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The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Truth with Lisa Boothe: Supreme Court Under Fire: Leaks, Judicial Activism, Birthright Citizenship & Transgender Sports Cases
00:26:09
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- [00:00]
A
This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human. Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth, where we get to the heart of the issues that matter to you today. I'm joined by Carrie Severino, president of jcn. She is also a co author of the bestselling book justice on Trial, the Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Court. And that's what we're going to talk about today, the future of the court, the future of the judiciary in the country. We've seen how left wing activists have tried to use the courts to stop President Trump's agenda, to thwart his agenda. And we've also got some big, big Supreme Court battles coming up on. Things like Trump's executive power limits, birthright citizenship, transgender sports bans, gun rights expansions, election law reforms. We're talking big, big ticket items here. Hot button issues. So do we think Supreme Court justices are scared right now in this environment? I mean, we've seen attempted assassinations against some of the Supreme Court justices. You've got a bunch of crazy people out there. Does that shape their opinions? Does that shape some of these rulings? Also, we've got this group, the Federal Judicial Center. So it's basically the research and education agency of the judicial branch of the United States government, but it's partnering with a left wing climate activist group. Why is that and what does it say about left wing bias in our legal system today? All that and more with Carrie Severino. Well, Kerry, it's great to have you back on the show. There really are no shortage of judicial topics to discuss, so appreciate you for making the time.
- [01:38]
B
Happy to.
- [01:40]
A
I saw the day. I'm not sure if you, I'm sure you saw it, but that Chief Justice Roberts has started asking Supreme Court staff to sign NDAs after, you know, we've seen some controversial leaks, particularly with the Roe ver suede overturning the draft on that. Is this the right call? What, what do you make of that?
- [01:59]
B
Well, you know, it's very discouraging to see the leaks that have happened through this. The Supreme Court when I clerked there, now, this is now, you know, over 20 years ago at this point. But the Chief justice himself was very clear about the fact that this, what happens in these walls has to be kept with a strict confidentiality and lawyers should be familiar with this. It's a legal ethics question. So I, I think, unfortunately, you know, used to be that you could have a little more confidence that people who were funct at that high level. We're going to also have ethics to go along with that importance of that job. Unfortunately, obviously, with the Dobbs leak, we saw that that doesn't always hold true. And so I, I think he, I wish he hadn't been forced into that position, but I kind of, kind of was.
- [02:45]
A
Doesn't that kind of underscore where we are today and also where like the law currently is and where the judiciary brand. Right. It's like everything is political when it used to not be. So, I mean, there's always been politics, but not like this bad. Right.
- [03:00]
B
You know, I'm not a historian, so it's hard to, hard to do the comparison. But I'll tell you, the court has had definitely moments of, of tension based on politics in the past, but the justices themselves have generally been able to rise above it because they know that they have to work together literally for the rest of their lives. It's, it's life tenure, but it's also a life sentence. And so I do think it's discouraging to see the clerks at at least seem to be maybe not at least insofar the leak has been concerned, not taking it as seriously. And I, I hope that we can get back to a time when, when we, when we're looking to the health of these institutions and respecting them highly enough that we don't have to worry that someone, be it clerk or justice, is going to leak something in order to try to influence other justices in the court.
- [03:50]
A
You know, before we get to more specific things that are happening right now, I mean, we've really seen the left and they did this during President Trump's first term. They're doing it again, really trying to use the courts to stop his agenda and to really stop what Americans voted for. How successful would you say they've been this second term in trying to stop or thwart his agenda?
- [04:12]
B
Well, you know, it's always a strategy that people want to do. It is it increased in volume dramatically, particularly during the Trump years. It used to be that you could expect that maybe major things are going to get attacked in the courts. Even in the first Trump administration, there were, were regulations that before the, the ink was even printed in the Federal Register, already had lawsuits against them. I do think that because of some of the actions of the Supreme Court, particularly in pushing back against the universal injunctions, that effort hasn't been as successful as it could have been. It's now not just a matter of the top, you know, tier. Things are going to get sued, but anything that the administration is doing is going to get a lawsuit I think that's why the Supreme Court did step term and said, hey, you can't have courts trying to block with one lawsuit, block the execution of a law or into executive order throughout the entire country because otherwise you literally will not be able to get anything done in four years or maybe even eight years. It takes so long for these lawsuits. So I think that has done a lot to help push back on that. And there are some really important cases that the court has tried to work through very expeditiously. You know, just this term alone we're looking at birthright citizenship kind of for the second time. We're looking at the, whether the president has the right to hire and fire without having tenure on the, on different high level executive officials, including people at the FTC and at the Federal Reserve. So there are some really important issues that the court is trying to look at. His tariffs, they're trying to move this through expeditiously, but it's definitely slowed things down, but it certainly hasn't. They haven't been able to grind things to a halt, you know, and just.
- [05:58]
A
Further underscoring the bias that's seeped in. So the Federal Judicial center is the research and education agency of the judicial branch of the United States. And I know you've flagged this, but the Federal Judicial center has partnered with an activist group, walk us through this. Why it matters and, and why people should know about it.
- [06:19]
B
Yeah, so the Federal Judicial center is a government organization supposed to be just kind of doing administrative actions for the court, supposed to be helping out judges, you know, and, but as part of one of their ostensibly educational efforts, they've really become co opted by some a group that's on the far environmental left called the Climate Judiciary Project and, and also the Environmental Law Institute. These are left wing, dark money funded organizations that are regular supporting lawsuits on environmental law issues, trying to, to shut down energy production, other things before the courts. Normally if a group like that is trying to be involved in a lawsuit, what they might do is either support the litigants themselves, file an amicus brief to make their positions known. Right. That that's one way that, that outside groups can influence the courts. What they decided to do here is actually no, we're going to run judicial education and we're going to feed them our ideas both about what the, what the actual state of science is, which obviously comes with a very heavy tilt to environmental scientists, including. We're looking at some of these people who are actually very controversial and disgraced scientists. On the left, we've we've got them pushing legal theories that would favor the litigants who are, who are the pro environmental group litigants in these cases and presenting it to the judges as if this is a balanced and neutral thing. And the worst thing is this is coming out of now a organization, the Federal Judicial center, that is funded by our taxpayer dollars. And so this is a real co opting of a government organization for what's supposed to be neutral to actually be really influencing these judges who are going to be hearing cases that these same groups are, are really advocating it.
- [08:10]
A
We're basically paying for this indoctrination then, is what you're saying.
- [08:14]
B
Yeah, we're paying for the indoctrination. And you know what, we're, we're giving free bonus time to one side in a major controversial lawsuit. They're getting to have, you know, all of this time looking at the, at the judges. Instead of their maybe 40 page amicus brief, they get a whole reference manual that's presented as a neutral factual document that now the judges are going to be coming at it from their perspective. It's, it's outrageous attempts to influence the, the judiciary. And it goes back a little to how you framed some of the other actions where this is, some, these are, these are oftentimes pushing things that didn't get passed through the, through our elected representatives. The American people didn't vote for the Green New Deal, but they're going to the courts trying to get it and now they're trying to capture these judges so they can just push through in the judiciary what they couldn't do at the ballot box that turns our system on its head.
- [09:08]
A
Well, and also this is concerning because very often left wing groups use like environmental issues and climate issues to try to shut down. Like even if you looked at Alligator Alcatraz in Florida with where, you know, Florida was keeping some of the illegal aliens, you know, the left used environmental issues to try to shut that down as well. So this is very problematic. How does something like this happen?
- [09:36]
B
You know, that's something I'm hoping we'll be able to get more information on. The House Judiciary Committee is actually looking into these organizations, the Climate Judiciary Project, the Environmental Law Institute, and they're going to hopefully be able to uncover a little bit of how, how on earth do you insert yourself into this purportedly neutral government organization? You know, the, the Federal Judicial center is coming back asking for about 3, $35 million in federal funding annually. I think Congress ought to take a look at it and say, hey, until you can explain what's happening here, until you want to rescind these, you know, documents that are so coming at it from such a biased perspective, we're not going to be further funding this enterprise. So I think we really need to dig into this and shine some light on what's been happening here. Really. We know the deep state happens. This is just another example of a yet different area where you have the left burrowing into our government organizations and trying to just turn them into leftist propaganda groups.
- [10:42]
A
Have we seen other examples from the Federal Judicial center of, you know, sort of linking arms with left wing activists?
- [10:50]
B
This is certainly the most egregious that we have seen. I feel like in general, we probably could have seen some more consistent defense from the, the judicial branch when it came to judges who were being threatened, particularly during. We started to see this a lot during the Trump era. There are judges who needed to boost their martial presence. We obviously saw things like the attempted assassination of Justice Kavanaugh. The Supreme Court justices with people, even the ones with children at home had people protesting at their private homes in, in, in many cases in violation of local law. That wasn't being really dealt with properly yet. We saw a very delayed response from the Administrative Office of the Courts until after it was, in terms of the Biden era, judges who were also. And, and I don't think any judges on either side should be intimidated, particularly at their homes. But we, we saw them standing up a lot more vociferously, I think, for the Biden appointees than they did for Trump appointees and just general judges on the right that were being attacked and threatened by violent individuals, particularly around the time of the Dobbs decision.
- [12:01]
A
Gotta take a quick commercial break. If you like what you're hearing, please share on social media or send it to your family and friends. Who has oversight over the Federal Judicial Center?
- [12:12]
B
You know, Congress ultimately does. They, they hold the power of the purse and they, they do have oversight authority to, to bring people subpoena documents and to, to question witnesses. And so I think, I'm hoping that that is what the House Judiciary Committee will ultimately do. I'm hoping they may be able to even hold a hearing on this to get people in front of them to say, what were you thinking? How is this supposed to go down? That that is ultimately Congress's role is to, to make sure that this kind of thing doesn't happen.
- [12:43]
A
You know, you had mentioned earlier with some of these Supreme Court cases that we're gonna see, I mean, we're talking like Major things, right, like climate stuff, election law, transgender sports bans, like gun rights, like Trump's executive power.
- [13:02]
B
Like. Yes. No, it's, it's a huge, huge term. I think a lot of those ones I alluded to before have to do with just the role of the presidency and how, how to other president has authority over the federal officials can he does. Is he required to keep people on who he just fundamentally disagrees with? Just because the statute that was passed may say they have a certain number of years. But we saw that President Biden was firing people left and right where the statute might have said they had years left on their term. And he said, well, no, this is part of the president's authority. I'm glad that President Trump is finally taking that to the Supreme Court to get a ultimate ruling. So he knows, hey, is it or isn't it? Do I have the right to do this? And I think they're ultimately going to say he does. We, we, as I mentioned, he's got the tariffs case coming up. We've got whether he can fire the Federal Reserve chair. We've got the birthright citizenship question, which is going to be really significant. How do we interpret the 14th amendment? How do we understand the notion of birthright citizenship? Because it says that everyone who's born here, who's in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the laws, the court has dealt with that in, in some ways, but never as directly as they're going to here in terms of are you fall under birthright citizenship under the Constitution, if you are here illegally, if you are here in a transient fashion, not someone who's actually a permanent resident here. So that's going to be a really important thing. Women's sports, as you alluded to, was discussed. There's some really important election law cases coming up dealing with redistricting, you know, and other areas and campaign finance laws. Boy, it's going to be a huge.
- [14:39]
A
Huge, Supreme Court term for the birthright citizenship challenge. How do you see that going? And, and obviously that's very significant.
- [14:50]
B
Yes. Yeah. Well, we're still in the early stages of this. They have petitioned to have the court hearing the case. I think it's one they, they simply are going to have to address that issue with. Last time they, they took a case dealing with birthright citizenship, they really addressed it on the level of the universal injunctions. We had judges that were just saying, well, here's one case in this one state, but we're going to forbid the federal government from carrying their, their policy out anywhere, nationwide, really worldwide, anywhere. And the court didn't get all the way to the question of can President Trump make this birthright citizenship clause? They just said, look, you can't forbid him from even taking any steps anywhere in the country. So now it's coming back on the merits, as we say, looking at this question, I think it's a lot harder question than a lot of people assumed for many years. I think a lot of us just want to run along going, oh, yeah, everyone who's born here automatically. But then when you look at the text more closely, when you look at the history, I think it's going to be a real battle of the historians in a, in a way, because what we need to look at when we're looking at a constitutional provision isn't what do I read these words in 2026 and think they mean today? But what did the people in 1865, whenever a particular text was passed, what did they think it meant? Because it's not going to be fair. You know, if I pass a law today and 100 years from now, someone says, well, this word now means something different. That's not representative government anymore. Because I didn't. It's not what I decided on. And so we need to make sure that we read the 14th amendment as it was understood at the time. And there's some, there's some strong historical arguments, really, on both sides of was this. Actually, we know it was intended to give citizenship to the children of the freed slaves. That was the clear purpose of that. Absolutely. That's included. We. Beyond that, we also have later court cases saying, you know, if you're a legal permanent resident here, you and you have children, even if you're not a citizen yourself, but you're living here permanently. In a legal fashion, yes, that conveys citizenship on that. But it's never been understood that someone who say, the child of a diplomat is born here, maybe lived his whole life here, but doesn't matter. His father's, you know, the ambassador from China, he doesn't have American citizenship. If someone's an invading army and they have, they bring a pregnant woman with them, for whatever reason, she gives birth, not a, not an American citizen. So we've always understood there's some things that are clearly in and some things that are clearly out. But I don't think we've had a chance to hear back from the court on the final answer of, okay, what happens for this huge, millions of people interim group now where we have so many illegal immigrants and people who are engaged in birth tourism and other transient visitors to the country even. Was that really the understanding of the 14th Amendment, that they would all be automatically conferred citizenship?
- [17:32]
A
I feel like the Lisa Cook case is interesting too, with President Trump firing her from the Federal Reserve Board because you can't fire for cause, but for cause has been untested and it's undetermined. And so it's like, where, where does that go? Right. How do they determine that?
- [17:51]
B
Yeah, that's going to be an interesting case because in some ways it's similar to the Slaughter case that I alluded to earlier, where it's just his ability to fire high level executive branch officials just across the board without cause. And I think the Supreme Court's going to say, yeah, there's certain officials you could definitely even fire without even having cause. The Federal Reserve, from the arguments that we heard a few weeks ago, the court seems like it does want to treat it differently than a lot of these other federal agencies. And it's unclear exactly how that case, in my mind, is going to shake out in this case. The President's not saying I can just fire Lisa Cook for any reason. I feel like it. He's saying there is cause. She lied on these mortgage documents. That goes to the actual issues that she's, she would be dealing with at the Fed. And so we want to make sure these people are going to be people who, who are upright and are not committing fraud in any way. I think it's possible the Supreme Court's going to try to chart a middle path that says we're going to leave in place the idea that you have to have some kind of cause to fire someone from the Fed. But I think the big question is how much, what, what kind of cause do you need? Is this going to be close enough? How much are courts going to look into this? Is this is a good reason, this is a bad reason. And how much notice and opportunity to respond then does someone like Lisa Cook get to say, hey, wait, no, that was a, that was a typo, I didn't make this false claim, or whatever, whatever they want to say to defend themselves if they're being fired for cause.
- [19:15]
A
On the transgender, for the sportsman that they're looking at, what is it? West Virginia vs. J and similar cases. What, what are the broader impact? Because obviously, you know, this is dealing specifically with men and women's sports, but what are the broader implications as a result of, you know, if we get a narrow ruling, a broad ruling, what are sort of the broader implications here?
- [19:37]
B
Yeah, well, so The. The. The two states that are directly involved in this case. You mentioned West Virginia, and the other one is in Idaho. But this is a case where 27 different states have laws or policies in the book that say in women's sports, only actual biological women can compete. And we all understand intuitively why that is. It's because there are biological differences to how men and women perform on the sports field. They want to make sure women have a fair shake at a very minimum. Obviously, this is going to affect all of those. The majority of states in the country and. And it, by extension, the majority of. I would say that I don't know what percentage of the American population is in those 27 states, but the women across the country and young women who are athletes and want to make sure that they have a fair opportunity to compete in sports. But it does go broader, because if you take the arguments that. That the left is making in this case, basically the people who want to open up women's sports to even biological men go, it's very hard to draw lines to. To say, first of all, how could you draw a line that only says men who identify as women can play in these sports? That was one of the questions that came up in the. In the arguments. Aren't you then making a distinction based on transgender status? You say that biological men who think they're men can't compete in these sports, but biological men who think they're women can. That is actually a. Making a distinction based on transgender status. But depending on how broadly the court adopted these arguments, you could imagine that could have a major impact on all sorts of laws having to do with just separate bathroom and locker room facilities. Any kind of distinction based on sex, then, is kind of up for grabs. And potentially men would be then allowed to be in women's spaces and in women's organizations that heretofore have been able to be separate under federal law and under state law.
- [21:32]
A
You know, looking at the Voting Rights act, you know, the Supreme Court's looking at that in Louisiana. You know, how much of a. How many maps would change in the country as a result of what the Supreme Court decides on this?
- [21:51]
B
You know, that's all up to the Supreme Court. As few as one. It could be that it decides the case in such a narrow way that really only Louisiana is affected. And historically, that's kind of been the way the court has done it. It's often decided these cases and bases that are so tied up with the facts of the case that it's very hard for other Courts to then extrapolate and say, all right, now I'm looking at a case in Alabama, now I'm looking at a case in Florida, now I'm looking at a case in Texas. How do I apply this law even just to these other, other similar states? So if the court, I, I'm hoping, and I think a lot of people see that the fact that the court was supposed to decided this case last spring, decided to hold it over another, to another term, hear it again this year, I think a lot of people see that as a sign that they're going to make a broader decision. And so that in that case that could, this could be a decision that has a much broader impact. States right now are in a kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't situation because they have laws on one side telling them if you don't have a certain number of, you know, the Voting Rights act says you can't be discriminating the basis of race. Great. I don't think, thank God. I think there's not a lot of states who are actively trying to discriminate in the basis of race right now. But people have interpreted that then to say, well, you have to have a certain amount of minority, majority, minority districts. And then the states will say, okay, well if we're drawing our, our district lines based on looking at race, then on the other side we run into the 14th Amendment or the 15th Amendment. Really, how are, how are we not discriminating on the basis of race if we're drawing our lines on the basis of race? And so you might have the same map that one court says, well, this map is bad because it looks not enough at race and it's not drawing lines in a race conscious way enough. And another court looks at it and says, no, this, this map is bad because it's making too much consideration of race so that it's violating the Constitution over here. I'm hoping the Supreme Court comes up with a, some kind of way to break that. A really difficult bind that states find themselves in right now. And I think that could have a huge impact across the country because states really need some guidance so they understand how to go forward. And it's not just going to be for every time they redistrict. It's just years and years of litigation. It might be bad for election lawyers if they can't keep on bringing indefinite numbers of lawsuits, but I think it would be really good for the country.
- [24:08]
A
Now before we go, do you think, are Supreme Court justices scared to do their job these days. You know, we've seen assassination attempts against some of them, particularly Brett Kavanaugh. Obviously, he faced a, you know, character assassination during his confirmation process. You know, we're living in really heightened times, and these are really big cases that really transformed the country. How much of impact do you think that has on the decision making and some of these rulings?
- [24:39]
B
Well, I, I think it's a real factor in terms of the justices, something that's on the justice's minds. And thankfully, they do have good security because, remember, we know it's not just Justice Kavanaugh who was targeted by the assassin. It was multiple justices that he was hoping to take out. And unfortunately, we had a really irresponsible judge that gave him a pitifully low sentence for this attempted, you know, up to four attempted murders there. So that's. That was really shocking. I do think the federal. The. That the marshals have really upped their game in terms of protecting Supreme Court justices. But remember, there are so many other federal judges who are also getting threats, and not everyone, I think, has the level of martial coverage that the Supreme Court justices do. So I, I hope that it's not affecting their decisions. I do think they make every effort not to let that affect their decisions, but I, I hate that they have to worry about it, that they have to worry about going to a restaurant, that they have to worry about being able to be seen in public and having their houses doxxed. That's the. That's. That's really inappropriate having their. We've had people broadcasting, you know, where different justices go to church, where their kids go to school. This should not be the price of being able to be a public servant.
- [25:52]
A
I agree with that. Strange world we live in. Carrie Sabrino, appreciate you making the time. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, Ms. Carrie Severino. Appreciate her for making the time to come on the show. Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week. I also want to thank John Casio, my producer, for putting the show together. Until next time, This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.