Air Date 7/20/2024
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.
Extremism comes in many forms, and we live in an era in which way too many of them are on display simultaneously. But it's not a coincidence. The far right has been working toward an extremist Supreme Court for decades. Christian nationalists have similarly been trying to impose their rigid view of far-right Christianity on the rest of us for a very long time. The far-right Heritage Foundation now deems this to be the time to attempt to radicalize the federal bureaucracy, and far right calls for political violence and lax gun laws resulted in an environment where no one was really all that surprised about the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
Sources providing our Top Takes in under an hour today include Amicus; Boom Lawyered; Today, Explained; The Readout; No Lie with Brian Taylor Cohen; and the PBS NewsHour. Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there will be more [00:01:00] on the Supreme Court, Project 2025, political violence, and Christian nationalism.
And just a quick note before we get started: once again, I have more thoughts on the current state of politics in the US as reports are beginning to fly that Biden stepping down as the Democrat's nominee is more a matter of when rather than if. But I'll save those comments for the editor's note in the middle of the show.
Opinionpalooza The Supreme Court End-of-Term Breakfast Table - Amicus with Dahlia lithwick - Air Date 7-6-24
MARY ANNE FRANKS: So listen, I want to gauge where everyone's head is at. We are taping this show on July 2nd, just about 24 hours after Trump immunity comes down. Most of us have probably read it through carefully at this point, once or twice. And I'm experiencing it as seismic, no more and no less, for many reasons, not least of which is that the president can now kill people if it's an official act, but also, not just because of what it allows a future President Trump to do to democracy itself, but I'm just sitting with what this decision signals about how [00:02:00] six members of this Supreme Court look at the Trump presidency, the events of January 6th, the threats that Trump speaks every single day, Project 2025, separation of powers. We got hyper focused, I think, in this media cycle on Donald Trump himself, but I would really like to talk about what this says about the court. Steve, do you want to start?
STEVE VLADECK: Sure. I think when we did this last year, we talked about how the word of the term was arrogance. I think we've gone from arrogance to DGAF is my term for the October 23 term, not just because of the Trump case, Dahlia, but just I'm struck by the message that the court has sent over and over again in almost all of its major rulings, that it just doesn't care about how half the country perceives it, that it just doesn't care.
In the Fisher case, for example, that its decision is going to be held out as some kind of massive victory and exoneration of the [00:03:00] January 6th defendants. And it just doesn't care in the administrative law cases that it's going back on things that has taken for granted for 30, 40, 50 years.
And it doesn't care because Dahlia just doesn't fear any retribution. It doesn't fear any consequences. Joe Biden's not running against the court in the election, he's running against Trump. And so the court is just, I think, doing what it wants, when it wants. And what's remarkable to me is sometimes the other five conservatives are going so far that it's too far even for Justice Barrett. When Justice Barrett is the one saying, why are we doing this?, I think that is quite a revealing and alarming signal.
MARY ANNE FRANKS: Marianne, do you have a gloss on the DGAF court of 2023 term?
DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: I think that that's largely right. But I think my take away mostly was when you look at cases like Rahimi and you look at cases like the FDA case about Mifepristone, you also see the court avoiding its own messes, right? So it's a [00:04:00] version of this, but it's saying: We basically created, through Bruen and through Dobbs, we've created all of this havoc, and then with the natural and entirely predictable consequences of that havoc start to appear, the court then says that's obviously not what we meant; clearly people are getting this wrong. We don't know where the misunderstandings are coming from.
So you see over and over again that this court has created these monsters. The monsters are coming home. And when it seems really bad for the court -- and what I mean by really bad is that it just seems to be unseemly. There's the domestic abuser who's involved in multiple shootings and he really wants to keep his guns. The court's embarrassed by this. Except for Thomas. He's never embarrassed. I suppose he's unembarrassable. But you have them really sticking to this idea that they're being consistent and they're offering something real and legitimate with this history and tradition idea. But you look at a case like Rahimi and that Thomas writes the Bruen opinion, and then you get a majority, the conservative majority [00:05:00] agrees with it. Rahimi comes up and it's a predictable consequence of Bruen. And really, if you apply Bruen, Rahimi should win. And you've got all of the justices now saying that's not how Bruen needs to be applied. And you've got the author of Bruen saying, of course it is.
So the idea that originalism, history, and tradition gives something settled for us, gives us something outside of activism or just judicial chaos monkeys should be something that we are now abandoning, but I don't know that we are.
MARY ANNE FRANKS: Marianne, one tiny gloss on what you just said that I think is so interesting is I hadn't seen the through line until you just pointed it out, that the court's language in Rahimi, which is like, "I don't know why all the lower courts are getting this wrong. We were perfectly clear that we didn't mean what Clarence Thomas wrote in Bruen" is exactly the language they used when they adopted the quote-unquote "ethics code" this year, the unenforceable feelings ball ethics code that every jurist gets to decide for him or herself. And it was that same [00:06:00] language of "we've always had this binding code. We don't understand why the people are too dumb to understand that it applies to us." And by the way, it's also the vibe that they directed at the critiques of Steve Vladeck and other people who were pointing out the abuses of the emergency docket, which is like, "we don't abuse the emergency -- you guys must be too stupid to understand how scrupulously we apply our own procedures."
So there is this kind of persistent, persistent, not just like "cleanup on aisle four" vibe, but like, "why did you all spill the pickle juice all over aisle four?" when it's their stinking pickle juice?
Okay, Mark, your turn.
MARK JOSEPH STERN: I guess I sense that we are feeling the lack of any true swing justice in a lot of different ways that are speculative admittedly, but feel true to me at least.
There's no Justice Kennedy there who could sometimes moderate the conservatives. There's certainly no Justice O'Connor who could build [00:07:00] these bridges or give the conservatives reason to tone down their rhetoric or their positions to try not to alienate her. And Chief Justice Roberts looked like he was emerging as a swing vote toward the tail end of the Trump years, in part because there were a few cases like the census citizenship case, the DACA case, where he sided against the Trump administration, largely because of its sloppy lawyering and poorly concealed lies.
But now I feel like there really is not any justice, who sits in the middle, who can legitimately be won over by the liberal bloc in any meaningful way, and the conservative majority sees no reason to temper its goals and ambitions to try to limit the alienation that a swing justice might feel.
An example here is what's been happening with Barrett. Barrett, as Steve pointed out, has taken a somewhat more moderate stance in some of these cases, right? But she has still never joined with the Chief [00:08:00] Justice in a 5 to 4 decision where the liberals, the Chief, and Barrett are in the majority on the merits, and the others are in dissent. Every time she hedges in this way, it's to pick nits with aspects of the conservative majority's opinion, but ultimately sign on to some or much of it. That was true in the Trump immunity case where she said, well, I don't think it's true that we can't bring in evidence here in this particular discreet circumstance, but I'm signing on to everything else, cause I might not agree with the framing, but I agree with the bottom line. It was true in the Anderson case, where she said, I don't agree with the court's decision to answer this particular question, but I'm still going to sign on to the bulk of the majority's opinion, 'cause I don't think Trump can be removed from the ballot.
She is still, I think, spiritually very much in the conservative camp. And so the men don't feel the need to do anything to temper. their ambitions, I think, to win her over. And there's just the three liberals perpetually in dissent, increasingly refusing to pull punches, which I admire. I think Justice Sotomayor's dissent in the Trump case is one [00:09:00] of the most terrifying, brutal, blunt pieces of judicial writing I've ever come across. But that is just creating a growing chasm between the two blocs, and I'm not seeing anyone making any effort to build bridges, at least on the right. And that is leading to a court that's totally untempered by any internal dynamics that used to exist, that kept its most extreme temptations in check.
STEVE VLADECK: So this is Steve. I agree with all of that. I would just say that Mark's frustration with Justice Barrett, I would just direct to her ironically right at Chief Justice Roberts. Because I think the real individual story of the term is John Roberts is done trying to be an institutionalist.
Opinionpalooza This SCOTUS Decision Is Actually Even More Devastating Than We First Thought - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick - Air Date 7-13-24
DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: So Lisa, welcome back. Thank you for making a quick return. And I wonder if we could just start by sketching out the field. Maybe, can you just give us like day one of admin law when you're trying to explain to [00:10:00] people the rise of the administrative state and regulatory agencies, and just walk us through what drove the rise of these agencies? What do these alphabet agencies do? And why do they do so much of the bulk of the regulatory work right now?
LISA HEINZERLING: Administrative law is all about the agencies. Administrative law is a subject that governs the work agencies do, and how they do it, and how they're supposed to come to their decisions. So it's a huge field. It governs all of the agencies in the United States. And so most people, even without ever knowing about administrative law or what an agency is, have run across the work of an administrative agency, in either the drugs they take -- that would be the Food and Drug Administration; the air they breathe -- that would be the Environmental Protection Agency; the investments they make, perhaps they buy stocks -- that would be the Securities and [00:11:00] Exchange Commission; and on and on down the line.
Agencies are basically used by Congress when it passes statutes to implement Congress's direction. So you'll often hear about the administrative state. You'll often hear that the president is going to go it alone without Congress or act alone or use an executive authority, but that actually almost never happens. That's very rare. What the bulk of agencies work actually starts with Congress. Congress creates an agency, like the FDA or the EPA; funds the agency; and gives the agency instructions about what work to do and the parameters for that work.
And so, administrative law basically governs that relationship. It also provides for court review, judicial review of agencies' decisions.
And so, the term that just ended [00:12:00] really continued a trend that's been going on at the Supreme Court for a few years now, which is, really, I think it's fair to say that the court is is either dismantling or destabilizing the administrative state. Certainly destabilizing it, but I think dismantling is a fair word as well.
And what the court's doing is it's taking aim at the structure of the agencies, the way that they interpret those laws that Congress passes, and the way they need to go about their work. So let me say one word about each of those.
On the structure of agencies, what the court is doing is it's trying to make the heads of agencies, and even judges at the agencies, more responsive, essentially, to presidential both appointment and removal, and so bringing the agencies closer to the political apparatus of the government. And that may sound kind of technical, but it's really important, because one of the [00:13:00] reasons we have the agencies -- think about the agencies I mentioned, the FDA, the EPA, the Securities and Exchange Commission -- those are given those jobs partly because they have experts on the subject matters they deal with. So that becomes really important in administrative law to, oftentimes, Congress will decide to make them independent of the president. And that's one of the targets of this Supreme Court. And that's effectively one of the issues in the Jarkesy case, is who has to decide whether someone violated the law. Can the agency do it with its own judges, or do the federal courts have to do it? And in that case, they said the federal courts have to do it.
The second big issue has been how do agencies interpret their statutes? They're given a statute that tells them you should clean up the air. You should make sure drugs are safe. You should make sure that the cars that people drive are safe. And they say that to the agency, that's your mission. And [00:14:00] here's some parameters for that work. And for so many years, for 40 years, and I would say longer than that, the courts really deferred to agencies. If they had an unclear statute, a statute that's just hard to figure out exactly what it meant, then the agency's view of that statute would prevail as long as it was reasonable.
And so this is the piece of the process I mentioned before, which is judicial review. If an agency makes a decision and says, we're making this decision based on this understanding of the statute, for many, many years, courts would say, all right, if the statute's unclear, then the agency really gets to make the call. As long as it's reasonable, it makes the call. And that's what went by the boards in the Loper Bright case you mentioned at the outset, Dahlia, which is that the court overruled that deferential principle, announced in a case called Chevron, and replaced it with a court-centered kind of [00:15:00] interpretation. The courts figure out on their own what the best interpretation of a statute is.
And then just the last piece, because there's activity here too: agencies alone among the institutions of the federal government have to actually explain themselves when they make a decision. And when they explain themselves, they have to do so in a way that people can understand and follow and understand why they did what they did. It's not remarked on a lot of times in public commentary on agencies, but it's a wonderful feature of the administrative process, which is that the agency explain itself to the public in terms the public can understand.
Now, if the courts drill down too much on the agency's explanations, it becomes just a way to undo a lot of agency's work. And that is a separate case this term, a case called Ohio versus EPA, in which the court rejected an EPA rule on interstate air pollution because it [00:16:00] thought that EPA hadn't explained itself well enough. And that tightening of that requirement of reasoned explanation I think is going to come back to make agencies work a lot harder.
And I think all this work is occurring, in my mind at least, as part of a kind of anti-regulatory campaign on the part of the justices and even some lower court judges. They don't like how much power those agencies I mentioned have, and they're taking it away.
Just Decide the EMTALA Case Already, You Cowards - Boom! Lawyered - Air Date 6-27-24
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: So immediately what happens in the EMTALA fight is that this case goes back to the lower courts for further proceedings. Like Amani said, the Supreme Court jumped in on this fight before the Ninth Circuit could even go into it. Okay. And in the short term, I want to be very clear: that is good, because the situation in Idaho, with the state being able to enforce its ban in the face of EMTALA was clearly awful. And our job is to help through humor shine some clarity in these moments, but we're not by any stretch trying to diminish [00:17:00] the healthcare crisis and suffering that's going on. It's bad.
There's also this terrible Fifth Circuit decision in place that deals with Texas's ban, and just logistically speaking, that decision affects millions more people. So, to underscore, and not to put the people in Idaho pitting them against the folks in Texas and the Fifth Circuit, that's not the point. I'm really just trying to underscore that this is a punt. It's not a win. And the Biden administration has appealed that Fifth Circuit decision to the Supreme Court, and they're just waiting. So we'll see what they do with that.
IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: And that can mean that this term, the Supreme Court says, yeah, we're taking up EMTALA after the election, let's say Biden wins, they're like, all right, I guess we got to do this shit again. And so they're going to take up this case and we're going to do it and hear it again. If Trump wins, as you said, we're in Project 2025 department of life territory, and none of this matters.
I would just like to take a moment to pat myself on the back. Because if you type in the words, "Fetuses [00:18:00] can't consent to healthcare" into Google -- and I went into incognito mode just to make sure it wasn't my cache playing around with me -- my article that says, "by the way, fetuses can't consent to healthcare" is the first article that comes up. That was an article that talked about specifically the Texas v Becerra case. This EMTALA case that's pending in the Fifth Circuit, which as you pointed out, has a lot of really gnarly personhood language. And as I already mentioned, with respect to the purposeful misreading of the statute as applying to a pregnant woman and her unborn child, as opposed to a pregnant woman or her unborn child, it doesn't even make sense. The Fifth Circuit and Sam Alito's reading of the statute doesn't make sense. Because there's no way that a fetus could tell a doctor whether or not they wanted to be terminated in order to save the life of the person carrying it.
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Right.
IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: The healthcare decisions that are made under EMTALA are made by the pregnant patient. And sometimes that pregnant [00:19:00] patient will choose an abortion in order to save their own life, to save their organs, to save their fertility. That is their choice to make. Congress has allowed them to make that choice. It's not about what the quote, "unborn child" wants, no matter how much Sam Alito wants it to be.
So I just really want people to understand as we start refocusing on Texas v. Becerra and our good friend, Mattie K., right? Because that was a Matt Kazmarek decision. We're going to see the same, the exact same arguments. And I just need people to realize that these justices are willing to lie to get their way because they have an agenda and they are backed by billionaires like Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo and any other dark money group that is shoveling money into this court. So that's really, really critical.
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: That point is so important. And I remember in the oral arguments in this EMTALA case, Solicitor General Preligar was so It's so good on that point, that the health care decisions flow through the pregnant person [00:20:00] and don't exist independently and autonomously to a developing pregnancy. And so thank you and congratulations, by the way, I wonder if she read your piece.
IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: I hope so. That would be amazing. Honestly, every time I write about Sam Alito, I'm using his full God-given name in the hopes that it shows up on his Google alerts--
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Because he's going to be at a speaking event in Rome and call out Imani Gandhi. Let's hope.
IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Fly to Rome and shake that man's hand and maybe slap him across the face real fast.
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: No, please don't. The Secret Service will deal--
IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: No, that's bad. I don't want to end up in jail.
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: But, I keep complaining to you about this Department of Life. And I think maybe I want to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit more about what the Department of Life is. Because when you say it to me, my mind, I know it exists, but my mind is like, Department of Life is ridiculous. And maybe our listeners aren't aware about how bad it could get if Project 2025 is implemented.
IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Really, truly. And the Department of Life sounds as dystopian as it is. Roger Severino, remember [00:21:00] that jamoke? He is all over this and the thing is with a potential second Trump administration, we're going to see everything old new again when it comes to their assaults on the ways that the federal government operates in this space. And we're already starting to see it in the way the antis are spinning the EMTALA decision.
But what they would do is just read EMTALA differently here. They would issue a different guidance. Cause remember, that's the fight is over the guidance that the Biden administration issued after the Dobbs decision.
And based on Alito's dissent, what we've seen in the Fifth Circuit, what they've said in the Project 2025 documents, that would use EMTALA to advance a fetal personhood framing, just like if there's a Trump administration, Project 2025, the Department of Life would be urging the FDA to repeal access to Mifepristone altogether.
So really, this is the path that the Supreme Court has carved for us at the end of its term. And it [00:22:00] is completely and entirely electoral. If there is a Biden victory in the presidency, then we will see these cases reanimated in some way, shape or form, and the Supreme Court will rule on their merits. If there's a Trump win, then he does their dirty work for them, and this all goes away via agency action.
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Ugh. And just -- I know we're running out of time -- and just real quickly, we are waiting for a case, for a couple of cases about agency action, about who it is that is going to interpret ambiguous statutes regarding agency action.
And everyone, everyone that I know is expecting the Supreme Court to essentially pickpocket Congress and take agency power out of Congress's power and out of the power of the agencies and shuffle it to the Supreme Court, so that it won't matter if the Biden administration issues a guidance or any administration issues a guidance about EMTALA, because it will be the [00:23:00] Supreme Court that decides, ultimately, what the statute says and how it is any individual federal agency should be implementing statutes that create them. And that's a real problem.
What is Project 2025 - Today, Explained - Air Date 7-11-24 (1)
NOEL: I’m Noel King, with Shelby Talcott, who’s covering the 2024 presidential election for Semafor. These days Shelby has been writing a lot about Project 2025.
SHELBY TALCOTT: It's essentially this massive, organized, multimillion dollar effort to establish an administration in waiting for Donald Trump.
SCORING IN <Crafty Sneakers [c] - APM>
It's headed up by the Heritage Foundation, which is a conservative think tank that has been really instrumental in conservative policies throughout the years. When I talked to the project's head last year for this, he said that what fundamentally unites our coalition is deconstructing the administrative state.
<CLIP>
Paul Dans: Our common theme is to take down the administrative state, the bureaucracy and you're gonna, [00:24:00] um yeah. <applause> It's, it's not as easy done as it is said. The bottom line is that we need to have an army of conservatives ready to march in day one.
SHELBY TALCOTT: The way that they're trying to do this is through this multipronged, years-long initiative that involves vetting a number of staffers that theoretically could be in the next Trump administration. It involves making sure that those staffers know how government works, so training them. It involves this massive 800-plus-page policy book that essentially outlines the major conservative policies of today. And then the last prong is, of course, diving into this 180-day playbook that Project 2025 is currently developing to hand Donald Trump, should he win in 2024, that he could implement initiatives, executive [00:25:00] orders and policies, in his first year in office.
<CLIP>
Paul Dans: We are gonna be prepared, day one, January 20, 2025, to hit the ground running as conservatives, to really help the next president.
SCORING OUT
NOEL: Who's in the coalition that you mentioned? You talked about Heritage. Who else?
SHELBY TALCOTT: Yeah, there's over 100 coalition partners. And actually they reached that number at the beginning of this year. So SBA Pro-Life America has signed on, the Conservative Partnership Institute, Claremont Institute, TP USA, which is Turning Point USA, which is focused a lot on younger voters. So most of the major conservative organizations in the country really are a part of this effort.
NOEL: How unusual is it for the Heritage Foundation to have a thing like Project 2025? Is this unprecedented?
SHELBY TALCOTT: It's not unusual for there to be some kind of organization. They usually have this Mandate for Leadership that they will give an upcoming conservative president.
<CLIP>
Paul Dans: Heritage got on the book-, on [00:26:00] the marker as, as an organization by delivering the first Mandate for Leadership in 1980 to President-elect Reagan.
<CLIP>
Ronald Reagan: Heritage has transformed itself from a struggling and valiant coterie of conservatives to, well, a struggling and valiant coterie of conservatives -- [laughter] -- though today the influence and importance of Heritage is widely recognized in Washington and, indeed, by policymakers around the world.
SHELBY TALCOTT: But this scope and level of organization and the years that it has taken to plan and lay out this specific Project 2025 is really unique and really has never been done before. So in that sense, just the scale of this operation is unprecedented.
NOEL: Okay. But the Mandate for Leadership has been a thing in the past. Now, when Donald Trump was elected the first time, how much of their mandate for [00:27:00] leadership did he take?
SHELBY TALCOTT: He used a significant amount. So in early 2018, the Heritage Foundation came out with a press release saying that Donald Trump had, as of that moment, used over 60% of their policy proposals.
<CLIP>
Former VP Mike Pence: I mean, from right in the transition we went to work availing ourselves of the resources available from the Heritage Foundation. We laid out plans for this administration. We drew on the scholarship and the resources of this historic think tank.
SHELBY TALCOTT: And so that just sort of gives you an idea of, A, how influential historically the Heritage Foundation is, but B, how much Donald Trump may or may not, you know, rely on this Project 2025 and the proposals that they put forth this time around.
Project 2025 would allow Trump to target his enemies through the judicial system - The ReidOut - Air Date 7-10-24
JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Melissa, anything I missed in there? Anything else we should be concerned about for the average American with that kind of DOJ?
MELISSA MURRAY: That was a really comprehensive list, and it really does cover most of the 900 pages of Project 2025, which is essentially the [00:28:00] authoritarian's playbook. One point that I do want to mention here, though, is that the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity, which was announced just a week ago, has really given a major assist to Project 2025.
One of the things that this decision made very clear is that when the president is communicating with the DOJ or issuing orders through the DOJ, because the DOJ is viewed as an extension of the executive—of the president—those actions are immunized. Project 2025 ramps this up, puts it on steroids, makes it impossible, essentially, to prosecute the president or indeed anyone working through the DOJ for those acts because they are official acts within the perimeter of those official duties. It takes the unitary executive theory and really amps it up and makes the president essentially a king. So the court has laid a foundation to make project 2025 not just palpable, but indeed something that will last and be lasting throughout our history of Donald Trump as president.[00:29:00]
JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: And Ruth, then how would we be any different from say Russia or China or any other authoritarian country?
RUTH BEN GHIAT: Not much, and you know the very definition of authoritarianism is when the executive branch overwhelms or politicizes or hinders from being independent the judiciary—the other branches of government.
And so, what's interesting is all the parts of project 2025 work together because you also have to have a compliant civil service, because fascists and authoritarians—they have to destroy to create. So they're going to take apart the DOJ as an independent body and make it into something else.
That something is a body that will protect the president and his cronies from investigations, from prosecution, but it's not enough for the president to have immunity. You have to have a compliant civil service. So there [00:30:00] we have the Presidential—the training academy that's going to create what they call an "army" (they use that word) of vetted conservatives to go to work on day one.
So all of these things have to come together and when you have a politicized civil service—and in the nazi context Hannah Arendt called these people "the desk killers"—the people who signed the orders to harass and repress people and, of course later, in the German, context to do the Holocaust. But, all of these things must come into play.
The last thing that you must do is turn the public against the press—against journalists—so that any claims they make about prosecution, things that might be worthy of prosecution are no longer believed by the public.
Donald Trump has already been able to do that.
JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Yeah, and then maybe just start arresting members of the press. Let me play something that is, in a way, sort of funny and absurd, but actually deadly serious in another way. This is Stephen [00:31:00] Miller's America First legal organization. This is one of their advertisements.
STEPHEN MILLER: I am here today with an urgent message. America's biggest corporations and universities are illegally discriminating against Americans based on race and sex. These corporations and universities have adopted so-called "diversity, equity, and inclusion" policies that punish Americans for being white, Asian, or male.
If you or a loved one were denied a job, raise, promotion, or professional opportunity as a result of diversity quotas, equity mandates, affirmative action, or other racial preferences we want to hear from you.
JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Melissa. It's sort of a one part ambulance chaser ad and one part "NAAWP" Legal Defense Fund. Right? But what he's doing there is what the civil rights division of the Justice Department would change it to, right? A place where the whole mission would be [00:32:00] to defend white privilege.
MELISSA MURRAY: That's exactly right, joy. Obviously, enforcement priorities shift from administration to administration. And we've seen, for example, under Republican administrations, there's been less enforcement of voting rights, for example, or less prosecution of voting rights claims.
But Project 2025 explicitly says that the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Justice and the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Education will be dedicated to dealing with what they call "reverse discrimination"—so DEI measures in corporate America and in public institutions and in universities and colleges.
Basically, the real racism to be fought is the racism and the racial injuries that are endured by white men, principally, and those who are outside of what they view as the affirmative action spectrum.
JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Let's go on to the sort of apologists for this—people who are sort of trying, Ruth, to make this sound like it's not that big of a deal.
So, Bloomberg is reporting that the CEO of Warner brothers, David Zaslav has said regarding the presidential election. Asked about the upcoming [00:33:00] presidential election, he said it mattered less to him, which party wins. As long as the next president was friendly to business. We just need an opportunity for deregulation, he said, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to do better.
So of course they want lots of deregulation, meaning they'd probably be fine with having Trump. But I just want to remind Mr. Zaslav and others the way that this works in a country like Russia, because you said we'd be no different from that. The Kremlin has said that Vladimir Karamazov is "stable in a Russian prison hospital," but we're not even sure that that's true.
A Russian playwright and theater director was sentenced to prison for writing a play that Putin didn't like, and Russia has issued an arrest warrant for Yulia Navalnaya, who is the widow of Alexei Navalny, who they killed or allowed to die in a gulag. That's how it goes, right? If suddenly don't like—Donald Trump doesn't like what David Zasloff has on his networks, he goes from being somebody who gets juicy deregulation and tax cuts to somebody who's living like the Navalny's.
RUTH BEN GHIAT: Yeah, but it's way beyond that because, he could say, "Well, I'm not a dissident," but Putin's state [00:34:00] is a kleptocracy as, to various degrees, most authoritarian states, they thrive on corruption.
By 2018, one out every sixth Russian business person, if their business was prospering, the state would come after it to either seize its assets or make money because they would, find some kind of new—fabricate some tax charge crime, and so they prey on businesses.
It's the same in Erdoğan's Turkey where, you know, the state has plundered and seized assets worth over $40 billion since the 2016 coup attempt. And so, authoritarianism is not good for business. It is often the small businessmen as well as big corporations that come in for the equivalent of hostile takeovers. Especially if they're in entertainment or the media.
That's what Putin did. And that's what every—and that's what Orban has done too. The media, including big [00:35:00] properties, is 85 percent domesticated now. So these people are misinformed and they're living in a world of illusions if they think that they're going to be safe with these plans at the scale at which Trump wants to enact them.
Republicans issue vile reaction to Trump shooting - No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Air Date 7-15-24
BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: So, let me say first that violence is not the answer. It is never the answer, and part of why I, and I'm sure so many of you, are working so hard to prevent Donald Trump from taking power again is precisely because we don't want to validate the use of violence as a political tool, which Donald Trump has obviously done throughout his presidency.
Numerous times—from promising his supporters that he would pay their legal bills if they beat up protesters, all the way to the events of January 6th. Violence is not the answer. It makes this whole thing more dangerous for everyone, myself included, and it is not why any of us got into this. I've watched the responses to the shooting, and just as sickening as the shooting itself, has been the response to it.
There have been a number of Republicans who, without skipping a beat, have exploited these events to attack [00:36:00] Joe Biden or the Democrats. Mike Collins, a Republican lawmaker from Georgia, tweeted, "Joe Biden sent the order." Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote, "We are in a battle between good and evil. The Democrats are the party of pedophiles, murdering the innocent, unborn violence and bloody, meaningless and endless wars. The Democrat Party is flat out evil. And yesterday they tried to murder President Trump."
J. D. Vance wrote, "Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination."
And of course, Lauren Boebert posted this:
LAUREN BOEBERT: I do believe that Joe Biden is responsible for the shooting today, Kyle Clark. An innocent supporter of President Trump, someone who loved President Trump and was there exercising their right to support him lost their life today. Everyone who has called him a fascist, everyone who has called him a threat to democracy, who said that [00:37:00] he should be put in a bullseye as Joe Biden said, they need to have some very deep reflection tonight before another tragedy like this takes place.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: First of all, the Democratic Party and Joe Biden did not try to assassinate Donald Trump. The shooter was a registered Republican. In fact, because that's inconvenient for the narrative, now conservatives are saying stuff like this.
JESSE WATTERS: Don't read too much into the political affiliation because James Comey—also a registered Republican.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: Apparently, political affiliation is only exploitable if it fits the Republican narrative. Otherwise, if it doesn't bolster Jesse Watter's claims, then it's suddenly a moot point. Do you think that Jesse would have been claiming that political affiliation isn't important if he was a registered Democrat?
And beyond that, reporters from the Philadelphia Inquirer spoke to classmates of the shooter, and they were very clear about the fact that the kid was a conservative. One passage from the reporting says that a classmate of the shooter recalled a mock debate in which their history [00:38:00] professor posed government policy questions and asked students to stand on one side of the classroom or the other to signal their support or opposition for a given proposal.
"The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side. That's still the picture I have of him, just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other."
So I wanted to make that clear right off the bat, because the right has a long, long history of scapegoating Democrats for things that Democrats have nothing to do with. Why a conservative would try to assassinate the conservative candidate in this race is beyond me, but certainly had nothing to do with Joe Biden or the left. But to J. D. Vance's tweet, this idea that calling Trump a fascist led to his assassination attempt, let's discuss that.
First of all, Donald Trump is a fascist. That doesn't mean assassinate him, but he is a fascist. He wants to consolidate power into the executive branch. He wants to use the military as a weapon to suppress dissent. He wants an army of loyalists to do his bidding. He wants to be a [00:39:00] dictator. He wants to suspend the Constitution.
Those are his words, by the way. Things that he said. So yes, he is a fascist, but Vance has unilaterally decided to reverse engineer a way to blame the left, and that is by pointing to the things that the left is absolutely correct and justified in saying, which is acknowledging the objective reality that Trump is a fascist and deciding that because that's now the cause of the shooting that everyone on the left who said it is suddenly responsible.
That's not only insane and dangerous, but it's just a bad faith way to absolve the people who are perpetuating the violence while blaming the people who have long since condemned the violence.
It's not the Democrats or Biden who told rally goers again to beat up protesters and that we'd pay for their legal bills. That was Trump. It's not the Democrats or Biden who laughed at Paul Pelosi being bludgeoned with a hammer. That was Trump. It's not the Democrats or Biden who called for military tribunals for Liz Cheney. That was Trump. It wasn't Democrats or Biden who called for General Mark Milley to be executed. [00:40:00] That was Trump.
It's not the Democrats or Biden who posted a baseball bat photo with Alvin Bragg and threatened "death and destruction" if he was charged. That was Trump. It's not the Democrats or Biden who reposted images on the Truth Social showing Biden hogtied in the bed of a truck. That was Trump. It's not the Democrats or Biden who laughed off a kidnapping plot against Gretchen Whitmer. That was Trump.
We don't want Trump in power because we don't want violence. So let's not get it twisted. In fact, you want to see the difference on display? Here, for example, is the left's reaction to this shooting. AOC: "There's no place for political violence, including the horrific incident we just witnessed in Pennsylvania. It is absolutely unacceptable and must be denounced in the strongest terms. My heart goes out to all the victims, and I wish the former president a speedy recovery." Chris Murphy: "There's no room in America for political violence. We should all condemn what happened today, and I'm hoping for the health of the former president and everyone else at the rally."
And Joe Bide:
PRESIDENT BIDEN: There's no place in America for this kind of violence, or for any violence, ever. [00:41:00] Period. No exceptions. We can't allow this violence to be normalized.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: Meanwhile, here's how the right reacted when it's a Democrat who's the victim. Paul Pelosi's bludgeoned with a hammer and Don Jr. posts, "Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready."
Here's Marjorie Taylor Greene getting her audience to boo Paul Pelosi at a rally.
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: Where Americans are robbed. stabbed, raped, kidnapped, carjacked and murdered. But only the only crime victim you hear about from Democrats in the media is Paul Pelosi.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: And of course, Trump himself poking fun at Paul Pelosi after he was attacked.
DONALD TRUMP: And we'll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi who ruined San Francisco.
How's her husband doing, by the way? Anybody know?
And she's [00:42:00] against building a wall at our border, even though she has a wall around her house, which obviously didn't do a very good job.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: So no, both parties are not the same. Let's not pretend that one doesn't immediately and unequivocally condemn violence while the other one holds it. The only difference is that the pearl clutching on the right only begins when the violence happens to them.
And therein lies the real difference here. The left doesn't want any political violence, while the right is fine with it, so long as it doesn't impact them. There's also the fact that, had the Democrats gotten their way, guns like this wouldn't even be available to the general public. It is the Republicans who block any and all efforts to ban assault weapons like the one that was used in Pennsylvania.
They did it at the federal level when Senate Republicans blocked the legislation, and Pennsylvania Republicans, to use this state for example, did it at the state level when a Democrat controlled Pennsylvania House committee passed a bill banning the sale of assault weapons against the unanimous opposition of Republicans on that [00:43:00] panel, only for the legislation to be tabled in the Pennsylvania Assembly once it faced opposition from the state's Republican lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, the NRA.
In fact, Trump himself signed the bill revoking Obama era checks for people with mental illness. He wanted mentally ill people to be able to buy guns. Not the left. Not Joe Biden, but Donald Trump. So again, remember that if Democrats had their way, these guns wouldn't be available for sale, and certainly not to the mentally ill.
But Republicans ensured that this wouldn't happen. And so now, a clearly disturbed 20 year old had access to a weapon that he used to try and assassinate a politician from 150 yards away, All thanks to policies backed by the GOP and the very politician whose life was almost taken. I would hope that would serve as a proof point to pass common sense gun reforms that 90 percent of this country would agree with, but you and I both know that Republicans aren't interested in doing that.
So, I'll end with the same message that I started with. Violence is never the answer, and that is precisely [00:44:00] why we are working so hard to make sure that Trump and Republicans do not take power in November. It's because we don't want to validate the preferred tool of a party that for years has used it as a cudgel against the left.
Project 2025 would allow Trump to target his enemies through the judicial system Part 2 - The ReidOut - Air Date 7-10-24
JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: We've talked about the embrace of religious fervor on the religious right—I mean on the American right—and why it is dangerous. The Republican Party in this era of Donald Trump has allowed a small fringe white Christian nationalist movement to control the way the party and much of this country operates.
And so now, proud Christian nationalists are having their moment. Not just creeping into the culture, but seeking to revamp and define it. Charlie Kirk, professional troll and founder of Turning Point USA, embraces Christian nationalism and says things like, "Christians need to view the election as a spiritual struggle to save Western civilization," and that "Trump is crucial to restoring morality in America."
Right. The convicted felon sexual abuser equals morality. It's the kind of stuff that makes your [00:45:00] brain hurt because it makes no sense. Then, there's the interesting choice by the New York Times to platform a far right Christian extremist's musings on why he doesn't vote, which is code for, hey, maybe you shouldn't vote.
Matthew Walther, editor of a right wing Catholic literary journal, writes, "Why does anyone vote? I ask myself. The answer cannot be that we believe that by doing so, we will influence the outcome in an election." No, actually, that's exactly why I vote and why everyone votes. As it turns out, though, the New York Times has since made a correction after internet sleuths pointed out that this op ed writer did in the two most recent election cycles—wait for it—vote.
Not voting, of course, means choosing a devastating agenda for LGBTQ people, women and girls, brown and black people, basically anyone who doesn't look like Charlie Kirk or Matthew Walther. That is exactly what these statements under the guise of Christianity or bad opinion headlines are really about.
These guys are everywhere writing creepy op eds about Taylor Swift [00:46:00] letting down America by not being married with kids and giving even creepier commencement addresses. But the scarier ones are those who would run this country. The ones with offices on Capitol Hill, like Senator Josh Hawley—insurrectionist, fist pumper, and Missouri Republican who assured the National Conservatism Conference that he is a Christian nationalist.
JOSH HAWLEY: I'm sure some will say now that I am calling America a Christian nation. And so I am.
And some will say that I'm advocating Christian nationalism. And so I do.
JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: What a little phony. Marjorie Taylor Greene also said it during a Turning Point USA conference in Florida saying, "We need to be the party of nationalism and I'm a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists."
Lauren Boebert was more blunt saying, "I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk. [00:47:00] The Republican party is openly embracing the ideology and Project 2025 wants to make it part of the next administration. Politico reported recently that an influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas into his administration.
Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump's Director of the Office of Management and Budget and has remained close to him. Vought, who is frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump administration, is president of the Center for Renewing America, a leading think tank in the conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.
He's also an advisor to Project 2025. The dangerous agenda we've been highlighting that would usher in one of the most conservative executive branches in modern American history. But he isn't even the one with the creepiest agenda. There's a Wisconsin pastor who is calling for churches to form militias, who says that being gay should be a crime and who defends the [00:48:00] murder of abortion providers.
Once so fringe, he remained in the background. His book is now being quoted by politicians and former Trump officials.
What is Christian nationalism and why it raises concerns about threats to democracy - PBS Newshour - Air Date 2-1-24
LAURA BARRON LOPEZ - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: Brad Onishi is a former evangelical minister who once identified as a Christian nationalist himself. He left the church in 2005 and began studying religion from the outside, including extremism. He now hosts the popular podcast Straight White American Jesus, and is the author of Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next. I began by asking him what that term actually means.
BRAD ONISHI: Christian nationalism is an ideology that, uh, is based around the idea that this is a Christian nation, that this was founded as a Christian nation, and therefore it should be a Christian nation today and should be so in the future. According to survey data, Christian nationalists agree with statements like, "the federal government should declare the United States of America a Christian nation"; "Our laws should be based on Christian [00:49:00] values"; "Being a Christian is important if you want to be a real American".
LAURA BARRON LOPEZ - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: Onishi tracks a number of subgroups and ideas under the umbrella of White Christian nationalism, including what's known as the New Apostolic Reformation.
BRAD ONISHI: Well, the New Apostolic Reformation is notable for a number of reasons.
One: it's built around the idea that Christians are called to a new transformation or reformation of the United States. These are Christians who want to revolutionize the way that our country looks and to make it "great again" in terms of being a Christian nation.
They also are deeply invested in the notion of spiritual warfare. The idea that we are called as Christians to fight a cosmic battle between good and evil and that it's our duty to be boots on the ground for God in that conflict.
What this has led to, some decades later, is the New Apostolic Reformation leaders—the [00:50:00] Apostles and the Prophets that are really at the head of this movement—were some of the earliest to support Donald Trump in 2016, and they've remained steadfast in that support. They were at the very avant garde of trying to get the 2020 election overturned in the wake of Joe Biden's victory and mobilizing folks to be at January 6th. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of new apostolic reformation Christians at January 6th, as an example.
LAURA BARRON LOPEZ - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: We know that two thirds of White evangelicals sympathize or adhere to White Christian nationalist beliefs. So, where do they fall within this larger movement?
BRAD ONISHI: I think White evangelicals are the group we think of when we think of White Christian nationalism, and for good reason. These are folks who, when we think about the Iowa caucuses. In 2016, Trump's White evangelical voters were about 20% of his share of voters in that cycle. Just a few weeks ago, in 2024, that grew to well over 50%. White evangelicals remain committed [00:51:00] to the MAGA movement, and one of the key indicators of why is Christian nationalism.
LAURA BARRON LOPEZ - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: Are there leaders across these subgroups of White Christian nationalism that are tied to the former president directly or to his larger network?
BRAD ONISHI: Yes. For example, a group of New Apostolic Reformation leaders—Apostles and Prophets and others—were present at the White House a week before January 6th. Speaker Mike Johnson has direct ties to the New Apostolic Reformation. Speaker Mike Johnson is somebody who's sought the counsel and the friendship of Timothy Carscadden, who is a New Apostolic Reformation pastor from his home district in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Timothy Carscadden is a close associate with Dutch Sheets. Dutch Sheets is perhaps the most ardent Trump supporter in the New Apostolic Reformation. He's the one who may have done the most of any Christian leader in the United States to mobilize folks to try to overturn the 2020 election and to make sure to attend [00:52:00] January 6th.
One of the most frightening things, I think, about Mike Johnson is the flag he hangs outside of his office: An Appeal to Heaven flag. The Appeal to Heaven flag goes back to the Revolutionary War, George Washington, it was inspired by John Locke. But over the last ten years, the Appeal to Heaven flag has been popularized by Dutch Sheets.
Dutch Sheets sees the Appeal to Heaven flag as a symbol of Christian revolution. If you look closely at January 6th, you will see dozens of Appeal to Heaven flags. It may have a long history, but in the contemporary context, it has a very specific meaning. So, the fact that Mike Johnson has it hanging outside of his office, to me signifies how he understands his role as Speaker of the House in terms of being a Christian and being an American.
LAURA BARRON LOPEZ - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: In a statement to the NewsHour, a spokesperson for Johnson's office said, "The Speaker has long appreciated the rich history of the flag. Any implication that the Speaker's use of the flag is connected to the events of January 6th is wildly [00:53:00] inaccurate".
But Onishi says the concerning links go beyond the conservative politicians themselves. Last month, Lance Wallnau, a key New Apostolic Reformation figure, announced he was partnering with Charlie Kirk, the influential right wing activist who leads Turning Point USA.
BRAD ONISHI: They're going to be visiting and focusing on swing states: Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania. They claim they've already signed up 2,500 churches and they want to mobilize those churches directly for a political involvement and specifically to get Trump reelected. The two of them together signifies a crossover. It signifies a joining in a way that promises, I think, to be quite potent.
LAURA BARRON LOPEZ - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: Meanwhile, some have mobilized around what GOP leaders have labeled an "invasion" at the southern border. I asked Onishi about a protest convoy, calling itself "God's Army", currently making its way to Texas.
BRAD ONISHI: I think the end goal for the convoy is to kind of play a part, or play a role, in what they take to be the [00:54:00] story that is unfolding in the United States. Christian nationalists understand themselves to be playing a character. They are drawn into a narrative that says, You are at the last battle. You have a chance to do something that is much bigger than you. Will you answer that call? Will you come to DC on January 6th? Will you ride with us to the southern border? Because these are the moments, these are the battles that will shape our country. This is the cosmic war between good and evil. Are you really going to sit on the sidelines?
Some of us can laugh that off, we can think that that's a fringe ideal, but January 6th was not something to laugh off. And some of the events we've seen since then, the SWATing of judges houses, the evacuations of capitals due to bomb threats, so many more examples, little fires everywhere, are not things we can laugh off. And so I think the trucker convoy has cosmic goals as it plays a part in a very earthly standoff between Governor Abbott and the Biden Administration.
Final comments on what should come next for the Democrats
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips [00:55:00] starting with Amicus breaking down several cases handed down by the Supreme Court. Boom! Lawyered discussed the interplay between the court and federal agencies looking to restrict reproductive rights. Today, Explained explained Project 2025. The ReidOut looked at the power Project 2025 is hoping to give Trump. Brian Taylor Cohen on No Lie discussed the assassination attempt and the broader scope of violent political rhetoric. The ReidOut described the religious fervor on the right driving the Trump movement and the GOP toward Christian nationalism. And the PBS NewsHour explained the dangers of Christian nationalism. And those were just the top takes. There's a lot more in the deeper dive section.
But before we continue on to the deeper dives half of the show, I have continued thoughts on the process working itself out within the Democratic Party. This is an awkward time to be recording because, as I speak, all of the reporting is that Biden may be deciding exactly when and how to resign as the Democratic presumptive nominee [00:56:00] and release his pledged delegates to vote their choice in the upcoming Democratic National Convention. By the time you hear this, that may have already happened and, then again, it may never happen. But here are my thoughts on what I would like to see happen in the event that Biden willingly steps aside.
The process of finding a replacement candidate really needs to be an open process rather than some sort of coronation. I have no horse in this race. My perspective is that everyone should simply want the best candidates with the best chance of winning to take the top two spots on the ticket. And the only way to find the best candidates is to have a friendly competition in which people get to make their cases.
Any talk of loyalty and succession pointing to Kamala Harris as the heir apparent is the same kind of thinking that got the party into this problem in the first place. Plus, it will be widely seen as reeking of backroom deals and all of the seedier sides of politics that people dislike. The inverse of that is a [00:57:00] democratic process; as Biden's kingmaker, Jim Clyburn, described just after the Trump Biden debate, a "mini primary". He also said that he would support Harris, but thought it should be done through a scaled down primary process.
That sounds perfect to me. I have no problem whatsoever with people getting out in front and endorsing Kamala Harris. I've heard plenty of arguments for why she would be a fantastic candidate to meet the moment, Most prominently, people fantasize about a former prosecutor facing off against Trump, the convicted felon. Perfectly fine, sounds great, but do it in a democratic way.
Secondly, for those worried about the process being logistically complicated, I actually see that as a positive. People have been so sick of politics for so long, a messy last minute scramble for the nomination would be exciting in a way that would get people engaged and paying attention. Any effort to smooth and subdue the process by attempting to [00:58:00] coalesce around an heir apparent would kill all the fun and suspense.
Now, speaking of suspense and excitement, I just want to boost one story that I've seen, like, percolating up a bit over the past few weeks. First, it was just in an Arizona paper, so I didn't give it much weight, but I think the idea of Arizona Senator Mark Kelly being considered at least for Vice President is actually gaining traction and is sort of interesting. Like Kamala Harris having a particular background well suited to this moment, Mark Kelly is being recognized in a similar way, particularly in the wake of the assassination attempt. He's got built-in hero vibes from being a military pilot and astronaut, but his wife also happens to be Gabby Giffords, who was also shot in the head in a case of political violence. So, it's an interesting choice that could meet the moment in a way that others on the shortlist don't. Also, he's from a swing state, so there's that. That said, I haven't seen him speak much, which is why we need a mini [00:59:00] primary. We need to be able to analyze these people before the coronation.
And one last note on progressives like Bernie Sanders and AOC standing with Biden while criticizing those calling for him to step down, I suppose it's impossible to know their true thoughts, but I can share what insights I have. Immediately after the Trump-Biden debate, I saw an opinion piece calling on progressives to stay out of this fight, in essence, saying that it simply was not the proper role of progressives to attempt to influence Biden's decision. Instead, it's clear that they've been using what leverage they have, where they can, on policy. This is from a piece in The Nation on July 18th: "Under siege, Biden has become a born again progressive, perhaps even a leftist. Over the last two weeks, he's announced support for a wide swath of policies tailored to please left wing Democrats: new rules banning medical debt from being used in credit ratings and a [01:00:00] push for total medical debt relief, term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court, and new legislation limiting rent increases from corporate landlords to 5% per year, among other newly elevated proposals". And who's been giving credit for Biden's shift, Bernie Sanders, AOC and The Squad, and the Congressional Black Caucus, all those standing steadfastly behind him.
That's all great, and I support those policy proposals, but—although I would say that it's clearly too late to save Biden's candidacy—it's never too late to start moving the Overton Window. For all we know, this may have been the plan all along for progressives. And I don't mean to sound conspiratorial, [but] it's just, like, they may know where their power lies and where it doesn't. Knowing that they wouldn't be influential on the question of Biden's place in the race, they pivoted to a strategy of steadfast support combined with demands for progressive policies. [01:01:00] And just getting the conversation started and given legitimacy by the sitting president supporting things like Supreme Court term limits, will help boost them into the platforms of whichever candidate ends up taking his place. If that's how it plays out—in which case the progressives along with every other Democrat will wholeheartedly endorse the new nominee—they will have played their role to perfection and come out relatively clean on the other end.
Now, before we get back to the show, a quick reminder that July is our membership and awareness drive. If you get value out of this show, let this be the time that you decide to chip in and help sustain its production and tell some friends about it to grow our base of support. Unfortunately, the same sort of Trump resistance exhaustion that is causing so many to retreat from politics in general has also taken a real toll on our listenership, our membership, and the income that we're able to generate to keep everyone paid for the work they put in to keep the show going. So, when I say that we need your support that is not in the abstract. We don't have big funders [01:02:00] or any kind of institution or media outlet backing us up. It's really just you—the listener—deciding to chip in and make this show possible And as thanks, members get ad free versions of every regular episode and bonus shows featuring the production crew in conversation. And for this month, memberships are 20% off, so sign up now and keep that discounted price for as long as you keep your membership. Just head to bestoftheleft.com/support to grab your discounted membership, and then tell someone about us.
SECTION A: SUPREME COURTWhy Gay Marriage Will Be Illegal Next Year - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 6-25-24
THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: Like the Supreme Court justices are getting ready to overturn the Obergefell decision. That's the decision that granted the right to gay marriage to, uh, queer people all across the United States instead of just in the, uh, 15 or 20 or some odd blue states that had already granted that right to people.
And, uh, the clue to this, uh, came in the dissent written by Justice Sotom Sotom Sotomayor. Excuse me, Sonia [01:03:00] Sotomayor, uh, in the Department of State versus Munoz decision that was handed down day before yesterday, I believe, um, maybe it was Friday, yeah, it must have been Friday. Her, the first sentence of her dissent is, uh, literally lifted from the Obergefell decision.
Which is, uh, I, I think, uh, Sotomayor's way of, like, waving a flag, you know, a pride flag, but a flag, and saying, look out, this is coming. Now that, the Obergefell decision was a 5 4 decision. And at that time, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was on the court, she's been replaced by Amy Coney Barrett. Which is a major change in the direction of the court.
And Anthony Kennedy, who is an advocate for gay marriage, even though he's a Republican appointee, he was on the court. He was the guy whose son signed off on a billion dollars worth of [01:04:00] Deutsche Bank loans to Donald Trump that I believe Donald Trump threatened to publicize or somehow otherwise harm.
Kennedy's son as a way of convincing Kennedy to retire from the court. Because Kennedy was in great health. He's still around. I mean, you know, he's just doing his thing. But he's gone now. Uh, replaced by Brett Kavanaugh. These were both, uh, members of the court. Who should not have, in my opinion, should not have been replaced.
I don't think Kennedy retired, you know, voluntarily, frankly. I think he was blackmailed into it. And, uh, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, you know, within weeks of the election. And traditionally, that means that that Supreme Court justice is going to be up to the next president. But, of course, uh, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump jammed Amy Coney Barrett through the, through the, uh, through the Senate.
But in any case, uh, she, she says, basically, this is, this is what's [01:05:00] coming. She says the, the majority could have easily disposed of this case, the Munoz case, by just saying, you know, the guy, Munoz got all the, all the, uh, due justice. Uh, excuse me, all the due process that he was due. Uh, she writes, that could and should have been the end of it.
Instead, the majority swings for the fences. In other words, what they're doing in this case is they're setting up the rationale to overturn gay marriage. Now, she writes, the majority made the same fatal error Dobbs, requiring too careful a description of the claimed fundamental liberty is interest. And, by the way, this is the same, uh, issue that, that had to do with Obergefell.
You know, basically, Sonia Sotomayor is telling us, this is coming. They are coming for gay marriage. Not this year, but next year. [01:06:00] And the Republican Party is with them. Aaron Blake writing for the Washington Post. GOP support for same sex marriage has declined from a high of 55 percent in 21 22 to 49 percent, less than half in 2023, and now to 46 percent In 2024, a nine point drop over just two years.
What has happened? Well, we're starting to see right wing hate media talk about the queer community in, in, uh, slanderous terms, in negative, in negative terms. We've had all this rhetoric about groomers and, and, uh, you know, drag queens, and trans people, and trans sports, and trans kids in bathrooms, and All this, you know, basic hate mongering that's been coming out of the right now as just a steady stream of hate for, what, the better part of a decade now in a big way.[01:07:00]
And I'm telling you, one year from now, gay marriage is no longer being, going to be legal across the United States, unless Congress and the President next year, next spring, Make some big changes in the Supreme Court, and I'd be astonished if they happened that fast. The number, the percentage of Republicans who describe same sex relations, not marriage, but just, you know, people having relationships, as, quote, morally acceptable, was at 56 percent ten years ago, it's now 40%.
Forty percent. Six out of ten republicans, three out of four republicans, no, what's that, three out of five republicans say it's, say that gay, gay relationships are morally unacceptable. I mean, you got the Don't Say Gay Bill down in Florida. You got all this talk about groomers. [01:08:00] You got all these efforts to restrict trans rights.
By the way, the Supreme Court just picked up a case that has to do with trans rights. And everybody is fully expecting that they're going to strike down the ability of, of, uh, trans people, particularly minors, to, uh, to become trans people.
You know, so much for small government. Right, so much for the Republican mantra that we believe in limited government. They want government big enough to fit inside women's uteruses, and they want government big enough to tell you what you and your children can do, and how you have to live, and who you can marry, and who you can have relationships with.
This is not limited government. This is not, you know, small government. This is not conservative government. This is radical, reactionary, hate filled Republican rhetoric. And it is [01:09:00] damaging the lives of people in the United States. We are soon going to be back to a point where one of the highest public health risks for the queer community is suicide.
I mean, we're, we're, we never left it, really.
Gay, trans, lesbian youth are more likely to commit suicide than pretty much anybody else. It's been that way forever.
Opinionpalooza The Supreme Court End-of-Term Breakfast Table Part 2 - Amicus with Dahlia lithwick - Air Date 7-6-24
MARY ANNE FRANKS: Marianne, one of the big, big stories, Steve mentioned it, it was the theme of last term, but now it's like supercharged is the court's self aggrandizement this term.
And this month we've literally seen the justices weighing in on granular details about air pollution and how guns work and, you know, emergency room stabilization protocols for miscarrying women and homelessness, like there's nothing they're not experts on. If there were ever any doubt about it, the Supreme Court is the policymaker for all [01:10:00] policies in the country, and the conservatives are really comfortable just announcing that they're experts on clean water and air pollution.
Are we supposed to believe here that there's something scientific and methodologically sound that is happening when the justices do this? Or is this just, we all, you know, sort of legal realists. Now, this is just politics by another name. I mean, how do you, as somebody who thinks about the court, think about justices who have not just sort of structurally arrogated all this power, but feel, as Steve says, like no shame, perfectly comfortable in waiting in and telling us how we're going to regulate drugs now.
DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: It is an amazing move on the one hand that you have this degradation, uh, this contempt for actual expertise, right? In any number of fields, whether that's history or whether that's science or whether that's medicine. And at the same time as you're saying the court is also putting itself in the position to say, well, none of these experts know anything, but the court gets to [01:11:00] decide everything.
And it's been more embarrassing this term than most because of course, this has been the term where the justices have made mistakes about what chemicals are talking about. about and about, you know, how to even refer to certain types of procedures. They expose the fact that they don't know what they're talking about.
And here I should clarify the conservative justices because the liberal justices have been pretty good about saying we actually do think expertise matters. So yes, you can never get a consistency from the far right of the court except in the sense I always go back and think about the phrasing in 2016 when The election results were looking uncertain and Trump was asked, you know, are you going to respect the outcome of this election?
He says, I will respect it if I win. And I think that that just has defined this entire moment we're living in. It's where the conservatives say, I will respect whatever it is, science, expertise, law, whatever it is, if we win and that's it. And it's really depressing for me as a law professor to have [01:12:00] to confront that because it seems.
You know, as a professor, we like things to be interesting and complicated and not just naked power grabs. And it's a story about a bad, um, you know, the bad guy doing bad things. And it's such a boring and really depressing villain narrative, but it's really that clear. It's any rule that they want to set up is purely for the sake of can the far right in America use this to their advantage?
That is the rule that they will endorse. And as soon as it might be used by the other side, they will find a way to say that we didn't mean you guys. Um, and I just think that that's one of the most. incredibly depressing things about the cycle, even though we've seen it happen for some time. And of course, it was never the case that the judicial branch was free of this sort of bad motivation.
But it's so clear now to say, well, we are holding the courts hostage, and therefore we can just take all the power for ourselves. We can take the executive, we can take the legislative, we own everything. And we will make sure that we are the final arbiters of what gets. Caste is not just, you [01:13:00] know, law, but truth itself, all the time, over and over again.
And there's no shame about that. There's no shame of these justices saying, we can do this better than experts. We can do this better than scholars. We can do this better than scientists because we are somehow, you know, divine, I guess is what they're actually trying to communicate to us.
MARY ANNE FRANKS: I love what you're saying because it's a really crisp answer to the question everybody was asking on Monday, which is how is the same court that has fundamentally dismantled the administrative state creating an imperial presidency?
And your answer is no, in both of those moves, they created an imperial juristocracy, right? Like they gave themselves the power to both dismantle the parts of the executive branch and also, uh, uh, immunize others. And that's. In the end of the day, there's one player here, Mark. Did you, I feel like you had a thought or am I misreading your face there?
MARK JOSEPH STERN: I mean, I just keep going back to Neil Gorsuch in his opinion, blocking the EPA's plan to [01:14:00] limit ozone pollution, repeatedly mistaking nitrogen oxide. which is the pollutant that causes smog, with nitrous oxide, which is laughing gas, resulting in an opinion that repeatedly purports to limit the EPA's ability to regulate laughing gas in upwind states.
If you needed a clearer illustration of why the Supreme Court should not be seizing these deeply in the weeds policy decisions, let But for itself, like you couldn't look at a better one than that. I also think it's really interesting that Barrett dissented in that case, but joined so many of these other decisions that are awarding the judiciary more power and stripping it away from the executive branch and from Congress.
And I just think that goes to how she's so fundamentally conservative, but she has a limit for BS. This is the frame I always look at her through as like Professor Barrett, like sometimes when she's dissenting, it's like she's grading a bad student's. paper and like taking her red pen and [01:15:00] explaining all of the mistakes.
That was her EPA dissent. I feel like looking at Gorsuch and being like, Oh wow, you are a C minus student at best. Um, but when it comes to the broad stuff, giving the court all this power to keep issuing C minus decisions, blocking agency rules, she's on board. So it's like, she's still got one foot to go.
firmly planted in this camp of total judicial supremacy over the other branches. And the Supreme Court should be deciding every agency action for now and forever. But then when the court starts to get into the weeds, sometimes she's showing signs of rationality. I wonder if that is room for evolution for her, if there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance she's perhaps experiencing when the rubber hits the road and the court actually has to decide these issues and does so poorly, or if she's still just very much learning on the job and at the end of the day, Professor Barrett still can't see a C minus paper and let it pass without comment.
Opinionpalooza The Supreme Court End-of-Term Breakfast Table Part 3 - Amicus with Dahlia lithwick - Air Date 7-6-24
STEVE VLADECK: It's so much bigger. And so I actually [01:16:00] think the defining moment of the term, and you guys are going to laugh. Cause this is such a me thing to say was the court's unsigned, unexplained five, four order in January in the razor wire case. So just to remind folks, right, this was a dispute about whether the Biden administration could remove the razor wire that governor Abbott had placed along.
The US Mexico border in Texas and, you know, should have been an open and shut, straightforward case. The Fifth Circuit did a Fifth Circuit and made it messy. And what's striking is not that it was a five, I mean, it was striking was by four with Barrett and Roberts. Hey, Mark, there's one non merits example, right?
Joining the three Democrats in the majority. What was striking to me was the reaction. So by that afternoon, if not the next day, you had Chip Roy, Congressman from Texas, Ted Cruz's former chief of staff on Fox news, urging Governor Abbott to defy that ruling and that didn't get a lot of play nationally.
It didn't get a lot of attention. But that should have been a five [01:17:00] alarm fire for the justices that a prominent well liked at least in certain circles right wing member of Congress with a lot of sway is going on national television telling the governor of Texas to ignore this Supreme Court. That's the future.
And it's especially the future in a second Trump administration in those cases in which the court finds its backbone. And if I were a Supreme Court justice, I would be terrified that that became more than just an isolated event. So, you know, Dalia, to your point about sort of the court's view of itself and its relationship with all of the other institutions in government, that should have been an inflection point.
And everything that happened in the five months since has suggested to me that no one on the court seems to have gotten it. And certainly none of the six Republican appointees. And I'll just say, I really hope we never find out how much of a mistake that was and how short sighted it was on their part to not care more about their credibility, [01:18:00] even among those who don't usually agree with the court, because If you start having, you know, President Trump supporters in the second Trump administration saying, why do we follow this court that so many other people have already criticized?
You know, I'm not sure who's going to be left to stand up for the court at that point.
MARY ANNE FRANKS: I'm not sure if my heart can take two more answers to this question, but, um,
MARK JOSEPH STERN: Let me just try to infuse some, some fight and spirit into mine, and then we'll kick it to Marianne and she's going to make us all feel better, right?
Um, I think that what we've seen, especially over the last few weeks, shows how unfortunate it is that Democrats have chosen, by and large, not to run against the Supreme Court in 2024. Not just the president, but senatorial candidates seem to have decided that it's just too confusing and attenuated to run against the court and that they should run against Trump and MAGA instead.
I increasingly think that MAGA and the Supreme Court are one in the same, and that the Supreme Court is very much committed, as you noted earlier, [01:19:00] Dahlia, to implementing the Trump agenda, a kind of Project 2025, whether or not Trump wins, and that If somehow Democrats pull off, even say a huge victory in 2024, that they will be confronted with a Supreme court.
That's going to be living in an alternate world in which Donald Trump won and all of his powers were just sucked into the judiciary. There will be Trump appointees like Matt Kazmarek, all over the lower courts, blocking every single agency action before it can even be published. Right. There will be Fifth Circuit decisions that make the crazy ones from this term look reasonable.
And the Supreme Court itself will have five or six votes to frequently embrace these rather extraordinary, hardcore conservative decisions. And so I'll say like, for me, what I want. Progressives to do is look at the Supreme Court and recognize that it is restructuring government without any kind of mandate from the people, without any of those justices, obviously, ever getting [01:20:00] elected or winning a single vote, and realize that that is the most existential threat to democracy, that a single decision like The Trump immunity case is horrible and it's terrifying, but it has to be seen as part of this broader pattern of the United States Supreme Court restructuring representative democracy to make it less representative and less democratic.
And that is where the fight needs to be. It isn't there now, but there's still time left.
MARY ANNE FRANKS: Marianne, I think I'm going to give you the last word with the caveat, two caveats. People are exhausted and they're sad. I am exhausted and sad, but I don't think anybody has. Help me understand better than you what happens in a world where the rule of law is dismantled and oligarchs and men with guns roam free, and there is no law protecting the rest of us.
And it does feel to me as though we tilted into further into that world this term. You don't [01:21:00] have to give us hope that Mark did a very good job reminding us that it's not the end. Ultimately, up to the court, whether this happens or not, but I would love to just have your thoughts on this question of what do you do when the court has become And An echo of the voice that wants to shrink government down to the size that you could drown it in a bathtub.
I mean, that's full on the language of this court now or the majority. I'm not
DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: sure. And when I think about what could change the tide here, when I think about just how much shit. It has become obvious how cruel the consequences of these decisions, you know, how vivid these these consequences are, and it doesn't seem to matter, right?
The people who are responsible for them and the people who are supporting them are confident. They are absolutely confident that the cruelty will never come for them. So I guess one way of thinking about that. Thanks. Trying to change the path is what if people understood that the [01:22:00] cruelty will come for them.
Is there a moment where there is a popular understanding that when you have an unprincipled thoroughly untethered from any kind of rule of law, any kind of moral code, any kind of consistency, when you have that in place. Of a functioning democracy that no one is safe. Can people understand that, that, that they too, will not be safe at some point?
The problem I think right now is that when you have this power grab, this is the best version of the far right saying, we will make sure that they never have to worry about that. That they will always be kept safe. But you know, I think. No one should trust any form of government, right? That includes the courts, that includes the federal government, that includes the state governors, right?
Trying to locate some of that sense of suspicion that power concentrated in this way just purely on the whims of the powerful, isn't going to serve the people's interests and for people to understand that. The other thing that I think might happen, because so much of this is tied up with a certain kind of patriarchal resurgence, [01:23:00] is to understand that this is a position of weakness, this kind of theocratic.
Thoroughly partisan cruelty is weakness. So when you mentioned before about how there's this disparagement of the female justices as being emotional and hysterical and, and just responding to sort of feelings, that is in fact, of course, every accusation is a confession, right? That is exactly what is characterizing the far right right now.
They know they can't win unless they cheat. They know they can't win if the rules apply to both sides. So we're back to this statement, right? We're back to the Trump. Be in sentiment that I only respect the rules when I win. That's also another way of saying I can't win if the rules are in place. I would like to believe that there is some subset of conservatives out there that are actually quite angry about that idea that they can't compete, that if there's a fair chance.
That they would lose over and over and over again, and that they'll get angry enough about that that it will push them towards the concept of reciprocity [01:24:00] that that you and I talked about before with my my previous book in the Cult of the Constitution, because that's the only democratic principle, the idea that we have to have the same principles for everyone.
The same rule applies to everyone. And the fact that you're losing doesn't mean that that means the game is rigged. You might have just lost, and you should have lost. So will there be some attempt on the part of some conservatives to say, we don't want to be losers all the time, we don't want to have to admit that we're losers and have to change the rules every time.
We actually think we can compete if the rules are fair and the principles are real. I think that's actually our only chance.
Opinionpalooza This SCOTUS Decision Is Actually Even More Devastating Than We First Thought Part 2 - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick - Air Date 7-13-24
DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: You started to talk about this, Lisa, but I'd love for you to develop a little further. I feel as though we've now inured our listeners to, uh, being afraid when I ask you a question about the Administrative Procedure Act. But you make the point, and I think it's really central to understanding, that the APA becomes the cornerstone of Chief Justice Robert's majority opinion.
LISA HEINZERLING: Yes, it's so important. So the court was asked [01:25:00] to hold that this Chevron principle violated the Constitution, that it violated the separation of powers, that is the division of power between Congress, the executive and the courts. And that's been an argument for a long time against Chevron, again, since, since about the administration of Barack Obama.
So. They could have decided that, and indeed Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch in separate opinions said that they believed that Chevron violated the separation of powers. Now what would that mean? That would mean that even if Congress wanted to change the interpretive principle as the Supreme Court's side.
It wouldn't be able to. If it violates the Constitution for courts to defer to agencies interpretations, then there's no fixing it in Congress. And what the court did instead is it said, it starts with this long exegesis, this long discussion [01:26:00] of, uh, what courts normally do and always have done in its view with respect to interpreting statutes.
But that doesn't actually decide the case. It's this long kind of constitutionally, uh, inflected discussion. But when it comes to saying, why is it that legally Chevron was terrible? Why is it that Chevron itself was unlawful? It turns to the Administrative Procedure Act, which has said, is the default kind of governing framework for administrative agencies work.
And it turns to specifically one sentence in that statute, and that sentence is talking about how courts are to review agency actions of various kinds. And that sentence says, the reviewing court shall decide all questions of law. It has other things in that sentence, but that's the key point. That's the key passage.
The reviewing court [01:27:00] shall decide all questions of law. And the court thought, that, that means. And has meant for 80 years, since the Administrative Procedure Act was passed, that reviewing courts may not defer. Congress told us reviewing courts may not defer. They need to be the ones to make the interpretation, and, um, and they don't do that if they defer to an agency's view.
It's, that's, that's quite astonishing in a number of ways. It's noteworthy they didn't decide on the constitutional. It's also surprising that they would find that authority for them to undo Chevron in an almost 80 year old statute that has never been understood that way. It's never understood. that way.
And it's a little bit reminiscent, a couple of years ago, the court created something called the [01:28:00] Major Questions Doctrine, where it said that if an agency is making a decision of great economic and political importance and interpreting the statute to allow it to address an issue of that magnitude, um, Congress needs to have spoken really clearly, super clearly.
before the agency is allowed to address that kind of an issue. And the court said, we really think that if a statute's been around a long time and the agency has never exercised this authority, that's really a sign that it doesn't exist. Well, one could say that about the Administrative Procedure Act and the Loper Bright case.
This is a statute that's been around, again, for over 80 years. Nobody has understood, or almost 80 years, nobody has understood the statute this way. And it doesn't have to be. Understood that way. A court can decide a question of law about a statute's meaning and still give deference. It's still deciding that whatever the agency did fits within the broad parameters of the statute.
DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: [01:29:00] So this actually comes up at oral argument in January, where the solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogger, starts to warn the justices that if they overturn Chevron, and let's be clear, this is like Dobbs, that we've had lower court reliance on Chevron for a really long time, and what she warned at the time was that throwing it out could lead to having to reconsider a whole panoply of other cases.
As she said at the time, there's about 80 cases out there that need to be challenged if you're going to do away with Chevron. And we got a lot of like, they're there, but in practice, what was she suggesting is going to happen?
LISA HEINZERLING: Well, that's exactly right. There are, as like you say, approximately 70, 80 cases at the Supreme Court level.
That we need to think about. Are those still good law? And the court says, Well, we're not disturbing those cases because those cases will still be respected as precedent. But this is in [01:30:00] the middle of disrespecting the precedent that underlies them all, right? So there's a certain degree of like, really sort of, uh, do you mean it kind of attitude that that might inspire.
In other words, it's hard for them really to tell us to bank on stare decisis, which is the principle that you stay with precedent unless there's really good reason not to, that bank on that principle, um, in a case that is disrespecting that principle. Right. Also, the Supreme Court is only talking about, in those paragraphs, where it's saying, don't worry, this doesn't touch our decisions, well, okay, there are thousands of decisions in the lower courts that are relied on Chevron.
What happens to them? It will be up to the lower courts to decide whether to stay with them. And they might not. I mean, how solid can they be in sticking with their own precedent when the Supreme Court has abandoned its own precedent? So, that's a [01:31:00] big worry. I'll say even further, if I may, there's another context that I think is very much undermined Loeb or Bright.
In addition to the principle that courts are supposed to defer to agencies interpretations of statutes that they implement that are passed by Congress, there's also a principle that courts defer to agencies interpretations of their own regulations. It's a principle called Our deference, A U E R, if you want to imagine the case, that's the case, one of the cases it came from.
And I think that the lower propriet decision really undermines the basis for that kind of deference as well. So, because given the theory of the Administrative Procedure Act that the Chief Justice is working with, that reviewing courts decide all questions of law, That would equally undermine the principle of [01:32:00] deference to agencies interpretations of their regulations.
DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: Yeah, this is a piece of it that I think, uh, slid out in the initial reaction to Loeb or Bright, which is this is not just doing violence to Congress's ability to regulate. This does violence to the Agencies. I mean, it's really a kind of one two punch because it's irrigating power, both that is conferred upon Congress and that is conferred upon the agencies.
And that's a really good way of explaining it, that it sort of leaves open that the courts can just, you know, kind of push it. Pick through both statutes and agency interpretations of statutes. And really in, in both senses, the court is like, we're the decider, right? I mean, this is a huge, huge irrigation of powers that are conferred in other directions.
Opinionpalooza This SCOTUS Decision Is Actually Even More Devastating Than We First Thought Part 3 - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick - Air Date 7-13-24
LISA HEINZERLING: So, there are deadlines for filing challenges to agency rules, and statutes can set their own deadlines, but the review that takes place [01:33:00] under the Administrative Procedure Act, which we've heard about quite a lot so far, that statute says you need to file within six years.
of the time the action accrues. And the Supreme Court said that an action accrues not when the action becomes final, not when an agency issues a final rule, it's effective, and then you have six years to file a challenge. That's the approach taken by all the lower courts, and that's approach that makes some sense so that you can actually have some finality and know after six years, we know the legal status of this rule.
What the Supreme Court said instead is it accrues when a party is first injured by the rule. And in that case, it was a truck stop that was incorporated after the six year statute had passed, but was only injured when it became incorporated. And the court said, you can sue. And that sounds, again, may sound kind of arcane, maybe even a little dull.
It's hugely important. Why? Because the court has just [01:34:00] fundamentally changed the way courts must review agencies understanding of their own laws. And it said, and by the way, if you're newly injured, you can sue at any time, as long as it's within six years of your injury. So you can, as in court or post, incorporate a new company, for example, and then say, hey, we're injured now, and so we want to sue.
In those cases, it's just hard to imagine a court with a new lawsuit applying Chevron And so apply the new interpretive principle that the court has come up with in Loper Bright. And so even now, I know that industry lawyers are combing through the federal registers, that is the sort of daily newspaper, if you will, of the federal government with all the rules and announcements of rules in it.
They're combing through that. Going back probably decades to find rules [01:35:00] that they either didn't challenge because they thought they'd lose under Chevron or did challenge and the agency won under Chevron and thinking, you know what, we can file new challenges.
DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: How does that impact things like the MIFA Pristone decision?
Uh, well, there was no decision. They decided at the end of the day to not decide. But how does this changing of the statute of limitations affect MIFI?
LISA HEINZERLING: It's so interesting and troubling because in the Myth of Pristone case, as you know, the anti abortion parties had challenged even the original 2000 approval of Myth of Pristone.
And the only reason that didn't get brought up to the Supreme Court or wasn't an issue at that time is the Fifth Circuit said, no, you're out of time. It's way past the statute of limitations for that challenge. Well, it's not anymore, right? It's not anymore after Corner Post. And the same law firm that represented the [01:36:00] little truck stop in Corner Post has represented parties in cases involving reproductive rights.
And so I don't think There's any chance that they didn't know the relationship between those two cases, and I'll be surprised if there isn't a fresh challenge to that original approval of Mithra Pristone in the case that the court can cite in accepting it as corner post.
DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: You know, Justice Kagan has been sounding the alarm about what's going to happen to Chevron and the kind of hungry, hungry hippos approach to admin law.
In Loper Bright, Justice Kagan writes, quote, In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue, no matter how expertise driven or policy laden involving the meaning of regulatory aid. law. And then I think in the sort of gut punch sentence, she adds, as if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country's administrative czar.
And I always, in my head, I hear [01:37:00] the echo of Kagan writing in a 2019 case, where she really warned us that if this incredibly narrow view of agency authority were to be allowed to prevail. She wrote, quote, Most of government is unconstitutional. Can you sort of tie together this theme of judges as kind of free range administrative czars?
We saw it in the Ohio EPA case. We saw it, I think, in the Bumpstock case. You know, we're seeing it in the Mifflin Pristone case. All right. And all of these cases, you know, we mentioned jarcossi, we mentioned the Clean Air Act case from two years ago, Clean Water Act case from last year. It feels to me, and this goes back to your very first point, that if agencies have both the ability to be replaced electorally, right, that's the idea that if you hate what the EPA is doing, you can vote them out, but [01:38:00] also they have expertise and they can act nimbly.
And that, as you said at the very beginning, Lisa, they have to explain themselves. Now it just feels like this term in the aggregate is just a huge invitation for not just endless, infinite litigation, but endless, infinite judicial sort of supplanting. of information, of knowledge, of expertise, of science with kind of their own feelings and that that only ratchets in one way.
LISA HEINZERLING: Yes, that last part about ratcheting in one way is really important because Chevron itself could go both ways. It became more deregulatory in its later years, but it could mean that a president of either party could Really make a mark in terms of regulatory policy and their own, um, political agenda of either party.
Right. But today, the [01:39:00] combination of the courts being in charge and the courts being motivated by really an anti government That, that kind of theme and mood runs through these cases, this distaste of the so called bureaucrats, this distaste of the agencies, and underlying it less explicitly acknowledged but also true of this distaste of Congress.
So that they are really putting themselves in charge and putting themselves in charge not only citing some words in the APA or the Constitution for this proposition or this Power grab, but also really sending a signal with their attitude towards government. They don't like government very much, it seems.
They really are creating chaos in some of these decisions, but not allowing anybody to create order.
Just Decide the EMTALA Case Already, You Cowards Part 2 - Boom! Lawyered - Air Date 6-27-24
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: So it's another procedural ruling on [01:40:00] a big marquee abortion rights case that the court took up and then decided, You know what?
No, maybe we shouldn't be here right now, right? I think that's something. So while it's a procedural ruling, The court did give some pretty big hints as to how it's thinking about this issue of state abortion bans and their relationship to federal law, right? Let's start with the bright spots for a change on this podcast.
We're going to start with the good. That's Justice Jackson.
IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Justice Jackson did not come to play. No, she, she knows what's going on. Like she knows that she is, I can tell, I can tell I'm a black woman. She's a black woman. We have meetings that she knows that she is part of a corrupt body and she is writing opinions as if.
She's writing them for the future, right? She's writing them for justices in the future. So they will know what happened during this, whatever we're going to end up [01:41:00] calling this era, this period of time in the Supreme court. And so she called them out, right? She called them out. Basically she called them all bitch asses, right?
Like she agreed with, with Kagan and with Sotomayor about the fact that she, she agreed with them on the sort of the merits of it, but she wrote a separate opinion saying, I agree with them. But also we should not be dismissing this case as improvidently granted because quite, quite frankly, it was providently granted, right?
All of the issues have been laid out. All of the people have made their arguments. There are pregnant people who are still, still suffering as a result of this law and will continue to suffer as a result of this law as other states start passing laws that bring MTALA and their state abortion bans into conflict.
And she's absolutely right. And I want to read. A little bit of what she wrote. Yes, please do. So to be clear, today's decision is not a victory for [01:42:00] pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay. While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.
This court had a chance to bring clarity and certainty. To this tragic situation and we have squandered it. And for as long as we refuse to declare what the law requires, pregnant patients in Idaho, Texas, and elsewhere will be paying the price because we owe them and the nation and answer to the straightforward preemption question presented in these cases, I respectfully dissent, boom, that's a whole word.
That is, that is, that's what we Black folks like to call a read.
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: It's amazing. And she's honestly emerging as one of the strongest writers on the court by far. I [01:43:00] mean, she's really giving Kagan a run for her money there. And I think, Not only is it clear, and I love that she brings Texas into this, and we'll talk about why that matters in a minute, but because not only is it so clear, but there's also such clear subtext in the passage that you just shared, because this delay and this dawdle is is an election ploy, right?
What we have is a Roberts court that has pivoted to full Trump campaign mode by the end of its term, if it wasn't already there in the beginning. And this is a coward's decision, right? Because if we do end up in a Trump administration, then As I have been sharing with Imani, we're gonna get a Department of Life.
IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: God, I hate when you say that. I'm
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: so sorry. It's not
IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: my phrase. I know, but I, but you keep saying it at me. I know. You keep typing it in Slack at me. I'm so sorry for that.
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: I'm so [01:44:00] sorry for that, but we need to look. Like, we need to look at what is a possibility pretty squarely in the face, and a Department of Life means an end to this particular EMTALA fight because it's full steam ahead into fetal personhood.
It is full steam ahead in letting states enforce abortion bans that have zero exceptions whatsoever.
IMANI GANDY - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: Yeah. Yeah. And then there's Sammy the Leak Alito. There is. I really, I, I've been sort of apoplectic over the past 24 hours as I read the leaked opinion yesterday at how much this man is a liar. Yes. And if there's one thing that you should remember from this particular decision, it's that Sam Alito is willing to rewrite a statute to suit his agenda.
And that is concerning in myriad ways, right? Here's what he wrote. The government's preemption theory is plainly unsound. Far from requiring hospitals to perform [01:45:00] abortion abortions. Emtala's text unambiguously demands that Medicare funded hospitals protect the health of both a pregnant woman and. Her unborn child.
That's not true. And that's not just me being like, Oh no, you can interpret the statute a bunch of different ways. And I don't think it's true. No, it is a blatant lie because the statute doesn't say that Medicare funded hospitals are supposed to protect the health of a pregnant woman and her unborn child.
It says Or her unborn child, or, and, and are two different words. I don't know. Did you know that? That or and and are two different words. They are. So here's, and here's why it's a problem. Because the statute EMTALA was amended to add this provision requiring pregnant people in labor to be given stabilizing treatment, even if they themselves don't need the treatment, but their fetus does.
Yes. Because hospitals were dumping pregnant patients out on the street because their [01:46:00] lives weren't in danger, but maybe their fetuses lives wasn't. They didn't want to have to deal with that. With paying for all of that, it's expensive. They didn't wanna do, they were dumping pregnant patients just as Idaho has been dumping pregnant patients all year.
So this idea that the statute is supposed to protect both the pregnant woman and her unborn child is not born out by the statutes plain text norby the amendments, norby any of the legislative lead up to this statute. It is a lie and frankly. And later in his dissent, he actually, he actually relays what the statute actually says.
He relays that it says, uh, or her, excuse me, or her unborn child. He says that, but then later says, Oh, but it's an unambiguous that it's and her unborn child. So I just really, I just really want people to know that you cannot trust this man as far as you can throw him.
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO - CO-HOST, BOOM! LAWYERED: No, and he's breadcrumbing, right?
Because, and we'll talk about the Texas decision too, the, that misread of the statute that you just described is the read [01:47:00] of the statute that the Texas District Court in Fifth Circuit is trying to emplace on Mtala. Bingo. Thank you. Please talk more about that. Well, I mean, it's what Sam Alito does. I mean, what he does is campaign from the bench, right?
And he uses judicial opinions, majority or dissent to call out for the conservative legal movement, what the next case should be, how it should be framed, and functionally how to get at least five votes. And to your point, you know, he is merging amendments to the statute and a sleight of hand to the statutory text and just privileging a read that gets to his political agenda
SECTION B: PROJECT 2025
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B: Project 2025.
What is Project 2025 Part 2 - Today, Explained - Air Date 7-11-24
NOEL: Okay. Now, it's worth noting that the Trump campaign could decide it doesn't want to do any of this. Right. So there's, there's nothing saying Donald Trump, if he were to be [01:48:00] elected president, has got to carry out this plan. When you talk to people inside of the campaign, do they want to carry out this plan?
SHELBY TALCOTT: I think it depends on who you talk to, honestly.
NOEL: Huh.
SHELBY TALCOTT: And what's notable is there was a slew of reports that came out earlier this year and, and towards the end of last year about, you know, Donald Trump's plans if he went into office again and they used a lot of people from these groups and from Project 2025, and the campaign very quickly came out and issued a pretty strict statement saying, we're appreciative of everything that Project 2025 and these other groups are doing, but they don't speak for the campaign. Donald Trump and the campaign speak for us. And these initiatives, if they come from Project 2025, are not coming from Donald Trump. And so I think that's notable. But I also do think it's important to remember that there are a lot of [01:49:00] former Trump officials involved in Heritage Foundation in general and in Project 2025. And last time around, Donald Trump used so much of their policy proposals. And a lot of these policy proposals that they're putting forth are pretty common policies and pretty popular within the conservative movement. So I would expect at the end of the day that Donald Trump uses this project in some form or another.
NOEL: Alright, so Shelby, how and when did the Biden campaign start responding to news of Project 2025?
SHELBY TALCOTT: They really took notice of it just a few months ago..,
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They started seeing videos coming out about the project and denouncing the project.
<CLIP>
thedevilsdaughter162: What’s Project 2025? It’s a nightmare. That’s all I can say. It is an absolute nightmare.
<CLIP>
caseyincontext: Anytime someone posts a video about Biden potentially losing in 2024, the top comment is always [01:50:00] about Project 2025.
<CLIP>
heathergtv: Welcome to part two of our series Project 2025: How Democracy Dies!
SHELBY TALCOTT: And so they saw that and thought, well, this is perfect. And that's when they started putting out their own videos, going after the project, highlighting the project.
<CLIP>
bidenhq: It’s all a part of their Project 2025 agenda, which is a set of extreme policy plans that they have for a second Trump term: things like banning the distribution of abortion medication, declaring that marriage doesn’t apply to same-sex couples, and undoing the historic progress that President Biden has done fighting climate change and forgiving student debt.
SHELBY TALCOTT: And it's interesting. There's TikToks sort of doing explainers. They have a TikTok where AOC is speaking about Project 2025.
<CLIP>
AOC: This is exactly what Republicans have been going for. You have the Heritage Foundation, you have lots of folks, who are on record…
SHELBY TALCOTT: Of course, that's notable because AOC is one of the younger lawmakers who often appeals to younger voters. And she has also [01:51:00] been critical of Joe Biden in the past.
<CLIP>
AOC: Not only do they want to go after abortion, not only do they want to go after reproductive freedom, they’re going after IVF, they’re going after contraception…
SHELBY TALCOTT: And so having her come out and talk about it and putting that video up on TikTok is notable. And I'm told that those TikToks are some of their best performing videos as well. So it is resonating with that sect of voters that, quite frankly, they've been struggling with in the polls.
SCORING OUT
NOEL: Okay. So the Heritage Foundation, this is not unprecedented, they ordinarily do have some sort of guidelines, things the Heritage Foundation would like you to do if you're elected president. Are you surprised this election cycle that this is getting so much attention?
SHELBY TALCOTT: I think I am a little bit surprised just because, again, it's such a dense DC type thing, right? 800 plus [01:52:00] pages. But for whatever reason, I think in part because of the drastic changes that this project is hoping to implement, it has really resonated with a group of voters that in a way I, I'm not sure it would have in years past.
NOEL: Lemme ask you about something I think when I skim these 800 plus pages. Donald Trump, during his first term, used to talk a lot about the deep state.
<CLIP>
Trump: Unelected deep state operatives who defy the voters to push their own secret agendas are truly a threat to democracy itself.
NOEL: And people say, well, the deep state is just experts who are already in DC and they know what they're doing. I gather that the Heritage Foundation probably doesn't call it the Deep State, but does this 800 page book seem to speak at all to Donald Trump's idea that government itself is the problem?
SHELBY TALCOTT: Absolutely. And I think that goes back to [01:53:00] that comment from Paul Dans when I interviewed him a year and a half ago or so, where he said, what fundamentally unites our coalition is deconstructing the administrative state. And I think that goes back to Donald Trump, sort of one of his ultimate goals that he never really could fully do during his first term.
NOEL: So let's say Donald Trump is elected and he decides that he wants to take Project 2025 on full bore, right? He's going to go in on it. How much of this could a Trump White House actually execute, given that we have a Congress that could be split, that could be fully democratic, given that we have a Supreme Court. What do you think? How seriously should we take this?
SHELBY TALCOTT: I think this should be taken really seriously, just in part because it is such a big effort that has been going on for so many years. And because we've seen Donald Trump use Heritage Foundation in the past, and because there's so many former Trump officials [01:54:00] involved in this who still remain close to the former president. Now, the question of how much could actually be implemented, I think, really depends on what they're trying to implement. I do think that they anticipate that some of this will receive pushback, and they are also preparing for that. They're preparing for, you know, sort of potential legal issues and potential legal pushback. They're prepping for a long fight to get what they want done in government.
NOEL: And let me ask you lastly, so Democrats, at least some of them are freaking out about this, on TikTok and elsewhere, in opinion pages, etc. But of course, for Republican voters, this could be very appealing. ‘Hey, we've got a plan. And when we get into office, if you vote us into office, we're going to execute that plan.’
SHELBY TALCOTT: Absolutely. And that's really the ultimate pitch when this whole thing started.
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‘We're ready, we have the [01:55:00] money, get on board, help us figure all of these policy plans out so that we are never unprepared again, as we were in 2016.’ And so that's been the pitch to Republicans. And these are conservative policies that a lot of conservatives agree on. And of course, on the flip side, Democrats are going to be wildly upset about this. You know, these are policies that they don't agree on. And so we can expect that should Donald Trump take office again and tap Project 2025, that Democrats are going to fight with whatever means that they can to try to make it more difficult for these sorts of policies to be implemented.
What is Project 2025 Part 3 - Today, Explained - Air Date 7-11-24
NOEL: SCORING IN <Neutral Irene - BMC>
SHELBY TALCOTT: There are a number of significant proposals. So one of them, they of course talk about abortion restrictions. They include in their policy book a reference to the Comstock Act, which is a long-inactive 19th century law that banned birth control and abortion pills by mail.
<CLIP>
Mary Ziegler: [01:56:00] Conservative groups are arguing that the Comstock Act makes it a crime to mail any abortion-related item…
SHELBY TALCOTT: Broadly, a number of their policies are aimed at expanding presidential powers while shrinking the executive branch. So getting rid of the White House Gender Policy Council, domestic climate policy, getting rid of the clean energy demonstrations in the Energy Department.
<CLIP>
CNN's Jake Tapper: He also would refuse to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs he does not like, and he would remove officials he does not like from intelligence agencies.
SHELBY TALCOTT: So all of these efforts at, as they said, deconstructing the administrative state. There's also a lot in there about immigration. They want much stricter immigration proposals.
<CLIP>
Charlie Kirk: When Trump is president again as the 47th president of the United States, how do we deport 30 million people?
SHELBY TALCOTT: They'd like to bring back a failed effort from Trump to implement a citizenship question on the census. They want to mandate that the DOJ start legal action against local [01:57:00] officials who choose not to prosecute in part because of immigration status. And so there's all these sort of policy agendas that span across really every aspect of what conservatives are interested in.
<CLIP>
Ali Velshi: The radical plan calls for defunding the Department of Justice, dismantling the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services. It also aims to consolidate power by placing agencies like the Federal Communications Commission under direct presidential control.
SHELBY TALCOTT: And the last part of this that I would pull out as notable is, of course, their social policies. They talk a lot about getting rid of DEI. They want to stamp it out.
<CLIP>
Mike Gonzalez: The American people are waking up to this threat that DEI poses to our freedoms, to our way of life, to our peace of mind…
SHELBY TALCOTT: They talk a lot about anti-wokeness, critical race theory, gender ideologies in schools.
<CLIP>
Donald J. Trump: On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, [01:58:00] transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.
SHELBY TALCOTT: And so these are sort of just some of the overarching policies that this massive book is, and I do mean massive, is focused on.
SCORING OUT
NOEL: Okay. So 800 pages of policy ideas. One American president that they want to carry them out. Who's helping? Who, who are the people that would be involved in implementing Project 2025?
SHELBY TALCOTT: That is their second pillar. And that was sort of what they really first started working on was this LinkedIn for conservatives. But the goal is they'll have a number, 10,000-plus staffers that have been vetted by the Heritage Foundation, by Project 2025, that they can then hand to the Trump administration and say, these staffers are good [01:59:00] to go if you want to hire any of them. In addition to this LinkedIn for conservatives, they're giving the approved staffers the option of either online training, or if they're more advanced, in-person training on everything from the basics of governments to teaching them how to make sure that they can get into office and implement the plans that conservatives want.
<CLIP>
Paul Dans: What we’re doing is systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army of aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state.
SHELBY TALCOTT: When I talked to the leaders who are heading up this project, and when I spoke to Heritage Foundation on a number of occasions, they've always been quick to say this is in part because we were unprepared after Trump's 2016 win, conservatives did not expect him to [02:00:00] win. The country really didn't expect him to win. And so Donald Trump came into office and there wasn't really any sort of platform to help him.
<CLIP>
Paul Dans: President Trump was an outsider. This is a very insular city. So it’s not going to be welcoming to outsiders. Outsiders have to come into this place prepared and know what the game is.
SHELBY TALCOTT: And so they've essentially said that they've taken a playbook out of Democrats’ past plans.
<CLIP>
Paul Dans: We take a lot of exception with, with Joe Biden but the one thing I do credit his team with was being prepared. So they were signing things all week long the first week and we are going to be doing the same.
NOEL: And so the idea is day one, we've got our people. Our people are trained. Nothing in government ever works within the first 24 hours though, right? So like these, these are big policy proposals. How are they going to get done quickly?
SHELBY TALCOTT: Of course. I think the plan is some of them are going to be, right, executive orders that presumably the president could sign on day one, on the first week, on the first [02:01:00] month…
<CLIP>
Donald J. Trump: We love this guy. He says, ‘you’re not gonna be a dictator, are ya?’ I said, ‘no, no, no, other than day one.’
SHELBY TALCOTT: …but others are going to be guidance and regulations that presumably could be implemented within the first 180 days of Donald Trump's presidency.
NOEL: And is there any other kind of worldview behind this, underpinning this?
SHELBY TALCOTT: You know, as I was reading through, one of the things that stood out to me was a sort of summary from the head of the Heritage Foundation, and he noted that the authors of this book have broad consensus over four sort of pillars. And the first is restoring, – and I'm reading this as a quote – restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children's children. The second is, as we've talked about, dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people. The third, defend our nation's sovereignty, borders and bounty against global threats. And the fourth is [02:02:00] to secure our God-given individual rights to live freely, what our Constitution calls the blessings of liberty. And so I think, if you read those four, you get a sense of the sort of religious undertones that are also making up a lot of these policies and a lot of this book.
<CLIP>
Paul Dans: I think of conservatives as focused on God, country, and family, not government. But progressives spend 24 hours a day redesigning government. Now we see that government is directed against God, directed against family, directed against this country. So it is our charge now to get back and take over the government.
SECTION C: POLITICAL VIOLENCE
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Next up, one clip in section C: political violence.
Long Legacy of U.S. Political Violence- RNC Begins in Milwaukee After Trump Assassination Attempt - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-15-24
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, if you can respond first to the attempted assassination of President Trump?
JOHN NICHOLS: It’s horrible. Look, political violence, when it occurs in any country at any time, is an awful thing. [02:03:00] And when it is in the context of a campaign, this has a real impact, because it causes people to question whether they might go to a campaign event — right? — whether they might participate in the democratic process. So, no matter what you think about Trump, no matter what you think about Biden or any of this, to have an incident like this occur at a campaign rally is a big deal. It’s a big deal for this country.
By the same token, I would tell you it’s not the first. This is very much something that we have seen really throughout our modern history and going backward. We’ve had four presidents assassinated, killed in office.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Name them.
JOHN NICHOLS: What?
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Name them, if you can.
JOHN NICHOLS: I certainly can. Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John Kennedy, killed while serving as president. We have had a prominent presidential candidate killed at a campaign event where he accepted his victory in the California primary in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy. We [02:04:00] have had major candidates killed or harmed in other settings. We have had candidates for president badly injured. George Wallace was shot on the campaign trail in Maryland in 1972, permanently paralyzed. And in this city, in this city of Milwaukee, in 1912, October 14th, 1912, Teddy Roosevelt, the former president of the United States, was shot in the chest as he was coming out to campaign and deliver a speech, literally in one of the buildings adjacent to where this convention will be held.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: In fact, where the Hyatt is right now, where we got our press credentials.
JOHN NICHOLS: That’s where he was shot.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: That’s the new building that replaces the old hotel where he was speaking.
JOHN NICHOLS: That’s precisely right. And —
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: But he gave the speech anyway.
JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah, it was a fascinating speech. In fact, I went back and read it over the weekend, because it was such an amazing moment. Remember, Roosevelt is a former president of the United States. He had already displaced the Republican Party. [02:05:00] They didn’t nominate him for another term, and so he was running as a third-party candidate. It was a very intense campaign. And he knew that Wisconsin was a big state for him.
And so, literally, he assessed himself. He knew he had been shot in the chest muscle, but he had had a 50-page speech folded three times in his pocket along with a glasses case. The bullet went through the speech, hit the case and then lodged in his chest muscle. He determined that he could make it through. He wasn’t coughing up blood, as he said. So he went and gave a 90-minute speech. And incredibly, it was about the incident. And he talked about violence. He talked about political violence. And what he said at the end of the speech was that, as a country, we have to learn to get over economic and social divisions so that we don’t have more incidents like this. It was really quite a remarkable moment.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I mean, he was a hunter, so he knew [02:06:00] biology well and said, “No, it’s not in my heart or my lungs.” And he had that bullet in him for the rest of his life.
JOHN NICHOLS: Rest of his life. He made it through a 90-minute speech, though. And if you read the speech, it’s chilling, because he literally said to the people, “Look, I’ve been shot. But, I want you to understand, that doesn’t mean a thing to me.” He was a tough guy. He was a strong character.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: “Bull Moose.”
JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah. He said — in fact, that’s where — “A bullet doesn’t take down a bull moose.” But what he said was fascinating, because he says, “It doesn’t mean a thing to me because of the importance of what we’re talking about for this country and the importance of getting beyond violence, getting beyond the divisions in this country.” Remember, Roosevelt was running that year to the left of the Democrats and the Republicans in order to create what he referred to as a new nationalism, which was an effort to actually begin to address a lot of the economic inequality in the country.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And ultimately, though, Teddy Roosevelt did not win that campaign.
JOHN NICHOLS: No, he did not. And nor was George Wallace, who was shot on the campaign trail. It’s a very interesting thing. There is a tendency after a shooting like this to [02:07:00] assume it’s going to have a huge political impact — and it may. I’m not dismissing that. But what I will tell you is that there’s history that suggests that the country is horrified, the country reacts with sympathy, but it doesn’t necessarily say, “Oh, well, we have to elect this wounded warrior or this wounded candidate.”
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And interestingly, Teddy Roosevelt had replaced McKinley, who was assassinated when he did become president.
JOHN NICHOLS: Who was killed, absolutely. In fact, Teddy Roosevelt was one of those — it was a remarkable story there, because he was assassinated — McKinley, his predecessor, was assassinated shortly after becoming the president in the second term. And so, Roosevelt ended up almost with two full terms as president because of an assassination. And again, this is one of the things I think people need to understand. It is not a good thing. It is a deep tragedy. It is a horrific reality that assassinations, political assassinations, and attempts have been a [02:08:00] part of our history.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I want to read to you another columnist, Juan Cole, a piece that he wrote, the headline, “From 'Hang Mike Pence' to 'Paul Pelosi Hammered' to 'Shooting Trump' — Political Violence Is Deadly to Democracy.” He writes, “American politics has entered the most dangerous phase of its nearly 250-year existence. …
“Although the Right is blaming the political left for the violence, saying that its meme that Trump has dictatorial tendencies is responsible, the fact is that he did try to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, and some of his acolytes, at least, brought guns and ammunition to Washington, D.C, for the purpose, including the Proud Boys. It seems clear that the lives of Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi and others in the Capitol had been in danger that day, had security not whisked them to safety.
“The mob called into being by Donald J. Trump chanted 'Hang Mike Pence,' which was a call for an assassination. Insiders have reported that Trump expressed support for the sentiment.
[02:09:00] “As it was, a deranged follower of Trump came looking for Pelosi at her house in San Francisco and tried to kill her husband Paul with a hammer when he found she wasn’t there.”
And, of course, Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., mocked Paul Pelosi, as, ultimately, President Trump — President Trump has continually made fun of Pelosi around this.
JOHN NICHOLS: Mm-hmm. Look, I think the thing to understand is that after an incident like this, there’s often an effort to point fingers of blame, say, you know, that something Joe Biden said or something the Democrats said caused this to happen, and vice versa, right? This is the nature of our politics.
But one of the things that I think is important to understand is, we’re still very early in an investigation into what certainly looks like a security meltdown at that rally. Right? We don’t know what this young man was thinking. We don’t know much [02:10:00] about him. We’re starting to get a little bit of it. And so, I think it is the height of irresponsibility to try and say, “Oh, something somebody said caused this to happen.”
The much better response — and frankly, I’ll remind you that we’ve been through moments like this before. 1968, you saw Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in April, you saw Robert F. Kennedy assassinated in June. Imagine that moment that we were in. And you saw people — liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans — basically saying, “Hey, let’s try and chill this out. Let’s try and calm this down.” And I think that’s the right place to go.
What I will counsel, though, is, we are in a very charged moment. You just read through a list of realities of our moment, things that have been said, things that have been done. I remember on January 6th, I was in Madison — right? — and watching that, you know, those events play out. And you do, you know, say, “Where are we at?” I remember that chill of, like, “Wow! What is going on here?” And I think a lot of Americans [02:11:00] have been through that. In a sense, we have been through three years, or longer, maybe even 10 years, of incredible turbulence in our politics. This is an unstable period. And if we pause and think about that, you know, we ought to be careful about who we blame.
But this is one last thing I’ll say on this that I think is important, and that is that my sense is that the individual, the candidate, who can pull us back from this, who can actually say — as I think Biden tried to do last night — can say, “Hey, this isn’t who we want to be. This isn’t where we want to go,” has a real potential to connect with people, because I think people are feeling overwhelmed by the moment they’re in.
SECTION D: CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, section D: Christian nationalism.
Project 2025 would allow Trump to target his enemies through the judicial system Part 3 - The ReidOut - Air Date 7-10-24
PHOEBE PETROVIC: So he comes from the anti abortion movement, the rescue movement of the nineties and, uh, early two thousands where people were blockading clinics.
Um, and he had, I [02:12:00] would say an international reputation, certainly a national reputation for that anti abortion militant, uh, militantism back, uh, Several decades ago, um, in 2013, he wrote a book taking up the 16th century Protestant doctrine and using it to argue, as you said, that government officials today in America have a God given right and duty to defy law, policy, court opinion, um, that they believe violates God's law.
Um, and since that book came out, the rise of the tea party, um, the rise of Trump and MAGA. Uh, he has been increasingly embraced by Republicans on the right from school board members to county commissioners, state lawmakers, governors, all the way up to former Trump officials and pastor Trella's goal. It's really important to note, um, is that he wants a theocracy and he wants a very particular type of theocracy under a strict interpretation of his interpretation of, uh, uh, biblical law that emphasizes [02:13:00] the Old Testament.
And so, as you said, death penalty for LGBTQ people. Um, and he tones down his message when he comes and talks to local county groups, county Republican parties, and he is not as extreme as he is in his writings, um, or in his church services on Sundays. And
JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: he also doesn't believe women should be in politics at all, that women should simply, uh, be in the home and they shouldn't, uh, he sort of got a Taliban view of women.
Yeah.
GUEST 7: Women in government, to him, is sickening and perverse. Those are both quotes, almost as sickening and perverse as sitting under the headship of a female pastor. Um, and so when I started reporting the story, people were posting my screenshot or screenshots of my headshot saying, quote unquote, matriarchal hell, um, because I was a woman reporting the story.
JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Of course. I'll note that ProPublica, you're in your reporting. You've talked about former President Trump's National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, the one who got busted by the FBI messing with the Russians. He's praised Trujillo's book several times, extolling it [02:14:00] as a masterful blueprint showing Americans how to successfully reduce tyranny.
Jenna Ellis, a former Trump campaign lawyer, cited Trujillo's work as a solution to government overreach in her 2015 book calling for a biblical interpretation of the Constitution The polling is very clear. Republicans believe that the Bible should have a fulsome influence on the laws of the United States.
Two thirds of Republicans believe that. They think 33 percent a great deal. Some Democrats do not believe that. There's a sharp divide here. So this has become part of the mantra of the party, right? What he thinks is fairly normal in the Republican Party now.
GUEST 7: Well, I spoke to people, um, Republicans who were around in the nineties and two thousands for this story to get a sense of what.
What his reputation was back then, and some of them said, No way. Why are you reporting this story now? There's no reason you should be doing this. This guy sounds very fringe. And I would say to them, Waukesha County Republican Party has hosted Torello twice where he has talked about succession [02:15:00] openly and they post his book on their website and promote it.
And it says very clearly that the laws of the nation should reflect the laws of God. Um, and so, you know, Waukesha County is the heart of Republican politics in a very important electoral state in Wisconsin. Um, and so, uh, I think this reflects the sort of larger fracturing and infighting we see in the Republican party where there are MAGA folks and people who are openly embracing Christian nationalism and other folks saying that that doesn't quite mean what is, that's not quite what conservatism really means.
Um, but certainly he is far more mainstream than extremism researchers who started tracking him 30 years ago ever thought possible.
Is This the End of The Separation of Church & State - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 7-1-24
THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: Louisiana. The governor of Louisiana just signed legislation yesterday or the day before, I believe it was yesterday, that, um, requires every classroom in Louisiana to have a piece of paper that is in large enough type that every student can read it from their desk [02:16:00] that starts out, I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto themselves any graven images. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain. Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. What does this have to do with American law? There are only two things in the Ten Commandments that are at law in the United States. Don't kill.
Don't steal. That's it. That's it. You can even covet your neighbor's wife. I mean, you know, look at this. Donald Trump has done it his whole entire life. It's not illegal any longer in the United States. So it's not like, Here's the 10 rules for, for, you know, being a good citizen. These are the 10 rules for being a good, well, originally a good Jew.
And then, you know, now today, a good Christian and I believe a good Muslim. I I'm not sure, but I, I believe so. Well, we'll find out when we talk to Dean Obeidallah today. And back in 1971 in Lemon versus [02:17:00] Kurtzman, the Supreme court said it was unconstitutional for the government to pay teachers in private religious schools in that they were, they were just.
You know, parroting, uh, James Madison's 1811 veto. Um, the court also applied what it called the Lemon Test. Government action has to have a, quote, secular legislative purpose. In other words, government can't do things for religion. And, uh, but here's Jeff Landry, the Republican governor down in Mississippi, or Louisiana.
He says, if you want to respect the law, you got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses. Well, you know, Moses, uh, it, it, it was not one of the founding fathers. And, uh, Landry says he can't, you know, he wants to be sued. He wants this case to go to the Supreme Court. See, the Kentucky case in 1980, uh, that was a 5 4 decision.
that schools can't publish, can't post the 10 commandments and you can't have public prayer. [02:18:00] But, um, the Supreme Court overturned that in 2022 to a large extent in that case of the coach, the coach who had his team praying on the 50 yard line. Remember? And the Supreme Court said, well, it's not coercive, so he can do it, which was nonsense.
As as the coaches, students would tell you. Um, so what we've got now is, you know, a bunch of people on the politicians on the Supreme Court who are hell bent on imposing their their Catholicism. Actually, I mean, they're all Catholics on all the rest of us, and I just find it terrible.
Why Trump Is Partnering With Christian Nationalists - Robert Reich - Air Date 6-25-24
ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: Donald Trump is portraying himself as a religious savior. He says election day will be Christian Visibility Day. Trump has repeatedly compared his criminal trials to the crucifixion of Jesus, promoted videos calling his re election, quote, the most important moment in human history, and that describe him as a divinely appointed ruler.
A shepherd to mankind who won't ever [02:19:00] leave nor forsake them. So God made Trump. He claims, to be a holy warrior against an imaginary attack on Christianity.
DONALD TRUMP: They want to tear down crosses, but no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you. He's even selling his own version of the Bible.
We must make America pray again.
ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: Trump is playing to a rising white, Christian nationalist movement within the Republican Party.
LAUREN BOEBERT: I say it proudly. We should be Christian nationalists.
ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: Christian nationalists believe that the law of the land is not the Constitution. But instead, the law of God, as they interpret it.
Trump supporters are increasingly overt in their calls to replace democracy with a MAGA theocracy.
LAUREN BOEBERT: The church is supposed to direct the government. And I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk.
CLIP: We're meant to be a Christian nation. We should be a Christian nation. Welcome to the end of [02:20:00] democracy.
We're here to overthrow it completely. We didn't get all the way there on January 6th. But we will, we will endeavor. To forget, to get rid of it and
ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: replace it with, with this right here. That was a cross he was holding. The idea that the will of voters is irrelevant because God has anointed Trump was a recurring message in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Because
CLIP: it is not Joe Biden that rules this country. Jesus Christ is the king of everything in this world. Christ is king! Christ is king! Christ is king!
ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: In previous videos, I've highlighted how MAGA Republicans have embraced core elements of fascism. The combination of fascism and Christian nationalism is called Christofascism, a term first used half a century ago by the theologian Dorothy Zola.
Fascists rise to power by characterizing their opponents as subhuman. Christofascists take it a step further by [02:21:00] casting opponents as not just subhuman, But actually demonic people like
CLIP: Nancy Pelosi, she's a demon.
ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: Framing opponents as enemies of God makes violence against them. Not only seem justifiable.
but divinely sanctioned and almost inevitable.
CLIP: We are going to put on the armor of God.
Then maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us, just in case. When we take power, they need to be given the death penalty. And these people that are suppressing the name Christ. and suppressing Christianity, they must be absolutely annihilated when we take power.
ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: Christofascists want to strip away a wide range of rights Americans take for granted.
Former Trump staffers involved in developing plans for a second Trump term have called for imposing biblical tests on immigration, overturning marriage equality, and restricting [02:22:00] contraception. And MAGA aligned judges are already setting their dogma ahead of the Constitution. In his concurring opinion on the case that declared frozen embryos are people, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker cited God more than 40 times and quoted the book of Genesis and other religious texts.
Nothing could be more un American than the Christian nationalist vision. So many of America's founders came here as refugees seeking religious freedom. The framers of the Constitution were adamant that religion had no role in our government. The words God, Jesus, and Christ don't appear anywhere in the Constitution.
And the very first words of the Bill of Rights are a promise that, quote, Congress shall make no law. respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Christofascism, or any [02:23:00] religion based form of government, is a rejection of everything America has aspired to be. A secular, multiracial society, whose inhabitants have come from everywhere, bound together by a faith in equal opportunity, democracy, and the rule of law.
Beware.
Credits
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from Amicus, The Thom Hartmann Program, Boom! Lawyered, Today, Explained, Democracy Now!, The ReidOut, and Robert Reich. Further details are in the show notes. Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew, for their volunteer [02:24:00] work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today and get 20% off your membership at bestoftheleft.com/support, or through our Patreon page. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion.
So, coming to from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.
