Portrait of a John Roberts on Fire [TEASER]

These “boys” and in some cases “gals” keep proving us right! The 2024-2025 Supreme Court term was a beautiful illustration of this podcast’s entire thesis: this is an institution untethered by law, beholden only to right-wing ideology, and led by a real dipshit Chief Justice. If you're not a 5-4 Premium member, you're not hearing every episode! To hear this and other Premium-only episodes, access to our Slack community, and more, join at fivefourpod.com/support http://fivefourpod.com/support. 5-4 is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto. Leon Neyfakh provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Transcriptions of each episode are available at fivefourpod.com http://fivefourpod.com Follow the show at @fivefourpod on most platforms. On BlueSky, find Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social, Michael @fleerultra.bsky.social, and Rhiannon @aywarhiannon.bsky.social. Our Sponsors: * Check out Mint Mobile and use my code mintmobile.com/fivefour for a great deal: https://www.mintmobile.com * Check out Quince and use my code FIVEFOUR for a great deal: https://www.quince.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Hey, everyone. This is Leon from Prologue Projects. On this subscriber-only episode of Five to Four, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are reflecting on the recently concluded Supreme Court term. With the justices in recess for the summer, it's a good time to look back at all the wins they handed the Trump administration over the course of the term, and to take stock of how the court's conservative majority now fits into the MAGA movement. This is Five to Four, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

• 0:44Peter Shamshiri?

  Welcome to Five to Four, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have buried our nation in scandals like The New York Times is trying to bury Zohran Mamdani. I'm Peter. I'm here with Rhiannon.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 0:58Peter Shamshiri?

  And Michael.

• 0:58Michael Liroff?

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:59Peter Shamshiri?

  Have you heard about this lying piece of shit? This scumbag.

• 1:04Michael Liroff?

  Have you seen the website with the fake New York Times Mamdani headlines?

• 1:08Peter Shamshiri?

  No.

• 1:09Michael Liroff?

  Oh, they're very good. It's like a generator. Like, it'll generate fake headlines for you. They're pretty good. What I saw was like, "Mamdani's economic message failed to move these Trump voters in a rural Tennessee diner."

• 1:22Speaker 02

  I saw one that was like, maybe it's not quite the same website, but I saw one that was like, "Breaking: Mamdani told a waiter 'you too' when they said, 'Enjoy your meal.'"

• 1:36Michael Liroff?

  Yes.

• 1:39Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah.

• 1:40Michael Liroff?

  This one is right up your alley, Peter. "Eric Adams questions Mamdani's commitment to serving interests of Turkey."

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 1:48Peter Shamshiri?

  The Mamdani hit pieces are gonna keep coming.

• 1:50Michael Liroff?

  Oh, they're so bad.

• 1:52Peter Shamshiri?

  I guess they don't have much yet, you know? Maybe they'll find something, but like, so far, what they have is that when he was 18, he checked African-American with a clarifying note that said Ugandan

• 2:06Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 2:07Peter Shamshiri?

  on his college application. And, you know, for someone who, at that point, had spent more than a third of their life in Uganda...

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, born in Uganda, has a Ugandan parent.

• 2:19Peter Shamshiri?

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• 2:27Speaker 04

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• 3:13Speaker 04

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• 3:18Speaker 02

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• 4:54Peter Shamshiri?

  To the New York Times, this matters because in their mind, the very act of checking that box on a college application is cheating.

• 5:01Michael Liroff?

  Yes, yes.

• 5:03Peter Shamshiri?

  And so that's, that's what makes them upset. And then it came out that his SAT scores were like 2140 out of 2400, which like-

• 5:12Michael Liroff?

  97 percentile.

• 5:13Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, I'm not like familiar with the 2400 scale.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  It's just 800, 800, 800.

• 5:20Peter Shamshiri?

  Right, but I was just sort of like, that seems high, actually. That seems really good.

• 5:26Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, yeah, they're, they're like, oh, it's median but lower median for the average incoming Columbia student. It's like, okay, so it was appropriate for him to apply to Columbia. It's not crazy. He didn't get admitted. The, the whole scandal, I just, I want to talk about this for a second because you got this right, Peter. This whole thing, you have to believe so many insane things to think this is a scandal. The first thing you have to think is that by checking the African American box, you're getting some massive leg up in your admissions process unfairly so. Then you have to believe that that's really just code for black.

• 6:06Michael Liroff?

  And so someone of Asian ancestry who was born and raised in Uganda could never authentically believe that African American might include them.

• 6:18Peter Shamshiri?

  Right. There's layers to that because then you also have to explain to an 18 year old who spent basically the first half of their life in Uganda, that African American here is actually just like a term that generally means black rather than African American.

• 6:34Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 6:34Peter Shamshiri?

  There's, there's so many layers of just like, you have to impute-

• 6:38Speaker 05

  Hey folks, if you want to hear the rest of this episode, you're going to have to subscribe. This episode is one of our premium Patreon only episodes. Membership starts at just five bucks a month. If you want to hear the rest, join us at patreon.com/54pod. That's 54pod all spelled out. Members get a bunch of stuff. Not only do you get access to the premium episodes, but access to subscriber only events, discounts on merch. And at the $10 a month level, you get bigger discounts on merch and membership in the incredibly rowdy 54 Slack. So again, that's patreon.com/54pod, 54pod all spelled out. Become a member today.