INTERVIEW: Elie Mystal Talks 'Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America' Trump, Voter 'Fraud' + More

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Breakfast Club – Interview with Elie Mystal on "Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America"

Release Date: April 3, 2025
Guests: Elie Mystal, author of Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America
Hosts: DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne Tha God
Duration: Approximately 40 minutes

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Breakfast Club, hosts DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, and Charlamagne Tha God welcome legal scholar and author Elie Mystal. Elie delves into his latest work, Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America, exploring controversial legislation and their profound impacts on American society and governance.

Elie Mystal's Background and Motivation

[01:19] DJ Envy: "So the people, I'm glad you're here. What got you into studying constitutional law?"

[01:21] Elie Mystal: "Well, I went to law school. And I hated it... I never accepted the training... which led to my first book and certainly my career in general."

Elie shares his journey from Harvard Law School to becoming a vocal critic of traditional legal frameworks, emphasizing his resistance to conforming to established legal norms and his dedication to advocating for more equitable laws.

Central Thesis of "Bad Law"

Elie's primary argument revolves around the notion that many pre-1965 laws are presumptively unconstitutional. He posits that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a pivotal moment that dismantled systemic barriers, akin to apartheid, preventing equal participation in governance. Therefore, laws preceding this act that do not reflect inclusive democratic values should be reevaluated or discarded.

[02:30] Elie Mystal: "Before the 1965 Voting Rights Act... this was functionally apartheid country... If you're going to go all the way back before everybody had had a vote... that law should mean nothing."

Voter Registration and Voter Fraud

Elie vehemently criticizes existing voter registration laws, asserting that they serve no legitimate purpose given the non-existence of voter fraud.

[04:39] Elie Mystal: "I want to eliminate every single voter registration law. All of them in every state are bad... Voter fraud just doesn't exist. It's not a real thing."

He draws analogies to trivial government restrictions, likening mandatory voter registration to prohibiting fishing due to mythical creatures, highlighting the absurdity of basing laws on unfounded fears.

Voter ID Laws and Proposals

Addressing the contentious issue of voter ID laws, Elie challenges the Republican stance by proposing a feasible compromise that includes free national IDs and automatic voter registration.

[06:05] Elie Mystal: "If they were serious about voter ID, there is a deal on the table... Republicans are the ones who claim that voter ID is necessary to secure our election because their goal is not to secure elections... They want to restrict people from voting."

Elie underscores the political motivations behind voter ID laws, suggesting they are tools for voter suppression rather than genuine electoral security measures.

Election Fairness and Integrity

Elie asserts that no election in the U.S. has been entirely free and fair due to systemic barriers preventing full voter participation.

[08:45] Elie Mystal: "Big picture, we haven't had a single free, fair election in this country ever, ever... We've never had an election in this country where everybody who was eligible to vote... could easily go and vote."

He acknowledges certain elections' legitimacy while maintaining skepticism about the overall fairness of the electoral process.

Donald Trump’s Actions and Potential Threats

Elie offers a scathing critique of Donald Trump's efforts to undermine electoral integrity and democratic norms.

[09:35] Elie Mystal: "This is all his national ID crap... He's trying to give the specter that this is somehow tied to making sure that people are citizens... Voter fraud doesn't exist."

He discusses Trump's executive orders on election reforms, portraying them as veiled attempts to consolidate power and disenfranchise voters rather than genuine efforts to secure elections.

Airline Deregulation: Economic and Political Impacts

Shifting focus to economic policy, Elie examines the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, highlighting its long-term detrimental effects on workers and the Democratic Party.

[11:20] Elie Mystal: "When they gave away the airlines... it killed the Democratic Party for my entire lifetime. Labor got gutted... Airline jobs used to be good jobs."

Elie connects deregulation policies to the erosion of labor unions and the shift of working-class voters away from the Democratic Party, arguing that such economic decisions have lasting political repercussions.

Florida's "Don't Say Gay" Law

One of the most contentious topics discussed is Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law, which restricts discussions of gender and sexuality in schools.

[18:05] Elie Mystal: "The Florida 'Don't Say Gay' law... you cannot teach about gender differences, sexuality differences, transgender issues... It's heteronormative... It's pushing the man and the woman as the normal way."

Elie defends inclusive education, arguing that shielding students from diverse perspectives fosters ignorance and stigma. The hosts engage in a heated debate about the law's implications for student privacy and comfort in school environments.

General Discussion on Fascism and Dictatorship in the U.S.

Elie provocatively labels the current U.S. administration as a fascist dictatorship, drawing parallels to historical regimes and cautioning against complacency.

[28:30] Elie Mystal: "We are now living in a fascist dictatorship... Fascist dictatorships don't historically last very long... They overplay their hands... The outgroup gets so big they can overthrow the in-group."

He emphasizes the dangers of unchecked power, the erosion of democratic institutions, and the importance of active resistance to prevent authoritarian consolidation.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Elie calls for the Democratic Party and its supporters to build robust narratives and movements to counteract what he perceives as authoritarian trends. He stresses the urgency of proactive political engagement to safeguard democracy.

[36:05] Elie Mystal: "Nothing about fascism can be okay... Trump is a fascist threat to the country... We live in a country where you can get snatched up off the street for writing an article in the newspaper."

The episode concludes with the hosts lauding Elie's insights and urging listeners to engage with his book, Bad Law, to understand the complex interplay between legislation and societal well-being.

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Notable Quotes

• Elie Mystal on Voter Fraud:
  "[06:05] 'Voter fraud just doesn't exist. It's not a real thing.'

• Elie Mystal on Airline Deregulation:
  "[11:32] 'The Airline Deregulation Act came out in 1978... Labor got gutted.'

• Elie Mystal on Fascism:
  "[28:30] 'We are now living in a fascist dictatorship...'"

• Elie Mystal on Electoral Integrity:
  "[08:45] 'Big picture, we haven't had a single free, fair election in this country ever, ever.'"

Key Takeaways

• Reevaluation of Pre-1965 Laws: Elie advocates for scrutinizing and potentially discarding laws that predate the Voting Rights Act, especially those that perpetuate systemic inequalities.

• Voter Access vs. Suppression: Emphasizing the inexistence of voter fraud, he critiques restrictive voter laws and proposes inclusive alternatives to enhance democratic participation.

• Economic Policies and Political Shifts: The impact of deregulation on labor unions and its role in altering the political landscape is a central theme, highlighting the long-term consequences of economic decisions.

• Educational Inclusivity: Defending the importance of comprehensive education on gender and sexuality, Elie challenges laws that restrict such discussions, arguing for the necessity of representation and understanding.

• Safeguarding Democracy: Through historical analogies and present-day observations, Elie warns of authoritarian tendencies and underscores the importance of active resistance to preserve democratic institutions.

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For those interested in exploring these critical issues further, Elie Mystal's Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America is a recommended read, offering an in-depth analysis of legislation shaping the nation's future.

Transcript

[Unknown Host]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley season one.

[Gilbert King]

Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

[Unknown Host]

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

[Gilbert King]

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

[Unknown Host]

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2, starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app.

[Ellie Mostel]

App.

[Unknown Host]

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[DJ Envy]

Wake that ass up early in the morning.

[Ellie Mostel]

The Breakfast Club.

[Charlamagne tha God]

Morning, everybody. It's DJ Envy. Jess. Hilarious Charlemagne, the guy we are the Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building.

[DJ Envy]

They call him Big Ellie.

[Charlamagne tha God]

The reason I don't want to mess up your last name is my style.

[Ellie Mostel]

It's Ms. Stahl. Rhymes with Chris Stahl. I made that up myself. The kids used to say Ellie rhymes with jelly, and I didn't like that at all.

[Charlamagne tha God]

So welcome. New book out. Bad Law Man.

[DJ Envy]

First of all, Ellie, you know, you one of my favorite people to listen to. I love reading your work in the Nation. I started reading a lot more of your stuff a few years ago when I realized the Constitution didn't mean much okay. Anymore. Right. So. So the people. I'm glad you're here. What got you into studying constitutional law?

[Ellie Mostel]

Well, I went to law school.

[DJ Envy]

Okay.

[Ellie Mostel]

And I hated it. I went to Harvard Law School. And, you know, part of the legal training is, like, they. They say that they're going to make you think like a lawyer, Right? So what that means is that they take the way you think, which was fine to me, and they break you, and then they try to build you back up in this new, like, legal way of. Of understanding the world. And I just never accepted the training. I like at every point when you're telling me that, like, oh, well, this is how it's always been done. I'm always, like, by the slavers.

[DJ Envy]

And.

[Ellie Mostel]

And I should care about that why? And just so was a constant while I was in law school, like, back and forth in terms of my professors trying to kind of push me in a certain box and me resisting that box and not, you know, not all my professors. I. One of my professors was current Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. She was great, right? But I would go to her office hours and be like, why is this like this? And she would say, thurgood Marshall once said, it's like, I don't give a damn what Thurgood said. He was talking for a different time. What about Our time. And so these were the conversations I had all the time. And that led to my first book and certainly my career in general.

[DJ Envy]

And that's why you feel like all laws before 1965 should be deemed unconstitutional.

[Ellie Mostel]

I said presumptively unconstitutional, which is a legal dodge. I'm trying to lawyer my way around that. But my fundamental premise is that before the 1965 Voting Rights act, which I think is the most important piece of legislation ever passed in American history, this was functionally apartheid country. Not everybody who lived here could vote here. Not everybody who lived here could participate in the government here. The majority of people who lived here, if you think about not just black people, but also Latinos and also women, couldn't actually participate in the government. What do you call that? We have a word for that. It's that word is apartheid. And so if you're now going to say that we passed some law before everybody had a say, before everybody had a vote, and that law should still be controlling today, I say, hell no, right? It's like Roy Breaker from Lock Stock, right? If the milk's sour, I ain't the type of pussy to drink it, right? So if you're going to go all the way back before everybody had had a vote, I'm saying that presumptively speaking, that law should mean nothing. Now, I'm not saying that you get rid of every single law passed before 1965. Some of them I quite like, like the 1964 Civil Rights act, and that was a good law. I also like the Sherman Antitrust Act. I like a lot of laws that were passed before 1965. But my argument is that if we like the law, we could pass it again. We could pass it again this time asking everybody. And for that example, I didn't make that up myself, Right. The example that I'm using here is what they did in South Africa, right? When South Africa got over apartheid, did they just go back to their Africana racist constitution, be like, oh, we just need a couple of amendments. We just need a couple of changes here to make? No. They threw the whole thing out and started again, this time asking everybody, this time having a completely new delegation of all of the people of South Africa, not just the white folks, but not no white folks. And they came up with a new constitution. It's one of the reasons why the South African constitution is generally thought of as one of the best constitutions in the world, and ours continues to be a piece of crap.

[Charlamagne tha God]

So what laws would you kick out immediately? What laws are you saying it needs to get the fuck out of here?

[Ellie Mostel]

Yeah. So the first one I have in my book is that I want to eliminate every single voter registration law. All of them. All of them in every state are bad. Right. That's different from voter eligibility. Right. We, I think, can all agree that there should be eligibility requirements, like an age requirement. Right. You have to be 18 to vote. I might say 16, but I'm not going to say eight. Right. I got an eight year old. We don't want. No, they're not ready for that. Right. That's a voter eligibility requirement. But once we, once you're eligible, there's no reason for you to have to pre register in order to execute your franchise. If you're eligible to vote, you should just be able to rock up to the polls and vote again. I didn't make that up. That's what they do in nearly every other democracy. And nearly every other democracy either has mandatory registration, automatic registration, or same day registration. What we do with this bull crap of like having to show up 10 days before, a month before in some places in order to preregister before you're. We're alone basically in the modern world in terms of people who do that. So we could just get rid of all of them. We could just get rid of all of them. And the people will say like, oh, well, we can't do that because of voter fraud. Right. Well, first of all, and I know this is going to be hard for some listeners who spend a lot of time listening to Republican lies, but voter fraud does not exist.

[DJ Envy]

I loved how you broke that down in the book. Expound, please.

[Ellie Mostel]

Voter fraud just doesn't exist. It's not a real thing. We shouldn't make laws based on protecting us from things that don't exist. Right. An analogy I've made is like, if let's say I want to go fishing, I want to go fishing that lake, the government says, nah, you can't fish there. And I say, why? They say, because the Loch Ness monster might get you. Get out of my face with that. Shut up. That's stupid. We're not going to restrict my right to fish because of a thing that doesn't exist. So that's number one. But number two, Republicans keep saying we need voter id. The voter ID is the thing that secures our election, that protects us from voter fraud. And I call their bluff. I'm like, all right, you want voter id, Fine, let's make a deal. Remember how this country used to actually make deals in order to Move forward. Let's make a deal. I'll give you your voter id. It's got to be national, it's got to be free, because if it's not free, it violates the 24th Amendments prohibition on poll taxes. But you give me a free national, I'll give you a free national voter ID and you give me automatic registration of every eligible voter that is also portable between either in the states or between the states. Portable means if I move, I don't have to re register, my registration follows me, I don't have to follow my registration. You make, you give me that deal, I will give you your ID card. Who says no? And I promise you, the people who say no are the Republicans are the ones who claim that voter ID is necessary to secure our election because their goal is not to secure elections because again, voter fraud doesn't exist. Their goal is to restrict people from voting. So if I say, hey, we're going to fix your fake fraud problem, but we're going to let a lot more people have a lot easier access to voting. Republicans are the ones that are like, oh, no, that's not. Yes, but not like that. Right? It's so. So again, if you, if they were serious about voter id, there is a deal on the table that we could make and they are the ones who don't want to make it. And that goes through, as I'm sure you guys know, through so many issues in this country where Republicans claim that there's a problem and Democrats and I got a lot of smoke in the book for Democrats, but generally Democrats are like, okay, let's make a deal. And Republicans like, we don't want the deal. We want the issue. We don't want to fix it. We want people to be pissed that it isn't fixed. And that's what Republicans keep doing, as opposed to actually making a deal with Democrats who are always willing to fold and trade and whatever. And so we don't fix any things. We just keep being pissed about things that aren't fixed.

[DJ Envy]

Well, question. Do you feel like all elections have been free and fair? Because people will say, Democrats will say the 2016 election was stolen, and then some will say they feel like this one was stolen.

[Ellie Mostel]

Big picture, we haven't had a single free, fair election in this country ever, ever. Because we've never had an election in this country. This goes back to my, my point. We've never had an election in this country where everybody who was eligible to vote or should be eligible to vote could easily go and vote. So I would say it's never actually been free and fair in terms of the particulars in the current. What was rigged, what wasn't rigged, whatever. Look, Trump lost in 2020 and he won in 2024. I don't like that he won in 2024, but he both got the most popular votes. 90 million people stayed home, but he got the most popular votes of the people who bothered to show up. And I believe the election happened as fairly as we do in this country.

[DJ Envy]

What do you think about his executive orders on elections that he just recently signed?

[Ellie Mostel]

Oh, this is all his national ID crap. And if you look at his. Nash, his version of national id, think about the things that he won't do that I just said that we could do for national id, he won't make it free. He literally is talking about IDs that people have to pay for. And while that might not be a lot of money to people like you and me, that's a lot of money to somebody. And it's a regressive tax that means, like, it's a hard. It's a larger percentage of your funds, the lower, the less money you have. Right. So first of all, he's not making it free. Second of all, he's not making it national. So he's putting in a system where, like, Alabama or Mississippi can have one kind of ID requirement, but Wisconsin and New York can have another kind of ID requirement. And we can imagine just how worse it'll be, how much harder it will be for certain kinds of people to get IDs in Alabama or Mississippi versus New York or California. Right. So he's not making a national fix to the problem. And he's trying to give the specter that this is somehow tied to making sure that people are citizens. Citizens already. Non citizens already can't vote. And there has, again, not been any evidence produced by any of these people that we have a significant or even a minor portion of non citizens actually trying to vote. Again, it just doesn't happen and certainly doesn't happen in the numbers that would be necessary to, like, flip an election. Right, but that. But he's not. Again, he's not interested in fixing the problem. He's interested in keeping people angry and pissed off about the problem.

[DJ Envy]

We're talking to Ellie Mostau, a new book out now. Bad law, 10 popular laws that Are Ruining America. Can you talk about Chapter three, who Gave Away the Skies to the Airline?

[Charlamagne tha God]

Now, I just want you to know Jess and myself were reading some of your chapter titles. Yes, we love Them. We got to go through a lot of them. There's a couple out that. Me and her were talking and we were like, these would be good if we were on edibles, but go.

[Ellie Mostel]

Do y'all like flying?

[Jess Hilarious]

Yes.

[Ellie Mostel]

You love flying?

[DJ Envy]

I do.

[Ellie Mostel]

You like flying? I hate flying. It is like, the worst. It is always the worst day of my life. Why? Well, I'm fat, so I gotta. I gotta squeeze myself into a small ass seat that ain't built for me. I got somebody's, you know, seat back right into my lap. I can't eat nothing.

[Charlamagne tha God]

The seatbelt extender, right?

[Ellie Mostel]

I gotta get the most embarrassing moment of my life every time I have to do it. Ma'am, can I have a seatbelt expender? I'm a fatty, please. And then I have to, right? And then I, like, cry on the inside, right? The food's expensive. The liquor sucks, the service sucks. I'm always delayed. My bags get lost. It is miserable. Jesus, right? Why don't you fly cargo didn't fly asar. Dude. Whenever I can. Whenever I can, I drive. I'm not even. I'm not. Whatever. Whenever I can, I drive. Right? I know that's bad for the environment, but, like, whenever I. If I'm doing East coast, that's why my agents, like, you know, if you want Ellie kind of east of the Hudson, it's like one price. And if you want me to get on the plane, it's a whole different. Right? Yesterday's price is not today's price. If I got across, if I got to get on a plane. But anyway, it didn't always used to be this way. Flying used to be awesome. Spacious seats, good service, kind people. And they weren't nickel and diming you at every point. And what the reason why it used to be great and now it's not. Is this thing called deregulation. The idea. The airline industry used to be one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country. That makes a lot of sense because we're putting metal in the sky and hoping it comes down at a survivable rate. That's crazy. So it used to be one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country. With literal price fixing, literally, they could. The government set the maximum price that you could charge for certain routes. And I know conservatives, Republicans, even a lot of Democrats are like, price fixing? That's terrible. That stops innovation. No, it doesn't. It makes flying a public service, and it makes it easy for people to get around the country. FDR thought it was a war Plan that it was part of our mobilization plan for war to have reliable, cheap and an accessible commercial air flight. Right. Democrats and Republicans gave the skies away literally to corporate raiders in the 1970s. Now when I started researching this book, I actually assumed that this was a Ronald Reagan program because most, you know, I don't know about your process. My process is usually like if I see something bad, show me the Republicans, right? Show me what Reagan did. Cuz I'm sure it's his fault and there's always a mustache twirling Republican, you know, behind every curtain. But for this particular issue, this Republican plan to deregulate the airlines and let corporate, let the market decide how we fly as opposed to the government that was spearheaded by the Democrats. And as I did the research Democrats that we all know kept coming up. Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, huge in this deregulation. Stephen Breyer, one of the Democratic appointees to the Supreme Court. For a long time there were all of these Democrats that like suck, got sucked in. Ralph Nader, right. Got sucked into the gospel of deregulation. And once they did it, once the Republicans, I would say snow, snow job the Democrats into this thing. The first thing that happened when they gave away the airlines is the thing that has, that has killed the Democratic Party for my entire lifetime. This, the Airline Deregulation act came out in 1978. I was born in 1978. For my entire lifeline, labor got gutted. Airline jobs used to be good jobs. Baggage handlers and flight attendants and pilots. Pilots used to be one of the best jobs you could get. And with market forces, with deregulation, those good jobs got slashed, right? And then you go into the Reagan era where Reagan's like social safety net. Here's a big old hole I'm cutting in your social safety net. And people fell from good middle class jobs straight through down to the bottom. And they've never forgiven the Democrats for it. See, that's the, that's the thing that I think the Democratic Party didn't kind of realize when you cut labor, labor used to vote for Democrats consistently, right? Not just black labor, white labor this white working class laborers used to vote for Democrats. But once the market controlled everything, Democrats weren't helping them. And that's how they became, I believe it's part of the reason why they became obsessed with their cultural issues as opposed to their economic issues. Because they felt like they weren't going to get ahead economically anyway, right? If you tell people like you're not going to get ahead economically, you're going to be poor, you're going to be struggling, but you're going to be better off than that black person over there.

[DJ Envy]

That's right.

[Ellie Mostel]

They're going to be like, okay, sign me up, Trump. Like, that's, that's how it happens. You get, you tell white folks that they're going to have nothing, but they're going to have a little bit more than black folks and white folks will sign up for. Yeah.

[DJ Envy]

The rich white man has convinced the poor white man that the liberal white man is taking all this shit and giving it to niggas.

[Ellie Mostel]

And it's not true. It's just straight up not true. But this act, this particular law that I write about is one of the first times where the Democrats, where the Democratic Party play ball with the Republicans. And I say that it's one of the biggest mistakes of the Democrats for the past 50 years. And if you understand how they make that mistake, you can understand how they've made pretty much every mistake they've made since. Right? Because it's the same problem. It's the same giving to the market what should be a government service. I understand that people don't like the government. I understand that people think the government is inefficient. I don't like the government. I don't like interacting with government forces. But as opposed to the market. See, people say you can vote with your wallet. Nah, the person with the biggest wallet can vote the most. When you're in the market, if you're in the government, then my vote technically counts just as much as yours. Right. And that's the huge difference. So when you give away government services to the market, what you are doing Democrats, is giving away my power to affect change in my own life. Right. And that's, that's the problem. It's like the difference between going, sending your kids to a school and sending your, your kids to a factory. Right. If you send them to a school, I have a vote. I have a say in how that school's run and what my kids should be taught and how they should be treated. If you send, if I send my kids to the factory, all I gotta say is in their paycheck. Right. And I'm using child labor because Trump wants to do that now, too.

[Charlamagne tha God]

Now, you had a question, right? Chapter nine?

[DJ Envy]

No, it's ten.

[Ellie Mostel]

No.

[Charlamagne tha God]

Okay, Chapter nine.

[Jess Hilarious]

Well, actually, why can't we say gay? What are we supposed to say?

[Ellie Mostel]

So, you know, as I'm sure most of your listeners are aware of, I could have written the whole book just Bad law in Florida. Like, you just gone through the Florida. This is terrible. This is. This is just racist. This is stupid. Right? I focused on the Florida don't say gay law because it is so particularly oppressive and stupid. The law says that you cannot teach about gender. Gender difference, sexuality differences, transgender issues. You can't say any of those words to school children.

[Unknown Host]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season one.

[Ellie Mostel]

I just knew him as a kid.

[Unknown Host]

Long, silent voices from his past came.

[Ellie Mostel]

Forward, and he was just staring at me.

[Unknown Host]

And they had secrets of their own to share.

[Gilbert King]

Gilbert King. I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott.

[Unknown Host]

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

[Gilbert King]

Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

[Unknown Host]

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

[Gilbert King]

If the cops and everything would have done the job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed.

[Unknown Host]

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now I need to tell you how I got here.

[Gilbert King]

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

[Unknown Host]

Bone Valley Season 2 Jeremy.

[Ellie Mostel]

Jeremy, I want to tell you something.

[Unknown Host]

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Ellie Mostel]

Right? And if you talk to certain kinds of conservatives, they're like, well, that's fine. Why does, why does a third grader need to learn about gay people? Why can't they just learn about reading and writing? Right? And I'm like, do y'all have third graders? Like, I got a 12 year old and a nine year old, right? They talk about all this stuff. They're. They're not in a kind of lascivious sexual way, but they're interested in. In who, in how these things work, right?

[DJ Envy]

I wanted a. Would they be if they weren't taught about it in schools or showing it on television?

[Ellie Mostel]

Yeah, because they just see it in their daily lives, right? And so I use the example if I. If I'm a school teacher and I'm, you know, I. I've got my wife and I have a picture of me and my wife on my desk at school. The kids see that it's me and my wife, that it's a man and a woman, right? If I'm a Gay school teacher and I have a picture of me and my husband on the desk. They see that that's different. They see that it's a man and a man, and they might have a question about that. And in Florida, I'm not allowed to say why. And so you act like it. People act like it's neutral, but it's not. It is what the scholars call heteronormative. It's pushing the man and the woman. That's the normal way of doing it. And the man and the man, or the woman and woman. That's just crazy and weird when you could just say like, that's my husband. Anyway, back to math.

[Charlamagne tha God]

So what do you think about Trump's transgender bill, where it's just two genders, this, then the other. What is your thoughts on that?

[Ellie Mostel]

It's again, biologically, it's not true. There are people who are different. That's just a biological fact. We can pretend people think that.

[DJ Envy]

Is it biological or neurological?

[Ellie Mostel]

Man, I don't know. I'm not a scientist.

[DJ Envy]

Because I said neurological.

[Ellie Mostel]

Because you can think you're in neurological.

[DJ Envy]

Wrong body. But I'm not. That's not biologically the fact man. Biologically, it's men and women.

[Ellie Mostel]

I, I, no, I, I don't think that's right. I think that there are. I, I, I, again, something other than man and woman.

[Jess Hilarious]

You have alien.

[Ellie Mostel]

As I see now, you're, you're pushing me into.

[DJ Envy]

Don't say gay.

[Ellie Mostel]

You're, you're getting me away from the law.

[Charlamagne tha God]

But I'm just asking.

[Ellie Mostel]

As I understand it, there are people who are born with female hormones in male bodies, right. Or vice versa. And they want to express how they feel inside as opposed to how they look on the outside. But I think the larger point is not just that. I don't know. The larger point is I don't care. There you go, there you go, there you go. It's not me. I'm the way that I am. Right. I don't care how it doesn't affect me. Just somebody else being trans doesn't make me think, oh, man, maybe I should, maybe I should be trans. I always wanted to wear nice hats. Like, that's not like, that's not how my, whatever. I, I tell a story in the, in the book about, in my kid's class, one of, one of the kids in my younger kids class came out as a boy after being a girl.

[Charlamagne tha God]

At what age?

[Ellie Mostel]

I want to say eight.

[Charlamagne tha God]

Okay.

[Ellie Mostel]

And you know, the parents were just like, how does one really, how Is that the kids were just like, yeah, whatever. It's Ramsey's now. It used to be Cleopatra. It's Ramsey's now, but it's cool.

[Jess Hilarious]

And then if I'm your mom, I'm like, no, I named you Corey. How are you just gonna come up and be Shakira today?

[Ellie Mostel]

But that's between, that's between Ramses and, and his mom.

[Jess Hilarious]

And the mom.

[Ellie Mostel]

That's not between me. And that's not, that's not between the school and the kid. I don't have a say.

[Charlamagne tha God]

But it kind of does set qualum or her, you know, I mean, because if your mama named you Corey and now you, you saying, I don't want to be called Corey. I want to be called Shamika. So now the school supposed to call you, man.

[Ellie Mostel]

I go to, I. My kids go to a progressive school where like, if my kid came in and said, I want to be called Ketchup today, they would call him Ketchup for like, they would just, they would call him what the kid wants to be called. And I think that's just the natural thing to do. If somebody comes and tells you their name, you say their name. Right? You don't say, actually, your cash is clay. No, you say, you want to be Muhammad Ali today. Guess what? You get to be Muhammad Ali.

[Charlamagne tha God]

So if your kid goes to school and say I'm Batman, they're going to call your kid Batman.

[Ellie Mostel]

They're going to call my kid Batman.

[DJ Envy]

I think that's a little different. We're talking about name.

[Ellie Mostel]

Yeah.

[DJ Envy]

Because if I say, yes, this is my name, you call me my name. But if I say I am Ketchup and I just stand still and when.

[Jess Hilarious]

Hot dogs come around, ketchup coming out.

[DJ Envy]

My head, that's just a little different.

[Ellie Mostel]

I don't. I see. I disagree. I don't think Ramses does anything different in school now that he's Ramsey than he did when he was climbing Cleopatra. I don't think that there's any. Doesn't learn differently, doesn't go to. Doesn't eat lunch.

[DJ Envy]

You might start going to different bathrooms, might start going into other women, which make women uncomfortable.

[Jess Hilarious]

Yeah, the other eight year old girls.

[DJ Envy]

All right, they're only eight.

[Ellie Mostel]

Do you, do you know how uncomfortable kids are in bathrooms as they hit puberty generally?

[DJ Envy]

So now you send a little boy.

[Jess Hilarious]

Yeah, but now it's into a private stall. But you got to walk past the sink and other dudes into a. Before you get to the private stall. And it's like what you doing here, Shamik?

[Charlamagne tha God]

You have daughters and sons.

[Ellie Mostel]

Sons.

[Charlamagne tha God]

All right, so your sons will not get naked in front of your wife and. And other women, but he will do it in front of you, correct? If you have to change or if it's something like that. Now imagine a girl going into a boy's bathroom. Where? Urinal. He's going to feel uncomfortable. It's going to make him feel awkward, don't you think?

[Jess Hilarious]

And even more uncomfortable than he would than, you know.

[Ellie Mostel]

So we were at City Field, and my boy going to the urinal, and my boy just drops. Trout doesn't use the fly. Doesn't like, just drops. Just drops. Trow to his ankles and just takes a pee. Now, I was uncomfortable. I was like, that's that. How was you raised? Oh, wait, that was me. Like, how did that happen? Right? And I was like, maybe you should pull. You know, when you do, he's like, oh, why? It's my butt. Why I was peeing.

[Jess Hilarious]

And I was like, he definitely sounds like your son.

[Ellie Mostel]

That's a fair point, right? Like, people will get over it. People. People will learn. And again, we're all. We're talking about this from the perspective of making things more comfortable for the heteronormative kids in the school. We also should be talking about this in terms of making things more comfortable for the trans kids in the school. Because as much as we might say it might be uncomfortable for the trans girl in the girl's bathroom for the other girls, imagine how uncomfortable it is for the trans girl in the boys bathroom as they hit people. And we know. And again, this is not me making it up. We know, statistically speaking, that trans women are the most likely people to be brutalized, to be murdered, to be beaten up, to be victims of domestic violence in this country. So if you're telling me that we can potentially save some trans kids from that fate and the cost is that some girls have to be a little bit uncomfortable in a bathroom at a high school, that is a trade that I am willing to make, and that is a trade that I think society should be willing to make.

[DJ Envy]

I respect everybody's right to live, but I don't want to have this conversation no more. Like you said, what you said earlier is true. I don't care. You thought y'all lost the last election.

[Jess Hilarious]

Now it's one of your favorite people. You like to listen to them.

[DJ Envy]

I do.

[Ellie Mostel]

I just don't like this part. Can I just get back to the lodges really quickly, please? Just very quickly. On the Law of this, the idea that we can discriminate against trans people but nobody else doesn't make sense legally. Right. If we're going to have a law that treats everybody equal under. Under the law, then we have to treat trans people with the same kind of respect and decency that we treat everybody else. And once you start trying to poke holes in that, you see, they're not stopping at trans. They're going right to gay. They're going right to all these other things. Right? The chapter, it says, the chapter say gay.

[Jess Hilarious]

Now we can't say trans.

[Ellie Mostel]

Now we can't say trans. Now we can't say, say all these other things. Right. So again, from a legal standpoint, equality.

[DJ Envy]

You want to drop your trousers.

[Unknown Host]

Out.

[Jess Hilarious]

And just pee right here. We're not uncomfortable at all.

[Ellie Mostel]

That's. We got to. We revolved, Right?

[Jess Hilarious]

Yeah.

[Ellie Mostel]

So, yeah. So just legally speaking, the easiest thing in the law is just to treat everybody equally.

[Jess Hilarious]

I got you.

[DJ Envy]

Why are people so nonchalantly, nonchalantly discussing Trump getting a third term?

[Ellie Mostel]

Well, here's the thing. He can't constitutionally, but what he can't do and what he can do are two very different things.

[DJ Envy]

That's right.

[Ellie Mostel]

If you understand that we live in a fascist dictatorship and we do. This is what it feels like. I know that the New York Times hasn't said today fascism started, but like, it started, right? This is, we are now living in a fascist dictatorship. And so when you tell the fascist dictator, hey, you can't do this legally, I might be right, but he might not care. So if you're asking me about the law, no, there is at. The 22nd Amendment is ironclad on this issue. There is no wiggle room. You cannot serve. You cannot be elected president more than twice. Doesn't matter if your terms were consecutive or non consecutive. They were very clear at what they wanted to do when they wrote that amendment. It's one of the most clear amendments in the entire Constitution that said Trump is a fascist dictator. And if he. Look, bro, my man lost the 2020 election and attacked the Capitol and came this close to overturning that election, right? So who's to say that he can't do it again? Who's to say that he can't be successful in doing it the next time, right? Like, so we, we can't blindly say that he can't do something just because he's legally prevented from doing something. He's already shown he doesn't actually give a damn about what he's legally prevented from doing. So can I make a case for how he'll do it? Sure, I can make. I, I, I like to say one of the things that makes me a little bit of a different legal commentator than a lot of others is that I understand what white people are capable of. I've never forgotten what white people are capable of in this country. And if you want to tell me that Trump is going to run for a third term and has a way to win it, I can tell you how he does it. He gets himself. Because remember, we don't have one federal election system in this country. We have 50. So all he has to do is get himself on the ballot in red states that are already capitulating to him enough red states to get to 270 votes. The ballot process is controlled by the states, not by the federal government. You can say, well, like, he shouldn't be kicked off the ballot, but he should have been kicked off the ballot last time because he was in violation of the 14th Amendment. What does the Supreme Court do? Oh, no, we shouldn't decide such things. It should be up to this 14th amendment. He should have been kicked off last time, but the Supreme Court didn't step in. Will they step in next time? I don't know.

[Charlamagne tha God]

So what Al Sharpton and everybody saying is BS that that can't happen. That's untrue. It can.

[Ellie Mostel]

No, it's not BS it can't happen legally. Got you. But let's not fool ourselves to think that Trump is not willing to act illegally. Right. He can illegally get himself on the ballot. He can illegally get himself to some version of 270 votes, and he can illegally declare that he is still the president. And who's going to check him? Boo. Yeah. Who's going to actually stop him from doing that?

[DJ Envy]

It won't be the Supreme Court. I love the article you wrote for the Nation called It's Impossible to Overstate the Damage Done by the Supreme Court. Do you think the Supreme Court would back him in something like that?

[Ellie Mostel]

I don't know. Wow. I, not only do I not know that they would back him, if they don't, I don't know that he would follow their order. Yeah, there's, there's been no evidence that Trump is going to follow a Supreme Court order that he doesn't like. And more to the point, there's been absolutely no evidence that he's going to enforce a Supreme Court order on the co President Elon Musk that he doesn't like. So even if the Supreme Court stands up to him. And I'm putting that in air quotes. There's no evidence that he'll actually listen to them because he control anything that he controls the physical power of. And I think people really have to understand this in a kind of chest thumping way, like if he physically controls it, because he physically controls the army, he physically controls the paramilitary, he physically controls the secret police. If he physically can control something, he doesn't have to listen to nobody. Legal, illegal, doesn't actually matter to him if he has physical control. Now, if he only has control because he's got to get other people to do his bidding in the states, in the localities, that's a place where the Supreme Court can kind of step in and maybe show some spine. Right. So if you think about these lawsuits that he has in New York against, like, Kathy Hochul, if it's a situation where, like, he has to force Kathy Hochul to do something and Kathy Hochul says no, and the Supreme Court says no, well, then I don't think Trump can't force her to do it. Unless he's literally willing to put boots on the Gwynne, which he might, but, you know, then we'd have some real traffic problems in Fort Lee. But if it's something that he has complete physical control over, I see no evidence of him actually following the Supreme Court order.

[DJ Envy]

What do you say to people who say, is it really a fascist dictatorship? If this is what people voted for, the people will say that was democracy.

[Ellie Mostel]

Working people voted for Hitler.

[DJ Envy]

Yeah.

[Ellie Mostel]

People voted for Franco. People voted for Pinochet. Fascist dictators are always popular. That's how they get to be fascist. Right. And it never has to happen to a lot of people. That's not how they stay in power. It just has to happen to enough people to make everybody else fear it could happen to them. That's how fascism has always worked. It's never been the. I read a book. Adam sir from the Atlantic made me read a book recently called they Thought They Were Free. And it's about. It's like, written about Germans in the 1950s. And it kind of goes back to how all the free Germans who we call Nazis now didn't think they were part of a Nazi fascist regime. They thought they were just normal citizens in their country. They didn't know they were under a dictatorship in real time. Because for most people, their lives don't have to change. Yeah, most people can keep doing whatever they were. Most people, whatever they were doing on November 4th, they could still do on November 6th. The election didn't change their lives because it never changes most people's lives because then they would get pissed off. It only has to happen to a few people. It only happens happens to a smaller sect, especially a sect that this country that people think are deserving of cruelty and shame and a lack of dignity, you know, whether it's trans people or new immigrants or whatever, people who think deserve black people deserve to get the boot up the ass. That's who it happens to. I'm a good person. Doesn't have to happen to me. That's how fascism always work. Look, guys, we live in a country where you can get snatched up off the street for writing an article in the newspaper. And as a person who writes articles in newspapers, this is something that has really worried me and really changed and affected how I think about my job and my life. And we can say, well, it only happened to green card holders. Yet now, so far, how long before it happens to me? I'm American, so I was born Queens. Right. But how long? Flushing. I was close enough to say that you could hear the stadium. Like high school.

[Charlamagne tha God]

You go.

[Ellie Mostel]

I'm just curious. Well, then I moved to Long island and I went to Friends Academy, which is like a private Quaker school. England Cove, kind of. As my parents made more money, we moved further and further. That's how it works out on the island. Right. So as I think about my career, when I. When I'm doing book events now, I have security.

[Jess Hilarious]

Yeah, Right.

[Ellie Mostel]

Which is not something I did for my first book. Right. When I write, I think about, like, how, you know, I'm very. When I write about Musk, especially because he's the one with so much power, I write very truthfully about him, but carefully. I use all of my legal skills when I'm writing about Musk to be very careful about what I'm saying, because I know that he will sue people and he will go after people.

[Charlamagne tha God]

Is there anything that you feel like this presidency has done good at all? Was everything bad? So you think it carefully now?

[Ellie Mostel]

No, no, I'm trying to think carefully how to say it without cursing.

[DJ Envy]

Feel free to cry.

[Ellie Mostel]

Yes. Okay, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Not one thing. Because there is not one thing that fascism does well. And if I give them that credit, I legitimize all of it. It's one of the reasons why I was so angry at Schumer's capitulation on the budget deal. If you say that you can work with these people here, there, and whatever, what you're fundamentally saying is that you just have A little bit of a disagreement on this. That and the other thing. You're not actually fighting fascism. You're just playing normal bullshit partisan politics, right? From my perspective, Trump is a fascist threat to the country. Nothing he do can be. Can be okay. And I want to have said that about other Republicans. I wanted to say that about Mitt Romney or John McCain or even W. Dick Cheney. Different. But. But even W, right? You could find some things that you could work together with those people on because they were fundamentally Democratic presidents. I mean, Democratic with a small D, right? Presidents who believed in democracy.

[Jess Hilarious]

Don't get gay. Oh, we can't say gay. Oh, we're in New York. We're in New York. Don't get gay. Because you say a small D and they were just thinking of small penises. No, you weren't.

[Charlamagne tha God]

Wrong with you.

[DJ Envy]

Jeff, I've got a couple more questions.

[Ellie Mostel]

I said small D and I said Bush, like in the same.

[DJ Envy]

But you, you know.

[Ellie Mostel]

What was the.

[DJ Envy]

Significance of Cory Booker's filibuster?

[Ellie Mostel]

It's got it. One of the things that Democrats can do since they have no political power, is start building narratives, start building movements, and start building momentum towards change, right? One of the reasons why I wrote my book is that I. Look, I wrote this before the election, before Joe Biden's first debate. I knew we were in trouble by the time, you know, while I was writing it. I was under no illusions, but I kept writing it and I kept thinking that this would be a good time to release it. Because from my perspective, if we lost, this book then becomes my first attempt to write Project 2029. Ooh, these people are out here writing Project 2025. When did they start writing that? In 2021. When they had no power. When they had no political power whatsoever. That's when they started their plans for. For this current MAGA revolution. So from my perspective, this is the time when we have no power, that we need to actually start thinking bigger and start thinking more actively, right? When Republicans come into office, they come in with a sledgehammer and they smash things. Smash things that I hold dear. Smash things that I care about. Right? When Democrats come into office, we come in with, like, super glue and tape and we're going to, like, put the vase back together to make. We gotta smash some things. My book is about what we can smash. What Corey was doing is that same kind of idea of building momentum to something bigger. And that is the best use of Democratic power at this point, because the only. It's the only power that they have. Right. You can't actually stand up to them legally because you have no authority. You can't send them to them in Congress because you have no authority. Now, I think they should be doing more than placards at the State of the Union. That was pathetic. Doing what Cory Booker did, breaking racist Strom Thurman's record on the Senate floor. Like, these are the narratives and stories that we can be building now so that by the time we get to 2026. I'm not even talking about 2028. So we get to 2026, primary season. That's the fight.

[DJ Envy]

But is it too late if we're already in a fascist dictatorship?

[Ellie Mostel]

Fascist dictatorships don't historically last very long, okay? Because they overplay their hands. They're terrible, and they overplay their hands. And while they. That that small group of people that they want to hurt at the outset, that everybody's like, yeah, let's hurt them. That always expands. It always expands. That's the nature of fascism. The. The in group gets smaller and the out group gets bigger. And there's a tipping point when the out group is so big they can overthrow the in group. That's how every fascist dictatorship has ended. Except for Rome, where you needed actual.

[DJ Envy]

Has there ever been. And you would notice I don't. Have there ever been a time in history when fascism has been born? Voted out, though, is what the question I'm asking.

[Ellie Mostel]

Yeah, yeah. Franco was voted out.

[DJ Envy]

Okay.

[Ellie Mostel]

Right. He didn't. We didn't have to bomb his country. Right. You. You can. You can vote these people out again. I'm not sure that we're going to have a free and fair election anytime soon.

[DJ Envy]

That's the.

[Ellie Mostel]

But. But yeah, you can vote these people. And, and, and if you, you know, my wife's from Zimbabwe. If you look at the African continent, happens all the time. You get, like, a terrible warlord, and they do terrible things, and usually they have to die. But, you know, when they die of, like, natural causes, you have a new election and sometime leaders the second time around. I would hope that we're not in a situation where we're in this until this man chokes on a Big Mac. Like, I would hope that we could be a little bit more proactive than that, but no, I don't. We're in a fascist period. Whether it lasts 2 years or 5 years or 10 years or 25 years is entirely up to us.

[DJ Envy]

All right, well, Ellie Mostell, his new book, Bad Law, 10 popular laws that Are Ruining America. I learn a lot from you, Ellie. I like reading your stuff, man. You are very good at what you do.

[Ellie Mostel]

Thank you so much.

[Jess Hilarious]

I try to make it. I learned a lot in this interview, so I appreciate you. Thank you.

[Ellie Mostel]

Thank you so much.

[Charlamagne tha God]

Alrighty, ladies and gentlemen, pick up the new book Bad Law. It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning.

[DJ Envy]

Wake that ass up early in the morning.

[Ellie Mostel]

The Breakfast Club.

[Unknown Host]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley season one.

[Gilbert King]

Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

[Unknown Host]

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

[Gilbert King]

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

[Unknown Host]

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.