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2517 - Trump's Showdown With SCOTUS And Protesters w/ Mark Joseph Stern
01:06:31
It's a Matt-jority top of the show today, with Sam joining a little later with an interview with Slate's Mark Joseph Stern about the goings on at the Supreme Court. The Trump administration is taking it's assault on democracy to the court, and there...
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Sam Cedar
You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show@jointhemajorityreport.com and get an extra hour of content daily.
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Matthew Leck
It is Thursday, June 12, 2025. I am Matthew Leck. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, a client state in the Mediterranean, Israel, you know, the one reportedly poised to militarily assault another one of its neighbors. This time around it says Israel kills at least another 120 Palestinians in Gaza. Violence continues in the West Bank. Domestically, a federal judge bars the Trump administration from continuing to detain Mahmoud Khalil, citing irreparable harm. The judge did leave time for the Trump administration to appeal. Also a majority of GOP voters, majority of voters oppose the GOP's big beautiful bill and only two thirds of Republicans support it, much lower than their support for sending the Marines to Home Depots. Also, Trump pretends to have a China deal in hand, touting magnets as experts say a China proved it hold holds a strong position. Maybe something to have considered. The World Food Program warns of famine risk in Sudan. And David Hogg booted from the DNC after suggesting slightly more democracy in the primaries. All that and more on today's Majority Report. Just me and Russ in today, kind of like the first day he was here.
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Mark Joseph Stern
Whoop, whoop.
- [02:17]
Matthew Leck
Emma, of course getting ready for her wedding. Sam out on Thursday though we do have Sam, don't if you're missing Sam or Emma, don't worry. I mean Emma's not going to be here but Sam. Well, we got a nice long conversation. Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer covering the courts and law for Slate, of course a standby here. Majority Report. They had a good conversation recently recorded. We'll play that in a second and we'll have a semi normal little bit of a bros Thursday. We're letting the monkeys loose with Thursdays for the boys. Remember Was that like 20, 22 by now? How old that? Is that when Eric Trump was talking about that? But we'll have a fun, fun half for you with Binder who recently had a child. He's gonna join us and Brandon Sutton. So semi normal but where it will save all the fun for the fun half. No clip. We will get right to this interview. But first Sam has an advertisement and that is the mid roll there for you if you want to run that.
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Sam Cedar
Thanks, Matt. In a moment we're going to be talking to Mark Joseph Stern, senior Slate senior writer at Slate, about what's happening on the Supreme Court. First word from our sponsor. Going online without ExpressVPN is not like. Is like not having a passcode on your phone. You're just making it insanely easy for anyone who steals your phone to also steal your whole digital life. I want to thank ExpressVPN for supporting the majority report. And here's the deal. Visit expressvpn.com majority. You can get up to four months extra free. That's four extra months free. Look, every time you connect to a public network, whether it's at the mall or in the subway or, or on the Amtrak train or, I don't know, at the airport, your online data is not secure. Any hacker on the same network can gain access and steal your passwords. They can steal your bank logins, they can steal your credit card details, maybe, I don't know, photos you don't want on there. Everything that you want to protect hackers can make up to 1000 bucks per person selling personal info on the dark web. ExpressVPN stops hackers from stealing your data by creating a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the Internet. It is super secure. It would take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to get past ExpressVPN's encryption. And none of you are in the airport for a billion years. It is super easy to use. That's why I really like it, because I'm Boomer adjacent. I guess all you gotta do, you fire up the app, you click literally one button and you are protected. It works on all your devices, works on your phones, your laptops, your tablets, and more smart TVs, so you can stay secure on the go. For me, I love it because, well, I want the security. And again, it is super, super easy to use. I was always intimidated by a of VPN. And ExpressVPN just couldn't be easier to use. Saul was always telling me, get a vpn. I did. Then he reminds me, put your VP on a VPN on. And then he's somehow amazed that I can actually do it. But it's super easy. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com majority that's E X P R E S s v p n.com Majority to find out how you can get up to four extra months. ExpressVPN.com Majority all right, quick break. And when we come back, we'll be talking to Mark Joseph Stern. We are back. Sam Cedar on the majority report. Emma Viglund out today. I am actually out today and we are pre recording this and I am in a virtual studio. So if it looks a little bit strange, don't get too thrown off by this. It is a pleasure to welcome back to the program senior writer from Slate, Mark Joseph Stern. Mark, you also have the co host a podcast and I. It's a legal term. I can't remember what it is.
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Mark Joseph Stern
Amicus.
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Sam Cedar
Amicus.
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Mark Joseph Stern
Amicus podcast with Dolly Lithwick. I'm the co host.
- [06:59]
Sam Cedar
I, I went to law school for a year and then I did everything I could to get every legal term out of my head. Thirty years later, I finally succeeded. All right, let's go through. There's a bunch of cases that are going on these days. And, and then I want you, if you could, to preview what we can expect. This time of year is sort of like your Christmas or Hanukkah, I guess, where you've got this sort of bevy of cases that just keep rolling out over the next couple of weeks. But let's start with the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case briefly. He's been brought back to the United States from Seekot, which is sort of the, like the primary demand, I think, that people had was due process for this guy. But they brought him back and then all of a sudden came up with a whole new raft of charges that he was supposedly they were charging him with. Obviously, we don't know the details of that case yet, but what's your sense of it?
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Mark Joseph Stern
I think it's very fishy. I think there's a good reason to be skeptical that many of these allegations against Abrego Garcia are true. I think it's pretty clear that the Trump administration cooked them up in an effort to save face, to comply with the court's orders to bring back Abrego Garcia, but to do so on Trump's own terms and to ensure that he would immediately be placed in criminal custody. So federal prosecutors have alleged that Abrego Garcia was part of this human smuggling scheme, that he was bringing undocumented migrants from Texas up through Tennessee to Maryland. They have indicted him in Tennessee, where he was pulled over during a traffic stop in 2022. The charges stem from that stop. They claim that he was carrying undocumented immigrants and smuggling them unlawfully. He said at the time that they were his fellow construction workers and that they were driving to a construction site. We know that he is a construction worker. It is a very plausible story. At the time, the federal government actually stepped in and Worked with Tennessee author to decide whether or not to hold him and his passengers and let him go and said, we don't find evidence that we need to hold him or detain him at this time. And so, you know, three years ago, the federal government had no serious issue with this. But now that the Trump administration is looking for a way to save face, they have revisited that episode and claimed that it is evidence of some kind of massive human smuggling scheme. I don't want to get into the details, but the new allegations in the indictment don't match up with the report that DHS filed at the time. There are discrepancies, there are exaggerations. It really looks like the Trump administration is maybe scraping the bottom of the barrel to try to further smear Abrego Garcia's reputation rather than fully comply with what the courts ordered, which was true due process and not just saddling him with even more legal problems than he already had.
- [10:02]
Sam Cedar
And we should also say, my understanding is that the U.S. attorney in Nashville, when they brought these cases, resigned rather than to pursue these charges, which is not a good sign. Prosecutors don't generally behave that way if there's any semblance of a case.
- [10:21]
Mark Joseph Stern
Right. So a top federal prosecutor in that office, according to ABC News, resigned rather than work on the case because he felt that Abrego Garcia was being politically persecuted and that the Trump administration was basically cooking up these charges just to find some reason to prosecute Abrego Garcia. I mean, this is the quintessential abuse of prosecutorial discretion. Right? Starting with the man that picking the crime the Supreme Court has warned against this time and time again, if you pick any one person, you can almost always cook up some criminal allegations against them. I'm sure if the government spent enough time, it could find some reason to indict you or me. Even Neil Gorsuch, no flaming liberal, has talked about this issue. And so I fear that the administration is successfully smearing this guy's name. People don't understand that an indictment means very little. Famously, you could indict a ham sandwich. And we need to wait until the federal prosecutors actually show us real evidence before drawing any conclusions here.
- [11:13]
Sam Cedar
Yeah, my bet is in 3, 4, 5 months, 6 months, this sort of quietly goes away. And I mean, honestly, like that, they just move on to another thing. And the nature of our news cycles is such that nobody's going to be talking about this case in four or five months. And if he is set free or ends up, you know, found not guilty, these charges, or they drop Them, the Trump administration is going to be on to persecuting somebody else by that point. Many people maybe. All right, let's turn to. I want to turn to a couple of cases that don't seem like huge deals, but it gives us a sense of, like, what's going on at the court, because. And then we'll get to the shadow docket stuff. But there was a case that Mexico brought about guns. Tell us about that one.
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Mark Joseph Stern
So the Mexican government sued a bunch of US Gun sellers and manufacturers, arguing that they were complicit in a scheme to smuggle guns south of the border to criminal cartels in Mexico. The lower courts allowed the lawsuit to move forward. The Supreme Court unanimously threw out the lawsuit. So Mexico loses, the gun sellers win. But I will note that the Supreme Court ended up deciding this on very narrow grounds in an opinion that was actually authored by Justice Elena Kagan, who is generally no friend of the gun industry. And this can get very complicated. But just to boil it down, the gun sellers had two arguments. One was really big and one was very small. And the court embraced the much smaller argument. So the big argument that the gun sellers wanted to make was that basically the entire gun industry is forever immunized against any kind of lawsuit for illegal conduct that is carried out with its weapons. Even if the industry and gun sellers and gun makers had some inkling that they were selling weapons to criminals, even if they knew that their weapons were part of a pipeline that was going to the cartels, that they were still immunized under a federal statute known as plca, the Protection of Lawful Commerce and Arms act, which does provide pretty broad immunity from suit, though it's not universal. Then the company's other argument, which was much smaller, was just that Mexico had not plausibly argued facts or put forth evidence that the gun industry was aiding and abetting this criminal activity. That is a much narrower argument. It's really just about the meaning of this one federal statute about aiding and abetting. And so the Supreme Court only embraced the smaller argument. Justice Kagan said, look, Mexico doesn't have any evidence that these gun sellers are aiding and abetting the cartels, that they're, you know, facilitating this criminal activity. So they threw out the suit on that grounds, but they did not embrace the broader argument that the gun industry gets immunity, even if it knows that it is the proximate cause of illegal conduct. So that question remains unanswered. And I know we're all disappointed to see another lawsuit against the gun industry fail, but it failed in the narrow way rather than the big way. And at this Supreme Court, like, that's kind of a win.
- [14:19]
Sam Cedar
Yeah. I just want to remind people about PLA because it is an incredibly unique statute. The gun industry is treated, I mean, even the vaccine industry. I mean, there's, there's immunity or protection for vaccines. I, I mean, no pun intended, but from, from lawsuits. But there is an immunization. Immunization court. There is a, another mechanism, at least to adjudic. No drug is 100% safe and people have the opportunity to go to that court and get some redress. But this statute basically immunizes gun manufacturers. We don't have anything really like this in any other industry. And it's why we have seen it is so rare that we see a win against a gun company, essentially. And there's been many attempts to hold them to account for a product that they sell that is really designed to kill people.
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Mark Joseph Stern
I mean, that's right.
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Sam Cedar
And the interesting thing about this case is that it's sort of analogous in some way to what we saw with Purdue and OxyContin, because they had, but they had statutory responsibility. Purdue did, and the, the sort of downstream distributors had responsibility to pick up on like, hey, the pills are being. Why are we selling so many pills to this one town in West Virginia? Or something like that? There's nothing like that on this. So that there was a much steeper hill to climb for the Mexican government.
- [16:06]
Mark Joseph Stern
Yeah, that's right. I mean, no other industry has this protection. And I don't think Congress would ever create this protection for any other industry, like car manufacturers, drug companies, pharmaceutical companies, like, they are somewhere along the line held responsible when they know that their products are being misused and abused for illegal purposes. And the gun industry fought for and secured this shield that generally immunizes its sellers. So even like these bad apple gun stores that we know are selling upwards of 90% of the guns used in crimes, they still have this really broad immunity from suit because they can throw up their hands and say, well, we don't know how our guns are being used. Even if we're selling almost exclusively to criminals. We don't know they're going to use them for crimes. We just take their word for it. Suit involved one narrow exception to plca, which kicks in basically when the gun industry knows that its own conduct is going to be the proximate cause of illegal behavior. And that is a worrying exception for the industry because, you know, there is a whole team of lawyers out there for some of these Gun groups that are going to the industry and providing very clear evidence that they are selling and manufacturing guns that are going straight to the cartels. And so they wanted to use this case to basically close that exception. Exception to render it totally useless to say that we are never the proximate cause of illegal use of our guns. We could never be blamed for it. We get a total shield rather than an 80% shield. And that is what the Supreme Court didn't answer. Now, look, in a future case, will the Supreme Court answer it in the favor of the gun industry? Probably. But this, I think, is a good example of the liberals, in my view, very clearly striking a deal with the conservative bloc of the court to say, all right, let's lose this the good way rather than the bad way and leave the bigger question for another day.
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Sam Cedar
I've always wondered why there isn't more attempt in a political realm. This may be outside your portfolio just a little bit to attack this law. I mean, you know, it's one thing to say that there's a Second Amendment right to have a gun, but there is a. It's a totally different thing to say we're going to hold the gun manufacturers certain amount of liability for their practices that end up causing their products to be used in a way that is, you know, highly problematic for society.
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Mark Joseph Stern
So I do have one sort of unsatisfying answer to that question, which is that, as a congressman, Bernie Sanders voted for PLCA and continued to support it when he was attacked for that vote in 2016. And it created a huge amount of kind of intramural tension among the Democrats. I think he's walked back his support for the law now, but at the time, he was kind of like a pro gun Democrat. He was from Vermont, which has very low rates of gun death and high rates of gun ownership. And so I think this became a third rail within the Democratic Party. And people are afraid to kind of reopen that. That box. But I agree that they should because it's a terrible law and it's a total outlier. And, I mean, there are actually good constitutional arguments that it violates the Seventh Amendment, that it prohibits people from exercising their rights to a jury trial when, you know, they deserve to bring civil claims against an industry that has caused them harm. And there's just no comparator to this law. This was a total favor to the gun industry. You know, if the tobacco had had better lobbyists in the 90s, it might have been able to enact a law like this. And then there would have been no master tobacco settlement. There wouldn't have been billions of dollars given to states and to victims of lung cancer. And like, this was basically the gun industry learning from the tobacco industry's mistakes because they were afraid they were going to become the next tobacco industry. And they said, how do we get ahead of that? And they did. And here we are 20 years after the law's passage, and repealing it is still not a priority for Democrats, unfortunately.
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Sam Cedar
I agree with you, and I think Sanders did walk that. Walk that path.
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Mark Joseph Stern
Yeah, he did.
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Sam Cedar
But it a while, because this is, I mean, you know, you come from a state where the people carry guns, right? You are subjected potentially to the NRA dumping a ton of money in against you. Now, the NRA is weaker these days, but. All right, let's leave that aside for a moment. Ames v. Ohio. Is that worth talking about briefly?
- [20:20]
Mark Joseph Stern
I mean, I think so, because I kind of want to defend the decision, even though I know a lot of progressives disliked it. So this was, I mean, a case with really icky facts, right? There is this straight woman who, who worked for the Ohio Department of Youth, and she claimed that this cabal of gays in her workplace was discriminating against her for being straight, for being a heterosexual woman. And so she filed a lawsuit under Title 7 of the Civil Rights act, which prohibits employment discrimination. And the lower courts threw out her lawsuit and said, well, you don't get to sue this easily because you are a member of a majority group, you're straight, and you claim that you're facing discrimination by a minority group, the gays. And in that rare situation, situation, under our case law, when there's a member of the majority claiming discrimination, they have a heightened burden. They have to prove what the courts have called background circumstances. So they had to prove, like, statistics that there was, like, rampant discrimination against straight people in this department in order to bring a suit. And the Supreme Court unanimously, in an opinion by Justice Jackson, overturned that rule, sided with the straight woman, and said, no, no, no, there's no different burden whether you're straight or gay, black or white, Christian or Muslim, male or female. Everybody has to carry burden to prove discrimination. That doesn't mean that this woman's suit will prevail. She still has to convince a judge and a jury that she faced discrimination. And I think she'll probably fail because her claims are pretty out there. But it does mean that no matter your sexual orientation, whether you are straight or gay or bisexual or whatever, you can bring a suit under Title seven. And the Reason that I want to defend this is that, you know, Title 7 does not protect groups. It protects individuals, and it protects them on the basis of traits. So it doesn't say, if you are black, you can't be discriminated against. It protects you on the basis of race. It doesn't say if you're a woman, you can't be discriminated against. It protects you on the basis of sex. And under the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock, it doesn't protect you if you're gay. It protects you for based on your sexual orientation, gay or straight. And so in this kind of weird decision that does protect a straight woman, the Supreme Court affirmed Bostock and affirmed that Title 7 protects individuals on the basis of sexual orientation in an opinion by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. And I think that was way more important than the actual, like, outcome of the case because it got online justices on board reaffirming that Bostock is the law of the land, that Title VII does prohibit discrimination on the basis of a person's sexual orientation. And it really reminds conservative lower courts, which have been criticizing Bostock from the day it came out, that they might not like it, but they need to follow it and apply it because it remains the law of the land.
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Sam Cedar
That's interesting. So the idea is that it is. It's protecting the individual, but it is a function less of how they're oriented, but whether the discrimination is a function of orientation.
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Mark Joseph Stern
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Right. So, you know, Justice Jackson made it very clear, if this woman were a lesbian and she claimed discrimination by straight people, it would be the same law that would apply. It doesn't matter, like, whether you're a member of a majority group or a minority group. What matters is whether you were discriminated against because of your identity. And everybody faces the same burden.
- [23:40]
Sam Cedar
I really want to read into the facts of that case because it sounds like it could be actually pretty fun.
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Mark Joseph Stern
It sounds like an affects miniseries in the making. Like, the facts are very bizarre. And I understand why a lot of liberal commentators hate this case because this woman's allegations sound sort of homophobic. I mean, she's like, oh, well, I had this gay colleague and she got promoted ahead of me. And then I had this gay boss and he didn't want to promote me. And it's like, maybe you were just a terrible colleague, but yet she has a right under the Civil Rights act to bring this claim. Might get tossed out, might not even make it to a jury. But the Supreme Court affirmed that at the you know, the very start, she does have a right to bring this claim.
- [24:16]
Sam Cedar
What are the other. Does it open up the door, though, to a lot of like, you know, so called reverse discrimination cases or, I mean, you know, there's a lot of times where these things aren't brought necessarily sincerely. And so, I mean, is that the concern?
- [24:33]
Mark Joseph Stern
So that is the concern among some liberals. And the NAACP did file a brief saying, look, we don't want Title VII to be turned into this cudgel for like reverse discrimination claims. And in fairness, a bunch of conservative groups, including Stephen Miller's group, filed briefs in this case urging the Supreme Court to use it to turbocharge reverse discrimination claims and to create a new rule that diversity initiatives are illegal, that DEI is illegal in the workplace, that all of this stuff that allegedly discriminates against straight white men is legal. But the Supreme Court did not go there, it did not embrace that argument. And I really think the impact of this case is going to be very muted. There are already a whole lot of barriers to bringing a workplace discrimination claim. It's already too difficult to bring those claims. I think it is pretty unlikely that this decision is going to open the door to people bringing frivolous reverse discrimination claims left and right. I think, you know, the standard that the Supreme Court embraced has already been used by a bunch of courts around the country for years. This was just sort of smacking a lower court that went in a different direction. And in those other courts, we're not seeing this problem. So I doubt that this will usher in more of that problem. I think those claims will remain pretty rare.
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Sam Cedar
Okay. All right, that's good to know. All right, let's talk. I want to talk to shadow docket. But before we even get there, as we start to get generalized a little bit, before we come back to the sort of like what we should be paying attention. A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump got very mad at Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society. Now, these little spats, they come and go. Elon Musk apparently tweeted just the other night, last night, I think it was that I regret some of the tweets that I wrote about Donald Trump. And so maybe they're going to make up. I mean, who knows? But what tell remind people what the Federalist Society is and how fundamental it has been to everything we are dealing with on a legal front, which is massive. Obviously, you know this and what the potential implications are going forward if there is this rift between Trump and Leonard Leo.
- [26:50]
Mark Joseph Stern
So the Federalist Society is A group of conservative and libertarian lawyers, basically a network that is very, very well funded. And the individuals who are a part of it lift each other up, create political connections, and help each other get positions of power. Red state attorneys general, judgeships, state courts, all of that stuff. The Federalist Society sort of exists to put people in those positions and also to encourage conservatives to enter academia, to go to law schools, and to churn out law review articles, which are not peer reviewed, which are edited entirely by law students, which then courts can use to try to shift the law rightward. I call it the Law Review industrial complex. The Federalist Society has just mastered the art of sort of laundering kooky theories of the law through their friends in academia and conservative scholars and getting it to the Supreme Court and making it look legitimate. And Donald Trump in his first term is there.
- [27:49]
Sam Cedar
Can I ask you one question about this? You may not know the answer, but was there a single judge Donald Trump placed? Something like, I want to say, 250 some odd federal judges, lifetime appointments to the judiciary. I think Biden was able to just surpass it by a couple, although didn't have three Supreme Court justices. Justices. And it really fundamentally changed the judiciary because Barack Obama was not very aggressive in putting judges on the bench. But was there a single one of those judges? I mean, what percentage of those judges were Federalist Society judges?
- [28:25]
Mark Joseph Stern
So, back at the envelope math. Like, at least 80% of his judge judicial nominees to the courts of appeals had some Federalist Society affiliations. The number is a little bit lower for his district court nominees because some of those were passed as deals with. With Democratic senators in their states. So, like, there were package deals where there would be 10 conservative judges and then five sort of centrist judges appointed to courts in New York and New Jersey. But the majority of Trump's judges in the first term all had Federalist Society affiliations, and all three of his Supreme Court justices were Federalist Society stalwarts. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett were basically hatched in a Federalist Society lab to serve as justices and to launder all of these crazy ideas that the Federalist Society produced into the law of the land. But what we're seeing now is that even though these judges have done almost everything that Republicans have wanted, right, they've overturned Roe versus Wade, they've effectively overturned affirmative action, they've overturned Chevron deference, and they're obliterating the administrative state. They're turbocharging executive power. It's not enough because they're still Delivering some losses to the right. They aren't full MAGA all the time. They are sometimes acting with a semblance of independence or principle. That's especially true, I think, of Justice Barrett, who is deemed a huge disappointment among the kind of Trumpy rights. And so this rift is a product of the fact that a lot of judges who Leonard Leo suggested to Trump do not rule for him 100% of the time. Now, they might rule for him 95% of the time, but that remaining 5% is now considered a deal breaker for Donald Trump. And the fact that a judge that he appointed ruled against his tariffs, or the fact that judges he appointed.
- [30:03]
Sam Cedar
It was the tariffs that really did it.
- [30:04]
Mark Joseph Stern
That really did it. Even though that was probably not a Federalist Society judge, it was still a Trump appointee who ran in sort of conservative circles. But that was just. That was like the breaking point. He was getting angrier and angrier because, you know, even like Neil Gorsuch, right, wrote the Bostock decision that protected employees on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. These justices and judges are not toeing the party line as regularly as Trump wants. And what we're seeing, too, is that there's a faction of them who are toeing the party line, right? So judges on the fifth Circuit, people like Andrew Oldham, James Ho, Kyle Duncan, these are all Trump appointees from the first term who are full MAGA. They rule for Trump 100% of the time. They are vocal partisan defenders of Trump. And they say, our job is not to just, you know, apply the law. Basically, our job is to apply MAGA and to weaponize the law for Donald Trump's agenda. They are out there on the front lines, and that is creating this rift that Trump can see that everybody can really see, where he's like, I want more of those guys. I don't want these squishes. I don't want people who rule against me 5% of the time. I don't want originalists and textualists. I just want MAGA partisans. I want loyalists. And Leonard Leo, although he himself was a loyalist, did not fully deliver that. He still put forth a bunch of judges who see themselves as real judges, like Amy Coney Barrett wakes up in the morning and she's like, I am a justice. I am doing real law. Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas do not. They wake up and they're like, how can I help Donald Trump? And so now there's this rift on the right within the conservative legal movement between those who still believe in the Federalist Society, society's like alleged principle of promoting originalism and textualism and judicial restraint. And those who want to burn all of that down to ensure that the only judges who get through in the second term are pure MAGA loyalists.
- [31:58]
Sam Cedar
I mean, to be fair to Leonard Leo, we all thought, I mean, Amy Coney Barrett was taking out ads against abortion.
- [32:04]
Mark Joseph Stern
Yeah.
- [32:05]
Sam Cedar
And so, you know, she, it was, it was a slight head fake. But, you know, I think the real problem is obviously she's a woman and you can't, I mean that there's a inherent problem there with her on the Supreme Court. From the perspective of, I think a Donald Trump.
- [32:23]
Mark Joseph Stern
I totally agree.
- [32:24]
Sam Cedar
I mean, honestly, I think it really does come down to that in some way. But. Okay, so with all that said, what are the implications of this going forward? Like, materially speaking, let's assume, and we should also say Leonard Leo is fine. He has an organization that got a billion with a B dollars. We don't even what that organization, as far as I can tell, is doing with that money that he got from some. I can't remember which right wing billionaire donated that money, but they're doing something and I guess we'll find out probably in five or 10 years. But in the meantime, does this mean that the number of judges that. And there's not as many available? Like, you know, when, when Trump came in his first term, there was so many vacancies because of Obama's sort of lack of prioritization of this, that Trump could just go in and there was plenty to fill. In this instance, there's not nearly as many vacancies between Biden and Trump over the past eight years aggressively filling these seats. But does this slow the process down even more? Does this mean that there are judges? Does this mean that maybe there are senators who are like, you know, Leonard Leo's not knocking on my door. I don't feel like I have to do this as quickly as maybe we would have done in other circumstances.
- [33:56]
Mark Joseph Stern
So I think it's a little too soon to tell. I do doubt that it will substantially slow down the pace of confirmations. It will be slower because as you said, there was this sort of generational turnover under Trump and Biden. There were a bunch of empty seats when Trump first came in. There aren't a lot of empty seats anymore. So he will appoint fewer judges this time. But these MAGA loyalists are really a dime a dozen. And I don't think that these Republican senators who maybe are going to step up and do more of the nominating now that Leo is ostensibly out of the picture. I don't think they're going to struggle to find candidates who fit the bill. Like every red states attorney general's office has become like a radicalization camp and a training ground for MAGA lawyers. Like they go do their, their tour of duty in the Texas Attorney General's and then they come out and they have this great qualification and they are extremist far right Republicans, but they can go before the Senate and say, hey, of course I'm qualified for this job. I worked in an Attorney General's office. I was a Solicitor General. Like they have been preparing these guys over the last four years. They have a long line of them who are ready. So I think what we'll see is like fewer professors, fewer people like Amy Coney, I mean she was a law professor for almost her entire professional career, right? Like that is no longer good enough. That suggests that there's room for evolution and personal views and growth. And they don't want that. They want people who have proved that they are foot soldiers for the cause. So they want people like Josh Devine, who is Trump's nominee to a district court in Missouri, who worked with the Missouri Attorney General to attack Biden's agenda for four years and is like a very far right guy who supports literacy tests for voting and is stringently anti abortion and has some very horrible things to say about women. That's who they want. And those guys, there are so many of them, they're falling over themselves to prove that they should, should get these positions. So I just don't think it's really going to slow them down.
- [35:46]
Sam Cedar
It's going to make for a dumber judiciary for sure because they're no longer, it used to be your Federalist Society member. Which one of you is going to achieve more academically or in terms of like, you know, publishing or whatever it is within the legal thought and now it's just really what's just basic loyalty test and what are you willing to do in any case given point?
- [36:09]
Mark Joseph Stern
So I think that's the most interesting effect that we'll see here. And it'll be especially interesting to look at someone like Barrett, who I actually think was pushed toward the center by the 5th Circuit over the last four years. So the 5th Circuit is the trumpiest appeals court. It's stacked with these MAGA extremists who I mentioned. And the Supreme Court has had to spend like 15, 20% of every single term reigning in the 5th Circuit just over overturning garbage that the three circuit.
- [36:36]
Sam Cedar
Courts, we should say 5th Circuit is Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Mississippi, Mississippi.
- [36:41]
Mark Joseph Stern
Yeah, just three states. And yet they make up a massively disproportionate amount of the Supreme Court's docket. And Barrett has started writing like fairly sharply about what the fifth Circuit has been embracing and basically saying this is clearly erroneous, this is not true, this is false, and, and losing her patience. And so I think the interesting thing to see will be, like, what happens when Trump stops trying to appoint intellectuals, people who can persuade a Barrett or even like a Gorsuch? What happens when he' just putting total mediocrities on the bench? Does that push the first term appointees who do have some intellect and principle a little bit more toward the center? I hope so. I really do not practice optimism toward the judiciary anymore. So I'm not going to say it'll happen. But I do think there's a possibility that there could be some impact.
- [37:26]
Sam Cedar
It's so disturbing on some level to think that almost the egos of the Supreme Court justices, that if they accept what they know to be a completely stupid argument, even though it may get to where they would go otherwise, that it reflects poorly on them. I mean, I guess that's, I don't know, maybe that's good. I mean, that's what, like sort of it is good. That's what I mean. It's definitely going to provide good outcomes. And it's good insofar as, like, I think we're finding that in our system of government, you need sort of some level of shame that exists within people based upon what they, you know, perceive, how they perceive themselves and why they went into this, you know, business of politics or law to sort of like carry the day. So I guess that's probably good, but I don't know, it just to have the fate of the nation riding on, on the sort of like the, the, I don't know, the personality ticks of just a handful of people is a little bit scary. Let's talk about the shadow docket. I feel like this was a huge story during the first Trump administration, that it sort of went away a little bit. Not as much, but a little bit. And then it's back, it's roaring back. And in some level that's what Brown Jackson was indicating the other day.
- [39:05]
Mark Joseph Stern
Yeah, she's very angry about what's been happening and I think rightly so, because the Supreme Court has sort of revived the shadow docket. I mean, it went away a little bit under Biden because the Supreme Court stopped intervening as aggressively on the shadow docket in favor of Biden. Like, you know, a lower court would rule against Biden and rather than step in and say, no, we have to pause this, the Biden administration gets to do it at once. The Supreme Court was like, oh, no, we don't want to abuse the shadow docket. So we're going to tone it down. We're going to let this play out.
- [39:34]
Sam Cedar
We saw this over and over again with, like, student loans was a big one.
- [39:37]
Mark Joseph Stern
Exactly. Immigration policy. Even if they ultimately ruled for Biden on the merits, they would refuse to use the shadow docket to let him do what he wanted to do in the meantime. And so some of these cases, like the effort to restore the remain in Mexico policy, you know, the Supreme Court just allowed the lower courts to do that for a year before stepping in and saying, oh, never, nevermind, that's totally unnecessary. You don't have to do that, Biden. But now that there's a Republican in the White House again, and that Republican is Donald Trump, the conservatives are very much reviving the shadow docket to rule in Trump's favor, to say, we can't wait for the lower courts to sort all this out. This is an emergency and we have to step in right now in favor of the Trump administration. Not every time, but much more frequently than not. And so in the past couple of weeks, we've seen the court repeatedly use the shadow docket to allow Trump to strip away away protected legal status from now more than a million migrants who came here legally who were protected from deportation under Biden. The Supreme Court has allowed Trump to strip away those protections. Even though the lower court said it was illegal. Even though the lower court said that the the Trump White House did it wrong and did it unlawfully, the Supreme Court allowed it to happen. And more recently, the Supreme Court protected DOGE from Freedom of Information act requests, protected Doge from having to be subject to basic transparency laws, and gave DOGE access to millions of Americans, extremely personal private information held in very restricted computers at the Social Security Administration and the Treasury Department. And in each case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has written furious dissents, basically saying, look, this is not what the shadow docket is for. The shadow docket is for true emergencies where one party has been obviously and irreparably harmed and where if the court doesn't step in immediately, then that harm will be impossible to redress in the future.
- [41:30]
Sam Cedar
Like, I'm on a plane being sent to El Salvador and Gulag.
- [41:35]
Mark Joseph Stern
So that was an example of the court using this correctly, the Trump administration was putting migrants on buses to illegally fly them to a gulag in El Salvador. The Supreme Court used the shadow docker to stop that, because once they were in El Salvador, the government was going to claim it couldn't bring them back. Right. That is where the harm is real, the urgency is real, and the court has to act. But in these cases, there is no urgency emergency at all. Big Balls and his colleagues at DOGE do not need immediate access to Americans private Social Security information. Right. The Trump administration does not need to immediately begin deporting 300,000 Venezuelans who came here legally. The Trump administration has not even really tried to prove that it's being irreparably harmed. All they're saying is, well, these lower courts are out of control and we don't think they should be able to stop us. And over and over again, the Supreme Court is agreeing with that. And I think abusing the shadow docket to give Trump an early win.
- [42:30]
Sam Cedar
And people should understand that. We don't know what the opinion. There's no opinions here. No, like, like, it's like even the dissent is a rare. Is. Is rare. Right. I mean, because. And really, it's. There's not. The dissent is really just about two things. One, abuse of the shadow docket, and two, there's no emergency here. And which is. Goes directly to the point of abuse of the shadow docket. Pocket. And the. The court. We don't even know who signs off on these, do we? So it's like, it's completely a. Just. It's literally like a rubber stamp and nobody's fingerprints are on it. And it makes it much easier for these members of the Supreme Court to not feel, you know, like I say, I don't think you made the point. Thomas and Alito, they don't feel ashamed. And, you know, to the extent that Gorsic or Kavana and Amy Coney Barrett or John Roberts do on occasion, this just means that they're not held to account. Like, anytime in the future, they could say, well, I wasn't me.
- [43:44]
Mark Joseph Stern
That's correct. There's no, there's no oral argument. Right. There's no full briefing. The court does not say how every justice voted. It's all done in the shadows. And I think one of the deeper problems there is the court really draws its legitimacy from having this process. Right. They show that they are doing real law, that they are considering the merits, that they are acting as judges. And on the shutter down, all that goes away. And it really does just look like a rubber stamp. And I think in the long run that does serious damage to the court's credibility and legitimacy.
- [44:12]
Sam Cedar
And when it's 6:3, I imagine it just takes a little bit of pressure off of those six because maybe they weren't part of the four four who said we're in favor of this.
- [44:26]
Mark Joseph Stern
Yeah, they can hide their votes and they sometimes do. And so we will have to say as journalists reporting on this, we don't know how John Roberts voted in this incredibly important, monumental order. Like we don't know how Kavanaugh voted because they didn't tell us. They just did it all in darkness.
- [44:43]
Sam Cedar
Crazy. All right. So that brings us up to where we are today day, more or less. But over the next three weeks is it, I guess the rest of June may be in fingers crossed.
- [44:57]
Mark Joseph Stern
Don't even say it. Do not know. They will finish by the end of June. We're manifesting it. Sam.
- [45:02]
Sam Cedar
There you go. You might that's when all of you Supreme Court reporters, you all plan your vacations.
- [45:12]
Mark Joseph Stern
Yes. Correct.
- [45:13]
Sam Cedar
The first week of July and pray that there's very quick. What are the biggest cases that you think are the most consequential ones or that are going to be they're going to we're going to find decisions on over the next three weeks.
- [45:30]
Mark Joseph Stern
I'll just list a few. One is Skremetti versus United States, which involves the constitutionality of state bans on gender affirming care for minors. Almost half the states have now enacted these laws prohibiting minors from accessing puberty blockers in hormones. The Supreme Court will decide whether those laws violate the equal protection clause. I think it's a spoiler alert to say that the court will very likely hold that they don't violate equal protection. And it'll be another one of these cases where a lot depends on how the court says that. Will the court destroy the kind of broader edifice of protections against sex discrimination here or will it narrowly target trans youth and say that, oh, these are experimental medications, states have a right to protect their children and all of that bogus that, you know, we've seen time and time again from anti trans advocates. There's another case.
- [46:16]
Sam Cedar
Let me just add one or two things here. One, we're going to be talking to somebody I think from the ACLU over the next week or two about that case. And the other thing I heard is that the FBI is now searching for data on on on kids who are receiving these treatments now now so that as soon as that ruling comes down they can step in and either threaten or prosecute doctors or I don't know who else would be liable under this, under this ruling. And parents.
- [46:53]
Mark Joseph Stern
Parents. Yeah. The Federal Trade Commission to the FTC has started opening a potential investigation into doctors that advertise and provide this care, claiming that it's unlawful. This is really going to, going to enter us into a new stage of this fight. The Supreme Court's going to pretend like it's just settling the issue and leaving it to the states. They're going to do what they did in Dobbs and say, oh, we're not saying this can't happen. We're just leaving it up to the people in the states. But with the Trump administration in charge, that will be very clearly a lie. And the Trump administration is going to heavily put its thumb on the scale of trying to expand these bans and using the federal government to impose these bans, which Trump has already tried to do through executive orders that would defund healthcare providers and universities and hospitals and institutions that do provide gender affirming care to minors.
- [47:39]
Sam Cedar
We should also say the Medicaid provisions in the so called big beautiful bill, my understanding, is both defund care for trans kids, but also for adults.
- [47:57]
Mark Joseph Stern
Yes, that's correct. And, you know, if the Supreme Court does rule in favor of these bans, I doubt there will be any sort of line that it will draw that will prevent states from applying them to adults. And some states, like Florida, are already trying to apply the bans and extend them to adults receiving this care. So, yeah, the Republican reconciliation bill is an effort to further that goal by prohibiting states from using their own Medicaid dollars to provide gender affirming care, which would be devastating to transgender people because so so many are relying on Medicaid to get this care.
- [48:30]
Sam Cedar
Okay, next case that you think I.
- [48:33]
Mark Joseph Stern
Should be looking for, I'll pick the birthright citizenship case because it's both really important and really weird. So, you know, Trump has tried to end birthright citizen citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and also the children of temporary visa holders. Three different federal courts issued nationwide injunctions blocking that policy. The Supreme Court agreed to consider those injunctions, but it didn't agree to do so on the merits. Instead, it agreed to decide whether or not federal courts have the authority to issue these so called universal injunctions that apply nationwide, rather than much narrower injunctions that only apply to the plaintiffs. Now, this has been an issue sort of broiling in the lower courts and the Supreme Court for many years. Both presidents, presidents of Both parties have faced these nationwide injunctions. They have been abused. I don't think anyone denies that, but this would be, I think, the worst possible time to take away the lower court's power to issue nationwide injunctions. Because so much of what Trump is doing that is patently lawless applies all across the country. And if a federal court can't issue a really broad injunction, then it will force many, many different people all across the country to rush to court to try to get their own injunction protecting their own rights. And also because 22 of the plaintiffs in this particular case are states, they're blue states that are arguing that they have a right to continue recognizing the citizenship of children born in their borders. So if the Supreme Court undoes these nationwide injunctions, what will Happen is in 22 states which are plaintiffs, there will still be birthright citizenship for all children, regardless of their parents legal status. But in 28 states that chose not not to sue, there will not be birthright citizenship. So a child born in Philadelphia, where, you know, there's. They're not a plaintiff, Pennsylvania is not a plaintiff. They're not part of this lawsuit. They might not get birthright citizenship, but if they cross the river into Camden, New Jersey, they will then be able to argue that they get citizenship because New Jersey is a beneficiary of this injunction. So it's really messy. It's really bizarre to me that the Supreme Court took up the case on this particular question. And I think it could wind up being a tool to empower Trump to further enfeeble and weaken the federal judiciary.
- [50:43]
Sam Cedar
And this was, I think, you know, there was a lot of very pointed questions. I think, if I remember correctly, both with KBJ and with Kagan, that and even Coney Barrett, I think, if I remember correctly, where the Solicitor General was sort of tripped up a little bit, like the idea that, like, how is this supposed to work? Work where each individual in the country who is trying to protect their birthright citizenship has to file, get their own personal injunction, and this is going to happen throughout before the. It comes to the Supreme Court and.
- [51:26]
Mark Joseph Stern
Right.
- [51:26]
Sam Cedar
And then I think the argument was like, and what if you don't challenge those individuals? It will never rise to the Supreme Court. And it's just a question of who has access to the. The courts and can get there quick enough before you deport them.
- [51:42]
Mark Joseph Stern
Exactly. So Pagan said, look, you're going to lose in the lower courts because this is pretty clearly unconstitutional. What prevents you from just refusing to appeal to scotus? And that way, there's never a final answer to this, and, you know, there's never any kind of nationwide resolution. And the Solicitor General, John Sauer, didn't have a good answer to that. I mean, because that's sort of the game that they're running. And then Justice Barrett said, well, what if an appeals court rules against you in one case, you know, and says John Doe has to receive birthright citizenship? Will you respect that judgment when Jane Doe is born a week later? And the Solicitor General would not say yes. He would not agree to comply with the decisions of the federal courts of appeals. He said, we only promise to comply fully with decisions of the Supreme Court itself. But if they can keep the Supreme Court from ever deciding this issue, then, I mean, the playbook writes itself. So very, very disturbing series of loopholes that the administration could use to continue enforcement. What I think seven or eight justices would agree is an unconstitutional policy.
- [52:45]
Sam Cedar
It's sort of amazing that this has never been resolved.
- [52:48]
Mark Joseph Stern
Yeah, it is. Right? Well, we've never had an administration this contemptuous of the Supreme Court. I mean, maybe not since the first Trump administration, but even arguably not since Andrew Jackson or Andrew Johnson in the 19th century. Like, what we've had for years are presidents who say, okay, we follow the court's orders. We might appeal them. We might say that they are wrong during a State of the Union address, but we will adhere to them. And now the Solicitor General will not just promise even Justice Barrett. Yeah, okay. Of course we'll follow the court's orders. And again, I can only hope that that pushes a justice like Barrett or a justice like John Roberts a little bit more towards sanity and toward the center in this case, because they are going to unleash a lot of chaos if they give the administration what it wants here.
- [53:31]
Sam Cedar
Okay, one more case. Imagine there's a couple others, but give us one more that you've been looking out for.
- [53:38]
Mark Joseph Stern
One more is Mahmoud versus Taylor, which is a case involving Montgomery county public schools. In Mary, the schools have books that contain LGBTQ characters in their classrooms. Books like Uncle Bobby's Wedding, which features two men getting married. Some books involving children who are questioning their gender identity. Religious parents are now arguing that they have a First Amendment right under the free exercise clause to prevent their children in public schools from even seeing these books, from merely being exposed to these books, not just having these books read to them during story hour, but literally seeing them on the shelf because they claim that their kids seeing LGBTQ people violates their religious principles. And the Supreme Court, I have no doubt is going to rule in their favor. The Supreme Court is going to give religious parents all around the country a First Amendment right to prevent their children from seeing LGBTQ materials in schools. And this is framed as an opt out. This is framed as, okay, well, the child will just stand up and walk into the hallway to ensure that they're not exposed to this book. But the school system has already explained to the Supreme Court, I think, quite, quite compellingly that they cannot manage an endless system of opt outs. And what's really going to happen is that they're just going to have to pull the book classrooms. They're just going to pull the books. They're just going to have to give religious parents a veto over the books. Because there is no way to manage a system where a bunch of kids are protected by the Constitution from being exposed to a certain book that remains in the classroom.
- [55:05]
Sam Cedar
I just don't understand, like, what's the limiting principle here? I mean, you know, like, if I was to tell you, like, I, you know, in my sect of Judaism, I don't feel comfortable with a, a marriage where the woman's not working.
- [55:23]
Mark Joseph Stern
I just, like, I couldn't agree more.
- [55:26]
Sam Cedar
I, I, I don't feel comfortable with that. And my kids, I'm teaching my kids, you know, not to feel comfortable with that. Like, where's the limiting principle here?
- [55:36]
Mark Joseph Stern
So, I mean, that is again, like, the big question that, that we're, we're waiting to see is not exactly how the case will come, like, the contours of the decision, but what the justices say and how far that logic extends. And I do think they were searching for principle. And Justice Kagan, during arguments, was clearly fishing for Barrett by saying, like, where is the limiting principle? There's no limit to what you're saying. You're just saying that any child at any school, anywhere can be opted out of seeing any materials their parents oppose. And that is the plaintiff's argument. I mean, they really have no ceiling to what they're demanding here. I think there's a chance the court will try to impose some kind of limit. I mean, Barrett did sound concerned about this. I don't know if she's concerned enough to, like, try to write it into law. But it does seem to me that this is part of the Supreme Court's broader assault on secular public education. Right. So this term, the Court also had a case asking whether states are required to establish and fund religious charter schools. A Catholic school in Oklahoma argued that it had a First Amendment right to become a charter school and receive state funding to, to conduct Catholic indoctrination. The court split 4, 4 on that case because Barrett was recused and likely because John Roberts thought it went a little bit too far. But there were four justices, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas who are absolutely willing to say, like, yes, the Constitution requires states to fund Catholic schools, and they are not going to hesitate to say that. The Constitution also requires public schools to take out any and all material that offends Christians. And I think ultimately on the ground, the limiting procedure principle will be who is the most powerful religious interest group who can demand this of the schools? Right. Who is going to have the best funded lawyers and the loudest advocates at the PTA meetings who can go out there and say, how dare you expose my child to a book featuring a same sex couple? It's going to be conservative Christians every single time.
- [57:31]
Sam Cedar
It's, it is, it is borderline barbaric because you're basically shoving kids back into the closet in many respects. Like the, the idea. Idea. I mean, we're going back to, you know, when I was in elementary school where the idea of like, that there are gay people is just sort of something. Nobody. It cannot be in any way discussed or seen or anything like that. Personally, from my religious standpoint, I hate Christmas. And I, my kids come back from school and they tell me to see a book about Christmas. I'm, I'm down at the, the PTA board, but this seems, seems absurd, but it's part of a larger movement, it seems to me, like RFRA and this whole notion of religious rights superseding in many respects, civil rights.
- [58:25]
Mark Joseph Stern
Right. I mean, think about who's erased from this case. It is those LGBTQ kids in the classroom who won't see themselves represented. It's the children of same sex parents or transgender parents who are clearly sense the stigmatizing message when they, the teacher just puts a book on the shelf and half the students stand up and walk out because they're not allowed to be exposed to a book about different kinds of families. It's extraordinarily stigmatizing in a way that I think a different, better court would view as unconstitutional itself. Right to sort of impose this, don't say gay style policy on classrooms all across the country. Through the First Amendment, it tells different kinds of families and LGBTQ children that there's something wrong with them, that, you know, they're so weird or different or bizarre or sinful that they, you can't even have people like them introduced to Their, their classmates through children's literature. I, I think it's a very disturbing step, frankly, toward theocracy.
- [59:20]
Sam Cedar
And, and we're going to see these books just are going to be eliminated because there's no way. I mean, what is, what's the obligation? Do the, do the teachers go and say, johnny, your mom said that you can't see gay books, so you got to go out into the hallway? Or is it not the obligation of the school to make sure they're out in the hallway, that the kids kid needs to affirmatively say, I need to go to the hallway because my mom said I can't see any books that, you know, have two dads in them or whatever it is. I mean, they're just going to get rid of the book so they don't deal with the controversy.
- [59:53]
Mark Joseph Stern
I mean, the school is going to be so terrified of another ruinous First Amendment lawsuit. They're dealing with limited budgets. They're dealing with budget rollbacks. Right. They're going to say, we don't want to get sued. We're pulling the books.
- [60:02]
Sam Cedar
And that's going to be that so effed up. I can't even talk about it. Well, we just did. Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer at Slate, co host of the podcast Amicus with Dalia Lithwick. Thanks so much for your time. Always a pleasure. Really appreciate it.
- [60:22]
Mark Joseph Stern
Of course, Sam, thanks so much for having me on.
- [60:37]
Matthew Leck
Hey, folks, am I a little bit quiet? I can't tell. We are back. Brandon Sutton. Hey, Brandon.
- [60:45]
Brandon Sutton
Hey, man, how you doing?
- [60:46]
Matthew Leck
I'm doing pretty well. Good to see you. Do you want to plug anything before we head into the fun half?
- [60:52]
Brandon Sutton
Well, I will plug, as always, my own show, which makes sense since it is my show. The Discourse, which tends to stream every day now before the majority report 9:00am to 12:00pm p.m. eastern. And so if you're interested in, you know, spending a little time with Brandon, spending a little extra time with Brandon, you can find me on YouTube, you can find me on Twitch. Just got to search the Discourse with Brandon Sutton and I'll be there.
- [61:16]
Matthew Leck
What time do you usually stream your time? If it's usually that early in the morning?
- [61:21]
Brandon Sutton
Three. It's three.
- [61:23]
Matthew Leck
Okay. Very nice.
- [61:24]
Brandon Sutton
It's a nice afternoon stream for me.
- [61:26]
Matthew Leck
Yeah, check that out. Go follow the discourse. Also follow the. If folks aren't on Twitch following the majority of port, we are within like a weeks of couple few hundred. I don't know if you can go to that tab, Russ, of how close are we? We are at 999,525 followers. So, wow, 475 followers short of 100k. So go follow that, Poggers. I'll say that looking at the microphone, Poggers, I never. I've never. I watch Twitch all the time. I don't want.
- [61:57]
Brandon Sutton
That means my chat teaches me about Twitch. It's great. It's a real learning experience for me. As the streamer, we have this kind of, like, mind meld going on where, like, I don't have any. Any idea what I'm doing. And they go like, oh, no, you got to do this, you got to do that. I'm like, oh, perfect. It's how Cinderella must have felt with little magical helpers. Yeah, exactly.
- [62:16]
Mark Joseph Stern
Poggers now.
- [62:19]
Matthew Leck
Oh, they are exactly. Good. That's what we want. That's what we want. Okay, folks, so we are going to take a quick break. Oh, and Left Reckoning. Actually, let me plug Left Reckoning. Gonna have a Sunday show, a reading series. One of, I think, the most important essays of the. Of the, I guess, millennium came out in the New York Review of Books in the early 2000s by a guy named Tony Judd. It was called Israel the Alternative. And it's basically about how Israel is an ethnostate and that is anachronistic and not going to work. And a lot of what he has said has borne out incredibly well. It's an essay I first came across in his when the Facts Change collection. And I'll just say his writing on that is better than Chris Hitchens, who gets a lot more attention as a contemporary. But yeah, so. Patreon.com leftreckon if you want to hear me and David talk about that excellent essay, read it almost in full. So check that out this weekend. Patreon.com left reckoning. Now we'll go to the fun half.
- [63:21]
Sam Cedar
Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three, three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're gonna look back and go like, wow, what, what is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for. Hold on for a second. Emma, welcome to the program. What is up, everyone? Fun half.
- [63:58]
Mark Joseph Stern
No, Mickey, you did it.
- [64:00]
Sam Cedar
Fun hat.
- [64:01]
Mark Joseph Stern
Let's go, Brandon.
- [64:02]
Brandon Sutton
Let's go, Brandon.
- [64:06]
Sam Cedar
Bradley, you want to say hello?
- [64:08]
Matthew Leck
Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy.
- [64:11]
Sam Cedar
It's all the boys today.
- [64:12]
Brandon Sutton
Fundamentally false.
- [64:13]
Mark Joseph Stern
No.
- [64:14]
Sam Cedar
I'm sorry.
- [64:14]
Mark Joseph Stern
Women.
- [64:15]
Sam Cedar
Stop talking for a second. Let me finish.
- [64:17]
Mark Joseph Stern
Where is this coming from?
- [64:18]
Sam Cedar
Dude. But.
- [64:19]
Mark Joseph Stern
Dude.
- [64:20]
Sam Cedar
You want to smoke this? 7A. Yes.
- [64:26]
Mark Joseph Stern
Hi. Me Is me.
- [64:29]
Sam Cedar
Yes.
- [64:32]
Mark Joseph Stern
Is this me? Is it me?
- [64:35]
Sam Cedar
It is you.
- [64:38]
Mark Joseph Stern
It's me. Hello? It's me.
- [64:40]
Sam Cedar
I think it is you. Who is you. No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.
- [64:52]
Mark Joseph Stern
I'm gonna go skylight.
- [64:53]
Sam Cedar
Libertarians.
- [64:54]
Matthew Leck
They're so stupid.
- [64:55]
Sam Cedar
Though common sense says. Of course.
- [64:57]
Mark Joseph Stern
Gobbledygook.
- [64:58]
Sam Cedar
We nailed him.
- [65:00]
Mark Joseph Stern
So what's 79 plus 21?
- [65:02]
Sam Cedar
Challenge man.
- [65:02]
Brandon Sutton
Positive and quivery.
- [65:04]
Mark Joseph Stern
I believe.
- [65:04]
Sam Cedar
96. I want to say. 8 5, 7, 2, 1 0, 35. 5 0, 11 half.
- [65:09]
Matthew Leck
3, 8, 9, 11 for a seat.
- [65:12]
Mark Joseph Stern
$3,400.
- [65:13]
Sam Cedar
$1900. 5 4. $3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game. Actually. You're making me think less. But let me say this.
- [65:24]
Mark Joseph Stern
You call it satire. Sam goes to satire.
- [65:27]
Sam Cedar
On top of it all.
- [65:28]
Mark Joseph Stern
Yeah.
- [65:28]
Sam Cedar
My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day. Like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right.
- [65:39]
Mark Joseph Stern
Folks.
- [65:39]
Sam Cedar
Folks.
- [65:40]
Mark Joseph Stern
Folks. It's just the week being weeded out.
- [65:45]
Sam Cedar
Obviously. Yeah. Sun's out, Guns out. I. I don't know. But you should know.
- [65:55]
Matthew Leck
People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore.
- [65:58]
Sam Cedar
I have a question. Who cares?
- [66:01]
Matthew Leck
Our chat is enabled. Folks.
- [66:04]
Sam Cedar
Love it.
- [66:05]
Mark Joseph Stern
I do love that.
- [66:07]
Sam Cedar
Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump.
- [66:10]
Mark Joseph Stern
I'm losing it.
- [66:11]
Matthew Leck
Bro.
- [66:13]
Sam Cedar
Two o' clock. We're already late and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.
- [66:20]
Mark Joseph Stern
Outrageous.
- [66:21]
Sam Cedar
Like. What is wrong with you?
- [66:24]
Mark Joseph Stern
Love you. Bye.
- [66:27]
Sam Cedar
Love you.
- [66:28]
Matthew Leck
Bye.
- [66:28]
Sam Cedar
Bye.