Live from Fordham Law, Leah, Melissa, and Kate stay on the Trump 2.0 chaos beat. They cover the continued ransacking of the federal government by the new administration, lawlessness at the DOJ, and the gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Finally, they take some time to consider just how much this new administration hates women.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

Leah Litman [AD]

 

Show Intro Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court. It’s an old joke but when a argue 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.

 

Melissa Murray Because the Trump administration 2.0 is in full, can’t stop, won’t stop mode with an onslaught of executive orders and other actions that seem designed to break the constitutional order and maybe even the world order. We are not going to be actually talking about the court today. The court’s also been on vacation. Like, where are those guys like Mustique? Where are they? Who knows? The court’s not in session, but the federal government. So we’re going to be covering much of what the Trump administration has been doing over the last week. So this is all to say that we are staying on the chaos beat. And we should note that we are recording live at Fordham Law School on. Big crowd here at Fordham Law School, and they’re excited. And we’re recording on a Thursday evening. And the way this usually plays out is that we record on Thursday. And then there’s all kinds of stuff that happened on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then this episode gets released on Monday. So we don’t even know what’s going to happen. So a lot of this may be preempted by other things, but take it as a time capsule of a moment that we were in on a Thursday night and that there’s more to come and we’re just going to soldier on and do the best that we can.

 

Leah Litman So we are going to start with a rundown of the most outrageous recent developments. It would take us days to get through all of them. So we’re just going to cover some highlights, really lowlights and not JB, unapproved lowlights. This is going to include some new moves made inside the administration by Musk, Trump and some perhaps less familiar figures, such as the acting deputy attorney general, who we’ll call Dag Bag Emil Beauvais, an interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, a.k.a. USA Dick.

 

Melissa Murray Yes. Good. Good. Yeah.

 

Leah Litman So we’re also going to cover some developments in courts involving some of the administration’s actions. So it’s going to be a lot of stuff on DIY for men with bad personalities. And if there’s time, we will take a step back and focus on what these early moves tell us about the substantive vision of women and their place in society that seems to drive Trump, Musk, Vance The dirt bags. Maybe we should call them doggy bags. Doggie bags. They are full of shit. The muskrats, evil musketeers and whoever else is calling the shots over there in the Mojo Dojo. Cosmo White House.

 

Kate Shaw I hope the dean was prepared for us to get a little spicy tonight.

 

Leah Litman I feel like Charlie XCX at the Grammys, right? With like performing guest

 

Kate Shaw Without. There’s no delay, though. So think they can’t believe anything out. Okay. And I actually want before we dive in to make one threshold observation, which is that Leah has been saying for years that the meanest thing you can do to the conservative justices on the Supreme Court is to accurately describe their rulings.

 

Leah Litman Not a joke.

 

Kate Shaw Outrageous.

 

Leah Litman Not a joke, just a fact. That is a deep cut RuPaul’s Drag Race reference, just to be clear.

 

Kate Shaw And I feel like there is something similar afoot right now, which is that the best way to sound kind of like a raving lunatic right now is to accurately describe the ransacking of the federal government that is occurring in front of our faces. It is crazy. Reciting it without embellishment truly makes you sound unhinged. And I think if you landed here from Mars and just tuned into what we were saying, that would be your conclusion like this. There’s something wrong. You are not right in the head. No, like this is all just what is happening. We are trying to dispassionately just describe it for you. So on that note, let’s start breaking it down.

 

Leah Litman So we spent a lot of time in our last episode talking about Doge, and we’ll do a bit more of that today. But we’re going to start with the Department of Justice, which is actually becoming pretty dovish. Like get it like DOJ Doge, Yogi doge. Okay. Anyways, we are recording this live show in the city of New York, a great city with a not so great mayor.

 

Melissa Murray He’s pretty mid, he’s pretty mid.

 

Leah Litman Eric Adams. So, right, where do things stand with Mr. Adams, Melissa?

 

Melissa Murray So he seems very committed to the rat situation, which I appreciate. Um, very committed to threading his eyebrows, which I am always here for some strong manscaping, so good for him. But until last Monday, Mayor Adams was actually under federal indictment, which make America great again make America Tammany Hall again, whichever you choose. I’m not great for the city of New York. He had been charged by the U.S. attorney’s office in the southern district of New York with corruption charges, specifically bribery and the solicitation of foreign campaign contributions. Now, when this was first announced, we were a little dubious about how those charges would ultimately fare before our very corruption forward Supreme Court, which in recent years has taken a hatchet to various federal anti corruption laws. But it appears that we will never actually have the experience of reciting faithfully the conservative justices anti-corruption slash corruption forward decisions, because this particular case is never going to get to the United States Supreme Court. Because Acting Deputy Attorney General Dagdag Emil Beauvais, who was also one of Donald Trump’s lawyers in the New York Money. Trial and who is now emerging as a top lieutenant in the Trump DOJ has decided to put the kibosh on this prosecution.

 

Kate Shaw Or at least he has tried to do that. So this is a developing story. But here is where we are as of Thursday night.

 

Leah Litman Thursday, 6 p.m., we should say.

 

Melissa Murray Yeah. It’s going to be a long night.

 

Kate Shaw Could be a very long night. So let’s just bring you up to speed on where things stand as of, what is it, 615 Eastern time on Monday. As Melissa mentioned in a letter that I personally hope will be widely taught in both legal ethics and government lawyering classes for years to come. In that letter, Beauvais directed Danielle Sassoon, then the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, to dismiss the case against Adams, dismissed without prejudice so the charges would remain dangling out there. Seemed like that was part of the point. And so soon? We learned just before the recording started resigned rather than agree to dismiss the charges. Remember, she was the acting U.S. attorney designated by the Trump administration. She was picked for elevated for this role by Trump. And that’s part of why this resignation is such a big deal. So she wrote a letter to the attorney general, Pam Bondi, saying she could not.

 

Leah Litman Pamla Jo Bondi.

 

Melissa Murray Say her name, say her full name.

 

Kate Shaw I told Melissa I would and I’ve already I already failed.

 

Melissa Murray Very florid, a name like I grew up in Florida. In the fifth grade there were five girls who all had Jo as their middle name. So this is very specific, very of the moment.

 

Kate Shaw I will not omit that again. Pamela Jo Bondi In the letter, Sassoon explained that she could not in good faith request that these charges be dismissed. And Beauvais responded with an eight page screed of his own, saying that Sassoon’s resignation was accepted in light of her refusal to comply with his directive. And also saying many, many other things. So we are mostly going to focus on the initial letter, and there was a lot in it. That’s the initial letter directing Sassoon to dismiss the charges. First there was the fact that Beauvais decided to put in writing this letter at all. It is in some tension with Stringer Bell’s sage advice not to take notes on a criminal conspiracy. So, I mean, to be clear, the the main Justice Department could have leaned on the Southern District of New York quietly, could have tried putting this letter into the public domain reflects a choice and I think a choice to signal and to broadcast real antipathy for these kinds of anti-corruption prosecutions.

 

Leah Litman And more than that. So it does seem in DOJ’s defense that they do sometimes understand Stringer Bell’s advice, because Sassoon’s later letter to Pamela Jo Bondy notes, quote, Mr. Beauvais admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting’s conclusion like, I know I’m engaged in a little conspiracy here.

 

Melissa Murray Light conspiracy.

 

Leah Litman Light conspiracy. Don’t take notes.

 

Melissa Murray All right. So what did the DOJ letter directing the dismissal of the Adams prosecution actually say? Well, first, it makes clear that main justice did not decide to dismiss these charges against Adams because it had determined that there was a problem with the case or with the underlying evidence that had been gathered in support of the prosecution. So that was not the issue. Rather, the decision to let this like, corruption slide, as it were, is because Mayor Adams, in the administration’s own judgment, apparently needs to be free and on the streets to help the federal government enforce the immigration laws. Let’s put this differently. This is a non-prosecution that apparently is in exchange for Mayor Adams’s cooperation with the Justice Department, the Immigration Department’s decision to enforce the immigration laws and do this mass deportation screen literally. And Sassoon’s letter also says as much. It says, quote, Adams, his attorney, repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with immigration enforcement. So apparently that was what was on offer. And the DOJ said, yes, I would.

 

Leah Litman Sold.

 

Melissa Murray Exactly. Yes, please.

 

Kate Shaw Look. To be fair, the initial DOJ letter did contain some suggestion that the case should be dismissed for other reasons, not because of the weakness of the evidence or the legal theory, but because the charges were at least being pursued to close to the to the mayoral election. Right. They were impeding Mayor Adams reelection bid. And also there was a suggestion that the previous presidential administration was essentially punishing Adams for his criticism of their immigration policy. And that at least was the ostensible reason provided in part of the letter. But all of that, even inside the four corners of the letter, seems pretty pretextual because the letter then goes on to say, quote, We are particularly concerned about the impact of the prosecution on Mayor Adams ability to support critical, ongoing federal efforts to protect the American people from the disastrous effects of unlawful mass migration and resettlement. So it really does seem to be a thank you for your cooperation kind of situation.

 

Leah Litman And as we all know, tips and gratuities to officials are perfectly legal. Right. Or the US supreme.

 

Melissa Murray Non-prosecution the best tip.

 

Leah Litman Exactly. Exactly. Now, there is a footnote in that letter that tries to walk it back a little. It reads, quote, Your office correctly noted in a memorandum, as Mr. Beauvais clearly stated to defense counsel, the government is not offering to exchange dismissal of a criminal case for Adams assistance on immigration enforcement and, quote, insert Kathryn Hahn winking face here. That’s not actually in the letter, but the footnote doesn’t really blunt the impact of the text that’s right there about the line. You know, like we said, Stringer Bell would never but these guys seem to want to convey to people, scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours. They want to make clear the implied slash not so implied quid pro quo. Do our bidding and we’ll put you above the law to.

 

Melissa Murray Q Is a question, though, just as a common law matter? Do you remember that whole Prince thing about how the federal government cannot commandeer state officials into the service of a federal program?

 

Leah Litman It’s true. But what if the federal government instead implies that a state officer’s freedom depends on whether they are keeping daddy happy by enforcing federal immigration law,.

 

Melissa Murray Not conscription. Not commentating. Totally fine.

 

Leah Litman Exactly. And it’s totally fine. So after the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity section was informed they would be taking over Mayor Adam’s case, the acting head of the unit and his boss, the senior most career official in DOJ’s criminal division, both resigned. Like this is Trump’s Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon was firing officials who wouldn’t do his bidding to keep him above the law. And this is just another Thursday afternoon, less than a month into the Trump administration. This is an order so foul, so transparently corrupt. Trump’s elected officials are resigning rather than touch it. So The New York Times also reported that Mr. Bouvier, in accepting Sassoon’s resignation, informed her that the prosecutors who worked on the case, Adams case, were being placed on administrative leave and would be investigated by the attorney general and the Justice Department’s internal investigative arm.

 

Melissa Murray He also named those line prosecutors by name in the letter. So, I mean, like not full doxing because their addresses aren’t there. But, I mean, this does open them up to all kinds of stuff.

 

Leah Litman Yup.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah. So, you know, the district judge was presiding over the case, Judge Dale Ho, whose nickname we have regrettably had to retire since he took the bench. But you can listen to the back catalog.

 

Melissa Murray If you’re a true fan, you know.

 

Kate Shaw But, you know, I don’t think it is clear who is going to actually, like stand up in front of Judge Ho and ask that these charges be dismissed. You know, maybe it will be Beauvais personally, who’s in main justice, but could.

 

Leah Litman It’ll be big balls. That’s a joke.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah. So? So. So we don’t know. But I am quite sure that is going that is going to be quite a hearing. If and when somebody puts their name to this ask and has to answer questions about why.

 

Melissa Murray Maybe it’ll be Elon Musk. Anyway, guess what? We’re not even done covering the DOJ. That was just one episode in this week at your Department of Justice. There are more DOJ slash New York City hijinx that we can talk about. Last night, newly confirmed Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi announced that the Justice Department is suing the state of New York. At her press conference, Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi announced that DOJ has, quote, filed charges against Kathy Hochul, Tish James and others, end quote. Now, that is not actually true because Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi was talking about a civil suit that does not involve charges at all. It is a challenge to the city’s immigration policies. So it’s not a criminal prosecution and therefore, the term charges is really not apt. But why would the nation’s top law enforcement official pay attention to these minor, minor distinctions between a criminal prosecution and a civil suit?

 

Leah Litman The best people, the meritocracy in action.

 

Melissa Murray I think so.

 

Kate Shaw All right. So staying on the topic of New York, because there is. Yes, more so, the great controller of our city, Brad Lander, who is also running for mayor without federal charges dangling over him, announced yesterday some not so great news, which is that the federal government has apparently clawed back $80 million in funds that were not only approved but evidently also disbursed to New York. The funds were appropriated by Congress to help New York cover the costs of housing and providing other services to migrants in the city. I do not know the mechanism by which this clawback was achieved, but I do know that it seems outrageous. The administration is, to be clear, absolutely entitled to change its immigration enforcement policy like no one disputes that. But it cannot do it in this way. I mean, that I think observation could hold true for much of what we have seen in recent weeks and what we’re going to talk about. But we should say that Lander has pledged to challenge the federal government’s actions in court. And so that’s something that we’re going to keep an eye on.

 

Leah Litman And what this amounts to, they literally took $80 million out of New York’s bank account like that is looting the American people. And we should link this back to corruption like you would think New York City’s mayor would be making a stink about this. Alas, he has been bought off with a non-prosecution decision by the Trump administration like it is the corruption all the way down.

 

Melissa Murray All right. There’s more. We’re not done. Literally. Covering DOJ in this environment is like drinking from a fire hydrant. So we recently learned that the Trump DOJ is planning to take a pass on enforcing anti-corruption laws. So call surprise. Right? This is no surprise. Not only is corruption going to be encouraged, anti corruption laws will not be enforced. And as with many of the administration’s moves, reading about this felt a little bit like reading an Onion headline, but it’s not. So pursuant to a new executive order that was issued, the administration has plans to stop enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The FCPA is a 1977 federal law that prohibits U.S. citizens and entities from bribing foreign government officials in order to benefit their business interests. Seems like a good idea, but I guess the administration decided that it was going to take too long to wait for a case to get up to the United States Supreme Court so they could strike down the FCPA. So the Trump administration decided just to do this with a stroke of the pen instead. And I have to wonder what big law is going to do, because like a lot of big law firms have huge FCPA practices. So, I mean, if there is a burgeoning coalition to fight back here, I think it’s white shoe law firms.

 

Leah Litman From your lips.

 

Kate Shaw Complementing this executive order, ordering literally not enforcement of this Corrupt Practices Act. Attorney General Pamela Joe Bondi has also announced that the administration will disband the National Security Division’s corporate enforcement unit and drastically limit prosecutions under the Foreign Agent Registration Act or Fara. You know, it does seem to reduce to make corruption great again.

 

Leah Litman [AD]

 

Leah Litman So let’s move from the acting deputy AG Dag Bag and the newly confirmed AG to the interim U.S. Attorney for D.C., as we said, USA Dick. A guy by the name of Ed Martin. So a few days before Beauvais is absurd. Adams letter, Martin sent a fawning letter to Elon Musk and Doge compatriot Steve Davis that was evidently sent via X. Only as one does. You know.

 

Kate Shaw The new postal service is just. X, right? That’s what we’re all going to have to communicate using.

 

Leah Litman Communicating with private citizens.

 

Melissa Murray Sliding into your DMS, as it were. Yeah.

 

Leah Litman Yes. So the topic of this letter appears to be reporting on the names of individuals in DOGE wreaking havoc on the Federal government. And Martin pledged in the letter that, quote, If people are found to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically, we will investigate them and we will chase them to the end of the earth to hold them accountable. End quote. That last part is bolded in the letter. So, too is a sentence in the next paragraph which reads, quote. Noone is above the law. Yes, that’s spelled N-O-O-N-E Who is new? You asked.

 

Melissa Murray Only the best person. I think definitely.

 

Leah Litman Someone who’s part of the meritocracy is.

 

Melissa Murray 100%. So Martin is really distinguishing himself, even among this administration, of absolute winner. So after being installed as interim U.S. attorney for the district of the District of Columbia, he fired dozens of prosecutors who were involved in the prosecution of the January 6th protesters. So, again, very, very normal.

 

Leah Litman And I want to step back to note that what they are doing seems to be in tension with Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi’s P.J., BP’s new Department of Justice policy of requiring all DOJ lawyers to sign all briefs. Previously, the department had allowed attorneys to opt out of participating in certain cases or signing their names onto briefs, a move Bondi said, quote, politicize the department. So now people seem to be in a double bind. You have to sign your name to all briefs, and the administration will fire you if they don’t like some of those briefs. Because in addition to firing people involved in January 6th prosecutions, the department is reportedly investigating the prosecutors on the Adams case as well.

 

Melissa Murray All right. Back to Ed Martin. So Martin also withdrew all of the still pending charges against those January 6th defendants. So folks who had not yet been convicted but still had charges pending against them. All of those charges were withdrawn. But guess what, listeners, one of the January 6th defendants.

 

Leah Litman Wait wait. Question did those January 6th defendants. Were they needed to help enforce federal immigration law?

 

Melissa Murray Probably, yes. Probably. Probably. Or the Voting Rights Act.

 

Leah Litman Yes.

 

Melissa Murray It’s hard to say.

 

Kate Shaw Deep cut.

 

Melissa Murray Very deep cut. All right. Well, it turns out that one of the January 6th defendants who got one of these get literally get out of jail free cards was Martin’s own client. So Ed Martin was still representing this guy. He hadn’t actually withdrawn from the representation of this defendant. And when that was brought to Martin’s attention, like, hey, there’s a little conflict here. He said that he believed that he had withdrawn from the case, but it turned out that he hadn’t. And when he went to actually get dismissed from the case, having already directed the dismissals of those charges, the district judge who he went before, basically told him that he would not be granting leave for Martin to withdraw because Martin was no longer a member in good standing of the federal court there. That is how you do it. Okay. Like a legend, actually. Absolutely iconic. The district court was like, yeah, you’re your card’s no good here.

 

Kate Shaw And you know correctly that there’s at least one ethics complaint growing out of all of this that has been filed against him by the 65 projects. So we will see where that goes. I mean, I truly cannot imagine what the I think hard working, decent people in the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. must be making of all of this. Their nominal head who can’t even withdraw from his unethical representation because he has let his bar membership lapse.

 

Melissa Murray Only the best people.

 

Kate Shaw One more piece of DOJ kind of adjacent news involves Rod Blagojevich.

 

Melissa Murray I never I really was not expecting to hear Rod Blagojevich.

 

Kate Shaw You sort of forgot that that whole thing happened.

 

Melissa Murray It was like he’s been under a bridge somewhere.

 

Leah Litman You thought he had just kind of become irrelevant.

 

Kate Shaw He’s. Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what the next season is going to hold, but I think he could be a central figure. It’s entirely possible. In any event, you know, he is, as a reminder, the former governor of my home state of Illinois and Blagojevich did not have the good sense to try to sell a Senate seat while Donald Trump was the president. That was poor timing on his part. So he was prosecuted because that’s you know, what we did then? And he was convicted. He served eight years in federal prison. And he had the rest of his 14 year sentence commuted by Donald Trump the first time Donald Trump was the president. Well, Trump has now made that commutation into a full pardon. Blagojevich feels quite vindicated. And I just feel like maybe this is his moment. I don’t know. Maybe he’ll run for mayor, too.

 

Leah Litman Well, no, he he, too, is needed to help enforce federal immigration law and the.

 

Kate Shaw Voting Rights Act. Yep.

 

Melissa Murray All right. Okay. We need a palate cleanser from all of this DOJ nonsense. Let’s do some updates on some other agencies outside of DOJ, and then we can turn to all of the lawsuits, which we’ve gotten a lot of questions about. So lots to say about that. First up, I think we should remind everyone that Russell Vought was confirmed to OMB. And who is Russell Vought? Well, he is if you listen to our summer episodes, the architect of much of Project 2025 and Project 2025 was the conservative blueprint for the first 100 days of the Trump administration, which Donald Trump said he had absolutely no knowledge of. Interestingly, the first 30 odd days of the Trump administration seems to be following Project 2025 pretty much down to the letter. So.

 

Kate Shaw Has it even thirty days?

 

Melissa Murray Maybe there was some overlap. Hard to say.

 

Kate Shaw Hasn’t even been 30 yet, Melissa. Can you believe it?

 

Melissa Murray It’s not it.

 

Kate Shaw Who knows? When we hit the 30 day mark, I don’t know where we’re going to be. Yeah.

 

Melissa Murray How many days has it been?

 

Kate Shaw 20 something.

 

Leah Litman 25. When we’re recording.

 

Melissa Murray We are 25 days into a four year sentence. Oh my God. Okay. All right.

 

Leah Litman And four years is optimistic.

 

Kate Shaw Oh God.

 

Melissa Murray Well. There is that third term. Exactly. Anyway, we know that Russell Vought is part of the unilateral funding freeze. He hadn’t even been confirmed to OMB when he got that going. But despite that, you would think that the fact that he paused, all of this federal funding would have been a moment for the senators on both sides of the aisle to be like, hey, is this the guy we want running OMB? But apparently not. What sailed through the Senate was confirmed and for good measure, he was then subsequently made the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB, whose real director, Donald Trump, fired last Friday, two Fridays ago.

 

Leah Litman Yeah.

 

Melissa Murray Yeah.

 

Leah Litman So for folks who might not be familiar with that, the CFPB does super important work. It supervises banks and other financial institutions. It protects consumers by doing consumer education, investigating complaints filed by consumers, fining companies that engage in fraudulent and abusive practices. And so, of course, these guys were like that ones. Got to go.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah.

 

Melissa Murray Very, very populist.

 

Leah Litman Yes.

 

Melissa Murray Definitely good for the price of eggs.

 

Leah Litman Yeah. And you know, I think this, too, is part of the corruption forward ethos of the administration because guess who was and is trying to do something that the CFB might have regulated. Our secret president, Elon Musk, who wants to.

 

Melissa Murray So secret.

 

Leah Litman Right? Who wants to create some sort of musk buck and use X as a digital payment system. And federal regulators had to no surprise when carefully reviewing and scrutinizing digital payment systems because of security risks, fraud risks and more. And that’s no longer a problem.

 

Melissa Murray Coincidence.

 

Kate Shaw I’m sure it’s a pure coincidence, but votes first act as the acting CFPB director was in fact to tell the entire agency we’re no longer enforcing any of the consumer protection laws. Literally. That’s essentially what his agency wide message said. The offices are closed. No one is to perform any work tasks. If there’s an urgent matter, you should email Mark Auletta, who’s the chief legal officer. Then there was an email and that an email address for Pauletta that I’m pretty sure a typo in it because the FBI’s letters were transposed. So I don’t know where that email went. But turns out if you want to work at the CFPB and you have a job at the CFPB, there is literally no way for you to do that. You are barred from doing any work at the CFPB. Yeah. So and.

 

Melissa Murray Mark Paletta, is that is he a friend of our favorite justice?

 

Kate Shaw I mean, all roads lead back to Clarence Thomas somehow. So, yes.

 

Melissa Murray All roads. Do we. Speaking of roads and meritocracy, do you remember road rules slash real world contestant slash lumberjack slash new secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy?

 

Leah Litman I do, because I took a flight today and was literally panicked the entire time thinking about it.

 

Melissa Murray You have good reason to be panicked because there was yet another airline collision, this time in Arizona on Duffy’s watch. So a. And I just want to point out meritocracy. Yes, meritocracy. All right. This airline collision. There was a fatality involved. This is really a catastrophe. Deeply concerning. If you ever do air travel, which a lot of us do. But interestingly, guess where you’re not going to hear about this sort of thing. Typically, it’s been the case that when there is an incident like this, there would be an ordinary press release because the National Transportation Safety Board would release one. But in one of the most disturbing instances of the unholy entanglement between the United States government and Elon Musk is X, it was announced that going forward, the only way that investigative information and information about agency News Corp news conferences will be released is through X itself. So X is not only going to be your mail service and your digital payment system, it is also going to be the way in which the United States government communicates with all of us about airline safety and maybe other things. So this seems great for free markets and competition and data privacy.

 

Leah Litman Yeah. So I also want to be clear. What I think is kind of happening here are why they’re doing this. So I think it’s related to the fact that some federal departments are reportedly considering telling reputable news agencies to clear out and make room for wingnuts. So CNN reported that the Pentagon shared a plan that would replace NBC News as well as bright barred, apparently not right wing enough with one America news network in the Pentagon press corps workplace. And The New York Post was going to be invited to The New York Times, where.

 

Kate Shaw They’re just rotating live. They’re giving everybody a turn, right?

 

Leah Litman Yeah. And it just so happens that O.J. and ends turn is forever, right?

 

Melissa Murray But don’t you love the idea of page six in the Pentagon?

 

Leah Litman I don’t think they’re on the list.

 

Melissa Murray He heads up having lunch with the like, so good.

 

Leah Litman So I think this harkens back to something we covered a while ago, which is a project that was called Teneo. This was Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society for Everything. That was a plan that was described as a way to crush liberal dominance in the media, in education and elsewhere. And here I think they are propping up these far right news networks to give them access and to give them stories right. That other outlets are not going to have. I also think this same impetus is partially what explains, you know, the administration going after higher education institutions by, you know, withdrawing or attempting to withdraw National Institute of Health Research funds and other, you know, again, penalties that they just seem to be imposing on these places.

 

Kate Shaw All right. So we have a lot of other moves in other agencies we want to cover. We talked last week in our last episode about the abrupt termination or pause, but potentially longer term pause of many of the programs run by USAID. There was a lot of additional reporting just in the last week about USAID workers literally stranded when the agency abruptly placed employees on administrative leave, stopped their programs, ordered many people back to the United States. I mean, and to be clear, these are individuals, many of them, who are essentially U.S. diplomats. They hold diplomatic passports. They represent the United States and carry out U.S. aid policy in programs all over the world. And last Friday, many of them were told they would have to immediately leave their posts, meaning pack up their lives, hold their kids out of schools. You know, one family reported having to leave a post and not bring their dog with them, which like for us, all of us as dog owners is just like an unthinkable thing for the government to have done. Of all the horrible things the government has done in recent weeks. It also kind of appears since we last reported that the DOJ’s cabal has now set its sights on the Department of Education in a way it hadn’t even a week ago. And can I just, like pause to say how truly, like a military takeover it feels to be saying things like or reading things like, okay, the Department of Education has fallen, right? And there’s like, no way it might be holding on. It might not have fully fallen yet. This is the tenor, I think, of our conversations and much of the coverage this week, and it’s chilling.

 

Melissa Murray Yeah. So a few hours.

 

Leah Litman Before we were recording Senator Ron Wyden and posted this on Blue Sky. Quote, My office is hearing that doge is now at the IRS. That means Musk’s henchmen are in a position to dig through a trove of data about every taxpayer in America. End quote. So it seems to me that we are like a few news cycles out from a story along the lines of some dobro on a ketamine bender leaves at least, you know, at some weird strip club like a USB drive with millions of Americans bank accounts and Social Security numbers. I’m not trying to manifest that.

 

Melissa Murray Sorry. All right. So it seems that the muskrats have stormed the Department of Education and have announced that they are unilaterally terminating nearly $1 billion in U.S. geo contracts, including essentially eliminating a research office that was intended to track student progress. And there’s already a lawsuit challenging that. And. We’re going to turn to it in a minute, but that’s sort of where things are. They are they are definitely in the building.

 

Leah Litman Yeah. So this was a short list of lowlights out of DOJ, OMB, USAID, education and more. Axios described this as masculine maximalism.

 

Melissa Murray They’re trying to get a desk at the Pentagon.

 

Leah Litman I just could not with that. But much of what is happening is in clear violation of laws passed by Congress leading me to say like, babe. Wake up, new unitary executive theory. Just drop. Not only is all of the executive power vested in presidents, Republican presidents, all legislative power is also vested in presidents. You would think Congress would mind and you would be wrong, right? Yeah, you would be wrong. Because when Senator Thom Tillis was asked about Elon Musk’s exercising Congress’s power of the purse, Tillis answered, quote, That runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense. But it’s not uncommon for presidents to flex a little bit on where they can spend and where they can stop spending.

 

Melissa Murray I don’t even understand that statement. How can a little flex be unconstitutional in the strictest sense, but still be okay?

 

Leah Litman Like we knew stare decisis was for suckers. Now it turns out constitutions are for cucks. .

 

Leah Litman [AD]

 

Melissa Murray So it seems that Congress is not just asleep at the wheel. It also seems to be co piloting the plane right into the storm. You can pick whatever metaphor you want. But the good news is the lawsuits are flying fast and furious, so that’s good.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah. And so I’m going to turn to that topic now. We cannot provide a full roundup of all of the lawsuits pending right now. There are too many over three dozen and probably significantly over. But we do want to quickly shout out the organizations that are doing some of this work. State democracy defenders. Public Citizen, Protect Democracy. Democracy Forward. The ACLU, the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. And I’m sure there are more, but these are all scrappy little organizations doing incredible work, pulling together plaintiffs, filing complaints, really laboring to make sure and to show all of us that something of the rule of law remains. There are also some law firms that are stepping up to support this work, but more need to be doing that.

 

Leah Litman And I also want to note that state attorneys general offices have also been on the front lines doing a lot of work. You know, over 40 lawsuits in total have already been filed. Melissa’s colleague at NYU, Ryan Goodman, and the just security website have been doing fantastic work cataloging all of these cases. You know, the suits are challenging, among other things, the removal of officials who cannot lawfully be fired without satisfying certain conditions, granting DOGE access to sensitive payment systems, unilaterally canceling programs, activities, expenditures, entire offices and even agencies, as well as substantive challenges to things like the birthright citizenship executive order. And many of these cases have resulted in preliminary relief.

 

Kate Shaw So let’s start by mentioning one that was just filed that I think makes a really important argument that’s distinct from those that have been filed already. And it’s a suit filed against both Elon Musk and Doge. And it is challenging the extraordinary power that Musk and doge are exercising as inconsistent with the Constitution and specifically with the appointments clause. So the claim is that this kind of power can only be exercised by officers of the United States, individuals appointed as the Constitution requires. For those who exercise significant authority on behalf of the United States. So if it’s a principal officer, the President has to nominate in the Senate, has to confirm, and even inferior officers can only be appointed through the mechanisms that the Constitution allows if Congress acts to confer the appointment authority somewhere other than the president with Senate confirmation. None of that happened here. And so the focus of the suit is just that, you know, this extraordinary power that they are wielding, as did the Education Department. That’s the focus of this lawsuit. But the arguments absolutely apply much more broadly.

 

Melissa Murray All right. We also want to talk about some of the personnel related actions and the litigation that those actions have prompted. So just to give you like a snapshot over the last three weeks, the first three weeks of his administration, Donald Trump has fired the following people, career officials at the DOJ and the FBI for no other reason than the fact that they worked on the January 6th prosecutions. He has fired a number of inspectors general, the internal watchdogs of the federal government. They have fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, which is an entity that enforces the civil service laws and protects whistleblowers. It’s fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics because that person is in charge of ethics. He’s fired a board member of the NLRB, preventing the board from having a quorum and not being able to do its work enforcing labor laws. It’s fired the head of the CFPB. It’s fired the FEC commissioner, It’s fired the EEOC commissioner, and it’s fired much of the Kennedy Center’s board and replaced them with new board members, including one usher. That’s.

 

Leah Litman So each of these offices slightly different. And the legal arguments against the permissibility of the firing looks somewhat different from one to the next. But the cumulative meaning and effect of these firings is clear. You know, it is to eradicate from the federal government any individual or entity that would act with any degree of independence in a way that would check a lawless president.

 

Melissa Murray It sounds like something I read in Project 2025.

 

Leah Litman What’s that? Don’t know where.

 

Kate Shaw And to be clear, some of these officials are not going quietly. So there have been lawsuits filed. Actually, just last night, a district court issued an order to allow the head of the Office of Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger, who is represented by friend of the show, Joshua Matz, to remain in his position in advance of a hearing that was scheduled for next week. So for now, Dellinger stays put.

 

Leah Litman So we’ve already mentioned others are also planning to sue. That list includes NLRB board member Wilcox and friend of the show and previous guest Ellen Weintraub, who has attempted to be fired as an FCC commissioner last week. So the administration is going to have a number of these suits on their hands. And lo and behold, Wednesday night, Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris made an announcement that we knew was coming, but it’s nevertheless significant. So they are going to argue before. For the Supreme Court that the case of Humphrey’s executor should be overruled. As our constitutional law students know well, Humphrey’s executor is a 1935 opinion that allowed Congress to create agencies with heads that are somewhat shielded from the president’s ability to remove them and thus are able to be somewhat independent from politics and the president.

 

Kate Shaw So this has been, you know, building for a while, but it’s still a very big deal. The announcement came in the form of what’s known as a 530 D letter the Department of Justice actually sent to the Senate. And that happens sometimes. The executive branch decides not to defend a statute or a precedent. You know, a recent example was when the Obama administration decided to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act. It announced that it had concluded that Douma was unconstitutional. And it announced that in a letter, a 530 D letter sent to the Senate. But, you know, here, obviously the upshot of this argument, if accepted by courts, is that many, maybe not all, but many of the restrictions that exist in statutes that constrain the ability of the president to just summarily remove anyone he chooses will be unconstitutional. And thus one of the last remaining checks on the president inside the executive branch will be gone. And as we’ve said previously on the show, it couldn’t come at a better time. So, you know, we should say these arguments are not identical to the arguments against the job protections that members of the civil service enjoy, because on the list of individuals that we’ve mentioned are a number of civil servants who don’t have the exact same protections that the, you know, members of boards like the NLRB have. But they may be gearing up to make that argument, too, that all of the protections that career civil servants enjoy are similarly impermissible in that they encroach on the president’s power, which again, apparently includes not just all of the executive power, but all the legislative power and maybe all of the judicial power, too.

 

Melissa Murray All to say that the lawsuits are flying and some of those lawsuits are resulting in rulings against the administration and the men’s at Harvard Law School and Yale Law School. Well, those men’s have some thoughts about this. And we promised you in last week’s episode that Leah had some thoughts about Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman’s intervention on this question. So, Leah, I’m just going to let you cook. Go.

 

Leah Litman I just want to say, I got on a plane even though I was scared I was going to die in a fiery crash specifically so I could get to this part of the show.

 

Kate Shaw We are also grateful, Leah.

 

Leah Litman So the column by Noah was, Don’t worry, the system is working great because courts are invalidating some of these Trump orders. I don’t even know where to begin with how absurd and wrongheaded this is. Like the fact that these cases are even getting to court is itself, I think, like a mark that something has gone horribly wrong, like an indication of a real crisis, like the president is engaged in systemic and systematic legal violations, seems to view the law as like a decorative wall plant. And courts are not going to be able to stop everything because some of what the administration is doing is legal but wildly destructive. And the damage is going to be long term and hard to reverse. And also, courts are more likely to do their jobs and enforce the law ruling against the administration. If people are agitated and if there is public outcry and using your platform to give the public false assurances. Right. To tell them basically to calm down and to take away some of the public outcry is a choice. And this guy’s métier is bad, lawyer- brained, nay Harvard law professor, -brained, He is just vamping and primping in Bloomberg, and I have no patience for it.

 

Kate Shaw So we are definitely not getting invited to do a live show at Harvard. And I am okay with that.

 

Leah Litman And he does this because this is another callback just like Metier was, because people say things like, quote, Neither of us can remember what Noah said, but I know it was so profound. That appeared in The New York Times, just to be clear. And again, like the chasm between how our constitutional system is working.

 

Melissa Murray Okay he’s dead he’s dead.

 

Leah Litman I’m not done. I’m not done yet. I’m Elena Kagan with some douchebag at the lectern in front of me, and I am not done.

 

Kate Shaw Go off. Go off.

 

Leah Litman Okay. So the gap between how our constitutional system is functioning like and how it should be functioning is so, like, huge, right? The idea that you would write a column that says everything is hunky dory, did you look around? It is just so delusional. It is beyond delusion.

 

Melissa Murray I’mma stop you because we are an Equal Opportunity Destroyer podcast and it’s time for Yale Law School to enter the chat.

 

Kate Shaw That’s right. Okay. Yeah. So let us set up the Jedburgh Greenfeld intervention. What triggered this intervention was one of the district court losses that we have mentioned, which was a ruling by District Judge Paul Engelmayer in the Southern District of New York, which was really just a very preliminary ruling, pausing Elon Musk’s underlings from accessing the Treasury payment system until a couple of days later when an actual hearing could occur. It was a very modest light touch order, but J.D. Vance took it personally and he took to X, which is apparently how we all communicate and exclusively must communicate two inch, awfully close to encouraging defiance of court orders.

 

Melissa Murray Awfully close?

 

Kate Shaw I am going to I’m going to strike. So Steve Logic had a good column about this reading in the most charitable conceivable way, what J.D. Vance was saying, that’s it’s not how J.D. Vance intended it. But let me let me read the couple of sentences and then we can decide sort of how how close he came. And maybe, you know, he’s all the way there to outright encouraging outright defiance. So Vance said, quote, If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power. So I think there is a kernel of truth there, a judge can a directing a military operation telling a general where to send troops. Everyone agrees. Courts can’t do that would clearly constitute a political question, not suitable for judicial resolution. The point, though, is irrelevant because no judge is trying to do anything close to those examples, and thus the claim is deliberately misleading and seems designed to stoke opposition to courts in ways that could be quite dangerous that the administration decides it needs to actually amass public support for outright defiance. That’s the context. Now enter Yale Law School’s Jed Rubin Felt. You might even do the honors, Melissa.

 

Melissa Murray I’ll read it. This is so weird. Okay. In the voice of Jed Rubinfeld. JD is correct about this. And his examples are exactly right. Where the executive has sole and plenary power under the Constitution, as in commanding military operations or exercising prosecutorial discretion. Judges cannot constitutionally interfere. But yeah, I mean, but there was more to it. Like, I think contextually this wasn’t about military operations and both of them knew that. So this is just a very Yale Law School kind of thing to do.

 

Kate Shaw Yeah. Yeah. No, I was not trying to cosign the kind of embrace or endorsement that that Rubenfeld seems to be offering here. I actually think that it is incredibly dangerous to so the very narrow, I think point made by Vance in a law school classroom like has a kernel of truth to it. The point he’s making on the public stage is that we should think very seriously about not abiding by court orders. And I think Rubenfeld had to understand what he appeared to be endorsing in that in that tweet in a way that you can’t wildly.

 

Melissa Murray Dangerous can’t divorce the statement by J.D. Vance from an earlier statement he made when he was running for senator from Ohio, where he said that he would advise President Trump that if the courts did not rule in his favor, he could simply do what Andrew Jackson did and say, you know, let the chief just let him enforce his decision. I mean, that is sort of the broader context in which this entire exchange is occurring.

 

Leah Litman So what irks me is like they are equating to very different things and suggesting like a false equivalency. Right. And conflating easy cases in both directions. Right. And suggesting there’s some gray area here. Also, the Marshall thing that just annoys me because it’s like, did you not read the rest of the story about how Andrew Jackson eventually came to the court and the federal government’s defense when South Carolina attempted to nullify federal law and basically said, as president, I have a duty to enforce federal law and it would destroy that union. Right. If officials could just be like, I’m going to veto, nullify that federal law, like, again, read a book. Okay. So to make things better, White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt entered the chat.

 

Melissa Murray Now, before I take questions, I would like to address an extremely dishonest narrative that we’ve seen emerging over the past few days. Many outlets in this room have been fearmongering the American people into believing there is a constitutional crisis taking place here at the White House. I’ve been hearing those words a lot lately, But in fact, the real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges and liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump’s basic executive authority. We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law, and they have issued at least 12 injunctions against this administration in the past 14 days, often without citing any evidence or grounds for their lawsuits. This is part of a larger concerted effort by Democrat activists and nothing more than the continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump. Bless her heart. Okay, First of all, Caroline, we weren’t even in the room like we’re the ones constantly saying we were in the throes of a constitutional crisis. And we are. And we weren’t even there.

 

Kate Shaw She’s listening.

 

Melissa Murray She’s listening. Obviously. Friend of the pod, Caroline. But yeah, like, this is what that is. This is a genuine constitutional crisis. I’m glad she recognizes I’m glad someone recognizes it also. Now, you have a problem with forum shopping after Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk like girl, Come on, we’ve got the receipts. Okay. Also, the idea that judges have cited no evidence or grounds like, again, do you read did you read the.

 

Leah Litman No, Like the answer is clearly no.

 

Melissa Murray All right. Okay. So that’s all I’m gonna say about that. Yeah.

 

Leah Litman Also 12. Like, that’s it. Consider the denominator.

 

Melissa Murray True.

 

Leah Litman [AD]

 

Kate Shaw So we have maybe ten or so minutes remaining. So in the last part of the show, we wanted to take a few minutes to talk about an important throughline in some of the administration’s orders and actions, which we have talked about kind of individually but haven’t pulled together, which is sort of the view of sex and gender that emerges from some of these moves. And in some ways, like the question almost answers itself, which is like, what are the Dodge Brothers think about women having power and autonomy? But let’s unpack.

 

Melissa Murray Spoiler alert. It’s not good for you ladies.

 

Leah Litman So there was an insane story that didn’t get enough attention about the commandant of the Coast Guard.

 

Melissa Murray Commandant.

 

Leah Litman Commandant of the Coast Guard, the first woman to serve in that role, and the first woman to lead any branch of the armed forces. So, of course, within 24 hours of inauguration, the administration was determined to remove her in the most sadistic fashion.

 

Melissa Murray Citing DEI.

 

Leah Litman Right. The then acting DHS secretary issued a statement disparaging her leadership and excessive focus on diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

 

Melissa Murray And then it got worse. So she was summarily fired. She was given a 60 day period to find new housing because she was living in Coast Guard quarters. And then about two weeks later, according to NBC, she was thrown out of her living quarters with just three hours to pack up her life because, again, the president wants her out of quarters. According to the NBC report. This is the contempt that the administration seems to have for women in military leadership positions. And I’m not even getting into the fact that they nominated Keith HealthSouth to lead the Department of Defense.

 

Leah Litman Yeah. So or consider how they have justified some of their announced policies. So when HUD Secretary Scott Turner announced they were halting some enforcement actions, those protecting trans people, he said, quote, We at this agency are carrying out the mission laid out by President Trump when he signed an executive order to restore biological truth to the federal government. This means recognizing there are only two sexes, male and female. It means getting the government out of the way of what the Lord established from the beginning when he created man in his own image, end quote, I’m going to say something will probably get cut from the episode. I don’t even think Sam Alito needs to read the articles on Pornhub anymore. He can just read the news.

 

Melissa Murray That’s staying in.

 

Kate Shaw Leave it in, yeah.

 

Melissa Murray That’s staying in.

 

Kate Shaw So, you know, and just the fact that that there are so many utterances and writings along those lines that the kind of firehose of news has sort of so overtaken us we haven’t stopped to appreciate is just really stunning. So we just, you know, kind of want to point out a few other things. So, you know what? There’s a claim that these efforts that the administration has taken to eliminate literally all legal protections for transgender individuals and it seems essentially try to erase their very existence. They claim all of this is necessary to protect and defend women. So literally, the first part of the title of one of these anti-trans executive orders was, quote, defending women from gender, ideology, extremism. So let’s actually ask how committed the administration appears to be to defending women.

 

Melissa Murray Not so much, I think. So there are two things to mention here. One, I don’t think they’re necessarily interested in defending women, but more importantly, the constitutional scheme that we have been living under since 1996 with the United States versus Virginia and maybe even earlier with Craig versus Boren. The 1970s sex equality case basically says that the government cannot make policies in order to protect women, that that is a species of paternalism rooted in sex based stereotypes about gender roles. And the fact that we’re even talking about protecting women, that the federal government is issuing executive order after executive order in defense of women. And this kind of paternalism gives us the very distinct feeling that the very bedrock principles of constitutional sex equality are under threat. And if you were confused about that, just consider some of the language in the jobs opinion that didn’t get a lot of attention because they were too busy rolling back the right to an abortion in Dobbs. Justice Alito says that, you know, there is no route for the abortion right, in equal protection. And he goes all the way back to building a case where the court said pregnancy discrimination is not sex based discrimination because not all women get pregnant. It was the 70s. There were no women on the court. And but there are other cases since then, 1996, United States versus Virginia, 2003. Hibbs And they ignore all of this. And then, of course, Justice Alito says that women are not without electoral and political power. So. Apparently we aren’t because we need defending. So there’s a real inconsistency here and everything’s up for grabs.

 

Kate Shaw And to be clear, right, like these anti-trans moves are obviously horrific for transgender women. Like that is really clear and needs to be underscored. But it’s also the point that Melissa is making is that cis women, all women like this. A lot of this policy making is very, very bad for women writ large. And the view that women need protecting from government policy is one that, if taken seriously, would roll back, you know, over half a century of constitutional equality jurisprudence in ways that, again, I think have been a little lost in the shuffle given the firehose. So, you know, in turning now from kind of this high level observation to some substantive initiatives, we wanted to just tick through a few that we haven’t had a chance to mention that, but that are quite important.

 

Leah Litman So the Department of Education rescinded Title nine guidance. It stated, Niall, that his name, image and likeness payments must be proportionate between male and female athletes so women can be paid less. And the administration has been disrupting federal funding for rape crisis centers of state level organizations reported they weren’t getting CDC funding. The Federal Office on Violence Against Women removed funding opportunities, ways to apply for grants from its website. They’ve been blaming deadly airplane crashes on the presence of women in the workforce. A memo from NSA leadership listed some banned words words not to be used on websites and internal network pages. One of those words feminism. This is a government real F word. Exactly. A government of like arcs and patriarchs.

 

Melissa Murray So that was a lot. There is some cause for celebration. So we don’t want to leave you with the idea that we’re just a bunch of Debbie Downer is gloom and doom. We want to celebrate some things. And today, Thursday, the time we’re recording, we got word from Washington about a new confirmation. And we wanted to mark this new addition to the administration with a toast. And you already are groaning. So it seems like you know what I’m going to say. Yes. Robert F Kennedy was confirmed today as the secretary of Health and Human services.

 

Leah Litman DEI for brain worms. And we are going to mark this occasion, not with champagne toasting the end of the administrative state, but with.

 

Melissa Murray Raw milk people. Raw milk. That’s right.

 

Leah Litman We’re going to do it by chugging some milk.

 

Melissa Murray Raw milk.

 

Kate Shaw It is. It is packed. This milk is pasteurized. It is very, very pasteurized.

 

Leah Litman Yeah.

 

Melissa Murray Right. To the to that gentleman, clink here. Cheers.

 

Leah Litman Cheers.

 

Melissa Murray Cheers.

 

Kate Shaw Are you really going to drin this?

 

Kate Shaw I’m an oat milk girly myself. I’m going to leave this here.

 

Leah Litman Same.

 

Melissa Murray Delicious.

 

Leah Litman Right. So I also brought a bear carcass that because I rushed here from the airport, I wasn’t able to dispose of. So after the show, we’re going to drop this bad boy off at Central Park.

 

Kate Shaw Luckily, it’s very close by.

 

Melissa Murray Very close by. Okay. So all of this is a lot. Again, we want to be a little more upbeat. So I’m going to ask my co-host, how are you finding hope amidst all of this?

 

Kate Shaw I mean, I think it’s hard, but important. So I think that honestly. The resignations today at DOJ were really an important moment. I think I think that seeing people stand up even at personal cost to what they think is outrageous, unethical conduct that can’t be squared with the rule of law. I think that, you know, the courage is contagious. I think actually that that really was important and I’m glad that it happened today. So we could kind of try to process it a little bit in real time with all of you. So that’s one thing.

 

Melissa Murray Leah?

 

Leah Litman Ohh, this is a hard one.

 

Melissa Murray Dig deep.

 

Leah Litman I appreciated a post by front of the pod guest of the pod, Sherrilyn Ifill, on her substack in which she said, like, I see a lot of statements along the lines of no one is doing anything. But that’s not true. There are people doing things and if you are doing things like you see them too. And that has partially been my experience and I appreciated that.

 

Melissa Murray So I’m taking solace in the fact that I believe the children are our future. And it’s not just the song. Middle school students at a U.S. base in Germany walked out of school in protest when Secretary Pete Hegseth came to visit. Right on, kids. And I’m also cheered that, you know, there are high school students around the country. I’m including here in this room tonight. And we’d love to say hello to Dr. Rachel Helpers, Supreme Court class and the feminists of Trinity who are back there, too. They are doing the work, learning about the Constitution and learning about Supreme Court cases and the fact that they are pitching in and doing this work right now. It’s huge. So that’s giving me hope. The fact that he is going to dispose of this bare carcass. Moments of levity like  that.

 

Leah Litman That and Noah’s body.  That’s not going in. Okay.

 

Melissa Murray All right. This is all to say that we are in the midst of a genuine constitutional crisis. Do not lose sight of that. Do not let them gaslight you into believing that it’s not true. I’m like, This is the moment. And one day we’ll ask ourselves, What do we do in this moment? And that’s serious. These are tough times. Hang in there. If you are even a fraction of as incensed as we are about all of this, please make a phone call. Donate some money to organizations doing this litigation. Support journalism by subscribing to the places who are doing great investigative work like ProPublica and Wired. And keep listening to strict scrutiny because we’ll keep pushing this stuff out. We will be back next week and hopefully we will continue to keep lighting a fire under ourselves and all of you.

 

Leah Litman So before we are back next week, a few notes from this week. Elon Musk’s DOGE gang just got slapped down by a federal judge, but not before infiltrating the Treasury. First, if you’re wondering how we let billionaires hijack the government. Tune in to the newest episode of Assembly Required This week, Stacey Abrams unpacks how Musk and his cronies carved out unchecked power and what we can do about it. With Wired editor Leah Fieger. They unpack DOGE’s grip on the Treasury.

 

Kate Shaw And then I joined Stacey to answer a big question like, Is this even legal? And got to actually get some tips from Stacey’s experience heading up the minority in the Georgia legislature. And what a party that isn’t in control of a chamber but still can flex the muscles, can do so. I thought that was a great conversation. Listen now to stay informed and get practical steps on ways you can fight back. You can search for Assembly Required wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube.

 

Leah Litman And if you’re looking for more essential conversations, tune in to Pod Save the People, where organizer and activist DeRay McKesson, along with Kaya Henderson and Myles Johnson, bring a sharp take on news, culture and social justice, focusing on the stories that too often go overlooked. This week, they dive into how an AI program wrongfully jailed an innocent man for 17 months and what that means for the future of justice. Listen to Pod Save the People every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. So someone on Good Reads wrote in a review that they were reading this book Lawless, and didn’t realize that it was Leah Litman from Strict Scrutiny or that she had a book. And I feel like this is a failure on my part. I do have a book coming out. Lawless How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories and Bad Vibes. And also it relates back to Mojo Dojo, Casa House. There is a Mojo Dojo Casa House reference in the very first chapter to it. So if you would like to hear the equivalent of my pimply Virgin Edge lord friend list, libertarian DOGEbro reads but four Supreme Court justices, you should preorder it now and again. It is called Lawless How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories and Bad Vibes. As RuPaul said, never be afraid of a shameless plug.

 

Melissa Murray Strict Scrutiny is a Crooked Media production hosted and executive produced by Leah Litman, Me, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw. We are produced and edited by Melody Rowell. Michael Goldsmith is our associate producer. We get audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landes. Our music is by Eddie Cooper and production support comes from Madlyn Herringer and Ari Schwartz. Matt DeGroot is our head of production and we are very grateful for our digital team, including Joe Mataski. Our production staff is probably unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. You can subscribe to strict scrutiny on YouTube to catch full episodes. You can find us at YouTube.com slash at Strict Scrutiny podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to Strict Scrutiny in your favorite podcast app 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.

 

Leah Litman And a special thanks this week to Sophie Eisenstadt, who shepherded this entire live show.

 

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