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Leah, Melissa and Kate go on Corruption Watch to catch up on all the sketchy things happening in the judicial and executive branches. Then, they cover some recent oral arguments and opinions from The Court before bringing you a conversation from last week’s live show in LA with Representative Jimmy Gomez of California’s 34th Congressional District.

Favorite things:

• Kate: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans; Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir; Vladimir on Netflix (adaptation of the book by Julia May Jonas)

• Leah: Kacey Musgraves, “Dry Spell”; Judge Young’s opinion denying a stay of the remedies he ordered in response to the federal government’s illegal targeting of students & noncitizens based on pro-Palestinian speech; Sonja Starr & Genevieve Lakier, The War on DEI as a Project of Constitutional Subversion

• Melissa: The Devil is Busy on HBO Max; Good Woman: A Reckoning by Savala Nolan; Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette on Hulu and Disney+

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

Melissa Murray [AD]

 

Show Intro 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.

 

Kate Shaw Hello and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We’re your hosts. I’m Kate Shaw.

 

Leah Litman I’m Leah Litman.

 

Melissa Murray And I’m Melissa Murray. And on today’s episode, we are going to cover some of the legal news of the past week. And we’ll also share with you another highlight from one of our live shows in California. This one is from the LA show. And it is a terrific interview with Congressman Jimmy Gomez.

 

Kate Shaw But first, we want to start our coverage of recent legal news by focusing on the corruption that we are seeing from the administration and by walking through the many ways that that corruption is directly connected to the Supreme Court.

 

Leah Litman We are still working on a name for what obviously has to be and should be a recurring segment. There’s so much going on, but people should still be aware of the extent of the grift, even with everything else. So should we call it court option, like corruption, court option? Mm-hmm. No. Robert’s Barrens. I know I floated this one before. I think that one’s growing on me. Okay. Quid pro SCOTUS. Thievocracy. Okay. Brotus and the brologarchy. Make America grift again.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah, Robert Barrens and then this MAGA variation, I think are my two favorites.

 

Leah Litman Okay. So I do think I’m struggling at least a little. And it’s not because I’ve been dipping into an ambient jar, which again is not a thing that exists certainly in my house, but we welcome your suggestions listeners if you have an idea for this segment. But more seriously, last week, the New York Times had a really important story about federal campaign contributions in 2024. And their analysis found that, quote, 300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated more than $3 billion, 19% of all contributions, in federal elections in 2024. Billionaire families gave an average total of $10 million each. Most of the money went to Republicans for every dollar to Democrats. Five went to republicans.

 

Melissa Murray We should emphasize that that is an enormous change to the electoral landscape. So if you go back to 2008, that’s five presidential elections ago, this was the election that Barack Obama won. And coincidentally, maybe, I don’t know, it was the last election before the Supreme Court issued its decision in Citizens United versus FEC, which struck down the ban on corporations spending their own money to advocate in elections because the First Amendment. In that 2008 election cycle, the share of billionaire spending was, wait for it, almost 0.3%. Now, look at it. And when you look at that escalating number, you have one man to thank for it. John G. Roberts. Thanks, bro.

 

Kate Shaw Now, I do feel compelled. The way Melissa describes Citizens United is the way the majority describes it. But in Justice Stevens’ dissent, like he emphasizes, and I just, I think this remains true, it wasn’t a ban on corporations. It was a ban on this very narrow period of time right before an election when the spending could be done. They could spend all the other times they wanted to and in all kinds of other ways. They just couldn’t do it as themselves for 30 or 60 days before an election. So a modest regulation and even that was too much for the Supreme Court to permit. Um, but this Times piece is just full of case studies and anecdotes about specific billionaires and particular races where those billionaires intercede and where their money is hugely influential and is really worth reading in its entirety. The opening anecdote is about the Montana Senate race that unseated the Democratic incumbent John Tester. It describes how Steve Schwartzman, the billionaire chairman of Blackstone steered a $150 million investment. So this is before politics actually, just a business investment to now Republican Senator Tim Sheehy’s company. That’s like a firefighting from the air kind of company that was struggling until this money helped shore up his business and then help seed his Senate campaign. Schwartzman later hosted a fundraiser for Sheehee, donated $8 million to a pack supporting SheHe. $64 million. Other billionaires also donated to Shih’s campaign. And then there are just details in the Times piece about state races that in some ways like get even crazier. In Illinois, in the most recent gubernatorial cycle, 87% of the money given came from billionaires. And then maybe just one last observation, which is that the asymmetry that Leah mentioned at the outset, that just way more of this billionaire money goes to Republicans than to Democrats, is actually also a pretty new development. Once upon a time. Rich people gave roughly comparable amounts to Republicans and Democrats to kind of hedge their bets, and that is just no longer remotely the case.

 

Melissa Murray Kate, I feel I have to remind you that it is not unconstitutional to have rich friends who bail out your flailing business and then your business actually improves and you’re able to capitalize on those improvements to seed your run for a U.S. Senate seat. So you can then go forward with the kind of deregulatory policies that your billionaire friends want. That’s not un-constitutional, Kate. Actually every single step in that chain is unconstitutial in my constitutionalist We the people, Kate, I wrote a whole book about it. Right, yeah. We the people. Do you have an order? Do you like an annotation?

 

Kate Shaw Do you have an annotation in the First Amendment that sets forth all of the rights that you just described as obviously flowing from?

 

Melissa Murray Obviously, you’ll have to pre-order the book to find out. Good answer. The book is available for pre-ordered at all of your favorite outlets. But again, we the people, in order to form a more perfect.

 

Kate Shaw Oligarchy. Actually, that’s a good next book, just like a red lining of the constitution with the constitution that they think exists. Maybe let’s put that on the list. Let’s put it on the

 

Melissa Murray Let’s put that out there for our publishers, we could do that, all three of us could do that together. Oh, yeah.

 

Leah Litman Oh, yeah. That would be bleak. I don’t know. Well, the Second Amendment would be in like all caps and bold and underline, except for the prefatory clause. And then anyways, lots of ideas coming in. And then anyways, lots of ideas coming in.

 

Kate Shaw The thought bubbles where like, you know, you stretch out some and compress other texts.

 

Melissa Murray The ninth amendment, just big X. Right, exactly. The possibilities are really endless. Fourteenth amendment, also an X. Right, yeah.

 

Leah Litman So getting back to the Supreme Court’s view of the Constitution, one of the lines that has aged the worst from the Court’s opinion in Citizens United was the claim about how unlimited corporate expenditures do not give rise to corruption or even the appearance of corruption. Oh, really? Because every day of the second Trump administration gives us an opportunity to revisit that. So let’s talk about some of what we saw. Just last week—

 

Melissa Murray In our live show, we actually talked about the litigation that was ongoing between Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Well, guess what? Last week, Trump’s Department of Injustice announced that it has agreed to settle the lawsuit against Live Nation, and Tickettmaster. Again, this was an anti-trust suit challenging the arrangement between the two companies that, according to the lawsuit, contributed to a stranglehold on live music sales, one that, weirdly, did not redound to the benefit of music fans, but rather redounded to the benefits of the two companies. The settlement, which was announced mid-trial, came as something of a surprise to both the court and the 39 states in the District of Columbia, which had joined as co-plaintiffs in the suit. Notably, the lawsuit had actually survived a motion for summary judgment, meaning that the case would then proceed to a trial. So why does all of this seem to be very corruption adjacent. Well, for one thing, the states are objecting to certain terms in the settlement, like the fact that the damages to the states are capped at less than 1% of Live Nation’s 2025 revenue.

 

Leah Litman Just the tip, just the tip of the prophets, if you were.

 

Kate Shaw I’m no expert, but that does sound like a great deal.

 

Melissa Murray Say you’re not getting.

 

Kate Shaw In terms of sort of other, at least circumstantial evidence that this might not be totally on the level, prior to the settlement, the DOJ antitrust chief Gail Slater abruptly left the DO J along with the person who had been her top deputy. So the timing is at least curious.

 

Leah Litman More circumstantial evidence, Live Nation had hired MAGA nut job Mike Davis to lobby the administration. The company also named Trump’s buddy, Rick Grinnell, the current head of the so-called Trump Kennedy Center, AKA the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to its board of directors and hired Kellyanne Conway as a lobbyist. Once again, quite curious.

 

Kate Shaw No, Leah, I can’t believe you forgot to throw in the second definite article, the Donald Trump and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, sorry, yeah. Okay, so one other sort of curious fact is that Live Nation donated half a million dollars to Trump’s presidential transition fund.

 

Melissa Murray As one does, as one does. Anyway, the DOJ’s decision to enter into settlement mid trial during the government’s direct examination struck some people as very, very curious, perhaps even in bad faith. According to the presiding judge, it, quote, shows absolute disrespect for the court, the jury, and this entire process. The judge then described the surprising turn in the litigation as, quote unacceptable. And the judge was not the only one concerned about how all of this went down. Here’s friend of the pod, Senator Mazie Hirono, back in October, asking Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi about DOJ’s antitrust posture toward Ticketmaster. This was all before the settlement was announced. Take a listen.

 

Clip On January 30th of this year, the Trump DOJ’s antitrust division sued to block the merger of two tech companies. Then well-connected lobbyists met with your political deputies who overruled the career staff and approved the merger. So there’s a settlement on that. And separately, DOJ sued Ticketmaster last year. For monopolizing concert tickets and forcing consumers to pay outrageous fees. Ticketmaster has hired the exact same lobbyists who met with senior DOJ political people regarding the merger of the two tech companies. So my question is, Ms. Vande, have lobbyists met with your political deputies about the TicketMaster case?

 

Clip Senator Hirono, as I stated earlier, I am not going to discuss anything that is ongoing. Gail Slater runs the antitrust office. And Gail, if I can finish, Gail is doing an incredible job running my antitrust unit.

 

Clip It’s highly likely, Ms. Bondi, that the same lobbyists who met with your people basically got rid of the antitrust case. Senator, I don’t think a lot of people like that you were out protesting with Antifa.

 

Melissa Murray Notably, in her response, Pamela Jo mentions Gail Slater. As Kate noted, Gail was the antitrust chief who left DOJ just before the settlement was announced.

 

Melissa Murray [AD]

 

Leah Litman Back to the Supreme Court. You can pretty much draw a straight line between not just Citizens United and the corporate corruption, but also the court’s cases on presidential power and corporate corruption. Recall that when we discuss the court pending case in Trump versus Slaughter, that’s the pending case about whether the president gets to have the power to remove commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission without cause and also every other federal official who leads every other agency as well, except the Fed, because the justices have retirement accounts. We noted that giving the president that kind of sweeping power over the administrative state that itself exercises sweeping regulatory powers over corporations and industries was a recipe for corruption because it allows the president to exercise that power by ensuring that people at these agencies go easy on his corporate stooges and buddies.

 

Melissa Murray We should also remind listeners that when we covered the slaughter case, we noted that many of the pro-oligarch bros who attended Trump’s second inauguration actually headed companies that were being investigated by or were in active litigation with the FTC. Not surprising that those bros want a completely deregulated environment in which to do business. What is more surprising though, is that it seems like the president of the United States and the Supreme Court are more.

 

Kate Shaw Than happy to deliver it to them. And to take another example in the same vein, last week, the FDA announced that it was going to open the door to e-cigarettes that come in fruit and candy flavors. So those flavors had previously been restricted out of concerns that they would be marketed to and especially attractive to teenagers. So this about phase came in the form of a guidance document that announced that the FDA now will consider approvals for flavored vapes. Now, the document purports to affirm. The concern for flavors that appeal to kids suggest they’re likely to approve things that they at least say will be more attractive to adults. They mentioned coffees and mint and teas and spices, but honestly, if you’re familiar with teenagers and tweens and their propensity for like Frappuccinos and all things chai, I am not sure this is a distinction that has any hope of actually protecting kids, but stay tuned.

 

Melissa Murray But, you know, Kate, the thing about kids is that they’re really young, and if they get to film something early, they can be your consumers for literally their whole lives. Do you think that has anything to do with it?

 

Kate Shaw I think that probably does and that, in fact, is why previous administrations have tried to protect them and of course by this administration is happy to throw them to the wall.

 

Melissa Murray Honestly, I believe the children are our future.

 

Kate Shaw So do the tobacco companies and in that vein any guesses as to which industry helped fund Trump’s 300 million dollar ballroom or among others there have been quite a few funders, but in terms of the topic at hand any guesses I’ll tell you tobacco companies Altria Group and Reynolds American Both of which will benefit from the relaxed regulation of e-cigarettes They’re among the companies that have specifically urged the FDA to lessen this regulation and looks like that’s coming through for them

 

Melissa Murray They are really straight up selling out the American people and the public interests with a cash for regulatory benefits scheme. It’s amazing. Anyway, ProPublica has an astonishing story that compiles so many connections between people in the Trump administration, in the industries that those individuals are sensibly charged with regulating. So let’s tick through a few examples from that story.

 

Leah Litman So Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg founded a private equity firm that just so happens to own several companies that are seeking Department of Defense contracts related to missile interceptors. A firm he’s allowed to continue contracting with and to maintain a financial relationship with while at DOD. Trump has appointed more than 200 people who collectively own between $175 million and $400 million in crypto. And hold positions that influence the regulation of cryptocurrencies. This includes Todd Blanche at DOJ. DOJ has already shut down some investigations into crypto companies, dealers and exchanges. And Kate, I have to say when we were doing just the tip of the live nation ticket master settlement, I think I came up with a name for what DOJ is doing and what DOD is doing here. It’s the deal dough, right? Deals that actually fuck over the country.

 

Melissa Murray Wow, Leah.

 

Kate Shaw That’s good.

 

Melissa Murray You’ve really outdone yourself.

 

Kate Shaw I’m just worried about our younger listeners, but I think at this point, like, uh…

 

Melissa Murray I mean, if they were listening when you went to the Tenderloin Cave and saw your first pee-pee, I think they’re going to be okay. Ideal dough.

 

Kate Shaw All right. Well, I did we leave that in?  I think.

 

Leah Litman We did.

 

Kate Shaw We debated and It and I believe we did so.

 

Melissa Murray The deal dough is what the whole country will get f-ed with kids.

 

Kate Shaw Before noon in broad daylight, it’s coming for all of us. Okay, and just maybe one more example, and that is the New York Times recently ran a piece about the booming pardon industry, which I think is proof positive that Trump actually is the job creator he makes himself out to be because the pardon industry has resulted in just a boom for lobbyists who have been essentially facilitating the granting of pardons two very wealthy individuals convicted of crimes, but with cash on hand. And hoping to get out of their sentences. I mean, the piece like the ProPublica piece, like the Times piece about the campaign contributions is just real dystopian shit. Like it’s the corruption stupid, right? But here it’s like also there’s the hiring of social media. It’s not just like a cold hard cash. It’s like all of the mechanisms, you’re hiring social media influencers. You’re trying to get close to Laura Loomer who is like the pardon maker. Definitely need a parental warning on this one, although maybe without the context, Arby’s in your pants sounds totally innocent. I don’t know what that means.

 

Melissa Murray I genuinely don’t.

 

Leah Litman I mean, Laura Loomer couldn’t even really explain it. This was when she was deposed in some of the litigation. And they said, you, Laura Lumer said Marjorie Taylor Greene had Arby’s in her pants. What did you mean? And she just said, it’s hilarious. I meant she has Arby in her pant.

 

Melissa Murray This whole timeline is so fucked up that I’m cheering for Marjorie Taylor Greene. Yeah, I know. So messed up anyway. All right, we should switch to another topic. This is actually truly dystopian. Let’s do some other dystopia and stuff. Maybe in the vein of Margaret Atwood. Recently, listeners, there has been even more evidence for reading what has been happening with this government and with governance. Through the lens of gender. Again, as Leah explained a few episodes ago, we are living through government by the Manosphere, of the Manisphere, and for the Manosphere. A homocracy, if you will. First up, it seems like the devil wears Florsheim. Apparently, President Trump is absolutely obsessed with Michael Jackson’s favorite shoe brand, the Chicago-based brand Florshime Shoes. Just a little bit about the brand for those of you who are untutored. The company dates back to the 1850s, when Sigmund Florsheim, a German immigrant, began putting his old world cobbling skills to work. By 1886, he had become a partner in Greensfelder Florsheim& Company, a men’s footwear company, again based in Chicago. See what can happen when you don’t have ice doing immigration detention all over the place in a major city? Anyway, the company eventually gave rise to a family company, Florshyme Shoes, that Sigmound and his American-born son, Milton, founded. And they have been making mid-priced men’s shoes for over a century.

 

Kate Shaw So embarrassed. I am clearly a bad Chicagoan. I’m also descended from shoe salesman in Chicago on the North side. And I can’t believe I didn’t know about this brand. Maybe they sold it. But anyway, you know, is very familiar with Florsheim shoes, Donald J Trump, who reportedly gives them as a gift to everyone in his circle and administration. The Wall Street Journal reported that a female White House staffer says that all the boys have them. Interesting. He’s giving them to just the boys.

 

Melissa Murray They only make them shoes. So this is.

 

Kate Shaw Okay, I guess you guys are coming to Donald Trump’s defense here. I don’t quite know what to make of this. Well, we’re just like facts, Kate. Facts are facts. I mean, yeah. I guess there’s nobody, no female staffer in that department who doesn’t wear high heels and very lady shoes. So I guess that makes sense. Anyway, the journal reports that he is so hot for the shoes that he has a stack of them in the White House. Although I also just find this whole story so puzzling because he is famously really cheap. And so do we think he actually went out and spent thousands of dollars on shoes to gift or receive them from one of the many benefactors we were talking about earlier in the conversation.

 

Melissa Murray So part of the story is that the shoe.

 

Leah Litman And also they’re considerably cheaper than other shoes they might otherwise be wearing.

 

Kate Shaw Right. So he’s downgrading. Oh, all right. All right. So in any event, he gives them the shoes and the Daily Beast reports that staffers basically say it’s, it’s the case that everybody’s afraid not to wear them. One official was reportedly quote, rankled that he had to shelve his Louis Vuitton’s and replace them with a sensible leather footwear.

 

Melissa Murray That’s how I feel about downgrading from Barack Obama to this, this is insensible weather.

 

Leah Litman I know, but yeah, same idea though, right? Just the downgrade. Yes, it’s definitely downgrade, when the New York Times visited the White House in December, Tweedledum and Tweedle-Dummer, JD Vance and Marco Rubio gleefully showed reporters the shoes that Trump had bought them and quote, Vance lifted his leg in the air to show the president the pair he was wearing, end quote. I cannot even imagine this scene. And Trump allegedly ordered the footwear after stopping a meeting to criticize Rubio and Vance’s quote, fucking shoes, according to Vance himself.

 

Melissa Murray Who have been gifted the shoes include Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. And I’m just going to say, if you have more than one nanny going with you to Epstein’s Island, you can probably afford to buy yourself a pair of shoes.

 

Leah Litman I know Ford, but it’s a cult, so he has to wear that. I know, clear. Clear. And this- What do we call this cult? We call this the Shunateri executive. Love it. Love it? You were on fire today. California, you did something. I did Emma’s Women’s History Month rock ride this morning, which I love. And I’ve also been listening to Kasey Musgraves’ new single nonstop since early this week. And I feel like those two things really kind of revved me up. How long was the MRI? 30 minutes, yeah, so manageable. Anyways, the Bagehi men have really been on one as of late. So in addition to this gifting of the shoes, Trump reportedly just asks these guys their shoe size and they shout something out. And now there are all of these photos on the internet of these dudes stomping around in shoes that are way too big. So I didn’t realize he asked them and they’re lying about their shoe size. Happy Women’s History Month. Again, it is all about gender. You can basically understand everything that is going on through these lens. They all have complexes about their dick size and we are all living with the consequences of that.

 

Melissa Murray Oh my, I mean, wow, I genuinely did not know that. Another quick update from the Manosphere and this does seem like a gift of pettiness along the lines of what Leah just related. So this is just in time for Women’s History Month. Apparently, Florsheim’s parent company, the Waco Group is among the businesses and corporations that sued the Trump administration over tariffs. And in fact, Waco is now seeking a refund from the federal government over the tariffs that it paid. Last month, when the Supreme Court invalidated the tariffs, the head of the Florsheim company, Thomas Florsheim Jr., he’s the CEO of that parent company, Waco, co-authored a piece that was published in The Contrarian, and the piece was titled Business Leaders Welcome SCOTUS Tariffs Decision. He’s also gone even further with his critique of the tariffs and his embrace of the Supreme court’s decision two weeks ago in an interview with Spectrum News. Florsheim avered that the Trump tariffs had really hurt the business. According to him, at one point, the tariffs actually exceeded the price of the shoes themselves, forcing the company to shift their production from China to India, but then India got sacked with a bunch of tariffs and they were back to square one. All of this tariffing, he says, has made business planning absolutely impossible. So with all of this in mind, you’d think that maybe Florsheim might be a little excited about the fact that his brand is at the top of POTUS’s list of favorite things. But when he was asked about the president’s gifting habits, Mr. Florsheim said, he was unaware of the president gifting practices and he politely declined to comment further. As Mariah Carey said, I don’t know her.

 

Leah Litman This should have been the response of the men’s hockey team.

 

Melissa Murray Amen. I just want to go buy some Florsheim shoes now. I know that he likes them, but this guy is standing on business. I appreciate it. Thomas Florshine.

 

Kate Shaw Of the Waco. There are the occasional unexpected heroes in this timeline and I think Florsheim may be one of them.

 

Melissa Murray There’s no business like shoe business, he said. And he’s here for it.

 

Melissa Murray [AD]

 

Kate Shaw Okay, a handful of additional dispatches from government of the Manosphere. God, more bleak dystopia. The FBI director, Cash Patel, has announced that UFC fighters will now be either routinely or like just as some kind of, I don’t know, shtec training FBI agents. I’m not quite sure what the full scope of it is, but really disturbing either way.

 

Leah Litman This is a time. This is a place. What better occasion, Kate?

 

Melissa Murray I was going to say, this actually makes a lot of sense. No, but no, but Mark.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah, but he’d FBI, you know, this is like I feel like no, no, do you think Mullen wants it on this?

 

Melissa Murray It’s a unitary executive.

 

Kate Shaw Okay. I’m just saying he might want his people to get in on the UFC as well

 

Melissa Murray I mean, this is Markwayne Mullen’s moment. Like, you did not have no space between your first and middle names for nothing. Like, this where he is going to add value. This is the first time, I think, that anyone in this cabinet may actually be trained to offer real assistance to another agency or their own agency for the purposes that they are sensibly charged with deploying.

 

Kate Shaw Jokes write themselves. All right, in more news from the Manosphere, Senator John Cornyn has apparently abandoned his longtime support for the legislative filibuster in order to gravel before Trump to get his endorsement in the Republican primary runoff that he is now facing against Ken Paxton. The two went to a runoff when Cornynn, who is the incumbent, was challenged and failed to clear the threshold in the primary and now says he supports abandoning the filibbuster in order pass the Save America slash Save Act, Which, just as a reminder, is a series of voting requirements, including voter ID requirements and voting restrictions, including one that requires all registering voters to provide proof of citizenship that contains their current name. And a lot of people have observed that this requirement may serve to and may even be an effort to disenfranchise the millions of women who either don’t hold a passport or don’t have a birth certificate that reflects their married name. And obviously, because it would likely disenfrancise millions of people, the president is super into it. Meaning that John Cornyn is apparently now super into it as well.

 

Leah Litman You would think that running against someone whose corruption is so extreme it actually generated an impeachment in Texas, like against an impeached, perfidious adulterer whose wife has sought a divorce on biblical grounds, would be enough to secure an electoral victory. But, here we are.

 

Melissa Murray Here we are. More news flashes from the Manosphere. Last week, the Pentagon barred press photographers because they had released, quote unquote, unflattering photos of Pete Hegseth. The most surprising aspect of this story is that not all photographers were actually barred. Yes, you can laugh there. In other news, the Department of Defense has refused to provide escorts for ships that are operating in the Strait of Hormuz because the DOD says that the area is, quote unquote, too dangerous, which is weird because the president of the United States recently had this to say about conditions in the strait. Take a listen.

 

Clip Are you talking to the CEOs of various oil companies encouraging them to use this straight-up corporate right there? Yeah, I think they should. I think, I should. I think we took out just about all of their mine ships in one night. We’re up to boat number 60. I didn’t realize that that bigger Navy I would say it was big and ineffective, but every one of their ships just about all of their Navy is gone bottom of the sea Any mines in the Strait of Hormuz we don’t think so

 

Melissa Murray So very, very unitary.

 

Kate Shaw Really is a theme this week. Okay, so maybe last piece of big news from.

 

Leah Litman Oh no, it’s not the last, don’t over-promise. The Manosphere is the gift that keeps on giving. It’s Women’s History Month, they went all out.

 

Kate Shaw They sure did. It’s not even half over yet either. Okay, fine. Not the last, but in some ways, the like most insane piece of Manosphere news this week. Let me just tell you what I’m going to say. We’ve got a series of Doge Bro depositions this week. These came as part of one of the cases, one of many cases challenging Doge’s destruction of various aspects of and divisions of the federal government. And I just have to say, if you’re interested in going beyond sort of ambient levels of rage to full on incandescent rage, you should watch some of the videos of these clueless man-children who spent part of the last year destroying much of the American government in ways that we will probably feel for the rest of our lives. So we’re just going to bring you a couple of highlights slash low lights. Let’s start with this clip from a case involving the national endowment for the humanities.

 

Leah Litman These moments from one of the depos also speak to just how unitary our executive is, which is to say not so unitary at all.

 

Clip Do you have an understanding about who is creating the directives? And the priorities.

 

Clip For your team to address. Elon had made it clear that there was a number of small agencies that needed Doge leads. So him.

 

Clip Your understanding is that Elon Musk. Created the idea for the work that your team was engaged in.

 

Clip Based on the executive order. Right.

 

Kate Shaw This is a sample of Nathan Cavanaugh’s, and this is with a C, so no relation, except spiritually, to SCOTUS pro-Brett deposition.

 

Clip You don’t regret that people might have lost important income to support their lives? No. I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from $2 trillion to close to zero. Did you reduce the Federal Deficit? No, we didn’t.

 

Leah Litman So we’ve talked about boy math. There definitely seems to be some of that here, but also is this boy-rocracy? Like these guys are all the things. They accuse bureaucrats of being incompetent, clueless, out to lunch, dumb. I mean, these guys basically went into the Iran War with a fuck around and find out approach. Like, oh, the Strait of Hormuz, mines, the global oil market. Oh, yeesh, never thought of that one. Honestly, a part of me wonders if like, going to get like homophobic with the Strait of Hormuz and start calling it like the Gay of Hromuz or something. Like this is the insane levels of their approach to government. And it is just the overconfidence of mediocre white men as a model for governments. Like this government of the Manosphere, but more Doge Bro depositions. Here’s a mashup slash mix tape, 404 media made of Doge bro, Justin Fox, explaining what DEI is.

 

Clip How do you interpret DEI?

 

Clip The EO explicitly laid out the details. I don’t remember it off the top of my head. It’s okay, I’m asking for your understanding of it. Yeah, my understanding was.

 

Clip Exactly what was written in the EO. So can you- I don’t remember what was in the- So right now, do you have an understanding of what DEI is? Yeah. Okay, so what’s your understanding as you sit here today in this deposition?

 

Clip Well, it was exactly what was written in the EO. And so any time that we would look at a grant through the lens of complying with an executive order, we would just refer back to the E.O. And assess if this grant had relation to it. Okay. But, I guess…

 

Clip I’m stepping back from your methodology strictly in terminating the grants. Do you have an understanding as you sit here today of what DEI means? Yeah. Okay. So what’s your understanding of what it means?

 

Clip It is exactly what was written in the EO, and I don’t have the E in front of me, but we would always reference back to the E O and make sure that this grant was in compliance with the E.O. I understand that. Okay. But I’m not asking…

 

Clip Necessarily about what was in the EO. I’m asking very specifically about your present understanding of what? DEI. Mm-hmm. Do you have a present understanding of DEI? Yeah. Okay. Can you explain?

 

Clip And what that present understanding is? Well, it’s just easier for me to be referencing back to the EO.

 

Leah Litman Obviously he was wrong and he needs to listen to this podcast because he would know that DEI means dicks, ex-husbands, imbeciles, incels, idiots, or some combination thereof.

 

Melissa Murray The New York Times reported the Doge bros used chat GPT to scan contracts for DEI. And one of the prompts that they used was quote, from the perspective of someone looking to identify DEI grants, does this involve DEI respond factually in less than 120 characters begin with yes or no followed by a brief explanation and quote, literally, this is the chat GP T version of the guy with the butterfly name.

 

Kate Shaw So the Doge staffer in this mashup was apparently convinced, among other things, that a project about a woman’s experience during the Holocaust was an example of forbidden DEI content. And I will just say that again, a movie about women during the holocaust was quote DEI and so the grant had to be canceled because women are illegally woke, especially in the month of March. Yeah, as is the Holocaust. Us.

 

Leah Litman So, the entire Doge thing is really to me the same vibe as having Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, like mediocre at best. But these depositions are on a happier note, a testament to something litigation can do. Even if that litigation doesn’t result in a judgment that completely stops or fixes all of the harms, the American Historical Association, one of the plaintiffs in this particular case made these depositions publicly available on YouTube. For all to see these DogeBros asses hanging out. Like future employers of America, please bookmark these videos. And again.

 

Melissa Murray I mean, can we stop and just say there’s one thing a historian group is going to do and that’s make a fucking

 

Leah Litman So glad. Like, do it. So glad they did. After we finished recording, a judge ordered the videos be taken down from the internet because we can’t have nice things. But this is the internet, so they’re still available. Back to our regular episode. Speaking of body parts hanging out, we do have more on the manosphere this time from the judicial branch of the manosphere. So, Judge Lawrence Van Dyke of the Ninth Circuit. The homosexual who made a video dissent in a gun case, that video dissents showed the judge assembling a gun, check it out if you haven’t, but not to be outdone by his own video dissend, Judge Van Dyke authored a dissent that began and I quote, this is a case about swinging dicks. Girl, I’m just glad that he did not videotape us. Because we’re straight.

 

Melissa Murray That was great.

 

Kate Shaw Yes, because he really could have gone there. He can find himself to the written word here, and yes, I guess so.

 

Melissa Murray It’s like, it’s a traditional dissent. I mean, the content isn’t traditional, but it isn’t a traditional. No, just the form. I do.

 

Leah Litman Which I appreciate. I really want to know why these guys are so obsessed with genitalia. Okay. I think you know. Right. I guess we did touch on that earlier. But the case in which this dissent appeared involved a sex discrimination challenge to a nude spa that would not admit a pre-operative trans woman or women. And the Ninth Circuit concluded the business likely was in violation of various non-discrimination ordinances. And Judge Van Dyke really whipped it all out in response. So after that opening sentence, the following lines also appeared in his dissent. Quote, you may think that swinging dicks shouldn’t appear in a judicial opinion. You’re not wrong, but as much as you might understandably be shocked and displeased to merely encounter that phrase in this opinion, I hope we can all agree that it is far more jarring for the unsuspecting and exposed women to be visually assaulted by the real- Sometimes it feels like these supposed adults in the room have collectively lost their minds. Woke regulators and complicit judges seem entirely willing, even eager, to ignore the consequences that their Frankenstein social experiments impose on real women and young girls.

 

Melissa Murray This is where the courts and the executive are intersecting, because this is the language of all of those Trump administration EOs. I will also note that Judge Van Dyke, in his dissent, notes that the owners of the spa that won’t admit the pre-op trans person are Christians. So this is also the intersection of the whole First Amendment with substantive due process and anti-discrimination, all of it.

 

Leah Litman But because the judge is such a gentleman, he did take a beat to respond to his colleagues who thought his dissent was maybe just a little too edgelordy for Article 3. And here’s what he had to say, quote, My distressed colleagues appear to have the fastidious sensibilities of a Victorian nun when it comes to mere unpleasant words in my opinion, end quote. He also continues. Quote, the fact that so many on our court want to pretend that this case is about anything other than swinging dicks is the very reason the shocking language is necessary. The panel majority uses slick legal arguments and deflection to studiously avoid eye contact with the actual and horrific consequences of its erroneous opinion.

 

Kate Shaw All right. Well, that was a truly shocking piece of judicial writing, and I guess we have the Victorian sensibilities of the majority of the Ninth Circuit, according to Judge Van Dyke. And I think even, even Trump, I think, doesn’t want this. Like, I don’t know exactly who he’s speaking to with this kind of opinion. I imagine like the guy in the Oval Office, but I don’t think anyone wants to read this, quite honestly.

 

Melissa Murray I don’t know. I think the whole, like, he says what he means. He’s plain spoken. Like, that’s the kind of lane this occupies. And if you’re auditioning to be America’s Next Top Justice, maybe this is where it’s at. You’ve got, I mean, he has true portfolio now. He has visual media. He has written.

 

Leah Litman It’s like Elle Woods’ application to Harvard Law School.

 

Kate Shaw Yes. Literally, in the attention age, this is how you get on the Supreme Court. It’s possibly right. He just needs a podcast now. God, is that dispiriting. Oh, Melissa, don’t call that into being. Well, I have some ideas about where he could go. If there is going to be a first sitting federal judge to launch a podcast.

 

Melissa Murray Do not count out Jim Ho. I think that’s probably right.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah, that’s true.

 

Melissa Murray You heard it here first. Let’s delve in a little further on the issue of ethics and governance in the executive branch. And we’ll do this before we turn squarely to the Supreme Court. Listeners, our favorite attorney general, one Pamela Jo Bondi, has decided that there is a problem with DOJ and ethics. Specifically though, she believes the problem is that DOJ lawyers might be too ethical and too hemmed in by those pesky state bar associations that police ethical standards for the profession. Pamela Jo, you are almost there. You are so close. So close.

 

Kate Shaw Right, so what Melissa is alluding to is the fact that DOJ is trying to exert more control over state bar ethics probes that can result in disciplinary actions against federal government lawyers. State bars can actually be pretty important accountability institutions. People might recall that state bars had some success in meeting out some professional sanctions against lawyers who had assisted in trying to undermine or overturn the 2020 selection. And so of course, as accountability institutions, Bondi wants to go after state bar associations. DOJ proposed a new regulation that would let it, let DOJ intervene in state bar disciplinary investigations, including with the authority to review allegations against DOJ lawyers first and essentially divest those bar associations of jurisdiction over those matters while DOJ is like running its own investigation. Um, which I’m sure will be a very serious one. It just, it’s pretty obvious that this is a recipe for DOJ obstruction of any state bar investigations, um, of current or former, because I think the regulation or at least the proposal extends to former, uh, DOJ lawyers. So I think that one silver lining here is I feel like it does actually sound like people over there are like a little bit nervous about bar associations now or in the future going after justice department lawyers who engage in unethical conduct. And you know, I take some small joy in that fact.

 

Melissa Murray Okay, so take small joy in that, but I mean, federalism just took a seat on the couch and would like a word, like what?

 

Leah Litman Pamela Jo Bondi, Butterfly Mean. Is this federalism?

 

Melissa Murray But do you think this is a result of the D.C. Bar Association refusing to make her brother the president? Because remember, a lot of lawyers came together.

 

Leah Litman Reasons for this proposed regulation. Among others, Deputy AG Todd Blanche and former DOJ official and out judge, Emil Bove, Dark Lord of the Third Circuit, have faced ethics complaints in state bar organizations.

 

Melissa Murray Also to be added to this list of individuals facing state bar association complaints is our favorite friend of the pod, former USA Dick Ed Martin. There is a complaint that actually stems from his time as the acting USA Dick. The bar complaint says that Martin engaged in misconduct when he sought to punish Georgetown University Law Center. For things related to DEI. This is the non-Dick’s ex-husbands and imbeciles version of DEI, but obviously Ed Martin was engaged in the new form of DE I when he was trying to punish Georgetown University Law Center for engaging in DEI I guess. The complaint from the Bar Association accuses Martin of conducting unauthorized ex parte communications with a judge among other things. Let’s take one more beat on ethics, the DOJ, and House Bondi. I know we just mentioned the fact that Pam Bondi’s brother once ran to be the president of the DC Bar Association. Well, guess what? He didn’t win, but he’s still in the news. We could have added this to the grifting segment, but it might as well be put here as well. Last week, two Democratic lawmakers, Senator Adam Schiff and Representative Dave Min, a former law professor. Ask the U.S. Department of Justice’s watchdog to review whether U. S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has properly recused herself from cases that involve clients of her brother, Brad Bondi, who is a partner of Paul Hastings.

 

Leah Litman So in their letter, Schiff and Min said that in January, brother Bondi posted on LinkedIn several victories he and his team won in 2025, including one on behalf of Nikola founder, Trevor Milton, who was convicted of fraud in 2022, and then pardoned by President Donald Trump last year. Other defendants Bondi represented had their criminal cases delayed unnecessarily or dropped. The letter then said, quote, given the troubling pattern at the department of repeated interventions or dismissals and cases involving. Brother Bondi, although they called him Mr. Bondi. We are concerned that DOJ officials, including the Attorney General, may have failed to ensure the independence of internal accountability mechanisms.

 

Kate Shaw So there are lots of things that could potentially have triggered this decision to change the rules surrounding state bar associations, like maybe many of the above. But I will also just say that the conservative legal movement has actually been gunning for state bar associations and kind of accountability for federal government lawyers since the Reagan administration. Deborah Pearlstein has a forthcoming book that actually goes through the history of this. It’s fascinating. I mean, she had an op-ed in The Times this week about this latest regulation. And so it’s maybe these things like spurred them actually do it now, but like. The roots are quite deep. All right, should we move on to SCOTUS? Why not?

 

Melissa Murray So folks, at a public event last Monday in D.C., Justice Jackson and Kavanaugh had an exchange about the court’s shadow docket. The exchange was teed up when the moderator of the event, a federal judge, asked the justices about our friend, Professor Steve Vladeck’s fantastic book, The Shadow Docket.

 

Kate Shaw And KBJ had some things to say about the shadow docket. So she suggested that the emergency filing numbers would decrease if the court didn’t grant as many of the emergency applications that were filed. Does seem like sort of a supply and demand concept here. She also generally said, quote, it’s not, that is the shadow Docket is not, quote, serving the court or this country well. And she referred to the court’s involvement as a quote, real unfortunate problem that reflected quote, a warped kind of proceeding. Now, this is not breaking news if you have read her dissents in many of the court shadow docket grants, but it is still striking to hear her speaking in a different register, like in a public forum, as opposed to in her written opinions and making clear just how serious a problem she thinks this is.

 

Leah Litman Yeah. And Brett, for his part, intellectually outmatched, obviously, attempted to both sides the issue. He noted that the court also granted some requests on the shadow docket that were brought by the Biden administration. Now, this happened at a remarkably lower rate and where lower court rulings were truly unhinged, like barring the federal government from having any communications with social media companies. But no matter, he also, as ever, made the court out to be the victims here. Saying, quote, none of us enjoy this. And by this, he obviously meant following precedent, normal judicial process, and the rule of law. Boo hoo, Bwet, it’s so hard on you, I’m sure.

 

Melissa Murray All right, let me switch gears. We never get to do anything related to SCOTUS that we actually like, but there is actually some positive news. It has been reported that the federal judiciary approved the creation of a new Supreme Court defender office to help with the representation of indigent defendants. The idea seems to be that the office will serve as a counterweight to the U.S. Lister General in federal criminal cases, and that it is an effort to close the quote unquote advocacy gap between federal prosecutors and criminal defendants who appear before the court. It is a dedicated office that will aim to offer a comprehensive global view on criminal defense and a ready-made set of resources accessible to criminal defense lawyers. Obviously, we are excited about this development. We’ll see how it plays out and as the details get worked out, but we just want to commend all of the individuals who work so hard to make this happen and to say plus one, we…

 

Kate Shaw On board too.

 

Melissa Murray Really went all the way to the bottom of the.

 

Kate Shaw Jar in those live shows. We did, which meant we didn’t have a chance to really talk about at all about the other two oral arguments. So we’re going to briefly cover them now.

 

Melissa Murray Argument was in Hunter versus United States and in that case the court is considering the scope of appellate waivers. Appellate wavers concern the rights that defendants give up when they sign a plea agreement waiving their right to appeal. And in Montgomery versus Caribe Transport the court is considering whether federal law precludes state common lawsuits against a broker who allegedly negligently selected a motor carrier.

 

Leah Litman The argument in Hunter was just wild. If you ever listen to oral arguments, I would definitely recommend listening to this one. And part of why we at least wanted to mention this one is the case was argued by one Lisa Blatt, which meant we were again treated to the Lisa Blat show of interrupting justices and talking to them like they’re real people. And she was really on another level in this one and honestly, the federal government lawyer was too. But here is an exchange that was in a slightly different register that also kind of made my skin crawl So naturally had to share it

 

Clip I like that. I mean, yeah, that sounds good. I hadn’t heard that one. But yeah, but I just think in terms of just.

 

Clip Four circuits. That’s the four circuit standard.

 

Clip I’m just trying to get Justice Alito’s vote, and what I’m trying to say to Justice Alita is I care about the rest of you too, but. Thank you very much.

 

Clip Very, very few advocates have that goal. I’ll just stop then. Goal.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah, I didn’t. Yeah. He seemed to really like that, but then there was another moment also in Blatt’s argument that showed a different side of Justice Alito. And this was him taking apparently offense to something Justice Sotomayor had said about his previous colloquy with Blatt and Alito using that to kind of have what I read as a minor temper tantrum about how wrong he is by the current questioning format, which… You know, means that a lot of people get to go after him and he doesn’t get to have the last word. So let’s play that clip here.

 

Clip Justice Alito? Well, let me begin with Justice Sotomayor’s rebuttal of what she took me to be asking about regarding constitutional rights. Now, she will have the right to serve rebuttable, which I won’t have a chance to answer under this questioning regime that we have now.

 

Melissa Murray Apparently, seniority doesn’t have it’s- privileges.

 

Leah Litman I love it. He is, as always, a messy bitch from New Jersey who leans into the drama.

 

Kate Shaw I get to go too early in the order, so I don’t get to come, or I just get to say whatever she wants about me.

 

Leah Litman He’s like, I get the last word, I mean, come on, this is like the Real Housewives series where they flip tables. I love Jersey, I love the Jersey Shore. Oh my God, is he the Teresa Giudice of the court? You can hear him slapping the tables. You know he’s trying to flip the lecture.

 

Kate Shaw I think it’s bolted to the floor. So I probably won’t work there.

 

Leah Litman He’ll probably have a grievance about that too.

 

Kate Shaw You probably.

 

Melissa Murray This is reminding me of that flight to, and I was going to a National Constitution Center conference and Melissa and Joe Gorga were on the flight. Also on the fight was Robbie George from Princeton and surprisingly they didn’t know each other, but I did, I knew both.

 

Kate Shaw Well, I know Robbie George has no idea who the Gorgas are, but we will… You’d be in the Robbie George camp for this one. I don’t think he knew he was.

 

Melissa Murray It’s up there with the gorgeous. Yeah, well, that’s my two of a share. Well, that’s true.

 

Kate Shaw We’ll share so much. So moving on, let’s briefly cover the opinions we got from the court last week. First up is Gallette versus New Jersey Transit Corporation, in which the court unanimously held that the New Jersey transit corp is not an arm of the state for interstate sovereign immunity purposes. Sovereign immunity is protection from lawsuits, basically, which states enjoy. The New Jersey Transit Corp was created by the state of New Jersey, but it’s structured as a legally separate entity from the state and from the New Department of Transportation. And it has the traditional powers to sue and be sued and hold property and make contracts and incur debt. And all of that meant the court concluded that the Transit Corp was not an arm of the state or part of the State, which would entitle it to sovereign immunity. So that two individuals who had been struck by New Jersey Transit busses, one in New York, one in Pennsylvania, these were two separate cases that came up to the court together. But this finding meant that they could sue the Transit Corporation in their respective state courts for their injuries.

 

Melissa Murray We also got an opinion in Uriah’s Oralana versus Bondi, where the court unanimously decided that when federal courts of appeals are reviewing a board of immigration appeals determination that an asylum seeker didn’t experience persecution based on a set of facts that are undisputed, the courts are to review the BIA’s determination under what is known as the substantial evidence standard. That’s a very deferential standard, which means that most asylum seekers will likely lose. But importantly, the court’s opinion, which was written by Justice Jackson, did not extinguish the prospect of federal court review entirely. As she explained, the courts can set aside a BIA determination that an asylum seeker didn’t experience past persecution or doesn’t have a well-founded fear of future persecution if the finding isn’t supported by substantial evidence.

 

Leah Litman So last beat on the Supreme Court, the latest NBC News poll suggests that the percentage of voters with, quote, significant levels of confidence in the Supreme Court has dropped to its lowest point since NBC began polling on the issue in the year 2000. So 22% of voters said they had a great deal or quite a bit of confidence. 40% had some. 38% had very little or no confidence. It’s working people, continues sending strict scrutiny to friends and family challenge, continues. So that’s the legal news for the last week. And now you’ll get to enjoy another part of the Bad Decisions Tour, West Coast version. And that’s our interview with representative Jimmy Gomez of California.

 

Melissa Murray Well, hello there, Los Angeles! Thank you so much for being here, Representative Gomez. You are the perfect person to kick off this show because you are literally in the thick of things. You’re here on the ground in LA, which has been the site of a lot of, shall we say, unconstitutional things over the course of the last couple of months. And you also sit on numerous House committees in DC. So you, sir, have all of the tea. And it’s time to start spilling it.

 

Kate Shaw So we’re actually gonna start by asking.

 

Representative Jimmy Gomez Most of it

 

Kate Shaw Most of it? Alright well spill what you can.

 

Representative Jimmy Gomez Yeah, the stuff I won’t get arrested for, I will definitely spill.

 

Kate Shaw You figure out where those boundaries are.

 

Melissa Murray That’s a good caveat.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah. Yeah.

 

Leah Litman This is a legal podcast, so.

 

Kate Shaw Okay, so and actually that’s a good segue to the first topic we wanted to ask you about because you are part of ongoing litigation to ensure that Congress can exercise its oversight responsibilities which are secured by statute and they include visiting detention centers without advance notice. And that’s actually an issue that’s close to home for us. Your colleague, Representative LaMonica MacGyver, who’s a friend of the pod, has actually been criminally prosecuted for daring to engage in exactly the kind of oversight that the statute protects. So last week we had a development which is that a district court blocked the administration’s latest effort to obstruct members of Congress from accessing federal immigration facilities. Can you talk to us a bit about that litigation?

 

Representative Jimmy Gomez Yeah. That came about when, first, during the first Trump administration, we inserted language into an appropriations bill that said that no money could be used to block members of Congress from doing surprise inspections of any facility that held immigrants or undocumented or people that were accused of being in the country illegally. We put that language in. We were being able to go and do spot inspections. Because if you give them notice, they’ll clean everything up. There won’t be anybody there. So when we started doing this, when the raid started here in June, the first thing I did the day after I got off the plane from DC, I went to the detention center to do a spot inspection. And they denied my ability to enter. And what we found out later. Is what they do very often is they lie and when it and they said shocked shocked shocked and they and they say that I wasn’t allowed in or other members of Congress because there was a thousand protesters outside there was no one outside except attorneys and the press so we saw this so we got together and I was looking at suing myself for the fact that are denying members of congress access and the thing was they denied people from all over the country. We ended up getting 12 members to sue with Joe Naguse, myself, Norma Torres, and we won the, it took months, but we won the first temporary injunction. What ended up happening, they allowed us to get in and then they said, well, it doesn’t apply any longer because the one big beautiful bill, the $175 billion slush fund didn’t go through the normal appropriations process, therefore, it doesn’t apply. Then they even try to say it didn’t apply to downtown LA, what they call B18, because that is a field office and not a detention center. So they were just making shit up every single step of the way. And then we finally got to the point just last week where we won another temporary relief, and then it only applied to the 13 members of Congress, but then they just expanded it to the entire 435. So, we can stop and… During the summer one member said oh I’m going to get this appointment do you want to come and said they’re just going to clean it up so what we we they moved it back seven days then they moved it Back another seven days so we finally got in after after um two weeks that facility can hold up to 244 individuals in nine different uh cells

 

Leah Litman So can we actually talk a little bit about what you’ve seen in the business to the detention centers? Because, you know, last week we got news that another detainee, Emmanuel DeMoss, died in ICE custody because of an untreated tooth infection. And earlier today, the Associated Press and Mother Jones reported that staff at the largest ICE detention facility, Camp East Montana, are apparently taking bets on which detainees will be the next to die by suicide. So can you talk about what you saw in your conversations with people who have loved ones who have been detained or who themselves have been detained?

 

Representative Jimmy Gomez Well, so that visit I was just mentioning, we show up, we finally get inside, no one was inside except two people. It can hold up to 244. And it smelled like they used bleach to glean every part of the detention facility. So that’s why we have to do these spot inspections because we know they’re cleaning it up. We found out they diverted anybody that would normally go into that facility to Orange into San Ant. So what we’re looking for, do they have proper medical treatment? Do they have, is it overcrowded? Are they, do they access to attorneys? Do they proper food? That’s what we are looking for. And what we’ve learned, there’s been more deaths in detention centers over in 2025 than the past 10 years combined. So we look for people that were picked up and detained to see if they’re not getting forced to sign what they call expedited removal orders. So, and. One woman, just recently when I went back to see, she got arrested the day before, she was eight months pregnant, couldn’t find her using this, something called the aid number. Next day, people were like, well, she called and told her boyfriend or husband she was arrested by ICE. The next day we find out she was already in a different country. Like never, never included, they never, and when I when I asked for her, they said she wasn’t there. So I think they’re also hiding. What they’re doing with people.

 

Melissa Murray Let’s back up a few steps before we even get to the detentions. There are all of these immigration stops that have been happening here in Los Angeles. And I’d like to talk with you about a case that we’ve covered on the podcast, Gnome versus Vasquez-Perdomo. And the case is named for Krispy Gnomes. More on her in a little bit. But again, it’s about immigration stops here in Los Angeles. And a federal district court issued an order that blocked ICE from making immigration stops that were based on the individual’s apparent race, ethnicity, language spoken, as well as a number of other traits. But then the United States Supreme Court on the shadow docket stayed the district court’s order, which then freed ICE to do exactly the kind of racial profiling that the district Court had said was impermissible.

 

Kate Shaw And because this was the shadow docket, the court didn’t explain itself, as is so often the case on the shadow Docket. But Justice Kavanaugh did write separately to offer a pretty magical thinking account of what the immigration stops at issue really looked like. So on his telling these stops are short, they are respectful, they end, I know, they end whenever the officers realize that an individual they are targeting is a citizen or is lawfully present. So. That is the Kavanaugh account of what these stops looked like. And I have a feeling, Congressman, that that doesn’t align with what you have heard from constituents about what folks are actually experiencing on the ground at the hands of ICE. So can you talk about that?

 

Representative Jimmy Gomez Yeah, what we’ve seen, right after these raids started, I pointed out that they were targeting people just based on their ethnicity, the jobs that they’re doing, and if they had an accent or not. And this is, we see, we just see it. There’s 500,000 people who are undocumented of European and Canadian descent. You think they’re on the West Side pulling people over? Fuck no, right? They’re not pulling, like. They’re not do like, sorry. You guys can beep it out, right? Afterwards, it’s a podcast. It’s fine. It’s okay, it’s the podcast, it is fine.

 

Leah Litman Oh no, we swear gratuitously. We’re keeping it in. We’re keep it in, we’re keeping in.

 

Representative Jimmy Gomez I said that on cable Fox News made a big deal out of it, but you just see it over and over and over again. It is obvious what they were doing. I don’t know MS-13 gang members being day laborers at a Home Depot, right? Or working on the back of a kitchen at some restaurant. So they are deliberately targeting people because if you look like me, you look like anybody of Latino descent, you’re guilty. And that’s what they basically. Allowed to be legal in this country.

 

Kate Shaw And that’s the district court found exactly as you’re describing and the Supreme Court just basically sashayed in and said like no we disagree and then Kavanaugh had the kind of gumption to write separately.

 

Melissa Murray The caucasity.

 

Kate Shaw The caucasity. I guess that’s what you call it.

 

Leah Litman Mighty, mighty white of him.

 

Kate Shaw Mighty white of Him. To write separately, to essentially excuse it, and there was many, many things wrong with that separate concurrence, but one of the many was the sentence that I’m going to read right now in which he says, the interest of individuals who are illegally in the country and avoiding being stopped by law enforcement is ultimately an interest in evading the law. That is not an especially weighty legal interest. So not only is there the obvious targeting of a subset of a potentially undocumented population based on things like race, ethnicity, language spoken, job worked. It is also the case, even if there are obviously some undocumented individuals, there are many, many individuals who identify as Latino or Hispanic millions in the Los Angeles area who are also subject to the targeting that Kavanaugh just blessed. And that I think has like set in motion much of what we have seen in the last year in Los Angeles and across the country.

 

Representative Jimmy Gomez I think of my mom. My mom’s been in this country for 40 plus years. She became a citizen after Pete Wilson was threatening to take away people’s benefits, social security. Like, he was going after undocumented and people who were Latino descent. And I was worried about her getting pulled over, because she doesn’t speak. Her English is pretty broken up. She has an accent. And she doesn’t carry her passport on her or an ID that says, oh, I’m a US citizen. So she could be arrested. And then when she was in Mexico for a number of months, we thought about sending one of us down there to escort her back, because she would be targeted just because of who she is. And that’s a reality, and that’s what people live in fear in every single day in Los Angeles and across the country. Kids, all of a sudden, are not going to school. All of a sudden, people who are diagnosed with certain diseases are not going to get those treatments. Somebody told me that one of their patients needed to get dialysis and stop showing up. Like you have to have functioning kidneys to be able to live. But that is happening every single day because of the fear that this administration has caused through every single neighborhood that I represent. Not just the

 

Kate Shaw But that the Supreme Court has permitted Brett Kavanaugh owns kind of everything that you just listed.

 

Melissa Murray [AD]

 

Leah Litman So let’s shift gears a little bit. You are on the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. We are obviously living through a wildly irresponsible, reckless, catastrophic attack slash strike slash regime change against Iran. And as ever, it feels like there’s a disconnect between what Trump and those surrounding him are saying and what reality actually is. On one hand, nuclear facilities were destroyed last summer. On the other hand, they were on the cusp of a nuclear weapon. So how does all of the noise surrounding what the administration is doing speak to the wisdom and sanity or lack thereof of what the Administration is doing vis-a-vis Iran?

 

Representative Jimmy Gomez They, this administration has no respect for the law, for Congress, for facts. And what they will do is they’ll try to develop a fact pattern to justify any course of action. So when it came to investigating these facilities, oh, too many people protest. Oh, it’s not a detention center. It doesn’t apply. So they just developed these facts. When it comes to Iran, same thing. They are lying. I have not heard anything that supports their views. And even if you look at the public record, it’s all there. Tulsi Gabbard, who she’s crazy as they come, and should never be trusted. But she spoke in front of Congress and said that Iran, last spring, She said Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Trump on the plane, a reporter asks him and he goes, Tulsi doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Then they.

 

Leah Litman That’s why he made her Director of National Intelligence, right? Yeah, great role for someone who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

 

Representative Jimmy Gomez And then they do Operation Midnight Hammer when they drop the bomb on Ferdot. And then he said, oh, it was beautiful. It was great. And it was all of a sudden we obliterated their program. And there was public reporting that it only set back that program by a few months. And that person got fired, right? They asked them to actually go back and look at that intelligence again. And then the person came back with the same intelligence and got fired. And then other people got fired because they were going against the public, the narrative that Trump put out. So same thing is happening now. How many different rationale has he given? One, it was to help the protesters. Two, to stop the ballistic missile program, but that doesn’t, the Department of Defense says that’s not going to be operational to actually get a missile to the United States into 2035. Nuclear program that was supposed to be obliterated last summer, they’re only weeks away, but all intelligence says that they’ve actually, they have, they are not actively pursuing, right? That is in the public sphere, that intelligence. And there, and Trump is just using it as an excuse. Then, you have Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, well, we were gonna, we had an attack because If Israel attacked Iran, then Iran might attack our facilities. So they’re trying to find a legal rationale to support their actions.

 

Melissa Murray This sounds like originalism. Huh? This sounds like originalist.

 

Representative Jimmy Gomez Exactly. They’re strict constitutionalists or constrictionists. No, everything they’re doing, they engage in a war of choice and they’re trying to disguise it as a war of necessity. And when all the facts come out, the people who either voted no on the War Powers Resolution or are justifying these actions, it’s going to come back to bite them in the ass. And I hope that we hold them accountable for lying to the American public.

 

Melissa Murray So, Representative Gomez, you’ve mentioned so far Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump. We’ve mentioned Brett Kavanaugh. All of these are guaranteed buzz kills, so let’s shift the vibes a little bit. You are, like Brett Kavanagh, a father. In fact, you are the founder of the Congressional Dads Caucus. So what is the Congression Dads caucus doing right now to help all of us raise the nation’s children and make this a safer, more productive environment for them?

 

Representative Jimmy Gomez Well, the Congressional Dads Caucus, we’re up to 50 members now. There are only Democrats, Democrats and Republicans. So weird. Yeah, so. And what we’re doing, we, we we’re trying to put forward an agenda that works for working families and what does that, and also lead the Democratic Caucus in a direction that kind of boxes. The caucus, and so when we take the majority, that these issues remain at the top of the legislative agenda. So on March 17, we’re hosting the first ever national summit on the caregiving crisis. And we’re doing that in order to highlight the needs of people that are taking care of newborn babies and kids, but also the sandwich generation that’s also taking care their elderly parents. How there’s not enough support and what does it do to the family? What does it do to our economy? An average family pays 26 percent of their income towards child care and then you add in housing that’s another 30 percent and we had a national summit on the housing affordability crisis in September. So what we’re doing is we’re trying to build this support and box people in and then at the same time getting dads that are members of Congress to say, dads have a responsibility to take care of our kids, not only at home, but also in the halls of Congress.

 

Melissa Murray Yes, yes. All of those things.

 

Kate Shaw It is, I think, in terms of a hopeful note to end on, kind of recasting caregiving as an issue that dads need to have some ownership in is so important. So thank you for that work and for leaving us with a bright spot of hope, especially the kind of embedded premise that is that when the Democrats take the majority, we want to have the agenda ready to go on day one. And it sounds like you are hard at work at that. So thank so much. Thank you. All right, Representative Gomez, it was great to have you. Thank you so much for being with us. That was a fun conversation and it reminds me of something to share before we get to our favorite things. So people are probably aware of this, but I’ll remind you in case you’re not, we are less than nine months away from the midterms and there is a lot of work that you can do right now. November, we’ll decide control of Congress and also tell us whether Trump is going to maintain his Republican trifecta. And our friends at Vote Save America are here to help if you are eager to get started doing your part now. They will give you tips. Which you should be. Which you shouldn’t be. They will give you tips on how and when and where to donate to make sure your money goes the furthest, how to confidently talk to people in your life about midterms and key issues, and opportunities to take action with your community in real life.

 

Leah Litman I am already hosting a fundraiser for a state race this upcoming weekend. So yes, people need to start doing things now.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah, it’s like, nine months is not that long.

 

Melissa Murray It’s go time, bitches.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah, yeah, it is. Okay, so go to votesaveamerica.com. You can sign up to be part of the work this year and then send the signup link to Five Friends. This is paid for by Vote Save America. Learn more at votesaveAmerica.com and this ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.

 

Melissa Murray Now onto our favorite things, which is authorized by a candidate in the candidate’s committee, namely the president and Florsheim Shoes.

 

Leah Litman JK.

 

Melissa Murray Just kidding. Not actually. Just kidding.

 

Leah Litman One of my favorite things is people doing work for the midterms starting now and signing up for VoteSaveAmerica.com. Also, as I mentioned earlier, Casey Musgraves has a new single, Dry Spell, a new album that will come out in May. I’m obsessed with the single. It calls to mind earlier work in Golden Hour and it’s just great, very catchy. Judge Young, a Reagan appointee. Had a fantastic district court opinion on a stay issue, denying a stay of the remedies he had ordered in response to the federal government’s illegal targeting of students and non-citizens based on pro-Palestinian speech. And the opinion wrote, quote, now that it suits their interests, it is ironic to hear the public officials wail that they are but bit players in a fractured government, claiming that the US Customs and Immigration Service is somehow not before the court and unrepresented here. As this court recognizes, the entire theory of this administration is that of a unitary executive. With no agency independence for every single employee within the article to executive dances to the tune of the president, end quote. Receipts. Exactly, love it, favorite thing. There’s also a forthcoming law review article I recently read and really enjoyed. It is by Genevieve Lakeyre and Sonia Starr, forthcoming in the Texas Law Review called The War on DEI as a project of constitutional subversion. So would definitely recommend that as well.

 

Kate Shaw Awesome. I wonder, Melissa, we should, I guess it’s too late to add any citations, but it sounds like there might be some kind of connections between we are sort of arguing that at least the gender related executive orders are part of this kind of constitutional re-imagining that the administration is pursuing. So that’s what we argue in this forthcoming Supreme Court review piece. So I’ll have to check that one out. I am going to totally shift gears and recommend a little bit of fiction. So I just read The Correspondent, which my book club discussed and I actually liked It did kind of a lot, but it was… Extremely divisive in my book club and that actually makes for a good book club book because we really debated it and so Recommend it if you’re looking for a book club. I also just started the hail mary project which my 11 year old read and or actually he and my husband listened to like back and forth to travel basketball like Over many weekends and I thought it was ya, but it’s more kind of sci-fi I don’t know if it’s technically ya, But it’s incredibly fun and there is a big movie based on the book coming out later this month with ryan gosling who plays Well, the scientist, middle school teacher, the kind of protagonist. Anyway, it’s incredibly riveting. Finally, I think I’ve previously recommended the novel, Vladimir, which I loved and is now a Netflix show that I started watching and have been enjoying. But if you haven’t read the book, really read the books, maybe before you watch the series and then do that too.

 

Melissa Murray I also wanted to plus one Vladimir. Kate has been literally pouring this book into my ear for months, but I still haven’t read it. So I just decided instead to watch it on Netflix because it stars some people I really like. Rachel Weisz, for example, Leo Woodall, really, really cute. And also my personal favorite, the Silver Fox, Jon Slattery. So it’s really fun. It has a lot of like break the fourth wall moments that are really funny. So, highly recommend that. Also wanted to recommend the documentary that’s now out from HBO and Soledad O’Brien, The Devil is Busy, which is all about the post-Roe landscape, really fantastic. Out in the Bay Area, I should have mentioned this then, but I actually didn’t start reading the book until on the way back from the Bay area. So this is Savala Nolan’s Good Woman, A Reckoning, which is a fantastic collection of feminist essays. And if you’re not familiar with Savala Nolan’s writing, You should be. Her debut collection, Don’t Let It Get You Down, Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body was an absolute tour de force. And this new collection is, I think, even better. So very, very highly recommend. I’m also watching Ryan Murphy’s love story, like everyone else, about JFK Jr. And Carolyn Bessette. And although I am thoroughly enjoying it, the thing I really want to recommend or wish for, bring into existence, is a soundtrack from this. Because… The music is absolutely fantastic. It is a time capsule of all of the great hits from the 1990s. Intern Jordan would be absolutely obsessed. The music so on point. The cranberries, Better Than Ezra, James, absolutely amazing. And of course the clothes are nostalgia inducing and amazing too. I’m also really excited to report that there have been more striptease in the wild. Saw a couple of you at the airport in Los Angeles. Great to see you. And had the good fortune to be seated next to Stricty Justine at a dinner last week. She enjoys the podcasts and I enjoyed chatting to her and we were still basking in the glow of our warm West Coast welcome. So thanks to everyone who made that tour such a resounding success.

 

Leah Litman That reminds me, I also met a stricty in the wild, Hillary at the University of Michigan, who is a student here, and on the West Coast Glow, I am wearing a shirt that was given to us by one of our West Coast listeners that features the Portland Frog and says, Ribbit, resist, repeat, and no hope without hop. And I love it.

 

Kate Shaw And it’s sort of a Shepard fairy-esque rendition of The Toad, for those of you not watching on YouTube.

 

Leah Litman Portland Frog, not Toad.

 

Kate Shaw Oh, forgive me. Sorry. I also just read Tuck Everlasting with my eight-year-old, and there’s a toad who appears in sort of a couple of pivotal moments. I think that’s why Toad was front of mine. Also, I’m not sure I could totally tell that that was a frog and not a toad, but I guess he is the Portland frog.

 

Melissa Murray Toad-ally.

 

Kate Shaw Strict Srutiny 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 Srutiny in your favorite podcast app and on YouTube, at Strict Srutiny 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.