Strict Scrutiny – "Boy Math, Boy Law, Man Problems"

Crooked Media • November 24, 2025

Hosts: Leah Litman, Kate Shaw, Melissa Murray
Special Guest: Professor Jill Hasday

Episode Overview

This episode explores an extraordinary week in legal news centered on the United States Supreme Court and adjacent legal/political drama. The discussion, characterized by the hosts’ trademark irreverent, incisive, and accessible style, covers mid-cycle redistricting chaos, judicial shenanigans, executive branch legal challenges, and ongoing legal/cultural reckonings with misogyny and power. The latter half features a wide-ranging interview with Professor Jill Hasday about her new book We the Men, which analyzes how erasure and distortion of women's history perpetuate inequality.

Key Segments & Highlights

I. Hot Legal News: District Courts Gone Wild

[01:50–13:07]

• Unique Legal Developments in DC:
  • Judge Jeb Boasberg's Rulings: Allowed federal prosecutors in DC to proceed on indictments issued by local DC grand juries, not just federal ones—raising significant implications for executive-congressional separation of powers.
    • “It might have implications for other prosecutions in the District of Columbia, which, as we've discussed, stands in an unusual posture with respect to Congress and federal law.” —Kate Shaw [03:00]
  • Contempt Proceedings: Launched against the administration under the Alien Enemies Act. DOJ officials involved in deportations are slated to testify.
    • Judge Boasberg: “This has been sitting for a long time, and justice requires me to move quickly.” —quoted by Leah Litman [05:09]
• National Guard Deployment:
  • Judge Gia Cobb blocked the Trump administration from keeping more than 2,000 National Guardsmen in DC, deeming the city likely to win on unlawful deployment claims.
    • "Concerns regarding overreach and home rule were exacerbated by the fact that a significant portion of the troops are from other states..." —Kate Shaw [06:18]

II. Mid-Cycle Redistricting Madness & “Boy Math”

[07:08–24:36]

• Trump Spurs Redistricting Arms Race:
  • Texas, under pressure from Trump, engages in mid-cycle redistricting to gain new GOP seats—well before the decennial census; followed by California (Democrats) countering with their own mid-cycle effort (Prop 50), triggering nationwide arms race.
    • “Boy math, right? Exactly. That set off a redistricting arms race.” —Leah Litman [09:19]
  • Resistance from some red-state legislatures, e.g., Indiana, despite Trump's pressure.
• Legal Fallout & Court Rulings:
  • California GOP sues to block Prop 50; federal panel blocks Texas’s new map.
  • Judicial opinion exposes DOJ's dubious rationale—attempting to use race as justification for mid-cycle redistricting, effectively “self-owning” their legal strategy.
    • “Sometimes it be your own people.” —Melissa Murray [16:31]
    • “I vaguely recall a wise man once saying, the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race, you fuckheads.” —Leah Litman [17:05]
  • Judge Jerry Smith’s dissent goes off the rails: Soros conspiracy theories, personal attacks, and a wild, almost poetic (or “judicial diss track”) tone.
    • “The main winners from Judge Brown's opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom.” —Judge Jerry Smith, read by Leah Litman [22:21]
    • “Can you imagine being in a chambers that produces this?” —Kate Shaw [24:01]

III. Supreme Court Intrigue & Administrative Drama

[26:13–31:32]

• Emergency Petitions and Justice Alito’s ‘Messy’ Moves:
  • Texas appeals blocked maps to SCOTUS via Alito, who issues an unnecessary administrative stay—hosts speculate this is just out of ‘drama.’
    • “Could this be the very first administrative stay issued just to be petty? As I said, Sam is a messy bee from New Jersey who loves the drama.” —Leah Litman [28:25]
  • Hosts analyze possible Supreme Court outcomes, comparing related cases and warning of potential “real tomfoolery” on redistricting.

IV. Prosecutions-Gone-Wrong: The Comey Case

[31:36–41:49]

• Botched Federal Prosecution:
  • Explosive findings that the acting U.S. Attorney in Eastern Virginia, Lindsay Halligan, fundamentally misled the grand jury on James Comey’s rights and failed to follow basic procedures—including not letting the full grand jury vote on the actual indictment.
    • “Girl life, that's just so insane.” —Leah Litman [33:49]
    • “Would you like to be the mayor of Clown Town? Because that's what this is.” —Melissa Murray on Michael Dreeben’s exasperation [39:57]
  • DOJ scrambles, walking back its own statements in “another self-own.”
    • “Seems like another self-own.” —Melissa Murray [41:46]

V. #MeToo Redux: La Fair Epstein, Summers Emails, & Institutional Rot

[42:06–48:53]

• Sexual Misconduct Scandals Spiral:
  • White House found to have intervened in DHS’s investigation of Andrew Tate, returning seized electronics at behest of an official with a sexual harassment background.
  • Release of further Epstein-related emails:
    • Larry Summers seeks advice from Epstein about sleeping with a much younger female mentee, code-naming her ‘Peril’—blatant gendered/racial exploitation.
      • “The emails basically straight up lay out a sex for professional connection scheme.” —Leah Litman [45:12]
    • Epstein and Steve Bannon correspond on how to undermine Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony during the Kavanaugh nomination.
• Epstein Files Released:
  • Congress votes overwhelmingly to release Epstein documents, but hosts warn redactions and slow-rolling ahead.
    • “If you are awaiting a big wave of transparency ... you are a sweet summer child.” —Melissa Murray [48:53]

VI. Men Who Cannot Behave: RFK Jr., ‘Worms’, and Cultural Satire

[48:53–53:52]

• Journalist Olivia Nuzzi's tell-all about an affair with RFK Jr.:
  • Hosts read the book’s most cringeworthy (and viral) lines aloud.
    • “He desired. Desired. Being desired. He desired. Desire.” —Melissa Murray reading Nuzzi [49:57]
    • “I did not like to think about the worm in his brain that other people found so funny.” —Leah Litman [50:31]
• Meta-commentary on Media Men:
  • Discussion about Nuzzi’s ex-fiance’s Substack post using a “tortured bamboo metaphor” to psychoanalyze her.
    • “His posts are absolute art.” —Melissa Murray [51:55]

VII. Corruption & Executive Lawlessness

[53:52–62:44]

• Quid Pro Quos & Tariff Cuts:
  • Swiss companies give President Trump gold bars; coincidentally, Swiss tariffs are slashed.
    • “No one is entirely sure if it’s illegal for the president to accept gold bars or gold clocks as bribes in exchange for lowering tariff rates. Thanks in part to the Supreme Court.” —Leah Litman [54:31]
  • Hosts revisit earlier predictions, amusingly claiming to have “manifested” the gold obsession.
• Judicial & Executive Injustice:
  • NPR reports DOJ official Beauvais advocated literally sinking suspected drug vessels at sea—“piracy and also murder.”
    • “He said the US should just sink the boats, which to be clear, is literally piracy and also murder.” —Kate Shaw [57:38]
• Immigration Raids and Judicial Rebukes:
  • Charlotte, NC schools see 15% absenteeism after ICE raids; Chicago federal judge excoriates DHS for misrepresentations and using AI-generated incident reports.

VIII. Author Interview: Jill Hasday, We the Men

[68:39–100:25]

• Why Write Now?
  • Jill Hasday: “Women are about half the population. We're not a footnote or an aside. There's no story about the law that doesn't include women as much as men.” [69:23]
  • Motivated by a desire to challenge erasure before the U.S.’s 250th anniversary.
• Types of Forgetting: Erasure & Distortion
  • “Erasure”: women omitted from public memory, commemoration, textbooks (“men gave women the vote”).
  • “Distortion”: victory proclaims equality already achieved while denying rights in practice.
    • “Self-contradictory victory announcements... declaring victory at the exact moment you're denying [rights].” —Jill Hasday [87:28]
• Lochner vs. Muller:
  • “Lochnerism” is a legal insult; “Muellerism” (invented by Hasday) denotes the deep impact of decisions constitutionalizing women’s exclusion from certain work.
• Why Commemoration & Representation Matter:
  • Trump administration’s focus on symbolic erasure (e.g., blocking Harriet Tubman on the $20; recasting military history).
    • “Commemorating the past is about the future. Why are they so anxious to take out examples? Because they're trying to say the military should be more white and male.” —Jill Hasday [82:57]
• Legacies, Hope, & the Long Fight:
  • Hasday offers hope even in difficult moments, highlighting heroines like Ann Davido who fought anti-barmaid laws.
  • “I'm not minimizing the position we're in right now as a nation. I think we are in a perilous position, but I think we can survive.” —Jill Hasday [98:18]

IX. Favorite Things & Listener Shout-Outs

[100:28–106:46]

• Hosts recommend:
  • Music: Hilary Duff’s “Mature,” and Rosalía’s new album.
  • Books: Wild Dark Shore, Gods of New York.
  • Articles: Emily Bazelon & Rachel Poser’s NYT piece on the DOJ, Mother Jones’ profile of ICE antagonist Buzz Grambo.
  • Profile: Duchess of Sussex’s Harper’s Bazaar cover.
  • Shout-outs to fans, listeners, and fellow scholars.
• Upcoming Live Shows Announced: March 6th (San Francisco) & March 7th (Los Angeles) [106:46]

Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Texas’s boy-math redistricting:

  • "Governor Abbott basically said, know what, let's do some boy math here. Let's just do some redistricting right now." —Melissa Murray [08:14]

• On DOJ legal bungling:

  • “If the Justice Department hadn't suggested that actually race, not partisanship, was the reason to redraw these lines, it seems pretty clear, actually crystal clear, that there would be no legal objection that a federal court would entertain to these lines.” —Kate Shaw [18:23]

• On male-centric judicial narrative:

  • “Women are about half the population. We're not a footnote or an aside. There's no story about the law that doesn't include women as much as men.” —Jill Hasday [69:23]

• On hopes for change:

  • “Every advance women have ever achieved has taken generations against ferocious, often violent opposition...” —Jill Hasday [98:18]

Tone, Language, and Structure

• Tone: Witty, irreverent, and sharp—unafraid to use internet slang, pop-culture references, and humor to critique the deeply serious subject matter.
• Language: Blends colloquial/journalistic speech with academic and legal analysis; hosts are conversational and pull no punches, especially when calling out sexism, corruption, and judicial hypocrisy.
• Organization: Moves quickly through major headlines, spotlighting the week’s legal news, then transitions into deeper cultural and scholarly analysis with the Hasday interview.

Conclusion

This episode epitomizes Strict Scrutiny’s blend of legal acumen, biting humor, and feminist insight—skewering the week’s legal chaos while also connecting it to historical and structural inequalities. With breaking news on redistricting, vivid analysis of institutional self-owns, and a thought-provoking interview about the erasure of women from legal history, listeners come away informed, angered, amused, and energized for the fight ahead.

For more:

• Listen @ Crooked Media
• Read: We the Men by Jill Hasday (2025)
• Upcoming live events: crooked.com/events

(Timestamps reference start of topical content, skipping ads and sponsor plugs.)