring a religious rights Case in a lot of these cases would probably be a loser in court. So what they're actually alleging instead are things like it's a free speech case, such as the case that involved the therapist who wanted to be able to, you know, advise conversion therapy for LGBTQ youths and said that a law prohibiting conversion therapy would violate her free speech rights. That it wasn't. And it was really shocking that in the decision, very little was even said about the fact that it was a religious person who said that it violated her faith and that she was represented by religious organizations. So to your point as to how to fight back against that, it's to support groups that fight for freedom. If you have the ability to do so, you can donate your money, donate your time to groups that are advocating for civil rights laws to be upheld. And one thing that, as you're talking about this, I am just thinking about myself and the role that I have. That's something that I need to write more about because I mention it in these cases when I'm writing about them individually. But I'm feeling the need to write something to really talk about how these groups are pushing in a way that is coordinated. It is not by accident, and they're pushing for this. They're heavily funded, deep pocketed people who back these groups, and they now have the power. I mean, it was the same thing that led up to Roe v. Wade. Yeah, Roe v. Wade being overturned. This is not happening. All of a sudden, the Supreme Court isn't bringing these cases to itself. They're being brought in a coordinated effort that is led by the legal. By the lawyers of the religious right. And it's really eroding our democracy in a really ghastly way. I say this as a Christian who doesn't think there's anything Christian about this. So I really appreciate that question.
- [22:52]
Helen
Thank you. My name is Helen, and my restaurant recommendation would be any of the snoozes for breakfast. Two short questions about the. Relating to the Department of Justice. One, do you think that any of the many, many talented people who left the department would ever come back and bring back their institutional memory? That's one. And then the second question is, because Pam Bondi has been terminated, can she be charged with anything or ever put under oath to answer for actions or inactions while she was in office?
- [23:32]
Host
I'll answer the first one, but I'm gonna let Joyce answer the second one
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Barb
because I think I was gonna say the same thing. I was gonna answer the first one and let you answer.
- [23:39]
Jill
I'll answer the first. I'll answer the second.
- [23:42]
Barb
You and Jill can go ahead. Can I ask somebody else a question before we start? Because I see John Walsh, Barbs, and my former colleague, now your da. I mean, like John, do you think a bunch of our former colleagues will go back to DOJ to fix what they.
- [23:56]
Helen
Oh, you bet.
- [23:57]
Jeff
I planned for it already, so.
- [23:59]
Barb
All right.
- [24:00]
Host
Thank you. All right, Jill, why don't you ask.
- [24:02]
Jill
You want to answer?
- [24:03]
Host
Pam Bondi?
- [24:06]
Jill
I believe that even a sitting president can be indicted. So I think an attorney general, former or sitting, could have been indicted, and I think they're or certainly disbarred for doing bad things. So I think, yes, the answer to your question is I think that Pam Bondi should be. And I think there's no reason why she can't be called before Congress. I think the subpoena they issued, I don't think it was phrased as we're inviting the attorney general. They were inviting a person with personal knowledge, Pam Bondi. And I think that she should still have to come before Congress and answer questions, and we should all be able to. To hear him. It shouldn't be in secret.
- [24:53]
Barb
Can I add one gloss onto your answer? I agree about 5,000%. That subpoena had Pamela Joe Bondi's name on it. She needs to show up. But, you know, the Biden administration set the standard here for obstructing Congress. And the dividing line that they drew was this. Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro. They got indicted because when they got congressional subpoenas, they ignored them. And people who negotiated in good faith and provided at least partial information, they didn't get indicted. And so I think consistency is a virtue when it comes to prosecutions. And at least to the extent that we're talking about Bondi and this subpoena, if she shows up, if she testifies in good faith, then I think that she is in the clear. I hope that she will answer questions from truthfully, because when one testifies under oath, even when one is talking about the President of the United States and whatever information you, the former attorney general, may have seen in the Epstein files, you must still tell the truth. But I do think that we have to be fair and consistent.
- [26:04]
Joyce
I agree with everything that you say, but to that point about showing up in good faith, even if people show up and plead the Fifth and don't answer anything, that makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for them to be brought up on charges.
- [26:15]
Barb
Pami Jo's gonna plead the Fifth.
- [26:16]
Joyce
That would be awesome. That would be amazing.
- [26:19]
Barb
That is like such a happy note to end the show on. Well, thank you for listening to Sister Sidebar. Keep sending in your great questions for next week's show, and if you send in a voice memo, we'll try to play your question during our next episode. Follow Sister sidebar and hashtag sistersinlaw wherever you listen. And and please give us a five star review. It really helps others find the show. Don't forget to pick up your Sisters in Law merch and other goodies@politicon.com merch and we will see you every week on Wednesdays and Saturdays for new episodes of Sister Sidebar and Sisters in Law.
- [26:59]
Host
Okay, let's get fired up here.
- [27:00]
Sponsor Voice 2
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- [27:01]
Host
One, two, three. I love how corny that is.
- [27:04]
Sponsor Voice 2
And whenever we try to do something in sync, it's always awful.
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Sponsor Voice 1
Yeah.
- [27:09]
Joyce
Sister.
- [27:09]
Sponsor Voice 2
Sister.