A New Term of Supreme Chaos

It’s been a long summer, but Leah, Kate and Melissa are back together to break down the biggest cases and legal battles coming to the Supreme Court this term. Starting in October, the justices will hear challenges involving AR-15s and semi-automatic rifles, religious exemptions for schools receiving government funding, and the latest redistricting fights in Missouri and the 8th Circuit. Plus, Trump’s big arch updates and allegations that a government contractor illegally funneled nearly $200,000 to a Susan Collins super PAC. Then, Melissa sits down with National Association of Black Journalists President and Crooked’s Long Play cohost Errin Haines to discuss news outlets suing the President over press access. After, Leah talks to Columbia graduate and author Mahmoud Khalil about his new book, No Land to Stand On https://bookshop.org/p/books/no-land-to-stand-on-notes-from-detention-mahmoud-khalil/194e4581ec3decc1, the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech, and the treatment of people in ICE custody. Favorite Things: Leah: ProPublica https://www.propublica.org/ | Gil Duran, Nerd Reich; Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor End Times Fascism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIfX5qHorBQ | Alyssa Edwards’ response https://www.reddit.com/r/rupaulsdragrace/comments/1wokvmq/alyssa_edwards_responds_to_ken_paxton/ to Ken Paxton Kate: Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire https://bookshop.org/p/books/how-to-hide-an-empire-a-history-of-the-greater-united-states-daniel-immerwahr/c8aca5f688b118f5 | Ari Berman and Pema Levy in Mother Jones on Callais and the New New Jim Crow https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/09/supreme-court-jim-crow-voting-rights-act-history-cleo-fields-louisiana-callais/ | Nikole Hannah-Jones’s NYT Piece https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magazine/ny-public-schools-black-students-segregation.html Melissa: Propublica’s piece on Susan Collins https://www.propublica.org/article/fbi-susan-collins-navatek-campaign-donations-investigation | Charles Spencer, Swan Song https://bookshop.org/p/books/swan-song-diana-my-sister-charles-spencer/e87a70d6d838f0e6?ean=9798217566679&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=dsa_nonbrand&utm_content=%7Badgroupname%7D&utm_term=dsa-19959388920&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=12440232635&gbraid=0AAAAACfld42BkY2ibdLSm9u0unEq6qVXs&gclid=Cj0KCQjwt9jVBhDXARIsAFSP-6cnnKCWJfnllhKWpEQJxqfcaei_zLrZbduvt1Bec-Ihko-VLHfZyKkaAkqQEALw_wcB | Raphael Warnock, The Crooked Parts Made Straight https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-crooked-places-made-straight-reflections-on-the-moral-meaning-of-america-raphael-g-warnock/1011fa4bd18abd5f?ean=9798217058983&bkshp-astro=t| Zak Cheney-Rice, No One Can Fix School Segregation Alone https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/school-segregation-hannah-jones-essay-education-reform.html | Stacey Abrams at LCCR Gala https://www.lawyerscommittee.org/lawyers-committee-for-civil-rights-under-law-honors-stacey-abrams-and-mississippi-voting-rights-plaintiffs-at-2026-higginbotham-leadership-awards-gala/ Take the Strict Scrutiny survey https://crooked.com/strictsurvey. New Strict merch available here https://store.crooked.com/products/were-gonna-need-a-bigger-court-graphic-t-shirt. You can now listen to Strict Scrutiny for CLE credits in California, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington, and Oregon! More info at crooked.com/strict_cle http://crooked.com/strict_cleGet tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE on November 6th in Washington, DC: Crookedcon.com http://crookedcon.com/Buy Melissa’s book,The U. S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-constitution-annotated-for-the-contemporary-reader-melissa-murray/8e7f0dfa472fc3ca?ean=9781668221938&next=t&Buy Leah’s book, Lawless https://bookshop.org/p/books/lawless-how-the-supreme-court-runs-on-conservative-grievance-fringe-theories-and-bad-vibes-leah-litman/5b562d6fcb316d6e?ean=9781668054642&next=t, now out in paperback Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/strictscrutinypodcast/?hl=en,Threads https://www.threads.net/@strictscrutinypodcast, andBluesky https://bsky.app/profile/strictscrutiny.bsky.socialFor a transcript of an episode of Strict Scrutiny please email [email protected]

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Strict Scrutiny is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Guess what, folks? It's back to school season, and this year, 5 million children across Texas are going to be greeted by, wait for it, the 10 Commandments in their classrooms. Texas politicians passed a law requiring the 10 Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom, forcing their religion on every kid in those schools. 28 families in Texas, supported by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, are taking the fight to the Supreme Court, and we need you to amplify their voices before the Supreme Court gets its hands on this case.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  They're gonna go up, but we're gonna fight to get them taken down.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  That was Texas public school parent Ted Lowe. Ted and Rebecca Lowe are an interfaith couple. Ted is Jewish and Rebecca is Christian, and their kids are in Texas public schools. The story that they tell in this video is moving, and we hope that everyone hears it and shares it, because there is a human cost to Christian nationalist policies like these 10 Commandments laws and the decisions that the Supreme Court hands down. You can visit au.org/10c to learn more about this case and how you can help join the fight to protect church-state separation.

• 1:13Kate Shaw?

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• 1:43Speaker 03

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• 2:13Speaker 05

  Mr. Chief Justice, please support. It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word.

• 2:27Speaker 06

  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."

• 2:45Speaker 00

  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 Leah Litman.

• 3:05Kate Shaw?

  I'm Kate Shaw.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  And I'm Melissa Murray. And yes, folks, the band is back together. It is a new Supreme Court term, which means that we need to be operating on all cylinders to brace for what might be coming down the pike. So with all of the justices back to their regularly scheduled SCOTUS-maxing, we have decided that we will respond in kind with a little strict scrutiny post-maxing.

• 3:30Kate Shaw?

  When you said firing on all cylinders, for some reason I was just brought to mind, somebody recently told me that our show reminds them of, did you guys ever listen to the NPR show Car Talk, the like brothers who would like just banter? And then she was like, no, no, I mean, because you have such great chemistry. I was like, okay, I think it was meant as a compliment. So anyway, I passed that along.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Little did they know, we were post-mogging and pod-mogging each other right before we started recording.

• 3:52Kate Shaw?

  Right before, but critically not in the actual publicly released version of the episode. So, but yes, we are back together. We are very excited to be back together, and we are not excited about the fact that we are staring down the barrel of a new Supreme Court term. But since we are, we thought we would provide some table setting, just some big-picture thoughts about where we are and what we're looking for in the upcoming term. We're not going to really do a detailed rundown of particular cases, although we will reference some notable ones. But obviously, as we get closer to the arguments in those cases, we will do deep dives on all of those. After we do that table setting, we're going to bring you conversations with two people who can speak to the real effects of some of the legal matters that we will be discussing. So Melissa will talk with Aaron Haynes about attacks on the press and censorship, and Leah will speak to Mahmoud Khalil about immigration

• 4:35Kate Shaw?

  detention. Okay, on to SCOTUS. Its term starts next week. Deep breaths. Who wants to start?

• 4:41Speaker 00

  I volunteer as tribute.

• 4:43Kate Shaw?

  Thank you.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  I fucking hate it.

• 4:45Kate Shaw?

  Have at it.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  I fucking hate it. And by it, I mean, both Life of a Showgirl encore and the State of the Supreme Court perpetual encore. The combination of the two have me really convinced that our society has gone so far, we just don't have a chance of turning back. But more on the latter SCOTUS part. I have two big-picture thoughts about where we are now. I'll start with the shorter one.

• 5:06Kate Shaw?

  We'll come back to a little tailor later in the hour, just for those who are like waiting for Leah's full takes.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Don't worry. This is very fucking dark, Leah. I rode here in a Waymo, and I feel like I already took my life into my own hands already today. This is not what I was expecting. I'm sorry. All right. But it's gonna get even bleaker, because my first point was going to be just how much our expectations have been warped by the court's bad behavior, and how when you step back and actually reflect on it, it kind of reveals, that is, the expectations reveal how messed up things are. Like, I was thinking about the upcoming term, and we already know what's going to happen in a bunch of these big red meat for the right culture war cases, the Second Amendment case about AR-15s and semi-automatic rifles. The court is going to insist those have to be freely available because freedom and amisexual kinks. We know what's gonna happen in the religious exemption case, where religious

• 5:54Speaker 00

  schools are seeking permission to opt out from the state's funding conditions, that they not discriminate against LGBT people. I have a pretty good idea what's gonna happen in the Arizona voting case, where they're going to allow a state to require satisfactory proof of citizenship before voters are allowed to register. And I also feel like I have a good idea what's gonna happen in the trans rights case, where they're gonna throw a big standing bone to allow transphobic parents to assert their parental rights claim to stymie state efforts to make homeless services accessible to trans kids. So they're just gonna be further exacerbating the disparity, not bothering to consider whether parents have a right to help their kids get healthcare, only whether parents have a right to keep their kids from getting healthcare. And we know what they're gonna do, because they've showed us who they are and what they're about. They mainline Republican Party talking points

• 6:38Speaker 00

  and Republican Party grievances, spit them out as law, and that's just our expectations. And by themselves, that's pretty damning. All right. I think I'm just gonna hop back in that Waymo right now.

• 6:49Kate Shaw?

  Drive right into the Pacific Ocean.

• 6:51Speaker 00

  You'd rather face that than this SCOTUS term. Okay, yeah, that's fair. Yeah, I literally, wow, Leah. I don't even know how, to top that, I won't even try to gild your lily, Leah. Let me add on, though, to some of the points that you made. So one theme that I think you were touching on that is emerging, has been emerging, is this idea of the court normalizing bad behavior. And a number of different commentators have noticed that this term doesn't really seem like much of a barn burner. And I think that's probably true, at least not yet. It is true that the December sitting is going to be a banger, right? So that's the one with a lot of the big culture issues that you mentioned.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  Those will be on the docket. So Leah mentioned Veramontes, that's the challenge to Illinois' AR-15 ban. There's also Ferguson, that is the case about parents' rights and minors' access to trans care, trans rights generally. That sitting also includes the Arizona voting rights case that Leah mentioned. It also includes JOPE, that is the Han Solo Millennium Falcon beer case that our friend Ellie Mistal mentioned over the summer. But that December sitting, as packed as it is, it's really kind of anomalous, and for that, maybe we should be thankful. It is otherwise a pretty light docket. And I think, though, that that's not because the court is showing restraint, it's just that they've normalized doing so much substantive stuff on the shadow docket, the interim docket, the emergency docket,

• 8:18Speaker 00

  whatever we're calling it, and

• 8:20Kate Shaw?

  The shit show docket?

• 8:21Speaker 00

  The shit show docket, the just-the-tip docket. They've done so much on that, we've come to accept it as normal, that it doesn't even seem weird when the merits docket is relatively light. The other alternative explanation is that they are anticipating a shit ton of shenanigans coming out of or running up to the midterm elections, and they're keeping space available for that. That's also their fault, because they've facilitated, midwibed some of this shenanigans that are likely to happen. So that part, they've just normalized a lot of crap that's going to happen, and we see it reflected in the docket itself. My next point really relates to a lot of what we saw in October term 2025. So in Louisiana versus Calle, that was the case that was decided in April,

• 9:06Speaker 00

  in which the court basically hobbled what remained of the Voting Rights Act. The court also went balls out on hobbling the Reconstruction Amendments, insisting that the 14th and 15th Amendments, which sought to remedy the lingering residue of slavery and to incorporate newly-freed African Americans into the body politic as equal citizens, the court insisted that these amendments were studiously race-neutral, I guess. And I'm steeling myself for Veramontes, that AR-15 case, where the court is literally going to lean in, again, to this idea of race. So they're jettisoning race neutrality in order to talk about all of the ways that

• 9:46Speaker 00

  African Americans have been disarmed throughout history, and how the only way to remedy that racial injustice is to allow everyone in the whole country to tote an automatic weapon, you know, for racial justice.

• 9:59Kate Shaw?

  One definitely follows from the other, right? Like, logic.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Clearly, clearly. You know, so no 14th Amendment, no 15th Amendment, no race-conscious remedies in those realms, but for guns, we care. We care about the blacks.

• 10:12Kate Shaw?

  The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race, Melissa, is for everyone to have a semi-automatic rifle. I think a wise man, once said.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Yes, I did.

• 10:19Kate Shaw?

  That's poetry. I swear, that's gonna appear in a Brett Kavanaugh opinion within like six years. We should not call it into being. It is bleak, it is dark. Melissa and Leah covered many of the lowlights already. Maybe I'll just flag one more case that is going to be argued in the first week of the term, which is a case about the military detonating toxic explosives on Guam, and indeed, one of Guam's most pristine beaches, and just insisting it doesn't have to comply with environmental laws when it does that. And several others that we will mention are, I think, big cases to watch. But I actually wanted to maybe just say that I don't even want to talk about the big cases to watch right now. Like, maybe this is getting a little existential or something. But my first big-picture thought that I was mulling over as I thought about what I wanted

• 11:03Kate Shaw?

  to talk about on this term preview episode was that I actually have so enjoyed getting the chance, I mean, enjoyed is maybe the wrong word, but I've appreciated the chance to talk about Supreme Court reform and not individual prospective Supreme Court cases in these bonus episodes we've done over the course of the last month. And part of me just thinks we should spend some time on this episode, and so I guess that's what I'm doing right now, just going, if not deeper, we're not going to do a deep dive right now, but just continuing to return to the point that Supreme Court reform has to be front and center in every conversation about the Supreme Court and maybe every conversation about politics writ large in the next six weeks. Like, I think it's so, so important. The genre of this, I think, is echoing something that you said, Leah, about this all sort of feeling like a foregone conclusion.

• 11:44Kate Shaw?

  Like, the genre of the curtain raiser, where in normal times, we will, like, have a set of conversations about the big cases that the court is taking up. Those are fun to have in normal times. Like, the court does take up some really tough and interesting cases, and it can be satisfying and engaging to talk through the puzzles that they present and to, like, untangle lines of doctrine and to try to game out where various justices might be. But with so much of what the court is likely to do, a foregone conclusion, and the court just feeling so increasingly out of control and illegitimate, I am finding myself searching for the joy in that ordinary curtain raiser.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Not you, Kate. What have we done? What have we done to Kate? What have we done to Kate?

• 12:26Kate Shaw?

  So, back to kind of being together in Car Talk, I think I'm going to have to find my joy in us being, I think, back in a more regular schedule where the three of us will have more aligning episodes where we are all on after a summer of mostly not being on episodes together. And then there is, I guess, if not joy or pleasure, exactly like some satisfaction in using the platform and, like, the weekly episodes to try to keep attention trained on SCOTUS, not just the individual cases, but the larger structural questions and the court's leading role in our current democratic crisis. And so I guess we are going to do that.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Who are you and what have you done with Kate? Where is Kate?

• 13:05Kate Shaw?

  I took some time off this summer. I looked deep inside, and I had a hard time finding any silver linings, Melissa. I really did.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Kate, we turned you. We broke you.

• 13:15Kate Shaw?

  Or John Roberts and the rest of them did. Yeah. So that is, I think, my top-line opening observation. And maybe I'll just say one more thing to add to something, Melissa, you said about November and December being the places to really watch for election-related developments. And by that, I mostly mean November after the election and December, because we should say, as we sat down to record on Friday, the court had just granted another emergency application from the Trump administration. So this one stayed a D.C. District Court order and allowed the administration to begin implementing this new program for checking citizenship eligibility using a new federal database, although I guess it's actually just linking an existing social security database to this other existing database known as the SAVE database. So I will say, I'm at an academic conference. This just broke.

• 13:59Kate Shaw?

  It sounds really alarming, but there's, I think, a very big kind of but. The court says in its procurium opinion that another statute, the National Voter Registration Act, prevents states from doing any large-scale purges right now pursuant to this new database checking system because of the proximity to the election, although they can still do individualized citizenship checks. I mean, I am actually curious if you guys have a take on this. I can't yet tell how big a deal it is. It does seem like in the hands of bad-faith actors, of which there are many in our political landscape right now, this could result in meaningful disenfranchisement. But the fact that the majority seems to say clearly you can't do anything large-scale and that Jackson, who dissents with Sotomayor and Kagan, while furious about the disregard

• 14:41Kate Shaw?

  of what the legal test for emergency relief like this is supposed to be, does say the order will have minimal impact in at least the short term. So I guess this is not like five-alarm fire. Is that basically where you guys came down on this order?

• 14:53Speaker 00

  I'm just thinking, this is for 2028.

• 14:56Kate Shaw?

  Exactly.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  And they're facilitating the ceiling of 2028. And we know that database produces false positives, right? Misidentifying people, right, as not citizens? Like, we just know that. And so I think the question at this point is just how big the scale potentially is going to be for 2028. Like, what systems to put in place to ensure that people verify whether they are, in fact, on voter rolls in the lead-up to the election? And the one small blessing is, hopefully, this actually isn't going to have a huge impact for 2026, but people can begin preparing for what to do if and when they try to use it in 2028.

• 15:26Kate Shaw?

  Yeah. Okay. All right. So that did just come down, but that court did not, I mean, how could it have allowed this to really go into effect for 2026? Although, you know, hard to put anything past them at this point.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  There's our Kate. That's our Kate. There she is.

• 15:41Kate Shaw?

  Maybe. Okay, so two of them, maybe. Although, interestingly, they did not here try to say, like, yes, he can, and he can do it now as opposed to in 2028. So I guess that's a, like, a small blessing. But in any event, I do think that both in this order and more generally, we do appear to have dodged some of the most egregious election interference bullets in the pre-election period. Back to what Melissa said about November and December, I definitely think we cannot rule out post-election litigation, right? So people who lose the election trying to maybe take a page from the book of, do you guys remember Jefferson Griffin in North Carolina?

• 16:13Speaker 00

  Do I remember him? Haunts my dreams. That is a name that only a mustache, twirling Confederate would give a child, like...

• 16:21Kate Shaw?

  It is, in fact, his real name. And we talked about him a lot on the show because he was a candidate for state Supreme Court in North Carolina. He lost the election, then spent months litigating to try to get the courts to magically turn him from a loser to a winner and came unnervingly close to succeeding. But anyway, you can imagine something similar happening with a candidate trying to get mail ballots thrown out or manufacturing some non-citizen voting issue. And there could also be mischievous in Congress around refusing to seat Democrats, which could end up in the courts, though unclear if they would actually intercede. So all of that, I think, is a possibility, and so November and December, I think, could be much crazier on the SCOTUS front than right now we are anticipating. I have one more thought. Wait, should I, should it Taylor now or maybe come back to Taylor?

• 17:04Speaker 00

  You can interject your thoughts now. I'm still...

• 17:08Kate Shaw?

  You're still processing.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Building up mine.

• 17:10Kate Shaw?

  Oh, I see. Okay. All right. Well, I will just say, I like patient zero. Sorry, not sorry?

• 17:15Speaker 00

  I will just immediately add that the immediate first line, "If you want a party, make zero fucking sense." The bridge is appalling. And three, the people in my DMs saying they like this, and now you, Kate, are, I think, why we are on the verge of being a failed state. But I'll return to this later.

• 17:33Kate Shaw?

  Well, because the bar is now in hell. It sounds like it would be a mid-level fave on, like, Torture Poets Department. That is how I feel about it. Like, it would.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Incorrect. Incorrect. I literally have no idea what you're talking about. Bringing it back to normalizing bad behavior, which Kate is doing in real time. Fair. You know, the Eighth Circuit redistricting, where do you think the Eighth Circuit learned? That you can just make shit up, ignore judicial opinions and basic features of our judicial system, like the idea that trial courts make factual findings or that appellate courts have the final say? I learned it from watching you, Dad, as Melissa would say. So the Missouri redistricting... It's for you, Jen X. That's for you. Truly wild. You know, the Missouri Supreme Court told the Missouri Secretary of State that the state had to use its 2022 gerrymatter map, not the 2025 Trump-inspired mid-cycle redistricting map. But then a federal district court said, "Nuh-uh. I know state law better than you do state Supreme Court, and the state has to use the

• 18:27Speaker 00

  2025 map, not the 2022 map that the Missouri Supreme Court required to be used." Now, that federal court order, a temporary restraining order, was stayed on the shattered docket by even dumb-dumb Brett Kavanaugh. But still, the lower federal courts and Eighth Circuit weren't done. They decided to affirm the temporary restraining order, but as a permanent injunction. And because they said this is a permanent injunction rather than a temporary restraining order, they were like, "Oh, yeah, we're doing something totally different than what the Supreme Court told us we couldn't do." It's awfully thin line there.

• 18:55Kate Shaw?

  All right.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  Slicing the baloney. Yeah. And it is baloney.

• 19:00Kate Shaw?

  And because it is, do you think it's likely that we're going to get a Gorsuch slash Kavanaugh writing lecturing the lower courts for not complying with SCOTUS?

• 19:06Speaker 00

  I actually think there's a non-zero chance that the delay is, like, they are writing something.

• 19:10Kate Shaw?

  They?

• 19:11Speaker 00

  Not necessarily the two of them, but like a procurium kind of opinion.

• 19:13Kate Shaw?

  Okay.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  They're probably, it's probably taking a long time because they're fighting over who gets the purple marker. Well, exactly. And like Brett Kavanaugh, right, is like smudging his fingers in finger paint, and so that drafting process just takes, takes a lot longer. Takes time. Takes time.

• 19:26Kate Shaw?

  We should warn people that to give no credit if they actually write something lecturing, because this would be the first time that they've issued such a lecture to anyone but lower court cases.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  And the defiance is so egregious. It's just laughable. And, of course, after we finish recording, the Supreme Court did, in fact, stay the Eighth Circuit's ruling with some, I don't know, nagging and swipes at the Eighth Circuit, which failed to understand that only the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court alone, and sometimes the Fifth Circuit, get to make shit up and play fast and loose with the law. Or at least that you can't play fast and loose with this Supreme Court's own dick dots. Everything else is fair game then. Here's what the Supreme Court had to say. Quote, "Given this court's two prior orders in this litigation, our conclusion that this was error should come as no surprise." That's what I mean by swipe. And then, just to make it extra clear, these are the final two sentences. Quote, "The District Court and Court of Appeals should not enjoin or otherwise prohibit

• 20:18Speaker 00

  the use of the 2022 map, and the District Court and Court of Appeals should not order or otherwise require Missouri to use the 2025 map in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri." Let's go to South, and now back to our regular program.

• 20:37Speaker 00

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• 23:26Speaker 00

  Okay, so my other theme slash big-picture thought is going to require a somewhat extended, perhaps conspiratorial-sounding rant that will, might involve me talking for a bit and probably quickly, so just bear with me. Like, this is what happens when you are a conspiracy theorist. But my thought was, even taking the events-

• 23:43Kate Shaw?

  We're gonna let you cook, Leah, just go.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  Great. Even taking the events of just the last few weeks, I've been struck by how much the court is to blame for, at least partially, and how they're also probably going to make it all somehow even worse. So the president announced he was moving ahead with the plans for a triumphal arch that veterans say will sully Arlington Memorial Cemetery, and the president has deemed this a national security matter. And it's like, where did he pick up the notion that simply saying "national security" three times lets him conjure up fascism and do whatever he wants? The Supreme Court, which had a shadow docket order over the summer in the Ballroom case. That's a Clue reference, because, as I said, this is going to get conspiratorial. But in the Ballroom case, the court stayed a lower court injunction blocking the construction, and the Supreme Court gestured to the laughable executive branch declarations, waving their

• 24:27Speaker 00

  hands and saying, "Oh yeah, Ballroom, key for national security. Sick parties, key for national security." And so the president just truths out, quote, "At the strong request of the United States military and for national security," that's capitalized, "purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent triumphal arch into a top-grade military complex slash triumphal arch to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus snipers, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition." This is obviously BS, but he said the magic word, it's national security. So maybe it's fine, he has reason to think it will be fine, and also maybe they will just say he has a Second Amendment right to stockpile drones. You know, again, not to manifest, but I'm sure they're thinking it. To be fair to them, the Korematsu Court did start all of this.

• 25:13Kate Shaw?

  And being fair to them is that they are reinvigorating Korematsu.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  Well, even though they killed it. First, they killed it, then they reinvigorated it. But, to be fair, okay.

• 25:22Kate Shaw?

  At the same time.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  Also, on the national security front, the president attempted to justify his ban on the press, namely MSNBC, CNN, and Politico, on national security grounds, which was really interesting, because first, it was that they were doing fake news, but apparently fake news and national security are the same thing when you translate it in your Google Trump translator. Anyway, why not, right? Why not just convert viewpoint discrimination into a legitimate concern about national security? We're going to talk about the press ban later with Aaron Haynes.

• 25:54Kate Shaw?

  I mean, they already kind of did that in the TikTok case.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  100%. We will get into all of this with Aaron Haynes, so please stay tuned for that. Also, on the national security front, the DC Circuit picked up the bat signal. They rejected Anthropic's challenge to the Defense Department's exclusion of Anthropic's AI from DOD's supply chain when the DOD said it was a national security threat. But really, after Anthropic tried to raise concerns about the DOD using their product to create autonomous weapons, that was really the national security concern, that Anthropic was making noise about what the DOD was doing, but I-

• 26:29Kate Shaw?

  And if the president says that's a national security problem, it's not for courts to second-guess.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  You gotta say it three times and hope the candy man doesn't come up. I hear you, Melissa, now becoming part of my tinfoil hat brigade, because there's still more. You know, also, last week, this isn't on national security, but something else the court has made worse. Last week, federal immigration officers shot and wounded another person, Wilbur Rafael Garcés-Pérez. According to witness accounts, the shooting was likely seemingly unprovoked. They may have shot him after ramming into his car, perhaps, and as part of a traffic stop. And then they also allegedly refused to render aid or allow others to do so. And again, it's like emboldened immigration enforcement using excessive force that seems to target people based on their apparent race or ethnicity. Yes, I am speaking your name, Brett Kavanaugh.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  This is a Kavanaugh stop.

• 27:20Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, so I think you can draw a clear line from the court's blessing of those tactics on the ground in Los Angeles and these continued uses of this excessive force, as we just saw last week. So it's also possible that this term, the court might double down and make all of the potential for these government abuses even worse, because on their docket is a very scary case asking the court to formally overrule Bivins. That's the 1970s case that allows you to sue some federal officers for damages when they violate your constitutional rights, although in now very, very limited circumstances, the court in recent years has all but cabined Bivins and the two other cases that authorize damages suits against federal officers for violating constitutional rights to their very particular facts.

• 28:02Kate Shaw?

  And now, this term, the case Nielsen versus Watanabe provides the court with an opportunity to just overrule Bivins outright, give federal officers even more immunity, make them even less accountable. This case arises in the context of a claim where officers allegedly denied an incarcerated person medical care. So if you thought it couldn't get worse on unaccountable federal officials, it very much could.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  And the specific facts of that case before the Supreme Court actually call to mind the shooting I was talking about, because what happened to Wilbur Rafael Garcés-Pérez? He was allegedly left asleep on the floor of a jail with a bullet still lodged in his body, similar to Watanabe. And the older case the Supreme Court is being asked to overrule, that had said you can sue federal officers who deny you medical care while you are detained, but the court is, I think, likely to say, actually, no accountability for federal officers, sounds great to us.

• 28:55Kate Shaw?

  Yeah. For what it's worth, when it's had this opportunity in recent terms, it has basically stopped short of outright overruling Bivins and those other cases, and just read them exceedingly narrowly. But I think you're right. I think there is reason to fear that this court is almost accelerating in certain respects, the things that it has tried to slow-walk, like this line of cases. So I wouldn't at all be surprised if they just did the damn thing in this case. So, speaking of unaccountable and emboldened officials, The Times reported that federal officials are drafting an executive order that would give President Trump explicitly the ability to control billions of dollars in scientific grants funded by the National Institutes of Health. So just to make that clear, this would be rather than having experts with scientific

• 29:36Kate Shaw?

  training, award grants on the basis of expertise, science, likelihood, the benefit to humanity, the Trump administration is probably going to put some Doge-bro and/or white nationalist in charge of approving and vetoing grants because they do or do not align with the administration's priorities. And I ask you, ladies, where could the executive branch have gotten the idea that they could withhold money Congress had allocated, intrude on Congress's power of the purse, generally violate federal law? Melissa?

• 30:05Speaker 00

  I know the answer. They learned it from watching you, John Roberts. They learned it from watching you.

• 30:10Kate Shaw?

  Dad, we have to remember to call him dad.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Daddy John Roberts. They learned it from watching you, dad. So I am glad we are now all in Club Conspiracy, because it makes me feel less alone, because there's even more unitary executive theory fallout slash nonsense. So a ways back, Trump killed an anti-corruption investigation by killing an entire seemingly anti-corruption unit. Kind of unsurprising that after the Supreme Court, in its apostasy of an immunity opinion, insisted that the president has plenary powers over law enforcement, that the president might choose to do something like this. Perhaps more surprising is that this episode might have ensnared, get this, Susan Collins' concern levels through the fucking roof.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  True, true. This new reporting comes from ProPublica, which really takes can't-stop-won't-stop to a whole nother level. This is wild.

• 31:07Kate Shaw?

  They're just doing incredible work. So the specific investigation that ProPublica was reporting on here, the one that the president killed, was looking at whether campaign finance laws had been violated. There were allegations that in 2020, a corporation illegally funneled money to Susan Collins's campaign, specifically that a government contractor, someone who is prohibited from making campaign contributions, allegedly routed almost $200,000 to a Collins super PAC via- A shell company.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  And folks, if we just hop back into our hot tub time machine, you'll remember that 2020 was when Senator Susan Collins was facing her last tough reelection. And anyway, according to this reporting from ProPublica, the transfer of funds to the Collins Super PAC took place after the head of said Super PAC met with that government contractor. Indeed, ProPublica reviewed an email from the head of the Collins Super PAC to the government contractor in which the head of the Collins Super PAC characterized the decision to funnel the funds through a shell company as, quote, "very smart." Stringer Bell would say-

• 32:15Kate Shaw?

  Exactly. Don't want to write that down.

• 32:18Speaker 00

  But also, I truly hope these people never watch The Wire, because I would like them to continue violating Stringer Bell's rules.

• 32:25Kate Shaw?

  It seems pretty clear that they don't. So they're just going to keep writing this down. So ProPublica also detailed an email from a Collins Super PAC subordinate to a lobbyist in which the subordinate requested from the lobbyist the telephone number of the government contractor who allegedly orchestrated the transfer from the shell company. Why did the subordinate need the government contractor's phone number? Because allegedly, Susan Collins wanted to thank the contractor. And guys, let me just remind everyone, that's not illegal. It is not illegal to thank someone for doing something nice.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Right. It is not illegal to thank someone for doing something nice, which is why we saw the President of the United States at the State of the Union go up to John Roberts and say, "Thank you."

• 33:03Kate Shaw?

  I won't forget. Indeed.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  Anyway, well, I mean, it's slightly different because Donald Trump was apparently thanking John Roberts for reasons. I don't know. ProPublica's reporting alleges that Senator Collins may have been thanking the contractor for entirely different reasons. So according to the reporting, Collins subsequently steered more than $30 million in government contracts to the contractor's company. Senator Collins, of course, vigorously denies this. She may also be concerned about where ProPublica is getting its facts. Apparently, you should not talk to someone who has been convicted and rely on their word. I know someone who's been convicted 34 times.

• 33:53Kate Shaw?

  Would like a word, would like a word about that. Yeah. Speaking of which, let's get back to the, it's all connected. Right, I do think the court partially unleashed this in their immunity opinion, signaling to the president he has plenary control over law enforcement. They also partially greenlit this by just demolishing anti-corruption statutes. But this is, I think, the part where I really feel like the guy in the meme at the whiteboard, you know, is crazy, pointing to all of these connections. Because who, according to ProPublica, got involved in the attempt to cover up the campaign finance issues that sprang up around this alleged transfer? Allegedly, one Kleda Mitchell. Listeners, you'll probably remember Ms. Mitchell from the elite Strike Force legal team aiding Trump's efforts

• 34:37Kate Shaw?

  to challenge the 2020 presidential election. Release the kraken. That was her, yep. But back to the campaign finance and blaming the Supreme Court. I'm trying to stay focused, but again, guy at the whiteboard pointing at all of the connections. The insane campaign spending and campaign spending asymmetries that we are seeing, including some that is going to try to bury the Susan Collins story, it includes the fact that the Dems are being outspent because the Republican National Committee has so much more cash on hand. Some $200 million was spent by Republican Super PACs in the first half of September. Here in Michigan, I cannot turn on my TV without seeing an ad attacking Abdul Al Sayed or an ad praising Mike Rogers.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  Well, some of that is because of RNC versus FEC. That was the court's decision last June that allowed candidates to coordinate with party committees about how party committees spend their insane war chests. And because the court, in a recent shadow docket order that Rashad Robinson and I just discussed a couple of weeks ago on the pod, allowed the Federal Communications Commission to demand that broadcasters give the party committees huge discounts on ads, which just exacerbates the spending asymmetries between the parties. So again, the Supreme Court, like a doula, I'm ready to catch this baby. Let's go.

• 35:50Kate Shaw?

  But let's just say, those are obviously the most recent installments. But obviously, the 2010 Citizens United case, right, really is-

• 35:56Speaker 00

  And subsequent.

• 35:57Kate Shaw?

  And the, yeah, DC Circuits.

• 35:58Speaker 00

  I mean, that's evergreen.

• 35:59Kate Shaw?

  I know, but I'm just saying, like, it's, yes, these are obviously important tweaks.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Say the name.

• 36:05Kate Shaw?

  So Citizens United, Speak Now, right, these cases that are-

• 36:07Speaker 00

  McCutcheon.

• 36:08Kate Shaw?

  That actually created the infrastructure of this Super PAC world that we are all living in. Like, that's where these hundreds of millions of dollars are coming from. And we are likely to see hundreds more pour in to sort of airwaves across the country in the next six weeks. And it's because of SCOTUS.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  And if you're wondering whether this could get worse, that sound you hear is one Samuel Alito revving up a diesel, gas-guzzling engine to pour some greenhouse gases into the ozone, pounding some roided up energy drinks while saying to the other justices, "Lady and gentlemen, start your engines. It's time to determine who America's most powerful corporation and next most fascist justice will be."

• 36:48Kate Shaw?

  Do you take any solace in their diesel engines being extremely expensive to fill right now?

• 36:53Speaker 00

  No, because I'm sure they're disfunded by their billionaire benefactors.

• 36:57Kate Shaw?

  Probably right.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Carlin Crowe just like pulls up a whole tanker of diesel.

• 37:01Kate Shaw?

  Exactly.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  And like, here you go.

• 37:02Kate Shaw?

  Fills it up right there. Yeah, that's probably right. Okay, so let's provide a little bit of detail in terms of what the cases that we're talking about look like. There are a number about corporate power and possibly corporate immunity. These cases offer the court yet more opportunities to give corporations a pass from legal liability, which could mean more money in corporations' pockets. So let's tick through them. First, in Department of Labor versus Sun Valley, the court will decide whether to throw out the Department of Labor's adjudicatory scheme for collecting money from employers who allegedly withhold wages from workers.

• 37:33Speaker 00

  Sounds cool.

• 37:34Kate Shaw?

  Right, exactly. And then there's SunCor Energy versus County Commissioners of Boulder County, where the court will determine whether oil companies are immune from state tort lawsuits alleging harms from climate change. You know, it's whether federal law preempts these state tort lawsuits. Please also note that Sam Alito has stock in Exxon and refuses to recuse from this case. This guy is totally dickmatised by the oil and gas industry.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  So much so that I'm sure that in true Taylor Swift fashion, Sam Alito is going to record a new song called "Oiled."

• 38:07Kate Shaw?

  Ew.

• 38:09Speaker 00

  But again, the fact that there are these clear parallels to what Sam Alito might do and this album speaks volumes.

• 38:17Kate Shaw?

  You deserved a nice thing right now, Leah. You deserved some good songs, and I'm sorry that that didn't happen.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  But she has a good song, "Coming Down the Pike," "Oiled," by Sam Alito.

• 38:26Kate Shaw?

  I really look forward to that.

• 38:27Speaker 00

  I don't.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  Could be about skincare, we don't know what it's about. I don't know. Anyway, while on the topic of SCOTUS-

• 38:38Kate Shaw?

  That was the subtext, Leah, subtext.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  No, but this is the problem, is like, this album, right, makes everything so explicit and crass. Like, it's not even fun or witty.

• 38:49Kate Shaw?

  It's true, but we don't have to do that.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  I think we just did. All right, while on the topic of SCOTUS ethics, or lack thereof, corruption, let's just talk about it. Can I just note that the president last week hosted a state dinner with President Xi of China? And who were some of the individuals invited to attend this monumental state event at the White House? Well, not the folks you think of, not the folks you might think would be invited. Instead, the folks on the list that we would be interested in knowing about included noted institutionalist John G. Roberts and his wife Jane. Not just the chief justice, though.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  Also included among the party was Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her husband Jesse, as well as Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. Can I have beer instead of the champagne, as well as his wife Ashley?

• 39:46Kate Shaw?

  Do you think the president attempted to go up to them and ask them, "Why are you such shells of the people you used to be?" Like, he posted in that Truth Social.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  I asked, "Why these guys?"

• 39:56Kate Shaw?

  It was interesting, especially because it's the ballroom. And, you know, it's not in the ballroom, because there is no full ballroom yet. But like, I think it was just in one of those tents. I think that's where this state dinner was. But Roberts, Barrett, it's an interesting choice. Like, why not Thomas Nalito? You think he invited them and they declined? I wouldn't be surprised.

• 40:12Speaker 00

  You think they declined? I don't know. Why would they decline? I bet Ginny Thomas would love to be at something like that. I do see why Brett Kavanaugh was invited. I mean, like, the learning resources, like, yes. Major Questions doctrine doesn't apply in Foreign Affairs. Like, that's the guy.

• 40:27Kate Shaw?

  But Barrett and Roberts have sold him out in several cases.

• 40:31Speaker 00

  I don't know. I mean, I still think immunity opinion number one in his book. So, yeah, I don't know.

• 40:37Kate Shaw?

  Won't forget it.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  Exactly. Won't forget it. So I am glad we are all bringing big, big conspiracy energy to the podcast now. And in this list of all of the things the Supreme Court has allowed, facilitated, enabled, I didn't even touch on the administration's alleged violations, apparent violations of court orders, you know, on the media press ban, where even after a lower court invalidated the president's revocation of MSNBC and other outlets' press credentials, MSNBC reporters were still barred entry, at least for some time. Or on DVD, the third country removal case, where the administration seemed to, again, be putting people on planes off to third countries, even after courts issued additional decisions limiting them. Additionally, on Friday, a federal judge held the Trump administration in contempt

• 41:19Speaker 00

  for deporting a man to El Salvador in violation of not one, not two, but three court orders. And I think the court is partially to blame for this noncompliance, given that they have repeatedly given the administration equitable extraordinary relief from lower court orders that the administration has plausibly violated, without saying so much as a word about any alleged noncompliance.

• 41:40Kate Shaw?

  Let's just maybe say a couple more words about the DVD case. We talked about it quite a bit during the first year of the second Trump administration, so in 2025. At issue here are the administration's efforts to deport individuals to third countries. So that's places where they have no relationship with, where they may be, and reporting suggests that some have been, subject to brutal and inhumane conditions, including torture. This truly was one of the most egregious abuses of the shadow docket during that first year of Trump 2.0. The court, with zero reasoning, allowed the administration to continue these removals, even though a lower court, in a carefully reasoned opinion, had found them likely unlawful. And to repeat this, and Leah has already said it, SCOTUS could not be bothered to say literally one word about that lower court conclusion and why it was wrong.

• 42:22Kate Shaw?

  And then the next day, SCOTUS reiterated that, yes, the administration could keep sending people to third countries, the district court should get out of the way. Okay, so that was all preliminary, the very early stages of litigation. Now, the same district court has issued a final judgment invalidating the policy, and the administration is back before SCOTUS a third time, begging to be allowed to resume these horrifying deportations. And if passed as prologue, the court will let them.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  I don't think it's overstating things to say that DVD was one of the worst decisions ever issued on the shadow docket. And the fact that it's now back at the court might have been on Justice Jackson's mind when she delivered some remarks, including about the shadow docket last week. So she said, quote, "We cannot expect the public to have faith in our judicial system if, without clear explanation, we are consistently greenlighting harmful acts that do real damage to litigating plaintiffs." A whole word. But while we are on the topic of crimes against humanity, I think now will be the time when I briefly share additional thoughts about "Life of a Showgirl" encore, because I do have additional thoughts in addition to the ones I have already shared.

• 43:30Speaker 00

  My bottom line, in addition to those I've already revealed, is that the album makes me want to walk into the ocean or impale my own ears and brain with rusty metal, so I am never again subjected to this dribble. I personally think Max Martin should both be embarrassed and eventually forced to answer for his crimes, which include the bad rap randomly inserted on Pink Clouding, the Patient Zero Bridge, which I've already noted, and the entire fucking song of "Cleveland." I am personally offended, on a very deep level, that, sonically, Cleveland calls to mind folklore in the opening. So it's not just a bad song. It's a bad song that tarnishes what was good. Like, lyrically, it's-

• 44:12Kate Shaw?

  Folklore is still good. It's not affected by this.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  No, it is. It mentally in my brain, right? I will think of Cleveland now when I hear the opening passage of "Last Great American Dynasty." Also, these are love songs, to the extent, and they are more about what the world-

• 44:26Kate Shaw?

  I know.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  -sees in their relationship than what she sees in him. Like, the woman-

• 44:32Kate Shaw?

  Yes, okay. It is largely about perception, but I will say two things. One, "He already took me to Cleveland" is a fucking funny line. That is a funny line.

• 44:40Speaker 00

  Unintentionally.

• 44:40Kate Shaw?

  Absolutely.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  Unintentionally.

• 44:42Kate Shaw?

  But deeply.

• 44:42Speaker 00

  Unclear who's in on the joke.

• 44:43Kate Shaw?

  Maybe not. But also, you know, there is some, like, kind of internal logic to it. So the line, "You only need to find one person in this entire world who doesn't find you completely insufferable, and I have an important announcement to make," that is about her and her relationship, and the song is awful, but I sort of found that charming.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  But here's the thing. It could have been interesting to explore this disparity between, like, having this, like, a deep, satisfying, warm, personal connection, right? That's, like, on the inside, and the rest of the world hating you. But she already did that and did it well in reputation. And the fact that, like, the woman who wrote "Evermore" is now saying, "This is the love of my life, hey, hey, hey," like, makes me want to eat myself into a sun.

• 45:26Kate Shaw?

  He likes what he likes, and he likes me.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  The, like, "You all don't like me, but ha, I got married."

• 45:31Kate Shaw?

  He does, I know. It's, yeah.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  It's not some big own. And also, I take it Pink Clouding is, like, an apology to Tom Hiddleston?

• 45:39Kate Shaw?

  Oh.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  But she's gonna have to apologize to him all over again because of the song, or at least because of the random rap. And I just feel like, if no one around you is willing to tell you these hard truths, I volunteer to do so. The album could have been amusing, had it just been released as, like, a spite album. "Oh, you all hated this, I'm gonna give you even more of it." And I just, in conclusion, you know who I bet likes this album?

• 46:04Kate Shaw?

  Brett Kavanaugh?

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, because that's how dumb it is. Oh. That's all.

• 46:08Kate Shaw?

  Oh, you think Charlie likes it? Because it's so bad?

• 46:09Speaker 00

  Charlie Axie has to like this bitch.

• 46:11Kate Shaw?

  Yeah.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah. My haters destroy themselves.

• 46:15Kate Shaw?

  Totally, yeah.

• 46:17Speaker 00

  The point about, like, marriage as an own, um, may I just refer you to some really fantastic work done by a young and promising scholar called "Marriage as Punishment"? But, like, this marriage is punishment for me!

• 46:31Kate Shaw?

  That's still slaps. That's an early Melissa. That's an early Melissa case.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  That title was a beggar.

• 46:34Kate Shaw?

  Really was. As is the entire article. Yeah, it is, I was just thinking-

• 46:38Speaker 00

  An award-winning article.

• 46:40Kate Shaw?

  Absolutely, and rightly so. Just to bring this back to, not SCOTUS, but Trump, the state visit from President Xi, I think, caused, I think, a lot of people to observe that it is just so rare in history that you see a great power self-immolate. Like, great powers fall, but usually because of some external force. Anyway, I dropped that observation in the context of our Taylor convo, for what it is worth.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  Self-immolation going on everywhere.

• 47:03Kate Shaw?

  Apparently. Except for at the Supreme Court, at least, at least in the short term. Maybe ultimately that's what's happening there, but, uh-

• 47:07Speaker 00

  I don't know. I've got a new article on me, "Supermajorities as Punishment."

• 47:13Kate Shaw?

  When we come back, Melissa is going to talk to Erin Haines. She's the president of the National Association of Black Journalists and co-host of Crooked's Long Play podcast. She and Melissa are gonna talk about news outlets suing the president for continued press access.

• 47:31Speaker 00

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• 51:10Speaker 00

  Listeners, Leah and Kate and I briefly discussed the president's media ban on CNN, MSNBC and Politico. Those news outlets promptly filed suit against the administration in response from being denied access to the White House grounds. And in multiple acts of solidarity, law firms, you could take a note from this, 49 additional media organizations, including CBS News, Fox News and the New York Times, filed a supporting legal brief in that litigation. And as importantly, the major TV networks withdrew from the rotating White House press pool in a rare joint protest. So a lot of solidarity among the news because everyone understands that this is an attack on the press and it's not just an attack

• 51:53Speaker 00

  on liberal press, it can be turned around to attack all press. Anyway, District of Columbia District Judge Timothy Kelly issued an order late Wednesday night blocking the president's ban for 14 days. Given everything that is going on, we thought that we should bring in someone who could talk with us about the press and someone who is not only a member of the press, but perhaps has a really vested interest in freedom of the press. And I couldn't think of anyone better than our good friend, Erin Haines. Erin is no stranger to the crooked media network. She is an award-winning political journalist, the editor-at-large and co-founder of The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom that focuses on the intersection of race, gender and politics. She is a co-host of The Long Play and she currently serves

• 52:38Speaker 00

  as the 24th president of the National Association of Black Journalists. Erin, welcome to Strict Scrutiny. Let's get to it. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for having me and thanks for wanting to talk about this. Right? I mean, you don't have to be a black journalist to care about black journalists. So thanks. Well, let's start there. So Lonnie Gwinier and Gerald Torres, both fantastic law professors, once wrote that people of color are often the canary in the coal mine for injustices, which is to say that people of color may experience it first, but it ultimately then trickles down to everyone. Given your experience representing black journalists as the president of the NABJ, were you surprised to see the president block selected outlets from the White House? What has his past behavior been with journalists?

• 53:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, the short answer is absolutely not, right? And even before I'm president of the National Association of Black Journalists, right? I'm old enough to remember 2016 when President Trump was in office the first time around and he was targeting who? Black women journalists, Jamelle Hill, April Ryan, Yamiche Alcindor, he's calling them out in press conferences from the press briefing room and talking about black women journalists who are doing their jobs, by the way, with professionalism, with integrity, with excellence every single day. And yet, you know, because they are asking questions, by the way, on behalf of the American people, he is trying to disparage them, he's trying to discredit them. And in that time, there were no consequences. There weren't people that were really pushing back against that behavior. And so, you know, fast forward a decade later,

• 54:07Speaker 00

  when he is continuing to single out women journalists, also black women journalists, Rachel Scott, Akayla Gardner, Jasmine Wright and others, he's singling these people out. Their colleagues are not pushing back against this in real time. The White House Correspondents Association not standing up for them. And so, you know, it has taken some time. The Associated Press, when they refused to refer to the Gulf of America and they were kicked out of the press pool and their colleagues did not stand with them at that time. They stood alone when they pushed back and said, no, we're not going to do that, right? And they litigated and that litigation is still ongoing. Correct. I mean, but like they pursued legal action. They didn't have anybody standing with them in that moment. And so, all of that, because there have not been consequences for years, right?

• 54:51Speaker 00

  Because this was allowed to become somewhat normalized, you know, at the highest levels of our government, absolutely. Why wouldn't he think that he can curate, right? Like who gets to be asking questions from the White House, from the people's house? So the president's ban is obviously animated by his objections to how he is covered by various outlets, the kind of questions that these black women journalists were asking. And to be very clear, that's viewpoint discrimination. Like you can't ban people from the press pool because you don't like what they're saying or the questions that they're asking, even if you dress it up as a national security concern. Sure. So I think we should just say it is unlikely that the president's arguments will be availing in court.

• 55:36Speaker 00

  But I think there is a bigger question about what happens outside of courtrooms, which is to say this president's actions on the press may have repercussions in the court of public opinion. That's right. So how do you think this is registering with ordinary Americans and their understanding of the media and how it works? And what its role is as an accountability institution for this president? Yeah, absolutely. Look, I mean, I think that is one, a potentially good thing that has come out of this unfortunate situation. And that is people paying more attention to the First Amendment and the importance of the First Amendment. Yes, absolutely that. And also that this is about, I mean, attacks on press freedom, attacks on journalists being able to hold power to account, actually erode the public's right to know, right?

• 56:21Speaker 00

  If these journalists are not in the room asking questions of the president on behalf of the American people, they're still going to try to do their jobs. Obviously, you saw those same journalists outside of the White House gates still trying to report on what the administration is doing. But like the idea, I think Americans are seeing, oh, what is it that the administration, that this president doesn't want the American people to know about what he is doing? I think that is the message that's translating for a lot of the American people right now. Look, we know journalism is not this country's favorite profession. And yet, they can understand what the impact may be to them if journalists are not able to do their jobs. And you think people are really cottoning on to that right now? Because like people don't trust the media.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  Like they think that the media is siloed, that Fox is for him and MSNBC is for the other team. And they really don't believe that there's truth that like, I mean, they're getting their news from a wide array of sources, not all of them reputable. Does this further erode the way people think about the media? And does it endanger the idea that the media is one of the few mechanisms that we have right now to call this administration to account? Well, I think that's definitely the risk. And I think that that's part of, you know, why the president continues to call journalism fake news and talk about the press as the enemy of the people. It is because the relationship between a healthy democracy and a healthy press, I mean, you don't have one without the other, right? So if you can discredit a free and representative press

• 57:50Speaker 00

  in a democracy, then you are eroding the entire institution. My hope is that people are beginning to become more aware of the relationship between journalism and democracy, that an attack on journalism is an attack on democracy in this country. So to that point, I thought one of the things that was so striking about the Chinese state visit was the president actually lauding the Chinese press and President Xi's control, autocratic control over the Chinese press. I don't think we've ever had an American president say something like that, like actually look to an autocratic nation and say like, I'll have what he's having. Yes, it's usually people around the world

• 58:34Speaker 00

  look at our press and our free press as an example of how this can work. I mean, this is another reason why journalists in the White House asking questions of power every single day, the world sees that. It is not just that the American people are seeing that. The world is seeing that in this country, in a democracy, you have journalists who are able to ask questions of the most powerful person in the country, arguably in the world, right? That is not the case in every country in the world. But that is what countries understand or what they have historically understood as what it means to be part of a democracy. One of the things that this administration has done that probably doesn't get as much notice as it should

• 59:15Speaker 00

  is that it has completely recast the Voice of America. So Voice of America was launched many, many years ago as a means of basically trumpeting a pro-democracy message throughout the world, particularly in countries that might be on the precipice of dipping into autocracy. And this president, one of the first things he did was install Kari Lake as the head of the Voice of America. And then he subsequently cut the funding for it. So it doesn't work anymore. Like what's the impact of something like that on a free press? And the role of the free press, not only being accountable here at home,

• 59:57Speaker 00

  but also perhaps spreading those democratic ideals elsewhere? Yeah, I mean, that's just it, right? Like the relationship between a free press and democracy, that message being spread across the world because of a vehicle like Voice of America. If you don't have that, you lose a very valuable vehicle for people to understand the role of the press and getting them information in some of those countries. But for Voice of America, they weren't getting information about what was going on, where they were. And so for them to have had that understanding of how journalism, of how the spread of honest and accurate information is supposed to happen, for that to go away, they do lose something. I think democracy more broadly loses something

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  when you have democracy being dimmed via a dimming of the press domestically and abroad. So one of the news stories this year that has fascinated me, again, this has not gotten a ton of coverage elsewhere, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EEOC, has effectively allowed a suit to proceed against the New York Times. So a white New York Times staffer has argued that the Times's policies, which were inaugurated between seven and five years ago, which require the newsroom to be more diverse, he argues that because of those policies, he was denied an important promotion. I will note that the Times implemented those policies

• 1:01:22Speaker 00

  in large part because lots of people have said, and I think there's plenty of evidence to support it, that when you have communities of color being covered by people who live in those communities, who are part of those communities, they're just going to register in a different way. And having a more diverse newsroom means you will cover a wider array of stories than you otherwise might. And so the fact of a diverse newsroom means they're going to be a better newspaper. This person apparently took the fact of a more diverse newsroom or the interest in a more diverse newsroom personally. And now the EEOC has allowed the suit to proceed. This is going to be something that The New York Times defends vigorously, uses all of its resources to defend, I hope.

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  But I don't think a lawsuit like this is necessarily aimed at The New York Times and those large media news outlets that can defend themselves. This is about smaller papers and getting smaller papers and news outlets to be afraid of doing diversity or having diversity initiatives because they can't afford to take the risk of being sued. And as a consequence, maybe they'll think twice when it's time to hire a woman or they want to hire a person of color. And that's exactly what this kind of lawsuit is about. And what do you think about that as the president of an organization that's meant to encourage diversity in journalism, meant to champion the work of Black journalists when we're

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  literally seeing the toehold that Black journalists and other journalists of color have gotten in these newsrooms, which is so tenuous, being eroded in real time? Yeah, I mean, tenuous to say the least. Look, I mean, The New York Times didn't just say it. The Kerner Commission report said it in 1968, right? Like, if, if we are going to get to a place where American journalism is truly representative, then we need to be hiring Black journalists to cover Black communities and the totality of diverse communities, right? Like, not just showing up when something bad happens, but covering them in their everyday life, showing them a full picture of themselves. Like, that is the work that, to this day, is not fully happening in American journalism, right?

• 1:03:32Speaker 00

  And so, NABJ comes along in 1975, founded by 44 Black journalists who understood that representation inside newsrooms was essential to shaping the fair and accurate coverage of Black communities across this country, right? And so, here we are, 51 years later. I think when the Kerner Commission report came out, something like 5% of all the journalists in American newsrooms were Black journalists. That number today is something around 6%, right? So, we're not talking about the Black press has just taken over American journalism. Far from it, right? Like, we are still fighting for Black journalists to have their rightful place in American newsrooms because journalism, and Black journalism included, is part of democratic infrastructure.

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  You do not have an honest and accurate record of this country without Black journalists. You do not have the American story without the stories that Black journalists are telling in communities across this country each and every single day, right? So, I think that the media consolidations and media cuts, whenever that happens, it always affects Black journalists disproportionately. We're often the last hired, and so that means we're the first that are shown the door. And diversity is always a casualty, even though we know, like I said, it is journalistic malpractice not to have people covering the communities that share their lived experience. We know that, right? And so, in this anti-DEI climate, which is affecting all institutions, journalism is not immune to that. Now, you're seeing this New York Times lawsuit.

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  You're seeing an EEOC that is sympathetic to white Americans, right? They are the ones that are the victims of discrimination at this point. And so, yeah, that absolutely sends a message to newsrooms, frankly, that have not been particularly committed to diversity without being pressured and pushed to hire diverse journalists in their newsrooms that are being empowered, frankly, to make a different decision that goes, frankly, in a direction that I don't think is productive for the profession or for our democracy. It's such a good point. And the fact that so many people are talking about the president's assault on the press but not linking it to this EEOC lawsuit is just, it's just insane to me. Like, they are part and parcel of the same thing. One final question for you, and thank you for taking the time.

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  I know you were at a conference and you've got tons of stuff going on, so just one final thing. In recent years, there's been criticism of formal coalition press groups. For example, the White House Correspondents Association has drawn some real critiques by those who argue that the WHCA has prioritized maintaining strong relationships with those in power over aggressively defending a free press. And one of the things they cite is that the WHCA continues to have its annual dinner where the president and members of the administration come, and it's something of a tongue bath for the administration. What do you think the role should be between these press organizations and journalists

• 1:06:27Speaker 00

  at this time? How do you balance the interest and the need for access with the desire and indeed the imperative to stand up for the First Amendment? So, from where I sit, the First Amendment is not optional. And I think that we are in a moment where journalists are going to have to fight for this profession. We're not going to have access to anything if we don't have, if we don't have a profession intact and standing strong and standing together, because the truth has to matter. The truth has to matter on behalf of the people that we are telling the truth for. And, and so, that, to me, feels like our best and highest use in this moment, because if we don't get that right, then, then we're not going to be able to do any of the rest of it. I'm encouraged by, you know, the White House Correspondents Association's recent stance,

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  you know, after this latest attack on the press with the president banning, you know, MSNBC, CNN, and Politico, the White House Correspondents Association coming out and speaking, pushing back against that. I mean, that certainly was something that I felt was overdue, but it is welcome that it is happening now. It is welcome that there, you know, have even been organizations of the Associated Press put out a statement, even though they were not one of the organizations that was impacted by this press ban, because there's an understanding. CNN was not allowed on Monday to have its cameras, and so, all of the outlets said, "We will not have cameras." That kind of solidarity, that kind of strength in numbers, it matters right now because we have to say collectively, in solidarity, there is strength in numbers to stand up and say that this is not acceptable and that this is not something that we can allow to be normalized in a healthy democracy.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  We cannot allow this to be normalized, right? This is wrong and it is anti-democratic. And it is not the prerogative of the president to decide who does or does not get to cover him. That's not the prerogative of any president, right? To be able to do that because they like or dislike the coverage that they are getting. We have a role to play, and it is important for us to assert that role and assert our First Amendment rights at each and every turn so that it is not okay to suggest that we're doing anything less than our jobs with professionalism, integrity, and excellence every single day. All right, Erin Haines, thanks so much for stopping by. I know you had a busy day, but we always, always value your expertise here on Strict Scrutiny. Thank you. Thank you.

• 1:08:36Speaker 00

  Listeners, you can read Erin's writing at the 19th, and you can listen to her along with Jennifer Palmieri and Mitchell Andrew at The Long Play, another fantastic, crooked podcast, sister podcast to Strict Scrutiny. And after this break, you'll have Leah with her incredible interview with Mahmoud Khalil. That's coming up.

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• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  It's time for the next and final segment, for which we got a huge news story underscoring just one reason why it is so important. So before we bring you my conversation with Mahmoud Khalil, Columbia graduate and victim of the administration's anti-Palestine speech campaign, wanted to talk about this Associated Press story, which confirmed that ICE has begun essentially electronically disappearing people who are in the agency's custody and who are subject to final orders of removal. So as of last week, anyone who is jailed by ICE and is subject to a final order of removal will not appear in the ICE online detainee locator system, making them effectively vanish. And what this means is people who have been detained for months suddenly will not appear in the locator

• 1:12:03Speaker 00

  system, even if they have not been moved. And people who are newly arrested may not show up in the system at all. So people, family lawyers, will not know where they are. You know, they could be deported and you might not know. And among other things, this will make it quite difficult to file habeas petitions challenging detention because attorneys won't even know what federal district their client has been moved to, you know, as a stage for their removal. And this might apply to, like, we don't really know, could be maybe a third of the people in ICE custody. And this tactic of disappearing people, making them hard to find to impede their ability to vindicate their rights is, of course, a tactic that the administration has tried, albeit in different form, shuttling people around so they're hard to find and before they can contact an attorney, including in Mahmoud Khalil's case.

• 1:12:48Speaker 00

  So Mahmoud Khalil is with me now. He's a recent Columbia graduate and his new book, No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention, is out tomorrow, September 29. Mahmoud became one of the faces of the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech because of his advocacy and organization. There were so many immigration matters on the court's docket last term. And this year, it's possible there will be more, including ones about immigration detention. So I am honored to talk to someone who can speak about this all firsthand. Mahmoud Khalil, welcome to Strict Scrutiny. Thank you, Leah, for having me. Of course. So let's get started. The title of your book, No Land to Stand On, can refer to Palestine, refugee status, immigration status, detention, and even legal standing to raise a claim.

• 1:13:31Speaker 00

  What meanings did you intend the title to carry? To me, I think No Land to Stand On was more of a realization, telling myself that statement. You know, I, myself, was born and raised in Syria, but I don't have its citizenship. I lived there for 18 years. I called Syria my home, but I always knew that it's not my permanent home. Because, you know, everything I had had something temporary on it. You know, my ID used to say, like, temporary ID for Palestinian refugees. The same when I went to Lebanon, when I fled Syria at the age of 18. I had to renew my residency, my temporary residency, every single year.

• 1:14:15Speaker 00

  And when I came here and I finally felt that this could be a place I could stay here, like, I'm seeking permanent home at that time. You know, like, the fall of the regime in Syria, the Assad regime, that I was basically fleeing, felt so distant. So I was seeking literally a permanent home. And that's basically, like, when I got the green card, it's the first permanent thing. You know, it's a permanent residency. Yes. LPR, it's supposed to be. The P is for permanent, for those of you listening. So that, to me, like, No Land to Stand On is more around impermanence. And also, I think the specific sentence,

• 1:14:59Speaker 00

  a lot of it comes from my mom. So my mother also fled Syria a few years after I left, like, in 2014 or 15, to Germany. And they couldn't see my family for over five years. Or, yeah, five years at least. I finally was able to go to Germany to see them. And when I met my mom, like, in Syria, she was very vibrant, very energetic. In Berlin, I felt like she lost her spark. And that pained me. And when I asked her, like, you know, what's wrong? Like, you look at her, you're like, she feels defeated in a way. And I remember she told me, like, I spent my whole life and my work,

• 1:15:44Speaker 00

  the money that we got to build a home for us in Syria. And in a year, we lost everything. So now I feel as if, like, I don't have a place. So why would I bother now to be that energetic? So it's really like, that feeling of deprivation, of impermanence, of just like uncertainty, especially now, what I'm feeling with uncertainty, I could be deported any day. My wife and I, like, can't plan anything because it just could happen any day. So the book really builds on this theme of displacement, right? And the uncertainty and instability that creates. And writing about that, but also so much more, you write that Palestine is not merely an exception to supposedly universal rights,

• 1:16:28Speaker 00

  like, the right to have a home, right? Or a country. But a warning about how easily those rights can be withdrawn from others. What do you want readers to understand from that warning? I think for years, we, as Palestinians, have been warning, like, everything starts with us. So take my personal story. When I was detained back in March 2025, like, a couple of months into Trump's administration, we were warning that it's gonna start with us. We are the canary in the coal mine. And then after my detention, the Trump administration touted about it as a plan or as a blueprint. That's what the White House said about my arrest.

• 1:17:13Speaker 00

  Because they want to use my arrest as a test case against other people. And also a warning to others. And warning to others. Like, they want to make an example out of me so no one would speak up against the administration. It's not necessarily not to speak about Palestine. Of course, that was a primary goal for them, to just, like, chill the speech of people, and mostly students, from speaking out for Palestine. Because the intention was not international students. Right. Most of the protesters were American students, American citizens who were dismayed by the genocide happening in Gaza, by the US support to that. But after me, they went- So, so, so sorry if I might interrupt you. Since, you know, you are saying that this is partially

• 1:17:58Speaker 00

  about, of course, the government's desire to chill speech and suppress speech, right? And like, the First Amendment is partially the vehicle, right, for challenging what is happening. But Palestine is the reason, as you are also describing. So what is lost when liberal defenders protect a Palestinian speaker's abstract right to speak while potentially distancing themselves from the substance of what the speaker is actually saying? I think I talk a little bit about in my story, how, in the book, like, how some of my lawyers wanted to focus a lot on your case as the First Amendment speech. Like, let's focus only on that and, you know, not talk a lot about Palestine, because Palestine is more of a throning issue. A lot of people wouldn't feel comfortable

• 1:18:42Speaker 00

  about, like, supporting you if it was about Palestine. But if we say, like, it's the First Amendment, then it's easier to joke. And I think that was, to me, sort of, I wouldn't say insulting, like, I understand their point of view. I understand that they are trying to protect me and to really have my case resonate with as many people as possible. But with that, I'm sort of like, I would be participating in the erasure of my people. The right to narrate that Palestinians, for so long, were denied. Everyone speaks about Palestinians, what Palestinians want, what Palestinians are, but they never want to hear from Palestinians. They don't want to hear about, like, all these things about Palestine. And by being complicit in that,

• 1:19:27Speaker 00

  I'm shooting myself in the leg, like, why would I do that? And as if speaking for Palestine is a taboo, is something wrong. And it's not. What I was advocating for is simply for equal rights, the end of killing, the end of using our tuition fees at Columbia or our tax dollars in the US from being sent to a foreign government. So there's nothing wrong about that. It's why we're trying to tiptoe around, like, that topic. And liberals still get wrong now, like, you know, with the Ed Sheeran, McElmore now, like, all that happening. It's not merely about First Amendment. Or even just about corporate power, right? Exactly. It goes beyond, way beyond that.

• 1:20:10Speaker 00

  So, most people might be familiar with some aspects of your story, or at least how the administration targeted you, literally grabbing you off the street, shipping you off, sending you to different detention facilities. And as you recount that experience, you say that constitutional protections supposedly are not supposed to depend on whether a person is sent to New Jersey, Louisiana, or Vermont. But in practice, it does. And of course, this is a theme that is very familiar to our listeners as we talk about the Fifth Circuit or courts in Texas often. But what does your case suggest about the conventional legal idea that federal law is uniform and applies across the country?

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  I mean, absolutely, like, the law should be one and equal and applied equally to everyone, especially in one country. But the legal system in this country, I feel like it's it's a product of the political system, where presidents appoint or nominate their preferred judges. And it's just like, it's insane to me because it's very, very ideological. It becomes that a court would become very ideological. And what happened to me, we call it forum shopping, where the government would want to take the case to a place where they think they would get a very preferable judge. That's happening so much in the South, and that's why it was shipped. And to me, when I realized that that was even possible,

• 1:21:35Speaker 00

  I was very shocked, like, that a court wouldn't see that. Like, that's why the government shipped me over 1,300 miles in 24 hours, like, less than 24 hours. I think I was out of New York 14, 15 hours after my arrest. And that makes like this tiered system of justice. So, for example, in my habeas petition case that was argued in Jersey, we won because, like, that's like, the case is so clear that the government is trying to unlawfully detain me based on these bogus claims. But it was a Democrat judge that ruled in our favor. After that, we lost an appeal, two to one,

• 1:22:20Speaker 00

  because the panel was two Republicans, one Democrat. After that, en banc, when the whole court wanted to hear it, it was like six to five, we lost six to five. So it was right across the ideological lines. The opposite happened in the Fourth Circuit or in Virginia with Brother Kansuri, someone who's going exactly the same as I'm going through, where he was lucky that he got a Democrat majority court that ruled in his favor. So I'm here, I'm in this stage where I'm now like at the verge of deportation. Like, it's just like by mirage that I ended up in New Jersey because I, you know, the government took me there to sleep there. I mean, they were hoping I would go to the Fifth Circuit,

• 1:23:03Speaker 00

  but also now I'm fighting my immigration case in the Fifth Circuit that's known to be extremely ideological, ideological. favoring the Trump administration, you name it. Yeah. So he'd like, I don't think there's justice. That's when I say, I feel like I'm getting justice a lot through, and not necessarily in courts, but more when people are voting out those who contributed to my abduction or are waking up to all these injustices happening, whether to me or to my people. That's justice to me, that's accountability to me. And on those ideological outcomes and divisions, you know, you mentioned that the Court of Appeals en banc,

• 1:23:46Speaker 00

  you know, the Third Circuit, you know, divided by narrow margins on whether to rehear your case. And I would be remiss if I did not remind listeners that some apparently, you know, Democratic senators refused to confirm some nominees to that Court of Appeals. And who did that clear the way to be confirmed? Judge Emile Bové, right? So like, this is part of why we will not stop talking about those judicial vacancies and nominations, because they can truly make the difference between enforcing law, vindicating rights, and not. No, in my case, I mean, that really what made a big difference,

• 1:24:31Speaker 00

  because it's very, as you said, it's very narrowly divided. I think it's like seven to six. If the Democrats managed to fill that vacancy instead of Bové, like, it could be like the opposite, seven, six Democrats, and that meant protections for millions and millions of immigrants. Because again, like, this case, it's not about me as a person. It's about whether immigrants in general, they would have access to habeas corpus to challenge constitutional claims. And that's like another, another part of, I mean, you're very familiar why that judge was not confirmed. Yes. Basically, because he was Muslim. Yes. So. Yep, exactly. It all comes full circle.

• 1:25:14Speaker 00

  But speaking about you as a person, as a scholar, you read ex parte Endo, the Supreme Court decision, while you were detained. And we're struck not principally by the fact that the detainee, the petitioner, won, so the doctrinal victory. But by the way, the individual, Ms. Endo, disappeared into a case name. Won in the Supreme Court, but as you emphasize, the machinery, logic of mass incarceration did not disappear. And what does that history suggest about the difference between winning a case, challenging a system, and how we need to keep the people affected front and center? I mean, that's what I'm really struggling with,

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  because now even like, sometimes I tune in some legal webinars, and they talk about my case, you know, like, the Khalil case.

• 1:26:06Speaker 00

  Right here, right here.

• 1:26:10Speaker 00

  That's the thing, like, it's just like about the Khalil case. And I'm now like, sort of brought down to that case. And that's how I felt about Endo, you know, like, it's, you know, I was like, oh, what's Endo? And then I went, because I had so much time in detention. I was like, okay, let me go look up what Endo is. And I was so shocked about her story, about how the United States even went further. You know, they were citizens of Japanese ancestry. Yeah. Yet, the government found a way to go after them. And that's when I say, like, these rights are not only ours to lose. Because it's really, once the administration, any administration, not necessarily this one,

• 1:26:53Speaker 00

  they target a specific subset of people or whatever we want to call it. They can, they would be able to. And that's why we need to keep fighting, because these rights that we got, people take it for granted. I'm really like fighting this case mostly, and a bigger part, because what's happening to me is wrong and shouldn't happen to anyone else. And less about whether I want to stay in this country or not. Because fundamentally, what's happening is wrong. Of course, I want to stay in this country. I'm fighting because I believe in the principles of the Constitution of this country and the potential of it. It's not perfect, but there is potential. So, speaking of those principles and rights, after the experiences you have had,

• 1:27:35Speaker 00

  what do phrases like "the rule of law" or "constitutional rights" mean to you now?

• 1:27:42Speaker 00

  I mean, down in me, like, I still believe, like, I've always believed in the rule of law. I always believed in the constitutional rights. What's happening now is these are afforded to some, to those who align with power, to those who, I once described it as a democracy of convenience, that when it's convenient, we will give you law, a rule of law. We would give you constitutional rights. In reality, people in power, they don't really care about that. They would use it the way they want it. And all of these, it's becoming to be abstract, very abstract, when the rule of law is not applied equally, when constitutional rights now, there is like different interpretations about, you know, who are the people?

• 1:28:25Speaker 00

  You know, like, now they're saying the people are only US citizens. They would go back to say like, oh, the people actually are not the enslaved people, but also it would go, the people are not women, all of that. Like, it's shocking. The other point is, I feel like also the rule of law is applied very, and equally, like, to people, because which definitely is not the rule of law, right? Like, the rule of law is law is supposed to mean just the law and apply to everyone equally, right? Not depending on who the person is. But I think this administration figured that they could do anything they wanted, whether legal or not legal. And the worst that could happen, the court would tell them, can you stop doing that? Without any real consequences. And if there were real consequences,

• 1:29:09Speaker 00

  it would be money that would be paid out of taxpayers rather than actually from the individual inflecting such damage. Because when I think about the officials who defamed me, who literally like turned my life into hell, they're not going to pay, mostly like pay for any of what they did because of the immunity or federal immunity or whatever, which is, to me, is just like bizarre. Because then, how these people would stop doing what they're doing? Like, if they are, if they feel that they are immune? Yeah. So, speaking of, you were talking earlier, why you want to win your case. Throughout the book, I Believe That We Will Win appears as both kind of an encouragement, a movement chant, and also a means of survival and,

• 1:29:53Speaker 00

  in particular, surviving detention. So what does winning mean to you now? You mentioned, obviously, wanting to prevail in your own case, but there's also challenging the detention system, furthering Palestinian liberation. Is it something that encompasses all of the above or more? I absolutely think it encompasses all of these and more. And in principle, is, I don't think the administration targeted me because they know me. It's just like, they wanted to send a message and I was the messenger. So what they want was much, much bigger than that, is like to actually terrorize people into not speaking and to

• 1:30:38Speaker 00

  use this as a blueprint to go after so many other people. So winning to me, and I believe we are winning, it's not like I believe we will win, I believe we are actually winning right now, the fact that the President of the United States is coming after, you know, a random student, that means that we are actually making difference. And winning to me is really what we are seeing now in polls and then, and hopefully we'll see in the midterms, that people are finally waking up to the years of the humanizations against Palestinians and immigrants alike, against the other, as they want, or the administration want to describe. So that's winning, a big win for me. And of course, like, to me, is

• 1:31:23Speaker 00

  that all, what I'm doing and what I advocate for is for the liberation of Palestine. And that's the ultimate winning for me. But it's also like the liberation of humans as a whole, you know, because the liberation of Palestine, I don't want it to come at the expense of anyone. So to me, it's just like a liberation of all of us, because to me, this conversation, that's now us and them, it's very dehumanizing. And I don't think it's sustainable and/or would get, like, peace. I don't want to be naive at the same time about, like, all of these. But in reality, this is what I'm fighting for. It's just, like, to liberate us all. Well, maybe we should end on the note that we are, in fact, winning. Again,

• 1:32:03Speaker 00

  the book is No Land to Stand On and is out tomorrow by Mahmoud Khalil. Thank you so much for joining, Mahmoud. We will be thinking of you as your legal fight continues. And thank you for joining us and reminding us of the human stakes to so many of these cases and issues. Thank you so much, Leah. Thank you for having me. Thanks again to Mahmoud Khalil for joining us. And as always, we are going to wrap with our favorite things. I've got a few. One, Levine's Fall Spice Chocolate Chip Cookies. Delicious.

• 1:32:34Kate Shaw?

  Can I just ask, it's not the same as pumpkin spice. What, is Fall Spice a broader spice palette?

• 1:32:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would describe it as a broader spice. All spice. Yeah. It has a lot of cinnamon, cloves, you know, cinnamon and whatnot. Yes.

• 1:32:46Kate Shaw?

  Sounds great.

• 1:32:47Speaker 00

  Was also going to add ProPublica. They don't need access journalism to do great journalism. What is everyone else doing? Two books on similar themes, Gil Durand's Nerd Reich and Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor's End Times Fascism. And then two shout outs to people who, I don't know exactly how to describe what they have managed to do, but like overcome incredible adversity. And just wanted to note that Amanda Zurofsky announced that she and her husband welcomed a child. Amanda, of course, is one of the women who, whose life was threatened by Texas's near total abortion ban. She testified in front of Congress and elsewhere about that experience.

• 1:33:25Kate Shaw?

  She was a guest at our live show in Austin. She is wonderful. We're such huge fans of hers.

• 1:33:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:33:30Kate Shaw?

  Sorry, but big news is, yeah.

• 1:33:32Speaker 00

  And another, another Texas is Alyssa Edwards slash Justin Johnson, who, absolute slime of the earth, Ken Paxton, has decided to come after and target as part of his campaign. And Alyssa responded with the poise and grace that defines someone who was crowned America's Next Drag Superstar Global All-Stars Edition. She has more grace and wit than Ken Paxton will ever. And, I mean, it's just, it's just astonishing if you, like, read the response and then, yeah. So just wanted to note that. It's not astonishing, because if you've seen Ken Paxton. That's true.

• 1:34:14Speaker 00

  But astonishing, and an astonishing response to a POS.

• 1:34:20Kate Shaw?

  Totally. Okay, I'm going to mention a couple of things. One, I am finally reading this book I've been meaning to read for a while, Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire. He is a historian at Northwestern. I had sort of had the book on my radar, and then he wrote a really good review in The New Yorker of Niko Bowie and Daphna Renan's new book, Supremacy, which we've talked about. And so I was like, oh, I should really read his book. It's incredible. It is great. Okay, a couple of pieces of magazine reporting from this week. Ari Berman and Pema Levy and Mother Jones have a long piece about Calais and the new, new Jim Crow that is gutting read, but really, really important, really excellent, excellent journalism. And sort of in that similar category, also gutting, also urgent and important, but, you know, highly personal, is Nikole Hannah-Jones's

• 1:35:01Kate Shaw?

  piece in The Times about her daughter and the New York City public schools failing her and just this kind of wrenching set of decisions and reckoning with those decisions that she and her family made about how to educate her daughter in a system that continues to fail largely Black and Brown kids in New York City. And it's, like, really brave and beautiful piece, and I highly recommend parents and everybody read it.

• 1:35:27Speaker 00

  So I don't mean to contradict, like, I actually found the Nikole Hannah-Jones piece so hard to read this year. You know, I remember the earlier piece from 10 years ago, and I remember reading that, too. And we made totally different choices for our kids. I think one thing that the piece doesn't talk about, but I think maybe should, is that for Black parents, there are just no really good options. Like, you send your kid to a failing school, and you have a piece like Nikole Hannah-Jones. You send your kid to a fantastic school with great resources, but they're one of, like, a handful of kids who look like them. And, you know, you worry about their self-esteem being crushed indefinitely and not being sufficiently tethered to their identity. There are just no good options.

• 1:36:08Speaker 00

  And I really wish she had just said that explicitly. So one thing I did love as a response that doesn't excoriate her, as so many people are doing on the internet, was a piece by Zach Cheney Rice in New York Magazine that responds to her New York Times piece. But I think it's just sort of reckoning with this, there are just shitty choices out there. And this is part of the residue of segregation. And it is really hard to do what Nikole Hannah-Jones tried to do when you're doing it basically alone. The difference between now and parents in the 1960s sending their kids into predominantly white schools to integrate them is that they were working as part of a huge coalition and community.

• 1:36:49Speaker 00

  And that was just not what Nikole Hannah-Jones was doing. It may have been what she aspired to, but in the end, it seems that's not what happened. I also wanted to say plus one to the ProPublica story. You should definitely read the ProPublica story about Maine Senator Susan Collins and these allegations about her and her team, perhaps, accepting a large cash transfer from a shell company, allegedly, that may also have resulted in government contracts going to a government contractor in exchange. So I think it's just amazing reporting. And again, the whole question of access, not when you're ProPublica. You, you just keep on your hustle. Good for you. I'm in Austin at the Tribune Fest, and I just saw Senator Raphael Warnock talk about

• 1:37:33Speaker 00

  his new book, The Crooked Parts Make Straight. I read it when it came out a few months ago. It's really just inspiring. He's, like, literally one of the best speakers I've ever heard. So definitely try and take a look at that. And I've gotten to meet so many fantastic Striktes in the wild here in Austin. So let me shout out Cassie, Morgan, Marie, Parisi, Joyce, and the fabulous ladies of Book Woman, not Book People, although they are great, Book Woman, which is an Austin indie bookstore that's absolutely fantastic, run by Lori and Susan. And they were absolutely fantastic. So please check them out if you're there.

• 1:38:08Speaker 00

  And finally, some housekeeping before we go. Striktes, are we going to see you at CrookedCon? The lineup was just released, and we think you're going to like what you see. Along with your favorite Crooked hosts, you'll see potential presidential candidates, members of Congress, campaign strategists, organizers, journalists, and many more at the Washington DC Convention Center on November 7. And at the November 6 Strik scrutiny live, we are going to be joined by attorney, civil rights activist, and former president and director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, multi hyphenate and total badass, Sherrilyn Eiffel. So we are going to have so much jurisprudence madness. It's going to be absolutely fantastic. I can't think

• 1:38:49Speaker 00

  of a better person to help us break down all of this than Sherrilyn Eiffel. So get your tickets. What are you even doing with your life? If you're listening to this album that Leah is, like, literally losing her mind over, like, just-

• 1:39:03Kate Shaw?

  Pause the hate listening and buy a ticket.

• 1:39:05Speaker 00

  I can't handle this on the eve of a new Supreme Court term.

• 1:39:08Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, it's a lot.

• 1:39:08Speaker 00

  Press pause. Press pause.

• 1:39:10Kate Shaw?

  But yes.

• 1:39:11Speaker 00

  Buy your tickets.

• 1:39:11Kate Shaw?

  Sherrilyn, we have had, we have been so lucky to have incredible guests over the years we've been doing this podcast. Sherrilyn is one of the very best, and we've never had her at a live show. So I am so, so excited to do that. Okay, so that is November 6. And then we'll be at the CrookedCon all-day event with another panel on November 7, the next day. So you have two opportunities to hang out with us. The shows will be very different, but I think it's fair to say equally fun. You can view the full CrookedCon lineup and get tickets at crookedcon.com. Ticket prices will go up on October 6, so you're still in the lower price window. Get yours now to lock in the early bird price. But if you are too busy, hate listening to the new tracks, between now and October 6, you can still probably get tickets after that, if there are any left. But try to get yours early. See you there.

• 1:39:54Speaker 00

  You can definitely get your emotional support billionaire to buy them for you.

• 1:40:02Speaker 00

  Strik scrutiny is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Melody Rauel and Michael Goldsmith. Music by Eddie Cooper. Our team includes Matt DeGroot, Ben Heathcote, Johanna Case, Kenny Moffett, Adam Lippert, and Eric Schut. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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• 1:40:37Speaker 00

  No, they said they'll be done on Monday.

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• 1:41:01Kate Shaw?

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