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Kate, Leah, and Melissa break down the oral arguments in United States v. Hemani, a Second Amendment case which challenges a law prohibiting “unlawful users” of controlled substances from possessing a firearm. Then, they cover two truly heinous shadow docket rulings–a case out of New York where SCOTUS’s conservatives seem to have found an impermissible racial gerrymander they believe in, and another on the outing of transgender children–before speaking with California Attorney General Rob Bonta about standing up to the Trump administration on issues like tariffs, federal law enforcement overreach, and antitrust. They also pour one out for Krispy Gnome’s (née Kristi Noem) generationally awful tenure at the Department of Homeland Security.

Favorite things:

 

• Kate: This judicial order in Urquilla-Ramos v. Trump
• Leah: Upcoming Sarah J. Maas books; Melissa’s upcoming book (link below)
• Melissa: [REDACTED]

 

Preorder Melissa’s book, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader

Buy Leah’s book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes

Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky

 

TRANSCRIPT

Leah Litman [AD]

 

Speaker 2 Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court. It’s an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they’re going to have the last word. She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.

 

Melissa Murray Hello, Bay Area. We are Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We’re your hosts. I’m Melissa Murray.

 

Kate Shaw I’m Kate Shaw.

 

Leah Litman And I’m Leah Litman.

 

Audience Woooohooo

 

Melissa Murray West Coast, best coast, we are finally here! And I can’t tell you how excited we are. We are so excited. I want you to know that I wanted to call this tour the LA face with an Oakland booty tour.

 

Audience Wooohooo

 

Melissa Murray I know, it’s catchy, it was catchy. I was outvoted. Some people thought it would not be decorous. And I have just three words for those people. Just the tip.

 

Audience Applause.

 

Leah Litman I own that.

 

Melissa Murray Anyway, this is the bad decisions tour and you can’t go wrong talking about the Supreme Court and calling something the bad decision tour because you know bad decision season will soon be upon us because this court truly cannot help themselves. And because they cannot help ourselves, it means we have an absolutely fantastic live show in store for you tonight.

 

Kate Shaw Sometimes what’s bad for the country is good for our podcast, and this is one of those times. So we are going to cover some recent oral arguments, including an epic SCOTUS debate in a case about drugs and guns on the original meaning, I shit you not, of the term drunkard. Because that is what passes for constitutional law on this Supreme Court, and remarkably, This was not a case about Pete Hegson.

 

Leah Litman Alcohol and or controlled substances may end up being a theme for this show because we also have to cover some recent shadow docket orders.

 

Melissa Murray But that’s not all. In addition to covering oral arguments and the shadow docket, we are also going to have a little kiki with an AG.

 

Audience Woo!

 

Melissa Murray And no, I am not talking about one Pamela Jo Bondi. I mean a real AG, not a real housewife. That’s right. California, your attorney general, Rob Bonta, is in the house. And to close out, as always, we will do a little legal news and end with our favorite things. One of them is you.

 

Kate Shaw All right, so we’re gonna start with the big oral argument recap. So after a very long hiatus, the court heard oral arguments in three cases last week, but we’re just gonna focus on one of them, United States versus Hemani, a Second Amendment challenge to a law that prohibits, quote, unlawful users of controlled substances from possessing firearms. Here, the government is suggesting that this unlawfully user language covers someone who is a habitual user of marijuana. Which is still, under federal law, even if not in many states, a controlled substance.

 

Leah Litman Remember that in NYSRPA v. Bruen, the Supreme Court turned the Second Amendment into a vehicle for originalist hotboxing. Bruen declared that firearm restrictions are constitutional only if the government can show that the restriction is consistent with the nation’s tradition of firearm regulation, which the court elaborated requires the government to identify a historical analog to modern day gun regulation. The court requires those seeking to promote gun safety to show that restrictions on modern firearms are the same as the kind of restrictions that our founding fathers would have used to restrict muskets.

 

Melissa Murray The jokes write themselves. It’s unhinged. It’s absolutely unhinge. But the thing is, it’s so unhinges that sometimes even the court agrees that it’s unhinge, at least sometimes. So you’ll recall that a couple of years ago in United States versus Rahimi, the court seemed to get cold feet about the Bruen historical analog test. So Rahimi was a challenge to a federal law that prohibited individuals who were subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms. And as it happened… Our forefathers were not especially stringent about policing gender violence, so weird. Accordingly, there were not a ton of laws about disarming domestic abusers at the founding, and there weren’t any at the time of the ratification of the Second Amendment, which meant that under Bruen, the challenge law about disharming domestic abuser should have been invalidated.

 

Kate Shaw But the court got cold feet. So because Brett Kavanaugh is the father of daughters, and also the first justice to have a chambers composed entirely of women clerks, that is actually true, though irrelevant, like the father-of-daughters bit, and some of his fellow Republican appointees got squeamish about putting firearms in the hands of individuals credibly accused of domestic violence, even if that’s where their own logic should have led them.

 

Leah Litman So, the court leaned further into the hotboxing aspect of the originalist hotboxing and said, we’re just gonna do a vibe check on this gun control measure. And as it turned out, the vibes were immaculate. Rahimi suggested that the restriction on domestic abusers was basically like the founding era surety laws that required certain people to post bonds before riding armed.

 

Melissa Murray Sure. Fast forward to the Hemani argument. So the justices and the advocates were trying to figure out if they were supposed to be applying the Bruen version of the Bruen test, which requires a pretty similar historical analog, a historical twin, if you will, or if they was supposed to be applying the Rahimi version of Bruen test, which just requires some hand waving and vibe checking. So which one?

 

Leah Litman Well, so the court ended up being more open to this Second Amendment challenge than I thought they might be, perhaps because they think another statute that prohibits possession by addicts will suffice to disarm people they think should be disarmed. And so this case gave the homosexuals on the Supreme Court the opportunity to really indulge in their homosexual fantasies and ensure themselves that they are so committed to the Second Amendment. They will invalidate firearm restrictions that are applicable even to people they don’t like. Now the two biggest narcs on the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice and Sam Alito, were friendly to the government, but I didn’t hear a clear majority to uphold.

 

Kate Shaw I thought, since we’re just sort of starting with high level impressions, this felt a lot to me like the 2005 case Gonzales v. Raich, which maybe the law students in the crowd will remember. That’s a case where the conservatives were very cross pressured between various items on the kind of conservative jurisprudence wish list. So the case dates back to much earlier in the country’s marijuana legalization journey. It was a California case in which the feds were trying to go after cancer patients who were allowed to grow marijuana for personal use under the state’s compassionate use law. So the case kind of pitted the desire to limit federal power, specifically under the Commerce Clause, against the desire to take a maximally punitive position as to kind of all drugs, even medical marijuana. So the anti-drug sentiment carried the day with enough conservative justices back in 2005 that they upheld the federal law. Here, I think I agree with Leah that the Second Amendment enthusiasm may win out.

 

Melissa Murray I just want to say someone who’s never done any kind of drug. And I see, I’m dead serious. I’ve never done anything. The only ingestion I have done has been passively walking through Sproul Plaza in Berkeley. Never done anything, I am as straight laced as they come. But I, as someone who has never done any of these things, was a little taken aback. By the justices’ apparently very deep knowledge of certain controlled substances. I’m just going to say that some of the hypotheticals were incredibly specific. I also want to shout out Justice Jackson, who stays on her hustle. Yeah. Yes. In every Second Amendment case, she continually points out how backwards and manipulable the Bruen test is. And in this particular oral argument, she repeatedly pointed out the inconsistency in the federal government’s approach to this case, Hemani, and another Second Amendment case that was heard this term, Wolford. So Wolford involved a Hawaii law that prohibited concealed carry on private property unless the property owner specifically authorized it. And in Wolford… The federal government said that all of the historical laws prohibiting poaching and hunting on private property were just too different from the challenge Hawaii law to count as historical analogs under Bruen. Weird. But here in Hemani, the federal government is now arguing that laws prohibiting vagrancy, which to my knowledge has absolutely nothing to do with the possession of a gun, These are historical analogs to the law prohibiting firearm possession by those who unlawfully use controlled substances. So historical twin here, no historical twin there, right. I’ve got it. That sounds exactly right.

 

Leah Litman This is why we call it originalist hotboxing. The justices light up the Federalist Papers, the Statute of Northampton, and some Blackstone and ask whether a gun control measure has good vibes or bad ones. An approach that is totally unmoored from anything approximating law.

 

Melissa Murray And yet they insist on. So my take on this case is that I actually, I don’t agree that they’re necessarily going to, this is gonna be a win for the Second Amendment. I think there’s a good chance that they will invalidate the statute, but I think they may do so on due process grounds. The view that the statute is unduly vague and doesn’t give enough notice about what is actually prohibited and who is targeted. So maybe, I don’t know. Anyway, we should highlight some of the notable quotables from this argument. And I’m just going to say. From JUMP, the new DEI, by which I mean dicks, ex-husbands, and imbeciles.

 

Kate Shaw It’s a great line, you can clap.

 

Audience Applause

 

Melissa Murray Someone tell Harmeet Dhillon. All right. D- The new DEI had a moment straight out of the gate. So there was an exchange between the deputy solicitor general who was arguing in favor of the law and Justice Gorsuch. So let’s roll that tape.

 

Clip The habitual drunkard, the American Temperance Society back in the day said eight shots of whiskey a day, only made you an occasional drunkard. We have to remember the founding era, if you want to invoke the founding era. To be a habitual drunkard, you had to do double that, okay? John Adams took a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast every day. James Madison reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day, Thomas Jefferson said he wasn’t much of a user of alcohol. He only had three or four glasses of wine a night.

 

Leah Litman Now we know why the Georgetown prep squad really wants to be originalists. But basically, Neil Gorsuch wants to know what’s the original meaning of hammered? Would James Madison have concluded that you were totally shit-faced when you threw back a few and included a journalist in your Signal group chat? And Neil, if you’re listening, I want to know, am I doing the originalism right? Maybe we shouldn’t call it original as hotboxing, but original as beer pong or SCOTUS thunderstorm.

 

Kate Shaw We’re still workshopping those. But they really were luxuriating in the idea that the founders were frat bros. Sort of like, since we do think they may be listening, maybe some of them heard Leah on a recent episode describe the current administration, which is a great line, which I will repeat, as government by the manosphere, of the manospere, and for the manosphere. Thank you very much. And the justices thought, yes, yes this is the way.

 

Melissa Murray Basically, animal house, but make it constitutional, yeah. Toe gut, toe gut. No, no gut, no really ear breath.

 

Kate Shaw I don’t really hear Brett saying that, can’t you? I know!

 

Melissa Murray I know! I do not want to see any of them in a toga, not one.

 

Kate Shaw To strike a serious note for one minute though, like part of the reason everyone drank so much in ye olde days was that we didn’t have real water filtration or purification yet, and so alcohol was a lot safer to drink than water a lot of the time. And because this seems to be the reality that Secretary Bill DeBeer slash raw milk is, to bring in another cabinet secretary, is earnestly trying to cultivate. Maybe it is time, or soon will be time, for all of us to hit the casks. Although, for the record, we haven’t tonight. Just sugar, which is our drug of choice.

 

Leah Litman There was a real frat bro undercurrent to the argument, and the Georgetown Prep alums brought their usual sea game to the occasion. Take a listen to Neal’s fellow Georgetown Prep alum, Brett Kavanaugh.

 

Clip In response to Justice Alito, I think you said that drugs are distinct from alcohol for Second Amendment purposes, although there’s some similarities. Is that accurate?

 

Clip Yes, and I would say that, yes, I can elaborate.

 

Clip Please elaborate.

 

Leah Litman Okay, yes, that is Brett, I like beer, Kavanaugh, begging the federal government to make a case for why there’s a difference between people using drugs and people using alcohol.

 

Melissa Murray It’s almost like he’s personally invested.

 

Leah Litman Almost, almost.

 

Leah Litman [AD].

 

Leah Litman Things only devolved from there. In fact, it got so weird. We’re going to play a little game where we invite you, our listeners and audience, to try to guess which justice brought up which drug during the argument. We’ll pose the question, you think of the answer, and then we’ll tell you which justices actually had which drugs on their minds. Okay, first, which justice invoked anabolic steroids? If you guessed Coach Kavanaugh, and I heard a few, sorry, you’re wrong. That’s a that was a good guess good guess justice for Brett Kavanaugh, okay It was Clarence Thomas who brought up the Roids.

 

Melissa Murray So real talk, I thought this was so helpful for contextualizing his concurrence slash rant in SFFA versus Harvard. I just thought he was an older black man mad that he couldn’t get the younger black woman on the court to sign on to his program of completely dismantling affirmative action. But in fact, he may just have been raging.

 

Kate Shaw Why not both? They do have that effect.

 

Leah Litman Or both.

 

Kate Shaw All right. Next question. Which justice brought up Ambien?

 

Leah Litman OK, I heard some in the audience say Barrett. Now, Justice Sotomayor was actually the first to bring up Ambien, but it was Justice Barrett who really dug into it. In fact, she offered the following hypothetical.

 

Clip Justice Sotomayor asked you about someone who takes Ambien to sleep. So let’s assume that someone takes their spouse’s Ambien prescription. The spouse takes it too lawfully with the prescription. But then you take it unlawfully because you break into your spouse’s ambient jar.

 

Melissa Murray Um, first question. Why is there a jar of Ambien in your house? It doesn’t come in a jar, right? No, I mean like, cookies come in jar? Ambient does not come in a jar so girl. What is happening in your home?

 

Leah Litman She brought up Ambien four separate times after Justice Sotomayor did.

 

Kate Shaw She also referenced both Adderall and Ritalin repeatedly.

 

Melissa Murray So that was actually, again, very revealing to me. So she offered a hypothetical that involved a college student who takes his roommate’s Ritalin twice a week because he thinks it will help with exams. That is a quote, to which I say, ma’am, that is a very specific hypothetical. Thank you. Bye.

 

Leah Litman The details are really what kind of give it away. You could have been very general about that. You could, and yet, Amy was also the first justice to bring up Xanny, or Xanax. Okay, one other drug or drugs cocktail, as the case may be. Which justice decided to invoke the prospect of a combination of. Heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl.

 

Melissa Murray Sam Alito is the answer! Why did everyone know that? Whoa, I’m low-key offended that Sam Alita got more applause than any of us.

 

Leah Litman They were clapping because they knew the answer because they listened to this podcast And I just want to say that all of his opinions make much more sense now

 

Kate Shaw Leah said that would be the last one, but I actually wanna add one more, which is sort of a compound question. So who brought up ayahuasca? And then who seemed to protest a little too much in disclaiming any specific knowledge of that drug? Two-part question.

 

Melissa Murray Wait, wait, wait. They know. They know, they know. So Justice Kagan did bring up the ayahuasca first. And I actually think this is one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments of the argument. So Justice Keagan described ayahuaska as a quote, very, very very intense hallucinogen.

 

Leah Litman I just want to say, if I worked with Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, I would also be interested in very, very, intense hallucinogens.

 

Kate Shaw You can sort of hear the longing in her voice, very, very intense.

 

Melissa Murray Like, am I hallucinating now? Please. If I worked with them, I would be living in Sparrow Plaza. So Justice Kagan first brought up the ayahuasca. And she also, I think, went to great pains to explain that, quote, I don’t know a lot about this drug. I’m assuming you don’t know a a lot about this drugs. So what I’m going to tell you about this drug, let’s just assume it’s the truth about this drug.

 

Leah Litman Okay. You say so Elena. That was pretty funny, but it was even more hilarious that after going all in on Ambien, Xanax, Ritalin, and Adderall, and Robitussin too, Justice Barrett was like Ayahuasca? I have never heard of the drug. Is that real? Girl be real. If we are allowed to add one more drug to the list, I have to say Neil Gorsuch threw out the word gummy with surprising familiarity.

 

Kate Shaw Fluency, right? Yeah. It just tripped from his tongue.

 

Leah Litman And then he immediately hastened to add the word bear. As if to dispel any suggestion that he is familiar with dispensary lingo. Now, it might not be doing coke off the toilet, but I did bring us some gummy bears to do on the podcast stage.

 

Melissa Murray Like I said, I’ve never done this.

 

Kate Shaw This is big for Melissa, just actual gummy bears. All right, because we are nothing if not fair and balanced, I do want to say though, as to some of the drugs that we were just mentioning, the lawyer for the solicitor general brought up the drug in the first instance. So they didn’t necessarily just conjure out of thin air all of the hypos that we just walked through. Still, their fixation on certain drugs was curious.

 

Melissa Murray Generous like she opened the door they ran through.

 

Leah Litman The solicitor general did not bring up a jar of Ambien.

 

Melissa Murray Or ayahuasca. No one was talking about ayahuasca.

 

Leah Litman No, no. Anyways, okay, so the drug-fueled flavor of the Armani argument seemed to bleed into some of the court’s shadow docket shenanigans. By which we mean the court released two shadow docket orders that were clearly written under the influence. You all know the shadow dockets. This is your shadow dock it on drugs.

 

Kate Shaw So the first possibly drug-influenced order came in a redistricting case out of New York, where the US Supreme Court paused a state court ruling that had invalidated the sole Republican-held congressional seat in New York City. So in Staten Island, because of course, and also part of Brooklyn. So the state court concluded that the district lines violated the state constitution because they diluted the voting power of black and Hispanic voters. The court then ordered the state to redraw the district. Which would have turned a safe Republican seat into a more competitive one.

 

Melissa Murray And of course, the Supreme Court would not let that happen because racial discrimination. This court may actually have identified, finally, an illegal racial gerrymander. Remember, racial gerymandering is when districts are drawn in ways that consolidate political power in ways that disadvantage minority groups. And what is the impermissible racial garymander that the court may have identified in this particular circumstance? It’s the fact that the New York trial court decision ordering the state to draw a different set of maps that didn’t dilute the voting power of minority voters. That’s the racial discrimination that the court finds impermissible. Now, to be very clear, this court did not conclude that it was racial discrimination when the Trump Department of Injustice begged the state of Texas to redraw new districts mid-cycle. And gerrymander away majority minority districts where minorities voters could elect the voters of their choice. Instead, they chose to save their powder for this particular instance.

 

Leah Litman Now, the court’s order in the New York case is unexplained, hence our caveats about possible racial gerrymander and whatnot. We don’t know why these goblins paused the state court ruling. But when you consider the redistricting cases from California, Texas, and New York together, The punchline seems to be that partisan gerrymanders are fine But, but once you start trying to remedy racial gerrymanders where minority groups are underrepresented, that is a bridge too far. There was one writing from one justice who voted for the stay, and it was from friend of the pod, Sam Alito.

 

Kate Shaw He was definitely hopped up on something in this concurrence. So he declared that it is, quote, unadorned racial discrimination to create a new congressional district for the express purpose of ensuring that, quote, minority voters, which was in scare quotes, are able to elect the candidate of their choice. Ah yes, we cannot have minority voters getting to cast meaningful votes to elect candidates who will represent their interests.

 

Melissa Murray Now, if that logic sounds ominous to you, then you know Sam Alito, and you’ve probably been listening to this podcast. So effectively, Sam Alita is suggesting that any race-conscious redistricting, including efforts to remedy the opportunity to lock minority voters out of power, that’s the real racial discrimination that we have to address. And if you follow, yes, hiss, because it’s terrible. If you follow that logic, then that will likely doom whatever shards remain of the Voting Rights Act, which is still up for grabs in a pending case before this court, Louisiana versus Kelly. And at this point, I can just imagine Clarence Thomas sitting in his land yacht in a Walmart parking lot reading Justice Alito’s statement and chortling to himself, yes, Paduan, I have taught you well.

 

Leah Litman Justice Sotomayor’s dissent for the three Democratic appointees wrote quote the court’s 101 word unexplained order can be summarized in just seven rules for thee but not for me As Justice Sotomayor noted, in other cases, the Supreme Court has paused federal court orders that had invalidated voting restrictions on the ground that federal courts should not interfere with election rules too close to an election. That’s the so-called Purcell principle.

 

Melissa Murray That’s exactly what the court did. They did exactly what they tell federal courts that they shouldn’t do, which is to change election rules when the election is looming or very close. So from what I can get from this, the true meaning of the Purcell Principle is that it’s always too close to an election to do something that would result in a multiracial democracy or wins for the Democratic Party, but it’s never too close to an elections to do something that will benefit the Republican Party. Am I getting this right? I think, yeah. Am I doing the gerrymandering right? Yeah, great, okay.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah, and that is the kind of emerging, I think, lesson from the court’s cases in this area. And as bad as previous cases have been in some ways, the New York case is actually a new low. And that’s because the court did not have authority to intervene in this case at all. So by law, the Supreme Court only has jurisdiction, the power to hear cases from a state court, which this case arose from, once the state’s highest court that could have ruled on the issue has done so, and that did not happen here. Which means the court didn’t have authority to issue this order, and yet they did it anyway. In the concurrence that Justice Alito wrote that we were just talking about, I think he arguably really misrepresents the background suggesting that New York’s highest court had refused to intervene, even though they hadn’t been asked to rule after the intermediate appellate court ruled here. But he basically, I think in a somewhat misleading way, described the procedural background. And then said the court’s intervention here was just fine because it’s just like other cases, including one in which the court intervened to protect Nazi’s right to march in Skokie, Illinois, like that’s the best case that he could find. But whatever you make of that decision, the state courts in that case had denied relief. That wasn’t what happened here. So.

 

Leah Litman I have a controversial take I would like to offer. And it’s this. Is Sam Alito the real Pete Hegseth of the Supreme Court? People might think it’s Brett Kavanaugh. I’m not sure. Because Sam’s opinion here honestly had echoes of Pete Heg-Seth standing in front of the lectern, firing off, there are no rules of engagement. We are not going to abide by those woke rules and basically admitting to war crimes in front of the entire world. Like it just coded Sam Alito to me. I don’t know. Princeton.

 

Melissa Murray All right, we haven’t even scratched the surface of the shadow docket. The shadow dockets is the gift that keeps on giving. It takes a lot more than a little hypocrisy from this court to really kick off that decision season. So the court’s Republican justices decided that get things started this year by making substantive due process great again. And they did that in a case called Mirabelli versus Bonta. Yes, that Bonta So this is a shadow docket decision arising from a case here in California. And let me give you just a quick refresher. Substantive due process refers to the idea that the Constitution protects rights that aren’t specifically and explicitly listed in the Constitution’s text. So these include unenumerated rights like the right to an abortion. Remember that one? It was a good one. It was good one, also the right to contraception, don’t get attached. Anyway, in Dobbs, the court overruled Roe versus Wade, ending the constitutional right to choose an abortion and making clear that going forward, any unenumerated right that would be understood to be entitled to constitutional protection had to be one that was, quote unquote, deeply rooted in the history and tradition of this country.

 

Leah Litman And this past week, the guys in the Dobbs majority decided that one right that is deeply rooted in our history and tradition is parents’ right to be notified if their child identifies as transgender at school, effectively to have the school out their children as trans. And they did so in a gratuitously nasty opinion. So these ghouls could have avoided using pronouns Instead, they chose to use she and daughter over the child’s objection.

 

Kate Shaw And in addition to the court’s hypocrisy on substantive due process, which Melissa was just talking about, Justice Kagan, who penned a lengthy dissent, called out the court hypocrisy on the issue of parental rights between this case and the Scrumetti case. So recall that in last year’s decision in Scrumetti, the court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. There, although it was asked to do so, the court opted not even to weigh in on whether the Constitution protects parents’ rights. To ensure that their child can obtain gender-affirming care without undue interference from the state. So refuse to even consider the parental rights question in Scrametti, and here, on the shadow docket, decided to sashay in and declare that the Constitution does afford parents the right to have their child outed to them as transgender.

 

Melissa Murray The other thing that makes us really egregious is that this is obviously a major question of substantive importance. And they decided to issue this decision on the shadow docket rather than taking the opportunity to resolve it on the merits docket. And there are plenty of opportunities to do so on the merit stock. There are a number of petitions that are pending before the court that would have raised this issue. They could have waited for the Ninth Circuit to finish its consideration of this question. But they were so impatient that they couldn’t do any of these things. And they disagreed with every single court of appeals that has so far considered this matter.

 

Leah Litman So if the punch line of the Purcell principle is that it’s always too close to an election to do anything that benefits multiracial democracy, but never too close an election to do things that benefit the Republican Party, this is now the punchline of substantive due process. Substantive due process is bad when abortion, but good when anti-trans. Parental rights are unnecessary when the right is to support your trans kid. But they’re an emergency requiring immediate action when the asserted parental right is to out your trans kid. As Justice Sotomayor said in the New York case, rules for thee, but not for me. And that, that is our update on one first street.

 

Melissa Murray Still sucks.

 

Leah Litman [AD].

 

Leah Litman For a change of pace and breath of fresh air, we’d like to talk to a lawyer who believes in the rule of law generally, not just selectively.

 

Melissa Murray Which is why we are delighted to bring onto the stage our very special guest for this show, your Attorney General of California, Rob Bonta!

 

Rob Bonta Good evening, everyone.

 

Melissa Murray Welcome to the show!

 

Rob Bonta Honored to be here.

 

Kate Shaw We’re thrilled to have you, and we do want to cover a lot of friends. We thought we’d jump right in by asking you to tell us. So we’re recording on Friday. And yesterday, you filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

 

Audience Applause

 

Rob Bonta Yeah. Yes

 

Kate Shaw It sounds like the people of the city know that. But for the listeners who don’t, can you tell us about that lawsuit?

 

Rob Bonta Absolutely and let me first say this was our 60th lawsuit that we brought in less than 60 weeks We’re bringing more than one lawsuit a week We’re winning repeatedly. We’re waiting 80% of the time or securing restraining orders and final judgments And sometimes when we sue Trump just backs down and says I give up We’ve protected 200 billion dollars of funding that California is owed It’s our funding that Congress appropriated that the branch with the power of the purse. We are protecting constitutional rights Like voting rights and birthright citizenship and this was our second case challenging Trump’s unlawful tariffs We had just won a prior case our AG coalition striking down his unlawfully tariffs under the International IEPA and International Emergency Economic Powers Act and He is dead set on His commitment to unaffordability and to raising prices. He is working overtime. He’s stretching and reaching even doing unlawfulness things to create terrorists that raise prices for him. This president doing a lot of things? It’s shocking. He promised he was going to lower costs on day one. It stinks because he chickened…

 

Leah Litman Because he chickens out on everything else and he refuses to chicken out on attacking affordability or terror

 

Rob Bonta He’s fully committed, he’s all in. He’s gonna finish the job, the job’s not done yet. And so he brought in other lawsuits on the day the Supreme Court issued their decision under section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. And he has no basis to bring these tariffs. This statute has never been invoked before in 52 years of existence, never. And it’s based on an archaic system, based on a balance of payments, deficit. Analysis, and at a time when we had fixed exchange rates instead of the floating exchange rates. So the bottom line is he’s acted unlawfully again. He has no basis for this lawsuit. Congress has the power to tax tariffs or taxes. Trump can’t issue these tariffs, so we went to court again to strike them down and fight for affordability for Americans.

 

Kate Shaw And we should say, so obviously he lost big in the IEPA case in the Supreme Court. And one additional piece of legal news we haven’t had a chance to cover is that the Court of International Trade, right, after the Supreme court ruled, issued a pretty sweeping ruling last week on the issue of refunds, basically finding that refunds are owed and the court’s decision last year in the Casa case about universal injunctions actually doesn’t apply in the Court of International trade. So according to that court, everybody, not just the particular plaintiffs who came to that Court. Is entitled to their refunds. And so I think that is probably because the Trump administration is already saying it can’t possibly comply. That is likely headed back to SCOTUS. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this trade act, Section 122 case is on a fast track as well. But, you know, so far he’s striking out and I think there’s every reason to believe that he’s gonna keep striking out.

 

Rob Bonta I think he’s going to continue to lose here. And look, he needs to give all the American businesses and American people who are hurt by his unlawful tariffs, who he victimized, give them refunds with interest. And do it immediately. And stop waiting, stop dragging your feet. Give them the money that they’re owed. You took it from them. And I do want to point out that this was in front of the US Supreme Court. This was his centerpiece economic policy. There was a belief among some that we might win at the lower courts. We might even win at the intermediate appellate court. But if you get to the US supreme court, he’s got three appointees there. They’re going to rubber stamp him and they didn’t on this.

 

Melissa Murray But there was also the 401Ks of the justices.

 

Rob Bonta I’m not going to get to the reasoning and the rationale, but I like the outcome. It’s a good outcome. It’s the right outcome. We also won our National Guard in California, Prop 50. We won on that all in front of the US Supreme Court. And my staff will get nervous as I say this, because they never want me to predict what the court will do. But I think that we’re going to a positive ruling on Lisa Cook and the Federal Reserve Board. I think we’re gonna get a positive ruling on birthright citizenship. We’ll see how that goes, but we can and we do win in front of the US Supreme Court sometimes.

 

Leah Litman So you’ve already kind of begun to talk about how you, as a state, are stepping up to the plate when the federal government is not only declining to protect people, but actively harming them. And we’ve talked about on the show the possibility of state prosecutions of federal immigration officers. Recently it was reported that Mary Moriarty’s office in Minnesota is investigating Colonel Lockjaw, I mean Greg Bovino, after news. That a whistleblower alleged that FBI forensic experts were ordered to stand down from processing the scene where Renee Good was killed because Cash Patel didn’t want Good referenced as a victim. And I know your office has been doing a lot of this work. So could you tell us about some of what your office is doing to address federal law enforcement overreach and what states can do more generally on that front?

 

Rob Bonta Absolutely, we’ve been standing up for accountability of federal officers to make sure that they don’t act with impunity, make sure they know even though J.D. Vance says otherwise, wrongly, that they don’t have absolute immunity. They don’t, I mean, that’s a fact.

 

Leah Litman He went to Yale, so… No.

 

Rob Bonta Ouch, ouch.

 

Leah Litman Yeah, I said that to your face, Melissa.

 

You said it to his face, too. We’re both Yale-ies.

 

Rob Bonta  We don’t claim him. We don’t claim him

 

Leah Litman Fair.

 

Rob Bonta So we’ve been making it clear that there is accountability and that we’re reasserting the rights that we have and affirming the rights we have as states, as law enforcement officers, as prosecutors to tackle crime that occurs in our states even if a federal officer is the one committing it. We actually also joined them as an amicus to Minnesota lawsuit challenging the militarized occupation of their state based on equal sovereignty and state sovereignty grounds and the governor and I issued a bulletin to all of our law enforcement. Community members here in California saying that if a federal officer commits a state crime on California soil and there is a victim here in California, California law enforcement and prosecutors have the right to investigate, to prosecute, to secure a crime scene, to gather evidence, to do what we do, investigate and prosecute crime. And the fact that we have to say that is unfortunate. But we had to say that, and we even opened up a portal inviting members of the public to share with us information if they think a crime has been committed by a federal officer, oag.ca.gov.reportmisconduct if you wanna share anything that you may know or someone you know knows. So, and then we also believe that civil liability pathways are important, just like section 1983 for local and state officers, what Bivens was supposed to be or used to be before it was weakened. There needs to be a civil pathway in California stepping up to. Put a lot into place this year in that regard.

 

Leah Litman I love it, cheering for Bivens and State Biven’s. This is my kind of crowd.

 

Melissa Murray You mentioned affordability briefly. One of the things that’s contributing to the inaffordability that’s plaguing so many Americans is the federal government’s refusal to enforce laws that would protect consumers, including antitrust laws and laws that prohibit corporate consolidation. We’ve talked a lot about this on the podcast. For example, last week, Leah alluded to the consolidation of the Manosphere media in the hands of Larry Ellison and one of his large adult sons. He’s a very tall man, purely descriptive. This is the Paramount Warner Brothers merger. But you also have some pending litigation against Live Nation and Ticketmaster. So I know there’s a lot going on in the state, and we know you have pending cases. So if you could sort of speak generally, why is it so important for the state to address these questions of oligarchism and corporate consolidation when, for most people, they seem like really big picture issues. How do they sort of get to everyone’s bottom line? How are they really kitchen table issues?

 

Rob Bonta No, thank you. And when you talk about things like anti-trust law and monopolies, sometimes people don’t know how that affects them. But it goes to exactly what you said. It goes to affordability. Corporate consolidation has proven objectively, historically, that it raises costs. So we have a role as a state to independently investigate and bring lawsuits when we believe that anti-trust law is broken, when there’s anti-competitive conduct. The federal government has long and traditionally been engaged in that role, the FTC, the US DOJ, what they will do going forward, TBD, and some already determined that I think they’ve really withdrawn from that role. And so into that gap and into that void, we must step to continue to protect consumers. And when there’s corporate consolidation, you see prices going up. You see wages for workers going down. You see lower quality, less choice, less competition. And that is what we look at in these lawsuits. And so we’re looking at that. It’s public that we are with respect to Paramount Warner Brothers. We have, we’re in court right now in the Southern District of New York on the Live Nation TicketMaster Case. We’re looking at other corporate consolidation possibilities and their impact on consumers. But this is about affordability. And so it’s not just Trump’s tariffs that are raising costs. It’s also his lack of enforcement of antitrust law allowing for corporate consolidation that raises prices for Americans. Percent. That’s wrong, someone needs to do it, and California and the states are stepping into that void.

 

Kate Shaw Can I ask you to talk kind of generally about sort of coordination and collaboration? So you’ve now referenced a few times working with other states and other state AGs, whether it’s National Guard, Birthright Citizenship, some of this anti-corporate consolidation work. So can you just talk a little bit about those collaborations and sort of how, as I tell my kids, teamwork makes the dream work? But how does that work? And then can you also tell us how, my understanding is that this, some coordination has been happening even back. You know, in as far back as 2024. So like, when did you start deciding you were gonna work together and what does that look like?

 

Rob Bonta Absolutely, and there are now 24 Democratic Attorneys General across the country. There were 23 when we started. We had a pick up in Virginia last year. And we are all sort of independent sovereign officers in our state, representing sovereign states. And we’ve banded together because we think that we can be more impactful and deliver more to those who need it as a whole than we can as a sum of our parts. And… We do it voluntarily, there’s no leader, we’re all equals, we’ve come together, and we started preparing and thinking about what might come before the election, knowing that we couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t be Trump, and that we owed our constituents preparedness and readiness and a plan, a plan of action, if he took over. So we planned, we charted, we looked at all the campaign promises, we read Project 2025, he put in writing what he was gonna do if he if he took office, and so. Horrible as the contents of project 2025 are, it gave us an ability to prepare and respond and plan. And so we have briefs and actions that are prepped and ready. We just have to dot the I’s, cross the T’s, press print and file it, if it happens. And we believe if he says he will do it, we take him at his word. We can’t take the chance that he might not. We have to be ready. So I’m grateful that the 24 AGs have been working. To get there and, you know, one example, we were the first state in the nation where the National Guard was deployed and federalized and we went to court, we got restraining orders that were successful in preventing the deployment and also preventing violations of the Posse Comitatus Act and then Trump announced a plan to do this in D.C. And do it in Portland and do in Chicago And so our ability to share information to, you know, we basically handed over our briefs and our best thinking and our strategy and gave it to our colleagues and they used it as it could be helpful when they were fighting the same battle. And then the California National Guard was deployed from California to Oregon, you know the day after the judge there had struck down the deployment of the Oregon National Guard. And so I was on the phone with Oregon AG Rayfield and we were talking, I was at my mom’s. Birthday brunch and when she turned 88 and you know I stepped away to talk to A.G. Rayfield so but we really value and I so value my colleagues who are in this fight together who are helping each other who are sharing information who are bringing passion and commitment and talent and knowledge to the table and we believe that we’re really accomplishing some important things for the people of this country.

 

Leah Litman So we also wanted to ask some more kind of personal questions. We’ve talked a lot about really personal questions, not that personal. We’ve talk a lot on the show how Brett Kavanaugh is really into being a father of daughters. So can you talk a little bit about what it’s like being a dad or father in these times?

 

Rob Bonta Yeah, you know, um… I love and am so honored and privileged to be the Attorney General of the state, a state that’s given me so much. It’s a title I’ll always cherish, but far from being the most important title that I have. The most important titles I’ll ever have will be husband to my wife Mia and father to my three kids, Andres and Raina and Ileana. And often as a public elected official, I have thought deeply about a decision I’m about to make, wondered if I’m doing the right thing. And I’ve often gone back to… Can you explain what you did to your kids and they’ll understand it and believe dad did the right thing and they’d be proud. So I think about a lot of what I do through that lens and I worry about them and so I look at a lot of my official work through the lens of a dad. I look a the safety work that we do when we’re trying to make online platforms and social media and AI safe for children. I think of them when we are doing our affordability work and making sure that there’s more housing production in the state of California, so that more people can pursue and realize the dream of home ownership. Some EMBs in the house. And I think about their rights and freedoms. And I just want them to have a world that’s fair and just and good. And if I can help create that, then that really drives me. I think of the rights and freedom and I think my oldest daughter, Raina, when I think that. She’s professional soccer player and a filmmaker. She met her wife playing professional soccer in Brazil. They got married intentionally and deliberately before the inauguration of Donald Trump because they weren’t sure they could after the inaugurations of Donald Trump and they eventually want to come to America. Her wife’s Brazilian. I want to make sure there’s a fair immigration policy and process and they want to have a me someday. I don’t want their choices of who to love, where to live, if, when, and how to have a family to be taken away from them. And so that gives me motivation, it gives me passion, it. gives more energy and more to win these fights.

 

Kate Shaw Can I just say really candidly, like, it is so grim in Washington, D.C. Right now, and an elected official who sounds like that is just such an incredible breath of fresh air. So thank you for reminding us that public official, public servants should sound like this. Right?

 

Audience Run for governor.

 

Kate Shaw So, okay, maybe this is, you know, some of the last couple of answers you gave sort of stepped into this, but I’m going to maybe just ask explicitly. Things are grim, as I just referenced, at the federal level. I don’t think we can downplay just how bad, how much damage that is going to be very hard to undo. How much damage has already been done at the Federal level in just the year and of this administration. We try all the time to find things to put our energy into and places to sort of seize onto to find hope. And it sounds like there are lots of things that do that for you. But can you just talk a little bit for people who are finding it difficult right now, like that practice, like how you find sort of hope and places to put the rage and the kind of energy that a lot of us have right now.

 

Rob Bonta Yeah, for sure. You know, I am hardwired hopeful. I’m just hopeful. And I’m a glass-half-full guy. And why? So many things give me hope right now. My team at the California DOJ gives me hope. And they are here in the house, by the way. So those particularly loud cheers, I think, are from them. And they’re some of the most committed, passionate, talented. Attorneys that I know. They do this for the work. They don’t want the recognition. I want to recognize them. I wanna thank them. I’m honored to be able to lead this office. I’m grateful that you’re here. And shameless plug, we’re hiring in our office, so if you want to be like them and join our team, we have our job postings online. My Democratic Attorney General gave me hope. The fight that they show, the commitment, you know, like in Minnesota, A.G. Ellison, in the middle of the toughest fight, standing strong, holding his ground, speaking truth. That gives me hope. Law firms that fight and don’t cave give me hope my prior law firm Kecker and Van Ness is one of the ones who fought so shout out to Kecker and Van Nest judges who do their job and follow the law follow the facts and while fending off you know, criticisms at their activist judges and their so-called judges and calls for their impeachment, but just do it and let the chips fall where they may. That gives me hope. All the elections since Trump was elected give me hope, the midterms, upcoming midtermes give me hope, the Trump polling in the tank gives me hope and he’s earned it, he deserves it. It’s appropriate reflection of where he should be. The blue wave that’s coming gives me hope.

 

Melissa Murray Say more about that.

 

Rob Bonta I mean I got my crystal ball out today on Supreme Court rulings on what’s going to happen. But you know, folks with good values and who care about the people are going to be taken over. And the folks are, they are not happy with where we are. And that shows up empirically in all the polls and I think that’s what’s gonna happen in the upcoming election. So that’s my hard-wired hopeful part. But finally I’ll just say this, you, us, we, the people. Give me hope when we show up, when we are engaged, when we know we have power, when we are not hopeless because we know we’re not helpless, because we can do something about this moment and make tomorrow more fair than today, when we stay engaged, when stay enraged about the abuses of power, and when we know that people power is the most potent power that there is in a democracy. The bosses of Donald Trump are not his billionaire buddies. They are not greedy corporations. They are you and me and us and we. And there are many chapters yet to be written in the story of the state in the story this country and we are gonna write we will choose what happens next we will use what happens tomorrow and so um… That gives me hope and when people show up in crowds when they show courage when they showed up for no kings rallies hands-off rallies to demand. Something from their government and to refuse to accept the unacceptable. That all gives me hope. So I I know that we’re gonna get through this. To me, it’s it’s inevitable. The one thing that is required is that we fight, is that, we stay engaged. But if we do, I know we’re going to be, we’ll have a tomorrow that’s more fair, more just, where the rule of law is intact. Where we have separation of powers and rights and freedoms and checks and balances and all the things that our country is founded on because we fought for them. And every leader and every person is called to step up. Sometimes the moment picks you. You don’t pick the moment. And it is what you do in response. So, a room full of dedicated, committed folks ready to fight, knowing that we can. Have a better tomorrow. That gives me hope and I’m grateful to be here with all of you.

 

Melissa Murray That just warmed my cold, jaded heart. I think I’m going to apply for a job at the California Jail Check. Ha, ha, ha.

 

Kate Shaw We’re ready. No, no, no. Sorry. Generally can’t have her.

 

Melissa Murray Audience, please give it up to Rob Bonta, your AG!

 

Leah Litman [AD].

 

Leah Litman Dare I say, I feel hopeful. He is making the police power great again.

 

Melissa Murray That part where he said he, when he did things, he was like, you know, how could I explain this to my children? Does DJT think about that? How would I explain this to John Jr.?

 

Kate Shaw It is just, it feels like government service at the federal level has been so debased. I know. That… To be reminded about what it is… That’s what it should look like. Yeah.

 

Melissa Murray Yes. I feel like Kate. Wow.

 

Kate Shaw It’s not bad, Melissa. It’s okay.

 

Melissa Murray It just feels so weird, it just feels weird.

 

Leah Litman I’ll see you back.

 

Melissa Murray Okay.

 

Leah Litman And let’s touch on some legal news.

 

Melissa Murray Oh, good. This will be bracing and sobering. Excellent. Okay. Okay. All right, folks. We have talked a lot on this podcast about the executive orders targeting the law firms. And as the attorney general noted, rather than settling with the administration, a few intrepid firms decided to challenge the orders and the courts invalidated those orders in every single case in which they were challenged.

 

Kate Shaw You know, as the Attorney General reminded us, you can’t win if you don’t fight, so those that fought actually all won.

 

Melissa Murray Anyway, well, friends, early last week the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration decided that it wasn’t going to appeal those lower court rulings. The government even filed motions to dismiss the appeals.

 

Leah Litman And then wait for it. JK! The New York Times reported that DOJ said backsies and they filed a motion to withdraw the motion to voluntarily dismiss their appeals. The law firms unsurprisingly objected to DOJ’s about face.

 

Kate Shaw We actually don’t know, and maybe we’ll just talk through now, like what do we think happened? Like one possibility is the president just changed his mind after seeing kind of favorable coverage by places like the New York Times, praising the law firms that had challenged the orders, targeting them. Another possibility is that the Solicitor General, who has to approve decisions about whether to appeal, initially made the decision to stand down. And then informed the court of that decision, and then the attorney general or the White House counsel overruled him, like those are possible. Regardless of the reason, this is all completely humiliating for the Department of Justice. Like, they should be humiliated.

 

Melissa Murray Add it to the list.

 

Leah Litman This is just the tip. As they say.

 

Kate Shaw But, you know, honestly, kind of just another average work day at the Department of Justice of sort of debasing and humiliating yourself, but actually a little bit worse than your average day. This was bad.

 

Melissa Murray Yeah, agreed. Speaking of another humiliating work day at a different federal agency, we are delighted to announce we have a new nickname. The new nickname is Christy No More! .

 

Audience Woooohooo

 

Melissa Murray Yes, beloved, Krispy Noem is out at DHS after Trump old yellered her. It’s so easy. What can I say, folks? Karma is a beach poo. Anyway, the president announced on Truth Social, where else, that Gnome will become a quote-unquote special envoy to the shield of the Americas. And I was very surprised to learn that this is definitely a real thing and not part of the Marvel universe. Thank you so much. Of course, to be very clear, the shield of the Americas, predictably, is very villain forward. This is the regime’s plan to occupy the entire Western hemisphere and summarily execute people. So very, very normal. Yeah, you can be alarmed by it. It is alarming. But again, this is a story of failing up. And the best part of this failing up story was that. When the truth social post announcing her ouster hit the interwebs, Kristi Nomore was speaking at a press conference. And it was semi-unclear if she even knew at the time she was speaking that she had been fired. Awkward. But maybe this is exactly what a puppy murderer deserves. Justice for cricket, justice for cricket.

 

Leah Litman Cricket is like, tell Kristi, I want her to know it was me.

 

Melissa Murray Always you, Cricket.

 

Leah Litman Yeah.

 

Kate Shaw Just to talk about that presser for a minute, at the press conference, Christine Noemore, misquoted, quoted but actually misquotid Orwell, which we have to give her credit. I mean, ending a tenure at DHS that was marked by vicious lies and carnage by misrepresenting Orwell is incredible, top tier, legendary, you have to hand it to her.

 

Leah Litman Yeah, it gets better. Oh yeah, because Trump announced that he intends to nominate Senator Markwayne Mullen of Oklahoma to replace no. Yep, no less evil, probably dumber, which is saying something. This is, after all, someone that is Christina Moore who was dikmatized by Corey Lewandowski. Glad you appreciated that one. Anyways, we thought we would take this opportunity to introduce you to the new nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security.

 

Clip Sir, this is a time, this a place. You want to run your mouth. We can be two consenting adults and we can finish it here. Okay, that’s fine. Perfect. You want it now? I’d love to do it right now. Well, stand your butt up then. You stand your but up. Oh, hold on. Oh, stop it. Is that your solution every poll? No, no, sit down. Sit down. You know, you’re a United States Senator. Act it!

 

Leah Litman Let them fight! Let them figh-

 

Melissa Murray This is a time, this is a place. Of course, this is a man who has no space between his first and middle names. It’s like, well, like, of course. I will say, it is a little on the nose to pick an MMA fighter to be your Secretary of Homeland Security.

 

Kate Shaw He actually was, right?

 

Melissa Murray Yeah, well, I mean, the record is debated. Some say he has a five to zero undefeated record. Some say it’s a three to zero, undefeating record. I want to know where the other two places. Just two are missing. Where? What happened?

 

Kate Shaw But he definitely fought. Yeah. Yeah, and he won some he won some matches. Yeah So that clip for folks who hadn’t seen it before is the witness testifying as teamsters president Sean O’Brien And then of course Senator sure Bernie Sanders at the end shutting it down. And you want to know what happened Jimmy Hoffa? I mean that guy was not backing down, but I also this was not I don’t think I mean the you know MMA matches and suggests as much as well, but this was necessarily like a one-off. So last week Mullen had this to say about a time that Senator Rand Paul was assaulted by a neighbor of his. People might remember this from a few years back. So Secretary Designate Mullen said, quote, I understand completely why his neighbor did what he did. I told him, him being Paul, I told them that to his face. OK, bad enough. But guess who the chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee is? It’s Rand Paul. But, I mean, obviously it’s funny, but also this is like incredibly dark and disturbing because between that and Senator Tim Sheehy evidently breaking a Marine veteran protesters arm last week, it does feel very field of blood, right, the wonderful Joanne Freeman book about, you know, actual physical, a moment in which like the shedding of blood was commonplace in the United States Congress. It feels like we are inching back toward that very dark place rather, rather quickly.

 

Melissa Murray All right, let’s go back to Kristi NoMore. That was a great history lesson. Thank you. All right. In more tales of Kristi NoMore, I just want to note that in what I am sure is a total coincidence, community peen, Chloe Lewandowski is also reportedly out at DHF.

 

Audience Applause

 

Melissa Murray According to a statement, the two of them are going to, quote, spend more time with their families. Wink, wink. Monogamy for thee, but not for me.

 

Leah Litman I’m just going to call him Corey Lewandoucheski, future assistant to the Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas. In order to commemorate the departure of these two legends from DHS, we wanted to play this from now soon to be former Secretary No More’s recent appearance before Congress.

 

Clip So Secretary Noem, at any time during your tenure as Director of Department of Homeland Security, have you had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski?

 

Clip Mr. Chairman, I am shocked that we’re going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee today. And ma’am, one thing that I would tell you is that he is a special government employee who works for the White House. There are thousands of them in the federal government.

 

Clip So reclaiming rights and advisers, you should be able to answer the question.

 

Clip The Department of

 

Clip Clearly every single day, every single day is to protect this country, to make decisions. You or any federal official is sleeping with their subordinate. That should be the easiest. You should be wanting to answer that question.

 

Kate Shaw I love that someone in the audience shares my discomfort with that. We played it as we were getting ready for the show tonight, and I was hiding my face. I could not watch it. And I was thinking, there is a reason I don’t watch reality television. I cannot handle that.

 

Leah Litman Her husband was behind her!

 

Kate Shaw That’s part of the reason.

 

Leah Litman I just, in case you missed it, one thing she didn’t say in response to that question was no. She did not deny the allegations and she was repeatedly asked. She’s never beating these charges. Yeah, she’s repeatedly asked to do so. But more seriously, inject this into my veins. This is a reminder that accountability is possible, that the Trump regime is weaker than they pretend they are, and that good things can happen when people and democratic leaders decide to hold alleged perfidious adulterers to account. I feel hopeful. Yeah, and this seems about as good a time as any to get to our favorite things.

 

Kate Shaw All right, so we’ve got a couple to share with you. One is something I’m gonna just read a couple of lines from. It’s a judicial order actually in a habeas case from West Virginia late last month that we haven’t had a chance to mention on the show. And I just wanted to read a couple of sentences from it, because I think it kind of crystallizes this moment maybe better than any judicial opinion that I’ve read so far. So here is what this district court judge wrote. Quote, across the interior of the United States, agents of the federal government masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons. Operating from unmarked vehicles, acting without warrants of any kind, are seizing persons and imprisoning them without any semblance of due process. The systematic character of this practice and its deliberate elimination of every structural feature that distinguishes constitutional authority from raw force, place it beyond the reach of ordinary legal description. So there’s more, but I just think that so beautifully crystallizes why it is so hard, as we’ve said many times, to kind of talk. Accurately about what’s happening right now and not sound like a crazy person because the assault is so profound and Unremitting on the very idea of law and the constitutional order that yeah You sound unhinged if you just calmly describe it and I think that this judge did a beautiful job of not sounding unhinge calmly describing the flagrant violations of specific constitutional violations and the idea of a Constitution without sounding unhitched. So I really salute that judge and I wanted to share it with you And then briefly, a handful of listeners that I’ve met recently. I was at Harvard Law School a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to say hello to Jenna, Fee, Lucia, Taylor, Hannah, Jennifer, and the rest of the wonderful group I talked to at the Harvard Law Review. Thanks so much for listening.

 

Leah Litman So on my favorite things is the recent announcement of the continuation of the Moss verse. So Sarah Moss announced new books in the Court of Thorns and Roses series and I am so excited, so excited. Not as excited as I am about another forthcoming book. We are about two months. Away from the release of Melissa Murray’s book. The U.S. Constitution, a comprehensive and annotated guide for the modern reader. I also have some personal shout outs. I wanted to shout out some guests in the audience. So A.G. Bonta mentioned that there are lawyers here from California DOJ wanted to give a special shout out to California DO J’s reproductive justice unit. And to at least one aspiring lawyer in the audience, Maya, I know this shout out isn’t as exciting as getting one from Justice Sotomayor, but this one’s for you and you can thank your dad, Jonathan, for the heads up.

 

Melissa Murray So I am also very excited that the book is coming out in two months. I’m excited. Me and my co-author, James Madison, are just really, really excited. No one is more surprised than James Madison that I’m his co-other. Never saw it coming. Truly. This week, I was on the road a lot. I was in Iowa at the beginning of the week, and I hung out with some really fantastic stricties at Drake Law School. Melissa, Anu, and Andrea, thank you so much for the warm welcome to Iowa, it was fantastic. But I would be remiss if I didn’t say that my absolute favorite thing this week is that my travels have taken me right here to one of my absolute favorite places, the Bay Area. And this amazing Bay Area weather, because it sucks in New York right now, absolutely sucks. There are some other real highlights of this trip that I want to highlight. First, this morning, one of my favorite things was when Kate reported that she saw her first penis pump in the Tenderloin.

 

Leah Litman Ha ha ha ha!

 

Kate Shaw It was like 11 o’clock in the morning. I think it was the east. It’s always at 11 o clock in the morning, Kate.

 

Melissa Murray Okay, never change San Francisco. Seriously folks, it’s so great to be home in the Bay. I was in Oakland this morning. Love you Oakland. I want to shout out my Berkeley Law former colleagues, always colleagues, who are in the audience tonight and my homies from our dance floor in Albany, California who are here tonight as well. We’re Strict Scrutiny and we love you West Coast!

 

Kate Shaw Strict Scrutiny is a Crooked Media production, hosted and executive produced by Leah Litman, Melissa Murray, and me, Kate Shaw. Our senior producer and editor is Melody Rowell, Michael Goldsmith is our producer, Jordan Thomas is our intern, music by Eddie Cooper, production support from Katie Long and Adriene Hill. Matt DeGroot is our head of production, thanks to our video team, Ben Hethcoat and Johanna Case. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to Strict Scrutiny in your favorite podcast app and on YouTube, at Strict Scrutiny Podcast, so you never miss an episode. And if you want to help other people find the show, please rate and review us, it really helps.