Make America Grift Again

Leah, Melissa and Kate go on Corruption Watch to catch up on all the sketchy things happening in the judicial and executive branches. Then, they cover some recent oral arguments and opinions from The Court before bringing you a conversation from last week’s live show in LA with Representative Jimmy Gomez of California’s 34th Congressional District. Favorite things: Kate: The Correspondent https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-correspondent-a-novel-virginia-evans/87852b9a3587f7c2?ean=9780593798430&next=t by Virginia Evans; Project Hail Mary https://bookshop.org/p/books/project-hail-mary-a-novel-andy-weir/00f52c9d7f2ed7f2?ean=9780593135228&next=t by Andy Weir; Vladimir https://www.netflix.com/title/81737584 on Netflix (adaptation of the book https://bookshop.org/p/books/vladimir-a-novel-julia-may-jonas/277d649bf30c649c?ean=9781982187644&next=t by Julia May Jonas) Leah: Kacey Musgraves, “Dry Spell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlohfwTunwU&list=RDNlohfwTunwU&start_radio=1”; Judge Young’s opinion https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/27868595-aaupstay031126/ denying a stay of the remedies he ordered in response to the federal government’s illegal targeting of students & noncitizens based on pro-Palestinian speech; Sonja Starr & Genevieve Lakier, The War on DEI as a Project of Constitutional Subversion https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5395361 Melissa: The Devil is Busy https://www.hbomax.com/movies/devil-is-busy/24d3b05e-15a0-4f17-9545-5f07dd381d7d on HBO Max; Good Woman: A Reckoning https://bookshop.org/p/books/good-woman-a-reckoning-savala-nolan/402f190b058c297f?ean=9780063320086&next=t by Savala Nolan; Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette https://www.disneyplus.com/explore/articles/love-story-fx on Hulu and Disney+ Preorder 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: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Lawless/Leah-Litman/9781668054628Follow us onInstagram https://www.instagram.com/strictscrutinypodcast/?hl=en,Threads https://www.threads.net/@strictscrutinypodcast, andBluesky https://bsky.app/profile/strictscrutiny.bsky.social

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  CrookedCon is coming up right after the election, and we have just added a bunch more great names to the lineup. We got Governor JB Pritzker coming, Senator Chris Murphy, and then over from the House side, Ilhan Omar, Robert Garcia, Sarah Jacobs, Jamie Raskin, Sarah McBride. We also have Carlos Eduardo Espina, Simone Sanders, Townsend, Eugene Daniels, David Pakman, Jessica Tarlov, Heather McGee, and then all the other people that we've announced on the website, plus more to come. Great list. Check out the full lineup and get tickets right now at crookedcon.com. We'd love to see you there. That's crookedcon.com.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  This is Danielle Fishel from Pod Meets World. You know when your skin just feels dry? Your face is just an Arizona desert in the middle of July? And you can feel it. That's when I know I need something that's really going to hydrate my skin without feeling heavy. That's why I've been loving Clinique Moisture Surge 100-Hour Moisturizer. The first thing I noticed is how lightweight it is. It has this really refreshing gel cream texture that absorbs so quickly, and my skin immediately feels like it got that drink of water it was asking for. Hydrated and plump, but not greasy or heavy. And for me, that's especially important if I'm putting on makeup afterward. I don't want five layers of stuff underneath my makeup. I want my moisturizer to do its job and then, basically, just get out of the way.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Moisture Surge does exactly that, and it keeps skin hydrated for up to 100 hours. It's also oil-free, fragrance-free, allergy-tested, and safe for sensitive skin. It just leaves my skin feeling fresh, comfortable, and really, really hydrated. Try Clinique Moisture Surge 100-Hour today at Clinique.com. Feels like Moisture Surge.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings. Do not spend it alone. Spend it with me, Alex Wagner, for Crooked Media Presents: Live Election Results. We're gonna have Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vitor, Stacey Abrams, Dan Pfeiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced. And they're all gonna help us make sense of what's happening as the election results roll in. So here's what you need to do. Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube and tune in on Tuesday, November 3, at 9:00 PM Eastern, 6:00 PM Pacific for hot takes, catharsis, and as many results as we can possibly analyze.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  This is Danielle Fishel from Pod Meets World. You know when your skin just feels dry? Your face is just an Arizona desert in the middle of July and you can feel it? That's when I know I need something that's really going to hydrate my skin without feeling heavy. That's why I've been loving Clinique Moisture Surge 100-Hour Moisturizer. The first thing I noticed is how lightweight it is. It has this really refreshing gel cream texture that absorbs so quickly and my skin immediately feels like it got that drink of water it was asking for. Hydrated and plump, but not greasy or heavy. And for me, that's especially important if I'm putting on makeup afterward. I don't want five layers of stuff underneath my makeup.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  I want my moisturizer to do its job and then, basically, just get out of the way. Moisture Surge does exactly that, and it keeps skin hydrated for up to 100 hours. It's also oil-free, fragrance-free, allergy-tested, and safe for sensitive skin. It just leaves my skin feeling fresh, comfortable, and really, really hydrated. Try Clinique Moisture Surge 100-Hour today at Clinique.com. Feels like Moisture Surge.

• 3:26Speaker 03

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

• 3:39Speaker 04

  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."

• 4:09Kate Shaw?

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

• 4:15Melissa Murray?

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

• 4:33Kate Shaw?

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

• 4:45Leah Litman?

  We are still working on a name for what obviously has to be and should be a recurring segment. There's so much going on, but people should still be aware of the extent of the grift, even with everything else. So should we call it Court Option? Like Corruption Court Option? No, Roberts Barons? I know I floated this one before.

• 5:04Kate Shaw?

  I think that one's going on me.

• 5:06Leah Litman?

  Okay, Quid Pro Scotus? Theevocracy? Okay, Brodus and the Brologarchy? Make America Grift Again?

• 5:17Kate Shaw?

  Ah, yeah, Roberts Barons and then this MAGA variation, I think, are my favorites.

• 5:21Leah Litman?

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

• 6:06Leah Litman?

  to Republicans."

• 6:08Melissa Murray?

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

• 6:53Melissa Murray?

  Thanks, bro.

• 6:54Kate Shaw?

  Now, I do feel compelled. The way Melissa describes Citizens United is the way the majority describes it. But in Justice Stevens' dissent, like, he emphasizes, and I just, I think this remains true, it wasn't a ban on corporations. It was a ban on this very narrow period of time, right before an election, when the spending could be done. They could spend all the other times they wanted to, and in all kinds of other ways. They just couldn't do it as themselves for 30 or 60 days before an election. So a modest regulation, and even that was too much for the Supreme Court to permit. But this Times piece is just full of case studies and anecdotes about specific billionaires and particular races where those billionaires intercede and where their money is hugely influential, and is really worth reading in its entirety. The opening anecdote is about the Montana Senate race that unseated the Democratic incumbent,

• 7:39Kate Shaw?

  John Tester. It describes how Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman of Blackstone, steered a $150 million investment. So this is before politics, actually, just a business investment to now Republican Senator Tim Sheehy's company. It's like a firefighting-from-the-air kind of company that was struggling until this money helped shore up his business and then helped seed his Senate campaign. Schwarzman later hosted a fundraiser for Sheehy, donated $8 million to a PAC supporting Sheehy. 64 other billionaires also donated to Sheehy's campaign. And then there are just details in the Times piece about state races that, in some ways, like, get even crazier.

• 8:16Kate Shaw?

  In Illinois, in the most recent gubernatorial cycle, 87% of the money given came from billionaires. And then maybe just one last observation, which is that the asymmetry that Leah mentioned at the outset, that just way more of this billionaire money goes to Republicans than to Democrats, is actually also a pretty new development. Once upon a time, rich people gave roughly comparable amounts to Republicans and Democrats to kind of, like, hedge their bets, and that is just no longer remotely the case.

• 8:45Melissa Murray?

  Kate, I feel I have to remind you that it is not unconstitutional to have rich friends who bail out your flailing business, and then your business actually improves, and you're able to capitalize on those improvements to seed your run for a US Senate seat. So you can then go forward with the kind of deregulatory policies that your billionaire friends want. That's not unconstitutional, Kate.

• 9:08Kate Shaw?

  Actually, every single step in that chain is unconstitutional in my constitutional list.

• 9:12Melissa Murray?

  We the people, Kate. I wrote a whole book about it.

• 9:15Kate Shaw?

  In this timeline, it's all fine.

• 9:16Melissa Murray?

  Yeah. We the people.

• 9:18Kate Shaw?

  Do you have like an annotation in the First Amendment that sets forth all of the rights that you just described as obviously flowing from those few words?

• 9:25Melissa Murray?

  Obviously, you'll have to preorder the book to find out.

• 9:28Kate Shaw?

  Good answer.

• 9:29Melissa Murray?

  The book is available for preorder at all of your favorite outlets. But again, we the people in order to form a more perfect oligarchy.

• 9:37Kate Shaw?

  Actually, that's a good next book, just like a redlining of the Constitution with the Constitution that they think exists. Maybe let's put that on the list of projects.

• 9:44Melissa Murray?

  Let's put that out there for our publishers. We could do that. All three of us could do that together.

• 9:49Leah Litman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:50Kate Shaw?

  That would be bleak.

• 9:51Leah Litman?

  Well, the Second Amendment would be in like all caps and bold and underline, except for the prefatory clause. And then anyways, lots of ideas coming in.

• 9:58Kate Shaw?

  The thought bubbles where like, you know, you stretch out some and compress other text.

• 10:02Melissa Murray?

  The Ninth Amendment, just big X.

• 10:03Leah Litman?

  Right, exactly.

• 10:05Melissa Murray?

  Fourteenth Amendment, also an X.

• 10:07Leah Litman?

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

• 10:40Melissa Murray?

  In our live show, we actually talked about the litigation that was ongoing between Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Well, guess what? Last week, Trump's Department of Injustice announced that it has agreed to settle the lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Again, this was an antitrust suit challenging the arrangement between the two companies that, according to the lawsuit, contributed to a stranglehold on live music sales, one that, weirdly, did not redound to the benefit of music fans, but rather redounded to the benefit of the two companies. The settlement, which was announced mid-trial, came as something of a surprise to both the court and the 39 states and the District of Columbia, which had joined as co-plaintiffs in the suit.

• 11:22Melissa Murray?

  Notably, the lawsuit had actually survived a motion for summary judgment, meaning that the case would then proceed to a trial. So why does all of this seem to be very corruption adjacent? Well, for one thing, the states are objecting to certain terms in the settlement, like the fact that the damages to the states are capped at less than 1% of Live Nation's 2025 revenue. Doesn't sound like a great settlement.

• 11:48Leah Litman?

  Just the tip of the profits, if you were.

• 11:51Melissa Murray?

  I'm no expert, but that does sound like a great deal. They say you're not getting screwed, but you kind of are.

• 11:57Leah Litman?

  Yeah.

• 11:59Kate Shaw?

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

• 12:14Leah Litman?

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

• 12:37Kate Shaw?

  No, Leah, I can't believe you forgot to throw in the second definite article, the Donald Trump and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Sorry. Okay, so one other sort of curious fact is that Live Nation donated half a million dollars to Trump's Presidential Transition Fund.

• 12:52Leah Litman?

  Hmm.

• 12:53Melissa Murray?

  As one does.

• 12:53Kate Shaw?

  As one does.

• 12:54Melissa Murray?

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

• 13:38Speaker 08

  On January 30th of this year, the Trump DOJ's antitrust division sued to block the merger of two tech companies.

• 13:48Speaker 08

  Then, a well-connected lobbyist met with your political deputies, who overruled the career staff and approved the merger. So there's a settlement on that. And separately, DOJ sued Ticketmaster last year for monopolizing concert tickets and forcing consumers to pay outrageous fees. Ticketmaster has hired the exact same lobbyists who met with senior DOJ political people regarding the merger of the two tech companies. So my question is, Ms. Bondi, have lobbyists met with your political deputies about the Ticketmaster case?

• 14:34Speaker 09

  Senator Hirono, as I stated earlier, I am not going to discuss anything that is ongoing. Gail Slater runs the antitrust office.

• 14:46Speaker 08

  I would say that...

• 14:47Speaker 09

  And Gail Slater, if I can finish, Gail Slater is doing an incredible job running my antitrust unit.

• 14:52Speaker 08

  It's highly likely, Ms. Bondi, that the same lobbyists who met with your people basically got rid of the antitrust case.

• 15:01Speaker 09

  Senator, I don't think a lot of people like that you're out protesting with Antifa.

• 15:06Speaker 02

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

• 15:24Speaker 02

  On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings. Do not spend it alone. Spend it with me, Alex Wagner, for Crooked Media Presents: Live Election Results. We're going to have Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vitor, Stacey Abrams, Dan Pfeiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced. And they're all going to help us make sense of what's happening as the election results roll in. So here's what you need to do. Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube and tune in on Tuesday, November 3, at 9:00 PM Eastern, 6:00 PM Pacific for hot takes, catharsis, and as many results as we can possibly analyze.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  This is Danielle Fishel from Pod Meets World. You know when your skin just feels dry? Your face is just an Arizona desert in the middle of July? And you can feel it. That's when I know I need something that's really going to hydrate my skin without feeling heavy. That's why I've been loving Clinique Moisture Surge 100-Hour Moisturizer. The first thing I noticed is how lightweight it is. It has this really refreshing gel cream texture that absorbs so quickly. And my skin immediately feels like it got that drink of water it was asking for. Hydrated and plump, but not greasy or heavy. And for me, that's especially important if I'm putting on makeup afterward. I don't want five layers of stuff underneath my makeup.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  I want my moisturizer to do its job and then, basically, just get out of the way. Moisture Surge does exactly that, and it keeps skin hydrated for up to 100 hours. It's also oil-free, fragrance-free, allergy-tested, and safe for sensitive skin. It just leaves my skin feeling fresh, comfortable, and really, really hydrated. Try Clinique Moisture Surge 100-Hour today at Clinique.com. Feels like Moisture Surge.

• 17:13Leah Litman?

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

• 17:56Leah Litman?

  that people at these agencies go easy on his corporate stooges and buddies.

• 18:01Melissa Murray?

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

• 18:29Kate Shaw?

  And to take another example in the same vein, last week, the FDA announced that it was going to open the door to e-cigarettes that come in fruit and candy flavors. So those flavors had previously been restricted out of concerns that they would be marketed to and especially attractive to teenagers. So this About Face came in the form of a guidance document that announced that the FDA now will consider approvals for flavored vapes. Now, the document purports to affirm the concern for flavors that appeal to kids, suggests they're likely to approve things that they at least say will be more attractive to adults. They mentioned coffees and mint and teas and spices. But honestly, if you're familiar with teenagers and tweens and their propensity for frappuccinos

• 19:11Kate Shaw?

  and all things chai, I am not sure this is a distinction that has any hope of actually protecting kids, but stay tuned.

• 19:18Melissa Murray?

  But you know, Kate, the thing about kids is that they're really young. And if they get hooked on something early, they can be your consumers for literally their whole lives. You think that has anything to do with it?

• 19:27Kate Shaw?

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

• 19:33Melissa Murray?

  Honestly, I believe the children are our future.

• 19:34Kate Shaw?

  So do the tobacco companies.

• 19:36Melissa Murray?

  Future market.

• 19:38Kate Shaw?

  And in that vein, any guesses as to which industry helped fund Trump's $300 million ballroom? Or among others, there have been quite a few funders. But in terms of the topic at hand, any guesses? I'll tell you. Tobacco companies, Altria Group and Reynolds American, both of which will benefit from the relaxed regulation of e-cigarettes. They're among the companies that have specifically urged the FDA to lessen this regulation and looks like that's coming through for them.

• 20:05Melissa Murray?

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

• 20:29Leah Litman?

  So Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg founded a private equity firm that just so happens to own several companies that are seeking Department of Defense contracts related to missile interceptors, a firm he's allowed to continue contracting with and to maintain a financial relationship with while at DOD. Trump has appointed more than 200 people who collectively own between 175 million and 400 million dollars in crypto and hold positions that influence the regulation of cryptocurrencies. This includes Todd Blanch at DOJ. DOJ has already shut down some investigations into crypto companies, dealers, and exchanges.

• 21:10Leah Litman?

  And Kate, I have to say, when we were doing the, just the tip of the Live Nation Ticketmaster settlement, I think I came up with a name for what DOJ is doing and what DOD is doing here. It's the Deal Dough, right? Deals that actually buck over the country.

• 21:31Melissa Murray?

  Wow, Leah. Wow, Leah. You've really outdone yourself.

• 21:34Kate Shaw?

  I'm just worried about our younger listeners, but I think at this point, like...

• 21:38Melissa Murray?

  I mean, if they were listening when you went to the Tenderloin, Kate, and saw your first pee pee, I think they're gonna be okay with Deal Dough.

• 21:45Kate Shaw?

  All right. Well, did we leave that in? I think we debated it. I believe we did.

• 21:49Melissa Murray?

  It was in. The Deal Dough is what the whole country will get effed with, kids.

• 21:53Kate Shaw?

  Before noon in broad daylight. It's coming for all of us. Okay, and just maybe one more example, and that is The New York Times recently ran a piece about the booming pardon industry, which I think, you know, is proof positive that Trump actually is the job creator he makes himself out to be, because the pardon industry has resulted in just a boom for lobbyists who have been essentially facilitating the granting of pardons to very wealthy individuals convicted of crimes but with cash on hand and hoping to get out of their sentences. I mean, the piece, like the ProPublica piece, like the Times piece about the campaign contributions is just real dystopian shit.

• 22:29Melissa Murray?

  Right. Like, it's the corruption, stupid, right? Like, yeah.

• 22:33Kate Shaw?

  But here it's like, also, there's the hiring of social media. It's not just like the cold, hard cash. It's like all the mechanisms. You're hiring social media influencers. You're trying to get close to Laura Loomer, who is like-

• 22:42Melissa Murray?

  Arby's in your pants.

• 22:43Kate Shaw?

  Pardon maker.

• 22:46Kate Shaw?

  Definitely need a parental warning on this one, although maybe without the context, Arby's in your pants sounds totally innocent.

• 22:51Melissa Murray?

  I don't know what that means. I genuinely don't.

• 22:53Kate Shaw?

  Oh, yeah. This is an episode that Leah and I did, I think, without you. It was a deposition.

• 22:57Melissa Murray?

  This was when she was deposed in some of the litigation and they said, you, Laura Loomer, said Marjorie Taylor Greene had Arby's in her pants. What did you mean? And she just said, it's hilarious. I meant she has Arby's in her pants.

• 23:15Melissa Murray?

  This whole timeline is so fucked up that I'm cheering for Marjorie Taylor Greene.

• 23:19Kate Shaw?

  Yeah. I know.

• 23:21Melissa Murray?

  So messed up. Anyway. All right. We should switch to another topic. This is actually truly dystopian. Let's do some other dystopian stuff, maybe in the vein of Margaret Atwood. Recently, listeners, there has been even more evidence for reading what has been happening with this government and with governance through the lens of gender. Again, as Leah explained a few episodes ago, we are living through government by the manosphere, of the manosphere, and for the manosphere. A homocracy, if you will. First up, it seems like the devil wears Florsheim. Apparently, President Trump is absolutely obsessed with Michael Jackson's favorite shoe brand, the Chicago-based brand Florsheim Shoes.

• 24:06Melissa Murray?

  Just a little bit about the brand for those of you who are untutored. The company dates back to the 1850s, when Sigmund Florsheim, a German immigrant, began putting his old-world cobbling skills to work. By 1886, he had become a partner in Greensfelder Florsheim and Company, a men's footwear company, again, based in Chicago. See what can happen when you don't have ICE doing immigration detention all over the place in a major city? Anyway, the company eventually gave rise to a family company, Florsheim Shoes, that Sigmund and his American-born son, Milton, founded, and they have been making mid-priced men's shoes for over a century.

• 24:41Kate Shaw?

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

• 25:08Melissa Murray?

  They only make them shoes. So this is.

• 25:11Kate Shaw?

  Okay, I guess you guys are coming to Donald Trump's defense here. I don't quite know what to make of this.

• 25:15Melissa Murray?

  Well, we're just like, facts, Kate. That's our facts.

• 25:17Kate Shaw?

  I mean, yeah, I guess there's nobody, no female staffer in the White House who doesn't wear like, high heels and very lady shoes. So I guess that's, I guess that makes sense. Anyway, the Journal reports that he is so hot for the shoes that he has a stack of them in the White House. Although I also just find this whole story so puzzling because he is famously really cheap. And so do we think he actually went out and spent thousands of dollars on shoes to gift or receive them from one of the many benefactors we were talking about earlier in the conversation?

• 25:45Leah Litman?

  So part of the story is that the shoes often do not fit the recipient.

• 25:50Kate Shaw?

  Right, okay, so that's right.

• 25:51Leah Litman?

  And also, they're considerably cheaper than other shoes they might otherwise be wearing.

• 25:55Kate Shaw?

  Right, so he's downgrading.

• 25:56Leah Litman?

  Right.

• 25:57Kate Shaw?

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

• 26:16Leah Litman?

  There is.

• 26:18Melissa Murray?

  That's how I feel about downgrading from Barack Obama to this.

• 26:21Leah Litman?

  This is sensible leather.

• 26:24Melissa Murray?

  Footwear.

• 26:25Leah Litman?

  I know.

• 26:26Melissa Murray?

  But, yeah, same idea, though, right?

• 26:28Kate Shaw?

  Just a downgrade.

• 26:29Leah Litman?

  Yes, definitely downgrade. When the New York Times visited the White House in December, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio gleefully showed reporters the shoes that Trump had bought them, and quote, "Vance lifted his leg in the air to show the president the pair he was wearing," end quote.

• 26:51Leah Litman?

  I cannot even imagine this scene. And Trump allegedly ordered the footwear after stopping a meeting to criticize Rubio and Vance's, quote, "fucking shoes," according to Vance himself.

• 27:07Melissa Murray?

  Those who have been gifted the shoes include Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and I'm just going to say, if you have more than one nanny going with you to Epstein's island, you can probably afford to buy yourself a pair of shoes, among others.

• 27:25Leah Litman?

  Well, he can afford, but it's a cult, so he has to wear them.

• 27:27Melissa Murray?

  I know, clear.

• 27:28Leah Litman?

  And this...

• 27:29Melissa Murray?

  What do we call this?

• 27:30Leah Litman?

  We call this the shoe-atory executive.

• 27:33Melissa Murray?

  Love it.

• 27:34Leah Litman?

  Yeah.

• 27:35Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, you were on fire today.

• 27:36Leah Litman?

  You know, I did Emma's Women's History Month rock ride this morning, which I love, and I've also been listening to Kacey Musgraves' new single, Nonstop, since early this week, and I feel like those two things really kind of wrapped me up.

• 27:54Kate Shaw?

  How long was the MRI?

• 27:55Leah Litman?

  30 minutes?

• 27:57Kate Shaw?

  30.

• 27:57Leah Litman?

  Yeah, so manageable. Anyways, the MAGA he-men have really been on one as of late, so in addition to this, you know, gifting of the shoes, Trump reportedly just asks these guys their shoe size and they shout something out. And now there are all of these photos on the internet of these dudes stomping around in shoes that are way too big for...

• 28:20Melissa Murray?

  I didn't realize he asked them and they're lying about their shoe size.

• 28:23Leah Litman?

  Yes, they lie about their shoe size. Happy Women's History Month. Again, it is all about gender. You can basically understand everything that is going on through these lens. Like, they all have complexes about their dick size, and we are all living with the consequences of that.

• 28:42Melissa Murray?

  Oh my, wow. I genuinely did not know that. Another quick update from the manosphere, and this does seem like a gift of pettiness along the lines of what Leah just related. So this is just in time for Women's History Month. Apparently, Florsheim's parent company, the Waco Group, is among the businesses and corporations that sued the Trump administration over tariffs. And in fact, Waco is now seeking a refund from the federal government over the tariffs that it paid. Fine. Last month, when the Supreme Court invalidated the tariffs, the head of the Florsheim company, Thomas Florsheim Jr., he's the CEO of that parent company, Waco, co-authored a piece that was

• 29:24Melissa Murray?

  published in The Contrarian, and the piece was titled, "Business Leaders Welcome SCOTUS Tariffs Decision." He's also gone even further with his critique of the tariffs and his embrace of the Supreme Court's decision. Two weeks ago, in an interview with Spectrum News, Florsheim averred that the Trump tariffs had really hurt the business. According to him, at one point, the tariffs actually exceeded the price of the shoes themselves, forcing the company to shift their production from China to India. But then India got sacked with a bunch of tariffs, and they were back to square one. All of this tariffing, he says, has made business planning absolutely impossible. So with all of this in mind, you'd think

• 30:05Melissa Murray?

  that maybe Florsheim might be a little excited about the fact that his brand is at the top of POTUS's list of favorite things. But when he was asked about the president's gifting habits, Mr. Florsheim said he was unaware of the president's gifting practices, and he politely declined to comment further. As Mariah Carey said, "I don't know her."

• 30:28Leah Litman?

  This should have been the response of the men's hockey team.

• 30:30Melissa Murray?

  But...

• 30:30Leah Litman?

  I mean...

• 30:34Melissa Murray?

  I just want to go buy some Florsheim shoes now. I know that he likes them, but like this guy is standing on business and I appreciate that. Thomas Florsheim of the Waco.

• 30:41Kate Shaw?

  There are the occasional unexpected heroes in this timeline, and I think Florsheim may be one of them.

• 30:46Melissa Murray?

  There's no business like shoe business, he said, and he's here for it. Okay.

• 30:53Speaker 02

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• 32:41Kate Shaw?

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

• 33:04Leah Litman?

  This is a time, this is a place. What better occasion?

• 33:07Melissa Murray?

  I was going to say, this actually makes a lot of sense.

• 33:11Kate Shaw?

  No, but, no, but, yeah, but he, FBI, you know, this is like, I feel like, do you think Mullen wants in on this?

• 33:16Melissa Murray?

  It's a, it's a unitary, exactly.

• 33:19Kate Shaw?

  Okay. I'm just saying, he might want his people to get in on the UFC as well.

• 33:22Melissa Murray?

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

• 33:47Leah Litman?

  Jokes write themselves.

• 33:48Kate Shaw?

  All right. In more news from the manosphere, Senator John Cornyn has apparently abandoned his longtime support for the legislative filibuster in order to grovel before Trump to get his endorsement in the Republican primary runoff that he is now facing against Ken Paxton. The two went to a runoff when Cornyn, who is the incumbent, was challenged and failed to clear the threshold in the primary, and now says he supports abandoning the filibuster in order to pass the Save America slash Save Act, which, just as a reminder, is a series of voting requirements, including voter ID requirements and voting restrictions, including one that requires all registering voters to provide proof of citizenship that contains their current name.

• 34:32Kate Shaw?

  And a lot of people have observed that this requirement may serve to and may even be an effort to disenfranchise the millions of women who either don't hold a passport or don't have a birth certificate that reflects their married name. And... Obviously, because it would likely disenfranchise millions of people, the president is super into it, meaning that John Cornyn is apparently now super into it as well.

• 34:52Melissa Murray?

  You would think that running against someone whose corruption is so extreme, it actually generated an impeachment in Texas, like against an impeached, perfidious adulterer whose wife has sought a divorce on biblical grounds, would be enough to secure an electoral victory. But here we are. Here we are. More news flashes from the Manosphere. Last week, the Pentagon barred press photographers because they had released, quote unquote, "unflattering" photos of Pete Hegseth. The most surprising aspect of this story is that not all photographers were actually barred. Yeah. Yes, you can laugh there.

• 35:35Melissa Murray?

  In other news, the Department of Defense has refused to provide escorts for ships that are operating in the Strait of Hormuz because the DOD says that the area is, quote unquote, "too dangerous," which is weird because the President of the United States recently had this to say about conditions in the strait. Take a listen.

• 35:51Speaker 10

  Are you talking to the CEOs of various oil companies encouraging them to use the Strait of Hormuz? Yeah, I think they should. I think they should. I think they should use.

• 36:03Speaker 10

  Look, we took out just about all of their mine ships in one night. We're up to boat number 60. I didn't realize that that big a navy. I would say it was big and ineffective, but every one of their ships, just about all of their navy is gone at the bottom of the strait. Has the President House laid any mines in the Strait of Hormuz? We don't think so.

• 36:29Melissa Murray?

  So very, very unitary. Love it.

• 36:32Kate Shaw?

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

• 36:37Melissa Murray?

  Oh, no. It's not. It's not the last. Don't overpromise. The Manosphere was really... The Manosphere is the gift that keeps on giving. It's Women History Month. They went all out.

• 36:46Kate Shaw?

  They sure did. It's not even half over yet either. Okay, fine. Not the last, but in some ways, the, like, most insane piece of Manosphere news this week.

• 36:57Kate Shaw?

  Let me just tell you what I'm going to say. We got a series of Doge Bro depositions this week. These came as part of one of the cases, one of the many cases challenging Doge's destruction of various aspects of and divisions of the federal government. And I just have to say, if you're interested in going beyond sort of ambient levels of rage to full-on incandescent rage, you should watch some of the videos of these clueless man children who spent part of the last year destroying much of the American government in ways that we will probably feel for the rest of our lives. So we're just going to bring you a couple of highlights slash lowlights. Let's start with this clip from a case involving the National Endowment for the Humanities.

• 37:32Leah Litman?

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

• 37:40Speaker 11

  Do you have an understanding about who is creating the directives and the priorities for your team to address?

• 37:54Speaker 12

  Elon had made it clear that there was a number of small agencies that needed Doge leads.

• 38:02Speaker 12

  So him.

• 38:05Speaker 11

  Your understanding is that Elon Musk kind of created the idea for the work that your team was engaged in?

• 38:14Speaker 12

  Based on the executive order.

• 38:16Speaker 11

  Right, okay.

• 38:17Kate Shaw?

  This is a sample of Nathan Cavanagh's, and this is with a C, so no relation, except spiritually, to SCOTUS Bro Brett deposition.

• 38:26Speaker 13

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

• 38:42Leah Litman?

  So we've talked about boy math. There definitely seems to be some of that here. But also is this bureaucracy? Like, these guys are all the things. They accuse bureaucrats of being incompetent, clueless, out to lunch. Dumb? I mean, these guys basically went into the Iran War with a fuck around and find out approach. Like, oh, the Strait of Hormuz, mine. The global oil market, oh, yeesh, never thought of that one. Um, honestly, a part of me wonders if like they're going to get like homophobic with the straight of Hormuz and start calling it like the gay of Hormuz or something like this is the insane levels of their approach to government and it is just the overconfidence of mediocre

• 39:25Leah Litman?

  white men as a model for governments like this is government of the manosphere. But more Doge bro depositions. Here is a mashup slash mixtape 404 media made of Doge bro Justin Fox explaining what DEI is.

• 39:42Speaker 11

  How do you interpret DEI?

• 39:54Speaker 12

  There was the EO explicitly laid out. The details, I don't remember it off the top of my head.

• 40:00Speaker 11

  It's okay, I'm asking for your understanding of it.

• 40:02Speaker 12

  Yeah, my understanding was exactly what was written in the EO.

• 40:05Speaker 11

  Okay, so can you?

• 40:06Speaker 12

  I don't remember what was in the EO.

• 40:08Speaker 11

  So right now, do you have an understanding of what DEI is?

• 40:11Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 40:11Speaker 11

  Okay, so what's your understanding as you sit here today in this deposition?

• 40:18Speaker 12

  Well, it was exactly what was written in the EO. And so anytime that we would look at a grant through the lens of complying with an executive order, we would just refer back to the EO and assess if this grant had relation to it.

• 40:33Speaker 11

  Okay, but I guess I'm stepping back from your methodology strictly in terminating the grants. Do you have an understanding as you sit here today of what DEI means?

• 40:43Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 40:44Speaker 11

  Okay, so what's your understanding of what it means?

• 40:46Speaker 12

  Well, it is exactly what was written in the EO.

• 40:52Speaker 11

  Okay, so.

• 40:53Speaker 12

  And I don't have the EO in front of me, but that was, we would always reference back to the EO and make sure that this grant was in compliance with the EO.

• 41:01Speaker 11

  I understand that, okay, but I'm not asking necessarily about what was in the EO. I'm asking very specifically about your present understanding of what, of DEI. Do you have a present understanding of DEI?

• 41:15Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 41:15Speaker 11

  Okay, can you explain what that present understanding is?

• 41:19Speaker 12

  Well, it's just easier for me to be referencing back to the EO.

• 41:23Leah Litman?

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

• 41:37Melissa Murray?

  As the New York Times reported, the Doge bros used ChatGPT to scan contracts for DEI, and one of the prompts that they used was, quote, "From the perspective of someone looking to identify DEI grants, does this involve DEI? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with yes or no, followed by a brief explanation," end quote. Literally, this is the ChatGPT version of the guy with the butterfly.

• 42:06Kate Shaw?

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

• 42:28Leah Litman?

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

• 43:10Melissa Murray?

  I mean, can we stop and just say, there's one thing a historian group is gonna do, and that's make a fucking bird hunt.

• 43:15Leah Litman?

  Yes, and I am so glad, so glad they did. After we finished recording, a judge ordered the videos be taken down from the internet because we can't have nice things. But this is the internet, so they're still available. Back to our regular episode. Speaking of body parts hanging out, we do have more on the manosphere this time from the judicial branch of the manosphere. So Judge Lawrence Van Dyke of the Ninth Circuit, the amisexual who made a video dissent in a gun case, that video dissent showed the judge assembling a gun, check it out if you haven't, but not to be outdone by his own video dissent, Judge Van Dyke authored a dissent that began,

• 43:58Leah Litman?

  and I quote, "This is a case about swinging dicks."

• 44:04Melissa Murray?

  Girl, I'm just glad that he did not videotape.

• 44:06Leah Litman?

  Because restraint, because restraint. Because he really could have gone there.

• 44:10Kate Shaw?

  He confined himself to the written word here, and he has, I guess, small blessings.

• 44:15Leah Litman?

  It's a traditional dissent. I mean, the content isn't traditional, but it is a traditional dissent form, which I appreciate. I really want to know why these guys are so obsessed with genitalia. Okay, yeah, right, I guess we did touch on that earlier. But the case in which this dissent appeared involved a sex discrimination challenge to a nude spa that would not admit a preoperative trans woman or women, and the Ninth Circuit concluded the business likely was in violation of various nondiscrimination ordinances. And Judge Van Dyke really whipped it all out in response. So after that opening sentence, the following lines also appeared in his dissent. Quote, "You may think that swinging dicks shouldn't appear in a judicial opinion.

• 44:58Leah Litman?

  You're not wrong, but as much as you might understandably be shocked and displeased to merely encounter that phrase in this opinion, I hope we can all agree that it is far more jarring for the unsuspecting and exposed women to be visually assaulted by the real thing. Sometimes it feels like these supposed adults in the room have collectively lost their minds. Woke regulators and complicit judges seem entirely willing, even eager, to ignore the consequences that their Frankenstein social experiments impose on real women and young girls."

• 45:27Melissa Murray?

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

• 45:52Leah Litman?

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

• 46:35Kate Shaw?

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

• 46:57Melissa Murray?

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

• 47:15Leah Litman?

  It's like L. Woods' application to Harvard Law School.

• 47:18Melissa Murray?

  Yes.

• 47:19Kate Shaw?

  Literally, in the Attention Age, this is how you get on the Supreme Court. It's possibly right.

• 47:23Melissa Murray?

  He just needs a podcast now.

• 47:24Kate Shaw?

  God, is that dispiriting. Oh, Melissa, don't call that into being.

• 47:28Melissa Murray?

  Well, I have some ideas about where he could go.

• 47:29Kate Shaw?

  If there is going to be a first sitting federal judge to launch a podcast, it's probably Do not count out Jim Ho.

• 47:34Melissa Murray?

  I think that's probably right.

• 47:35Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 47:36Melissa Murray?

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

• 48:14Kate Shaw?

  You were so close.

• 48:16Melissa Murray?

  So close.

• 48:17Kate Shaw?

  Right. So what Melissa is alluding to is the fact that DOJ is trying to exert more control over state bar ethics probes that can result in disciplinary actions against federal government lawyers. State bars can actually be pretty important accountability institutions. People might recall that state bars had some success in meeting out some professional sanctions against lawyers who had assisted in trying to undermine or overturn the 2020 election. And so, of course, as accountability institutions, Bondi wants to go after state bar associations. DOJ proposed a new regulation that would let it, let DOJ intervene in state bar disciplinary investigations, including with the authority to review allegations against DOJ lawyers first and essentially divest those bar associations of jurisdiction over those matters while DOJ

• 49:00Kate Shaw?

  is like running its own investigation, which I'm sure will be a very serious one. It's pretty obvious that this is a recipe for DOJ obstruction of any state bar investigations of current or former, because I think the regulation, or at least the proposal, extends to former DOJ lawyers. So I think the one silver lining here is I feel like it does actually sound like people over there are like a little bit nervous about bar associations now or in the future going after Justice Department lawyers who engage in unethical conduct. And, you know, I take some small joy in that fact.

• 49:31Melissa Murray?

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

• 49:37Leah Litman?

  Pamela Jo Bondi butterfly mean, is this federalism? But, you know.

• 49:43Melissa Murray?

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

• 49:50Leah Litman?

  Precipitating reasons for this proposed regulation, you know, among others, Deputy AG Todd Blanch and former DOJ official and now judge Emile Bové, Dark Lord of the Third Circuit, have faced ethics complaints in state bar organizations.

• 50:05Melissa Murray?

  Hmm. Also to be added to this list of individuals facing state bar association complaints is our favorite friend of the pod, former USA Dick Ed Martin. There is a complaint that actually stems from his time as the acting USA Dick. The bar complaint says that Martin engaged in misconduct when he sought to punish Georgetown University Law Center for things related to DEI. This is the non-Dicks, ex-husbands and imbeciles version of DEI. But obviously, Ed Martin was engaged in the new form of DEI when he was trying to punish Georgetown University Law Center for engaging in DEI, I guess. The complaint from the Bar Association accuses Martin of conducting unauthorized ex parte

• 50:50Melissa Murray?

  communications with a judge, among other things. Hmm. Let's take one more beat on ethics, the DOJ and House Bondi. I know we just mentioned the fact that Pam Bondi's brother once ran to be the president of the DC Bar Association. Well, guess what? He didn't win, but he's still in the news. We could have added this to the grifting segment, but it might as well be put here as well. Last week, two Democratic lawmakers, Senator Adam Schiff and Representative Dave Min, a former law professor, asked the US Department of Justice's watchdog to review whether US Attorney General Pam Bondi has properly recused herself from cases that involve clients of her brother, Brad Bondi, who is a partner of Paul's Hastings.

• 51:35Leah Litman?

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

• 52:13Kate Shaw?

  Hmm. So there are lots of things that could potentially have triggered this decision to change the rules surrounding state bar associations, like maybe many of the above. But I will also just say that the conservative legal movement has actually been gunning for state bar associations and kind of accountability for federal government lawyers since the Reagan administration. Deborah Pearlstein has a forthcoming book that actually goes through the history of this. It's fascinating. I mean, she had an op ed in The Times this week about this latest regulation. And so it's maybe these things like spurred them to actually do it now, but like the roots are quite deep.

• 52:45Leah Litman?

  Totally.

• 52:47Kate Shaw?

  Yeah. All right. Should we move on to SCOTUS?

• 52:50Leah Litman?

  Why not? So folks, at a public event last Monday in DC, Justices Jackson and Kavanaugh had an exchange about the court's shadow docket. The exchange was teed up when the moderator of the event, a federal judge, asked the justices about our friend, Professor Steve Latex's fantastic book, The Shadow Docket.

• 53:11Kate Shaw?

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

• 53:55Leah Litman?

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

• 54:40Melissa Murray?

  All right, let me switch gears. We never get to do anything related to SCOTUS that we actually like, but there is actually some positive news. It has been reported that the federal judiciary approved the creation of a new Supreme Court Defender Office to help with the representation of indigent defendants. The idea seems to be that the office will serve as a counterweight to the US lister general in federal criminal cases, and that it is an effort to close the quote-unquote advocacy gap between federal prosecutors and criminal defendants who appear before the court. It is a dedicated office that will aim to offer a comprehensive global view on criminal defense and a ready-made set of resources accessible to criminal defense lawyers. Obviously, we are excited about this development. We'll see how it plays out and as the details get worked out,

• 55:25Melissa Murray?

  but we just want to commend all of the individuals who worked so hard to make this happen and to say plus one, we are on board too.

• 55:32Kate Shaw?

  So let's briefly turn to argument recaps. We wanted to just note the other arguments the court heard the same week that it went wild on guns and drugs in United States versus Hamaney. We covered Hamaney in depth at our West Coast live shows.

• 55:43Leah Litman?

  Yeah, we literally went all the way to the bottom of the MDM jar in those live shows.

• 55:48Kate Shaw?

  We did, which meant we didn't have a chance to really talk about, at all, about the other two oral arguments, so we're going to briefly cover them now.

• 55:55Melissa Murray?

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

• 56:20Leah Litman?

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

• 56:54Melissa Murray?

  I like that. I mean, yeah, that sounds good. I hadn't heard that one, but yeah, but I just think in terms of-

• 57:00Speaker 14

  Fourth Circuit's, that's the Fourth Circuit's standard.

• 57:02Melissa Murray?

  I'm just trying to get Justice Alito's vote. And what I'm trying to say to Justice Alito is, I care about the rest of you too, but-

• 57:09Speaker 15

  Thank you very much. Very, very few advocates have that.

• 57:14Speaker 14

  I'll just stop then.

• 57:16Speaker 15

  Goal.

• 57:17Kate Shaw?

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

• 57:53Speaker 15

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

• 58:12Melissa Murray?

  Apparently, seniority doesn't have its purple chest.

• 58:14Leah Litman?

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

• 58:22Leah Litman?

  He's so greedy.

• 58:23Kate Shaw?

  Like, I get to go too, too early in the order, so I don't get to go. Then so do my or just gets to say whatever she wants about me.

• 58:29Leah Litman?

  Okay, justice for New Jersey, Jesus. I have the last word. I get the last word. I mean, come on. This is like the Real Housewives series where they flip tables. I love Jersey. I love the Jersey Shore. Oh, my God. Is he the Teresa Giudice of the court? You can hear him slapping the tables. You know, he's trying to flip the lectern.

• 58:48Kate Shaw?

  I think it's bolted to the floor, so it probably won't work there.

• 58:51Leah Litman?

  He'll probably have a grievance about that, too.

• 58:53Kate Shaw?

  He probably.

• 58:54Melissa Murray?

  This is reminding me of that flight to, and I was going to a National Constitution Center conference, and Melissa and Joe Gorga were on the flight.

• 59:05Melissa Murray?

  Also on the flight was Robbie George from Princeton, and surprisingly, they didn't know each other. But I did, I knew both of them.

• 59:13Kate Shaw?

  Well, I know Robbie George, but I have no idea who the Gorgas are.

• 59:15Melissa Murray?

  You contain multitudes. You'd be in the Robbie George camp for this one. I don't think he knew he was up there with the Gorgas.

• 59:21Kate Shaw?

  Well, the two of us share so much. Okay, so moving on, let's briefly cover the opinions we got from the court last week. First up is Galette versus New Jersey Transit Corporation, in which the court unanimously held that the New Jersey Transit Corp. is not an arm of the state for interstate sovereign immunity purposes. Sovereign immunity is protection from lawsuits, basically, which states enjoy. The New Jersey Transit Corp. was created by the state of New Jersey, but it's structured as a legally separate entity from the state and from the New Jersey Department of Transportation, and it has the traditional powers to sue and be sued and hold property and make contracts and incur debt. And all of that meant, the court concluded, that the Transit Corp. was not an arm of the state or part of the state which would entitle it to sovereign immunity,

• 1:00:06Kate Shaw?

  so that two individuals who had been struck by New Jersey Transit buses, one in New York, one in Pennsylvania, these were two separate cases that came up to the court together, but this finding meant that they could sue the Transit Corporation in their respective state courts for their injuries.

• 1:00:19Melissa Murray?

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

• 1:01:04Melissa Murray?

  if the finding isn't supported by substantial evidence.

• 1:01:07Leah Litman?

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

• 1:01:54Melissa Murray?

  Well, hello there, Los Angeles.

• 1:02:00Melissa Murray?

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

• 1:02:25Leah Litman?

  So we're actually going to start by asking--

• 1:02:26Speaker 16

  Most of it.

• 1:02:27Leah Litman?

  Most of it? All right. Well, spill what you can.

• 1:02:29Speaker 16

  Yeah, the stuff I won't get arrested for, I will definitely spill.

• 1:02:32Leah Litman?

  Okay. You figure out where those boundaries are. Yeah, yeah. This is a legal podcast, so.

• 1:02:39Kate Shaw?

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

• 1:03:18Speaker 16

  Yeah, that came about when, first, a few, during the first Trump administration, we inserted language into an appropriations bill that said that no money could be used to block members of Congress from doing surprise inspections of any facility that held immigrants or undocumented, or people that were accused of being in the country illegally. And we put that language in, we were being able to go and do spot inspections, because if you don't, if you give them notice, they'll clean everything up. There won't be anybody there. So when we started doing this, and when the raids started here in June, the

• 1:03:59Speaker 16

  first thing I did, the day after I got off the plane from DC, I went to the detention center to do a spot inspection. And they denied my ability to enter. And what we found out later is what they do very often is they lie. And they said-

• 1:04:16Kate Shaw?

  I'm shocked.

• 1:04:17Speaker 16

  Shocked, shocked. And they said that I wasn't allowed in, or other members of Congress, because there was a thousand protesters outside. There was no one outside except attorneys and the press. So, we saw this, so we got together, and I was looking at suing myself for the fact that they're denying members of Congress access. And the thing was, they denied people from all over the country. We ended up getting 12 members to sue, with Joe No Guzman, myself, Norma Torres, and we won the, it took months, but we won the first temporary injunction. What ended up happening, they allowed us to get in- And then they said, "Well, it doesn't apply any longer because the one big, beautiful

• 1:05:01Speaker 16

  bill, the $175 billion slush fund, didn't go through the normal appropriations process, therefore, it doesn't apply." So, then they even tried to say it didn't apply to downtown LA, what they call B-18, because that is a field office and not a detention center. So, they were just making shit up every single step of the way. And then we finally had, we finally got to the point just last week where we won another injunct, uh, temporary relief, and then that was, uh, it only applied to the 13 members of Congress, but then they just expanded it to the entire 435. So, we can stop and...

• 1:05:41Speaker 16

  (applause) And during the summer, one member said, "Oh, I'm gonna get us an appointment, do you wanna come?" I said, "They're just gonna clean it up." So, what we, we, they moved it back seven days, then they moved it back another seven days, so we finally got in after, after, um, two weeks. That facility can hold up to 244 individuals in nine different, uh, cells.

• 1:06:09Leah Litman?

  So, can, can we actually talk a little bit about what you've seen in the visits to the detention centers?

• 1:06:15Speaker 16

  Yeah.

• 1:06:16Leah Litman?

  Because, you know, last week, we got news that another detainee, Emmanuel Demas, died in ICE custody because of an untreated tooth infection.

• 1:06:23Speaker 16

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24Leah Litman?

  And earlier today, the Associated Press and Mother Jones reported that staff at the largest ICE detention facility, Camp East Montana, are apparently taking bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide. So, can you talk about what you saw in your conversations with people who have loved ones who have been detained, or who themselves have been detained?

• 1:06:46Speaker 16

  Well, the, so that visit I was just mentioning, we show up... We finally get inside. No one was inside except two people. It can hold up to 244. And it smelled like they just used bleach to glean every part of the detention facility. So that's why we have to do these spot inspections because we know they're cleaning it up. We found out they diverted anybody that would normally go into that facility to Orange County into Santa Ana. So what we're looking for, do they have proper medical treatment? Is it overcrowded? Do they have access to attorneys? Do they have proper food? That's what we're looking for.

• 1:07:27Speaker 16

  And what we've learned, there's been more deaths in detention centers in 2025 than the past 10 years combined. So we look for people that were picked up and detained to see if they're not getting forced to sign what they call expedited removal orders. And one woman, just recently, when I went back to see, she got arrested the day before. She was eight months pregnant. Couldn't find her using something called the aid number. The next day, people were like, well, she called and told her boyfriend or her husband she was arrested by ICE. The next day, we find out she was already in a different country. Like, never included. And when I went and asked for her, they said she wasn't there.

• 1:08:12Speaker 16

  So I think they're also hiding what they're doing with people.

• 1:08:17Melissa Murray?

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

• 1:08:58Melissa Murray?

  court's order, which then freed ICE to do exactly the kind of racial profiling that the district court had said was impermissible.

• 1:09:07Kate Shaw?

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

• 1:09:51Speaker 16

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

• 1:10:21Kate Shaw?

  It's okay.

• 1:10:22Leah Litman?

  Oh, no, we swear gratuitously.

• 1:10:23Kate Shaw?

  We're keeping it in. We're keeping it in.

• 1:10:25Speaker 16

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

• 1:10:59Kate Shaw?

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

• 1:11:10Leah Litman?

  Cauccacity.

• 1:11:11Kate Shaw?

  The cauccacity? I guess that's what you call it.

• 1:11:14Leah Litman?

  Mighty, mighty white of him.

• 1:11:15Kate Shaw?

  Mighty white of him. To write separately to essentially excuse it. And, you know, there was, you know, many, many things wrong with that separate concurrence. But, but one of the many was the sentence that I'm gonna read right now, in which he says, "The interest of individuals who are illegally in the country in avoiding being stopped by law enforcement is ultimately an interest in evading the law. That is not an especially weighty legal interest." So, not only is there the obvious targeting of a subset of a potentially undocumented population based on things like race, ethnicity, language spoken, job worked, it is also the case, even if there are obviously some undocumented individuals, there are many, many individuals

• 1:11:56Kate Shaw?

  who identify as Latino or Hispanic, millions in the Los Angeles area, who are also subject to the targeting that Kavanaugh just blessed, and that I think has like set in motion much of what we have seen in the last year in Los Angeles and across the country.

• 1:12:09Speaker 16

  I think of my, my mom. My mom's been in this country for 40-plus years. She became a citizen after Pete Wilson was threatening to take away people's, you know, benefits, social security, like he was going after undocumented and people who were Latino descent. And I was worried about her getting pulled over, because she doesn't speak, her English is pretty broken up, she has an accent, so, and she wasn't, she doesn't carry her passport on her, or an ID that like says, "Oh, you're, I'm a US citizen." So she could be arrested. And then when she was in Mexico for a number of months, we thought about sending one of

• 1:12:51Speaker 16

  us down there to escort her back, because she would be targeted just because of who she is. And, and, and that's a reality, and that's what people live in fear in every single day in, in Los Angeles and across the country. Kids, all of a sudden, are not going to school. All of a sudden, people who have, are diagnosed with certain diseases are not going to get those treatments. Somebody told me that their, one of their patients needed to get dialysis and stopped showing up. Like you can't, you have to have functioning kidneys to be able to live. But that is happening every single day because of the fear that this administration has, has caused through, through every single neighborhood that I represent.

• 1:13:35Kate Shaw?

  And not just the administration, but that the Supreme Court has permitted. Brett Kavanaugh owns kind of everything that you just listed.

• 1:13:41Speaker 16

  Yeah.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

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• 1:16:47Leah Litman?

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

• 1:17:32Speaker 16

  This administration has no respect for the law, for Congress, for facts. And what they will do is they'll try to develop a fact pattern to justify any course of action. So when it came to investigating these facilities, oh, too many people protest. Oh, it's not, it's not a detention center, it doesn't apply. So they just develop these facts. When it comes to Iran, same thing. They are lying. I have not heard anything that supports their views. And even if you look at the public record, it's all there.

• 1:18:14Speaker 16

  Tulsi Gabbard, who, she's crazy as they come, and should never be trusted. But she spoke in front of Congress and said that Iran, last spring, she said Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Trump on the plane, a reporter asks him, and he goes, Tulsi doesn't know what she's talking about.

• 1:18:34Leah Litman?

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

• 1:18:41Speaker 16

  Exactly. And then they do Operation Midnight Hammer, when they dropped the bomb on Fardel. Then he said, oh, it was beautiful, it was great, it was, all of a sudden, we obliterated their program. And there was public reporting that it only set back that program by a few months. And that person got fired, right? They asked them to actually go back and look at that intelligence again. And then the person came back with the same intelligence and got fired. And then other people got fired because they were going against the public, the narrative that Trump put out. So same thing is happening now. Like, how many different rationale has he given? One, it was, oh, to help the protesters.

• 1:19:25Speaker 16

  Two, to stop the ballistic missile program, but that doesn't... The Department of Defense says that's not going to be operational to actually get a missile to the United States into 2035. Three, a nuclear program that was supposed to be obliterated last summer. They're only weeks away, but all intelligence says that they've actually, they have, they're not actively pursuing, right? That is in the public sphere, that intelligence.

• 1:19:54Speaker 16

  And Trump is just using it as an excuse. Then you have Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, "Well, we had to attack because if Israel attacked Iran, then Iran might attack our facilities." So they're trying to find a legal rationale to support their actions, but their actions are illegal.

• 1:20:16Melissa Murray?

  This sounds like originalism.

• 1:20:17Speaker 16

  Huh?

• 1:20:18Melissa Murray?

  This sounds like originalism.

• 1:20:19Speaker 16

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

• 1:20:54Melissa Murray?

  So Representative Gomez, you've mentioned so far Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump. We've mentioned Brett Kavanaugh. All of these are guaranteed buzzkills. So let's shift the vibes a little bit.

• 1:21:09Melissa Murray?

  You are, like Brett Kavanaugh, a father.

• 1:21:15Melissa Murray?

  In fact, you are the founder of the Congressional Dads Caucus. So what is the Congressional Dads Caucus doing right now to help all of us raise the nation's children and make this a safer, more productive environment for them?

• 1:21:29Speaker 16

  Well, the Congressional Dads Caucus, we're up to 50 members now. They're only Democrats. Democrats and Republicans.

• 1:21:37Melissa Murray?

  So weird.

• 1:21:37Speaker 16

  Yeah, so.

• 1:21:40Speaker 16

  And what we're doing, we're trying to put forward an agenda that works for working families. And what does that? And also lead the Democratic Caucus in a direction that kind of boxes the caucus. And so when we take the majority, that these issues remain. At the top of the legislative agenda. So on March 17th, we're hosting the first ever national summit on the caregiving crisis. And we're doing that in order to highlight the needs of people that are taking care of newborn babies and kids, but also the sandwich generation that's also taking care of their elderly parents.

• 1:22:22Speaker 16

  And how there's not enough support and what does it do to the family? What does it do to our economy? An average family pays 26% of their income towards childcare. And then you add in housing, that's another 30%. And we had a national summit on the housing affordability crisis in September. So what we're doing is we're trying to build this support and box people in. And then at the same time, getting dads that are members of Congress to say dads have a responsibility to take care of our kids, not only at home, but also in the halls of Congress.

• 1:23:01Kate Shaw?

  Yes, yes, all of those things.

• 1:23:06Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, it is, I think, in terms of a hopeful note to end on, kind of recasting caregiving as an issue that dads need to have some ownership in is so important. So thank you for that work and for leaving us with a bright spot of hope, especially the kind of embedded premise, that is that when the Democrats take the majority, we want to have the agenda ready to go on day one. And it sounds like you are hard at work at that. So thank you so much.

• 1:23:32Speaker 16

  Thank you.

• 1:23:32Kate Shaw?

  All right, Representative Gomez, it was great to have you. Thank you so much for being with us.

• 1:23:38Kate Shaw?

  That was a fun conversation, and it reminds me of something to share before we get to our favorite things. So people are probably aware of this, but I'll remind you in case you're not, we are less than nine months away from the midterms, and there is a lot of work that you can do right now. November will decide control of Congress and also tell us whether Trump is going to maintain his Republican trifecta. And our friends at Vote Save America are here to help if you are eager to get started doing your part now. They will give you tips.

• 1:24:03Leah Litman?

  Which you should be.

• 1:24:03Kate Shaw?

  Which you should be. They will give you tips on how and when and where to donate to make sure your money goes the furthest, how to confidently talk to people in your life about midterms and key issues, and opportunities to take action with your community in real life.

• 1:24:14Leah Litman?

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

• 1:24:21Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, it's like nine months is not that long.

• 1:24:23Leah Litman?

  Go time, bitches.

• 1:24:25Kate Shaw?

  It is. Okay, so go to votecam America dot com. You can sign up to be part of the work this year and then send the signup link to five friends. This is paid for by Vote Save America. Learn more at votecam America dot com. This ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:24:39Melissa Murray?

  Now on to our favorite things, which is authorized by a candidate in the candidate's committee, namely the president in floor-shine shoes. JK.

• 1:24:48Kate Shaw?

  Just kidding.

• 1:24:48Melissa Murray?

  No.

• 1:24:49Kate Shaw?

  Not actually.

• 1:24:49Leah Litman?

  One of my favorite things is people doing work for the midterms, starting now, and signing up for votecam America dot com. Also, as I mentioned earlier, Kacey Musgraves has a new single, Dry Spell, a new album that will come out in May. I'm obsessed with the single. It calls to mind like earlier work in Golden Hour and I, it's just great, very catchy. Judge Young, a Reagan appointee, had a fantastic district court opinion on a stay issue, denying a stay of the remedies he had ordered in response to the federal government's illegal targeting of students and non-citizens based on pro-Palestinian speech. And the opinion wrote, quote, "Now that it suits their interests, it is ironic to hear the public officials wail that they are but bit players in a fractured

• 1:25:31Leah Litman?

  government, claiming that the US Customs and Immigration Service is somehow not before the court and unrepresented here. As this court recognizes, the entire theory of this administration is that of a unitary executive with no agency independence, where every single employee within the Article II executive dances to the tune of the president," end quote.

• 1:25:50Melissa Murray?

  Receipts.

• 1:25:51Leah Litman?

  Exactly. Love it. Favorite thing. There's also a forthcoming Law Review article I recently read and really enjoyed. It is by Genevieve Lakier and Sonia Star, forthcoming in the Texas Law Review, called "The War on DEI as a Project of Constitutional Subversion." So would definitely recommend that as well.

• 1:26:12Kate Shaw?

  Awesome. I wonder, Melissa, we should, I guess it's too late to add any citations, but it sounds like there might be some. Kind of connections between, we were sort of arguing that at least the gender-related executive orders are part of this constitutional reimagining that the administration is pursuing. So that's what we argue in this forthcoming Supreme Court review piece. So I'll have to check that one out. I am gonna totally shift gears and recommend a little bit of fiction. So I just read The Correspondent, which my book club discussed, and I actually liked it kind of a lot, but it was extremely divisive in my book club, and that actually makes for a good book club book, because we really debated it. And so recommend it if you're looking for a book club book. I also just started The Hail Mary Project, which my 11-year-old read, and, or actually, he and my husband listened to, like, back

• 1:26:55Kate Shaw?

  and forth to travel basketball, like, over many weekends. And I thought it was YA, but it's more kind of sci-fi. I don't know if it's technically YA, but it's incredibly fun. And there is a big movie based on the book coming out later this month with Ryan Gosling, who plays this, well, the scientist, middle school teacher, the kind of protagonist. Anyway, it's incredibly riveting. Finally, I think I've previously recommended the novel Vladimir, which I loved and is now a Netflix show that I started watching and have been enjoying. But if you haven't read the book, really read the book, maybe before you watch the series, and then do that, too. That's it.

• 1:27:29Melissa Murray?

  I also wanted to plus one Vladimir. Kate has been literally pouring this book into my ear for months, but I still haven't read it. So I just decided instead to watch it on Netflix, because it stars some people I really like. Rachel Weisz, for example. Leo Woodall, really, really cute. And also, my personal favorite, the silver fox, John Slattery. So it's really fun. It has a lot of, like, break the fourth wall moments that are really funny. So highly recommend that. Also, wanted to recommend the documentary that's now out from HBO and Soledad O'Brien, The Devil is Busy, which is all about the post-Roe landscape. Really fantastic. Out in the Bay Area, I should have mentioned

• 1:28:12Melissa Murray?

  this then, but I actually didn't start reading the book until on the way back from the Bay Area. So this is Thavalla Nolan's Good Woman: A Reckoning, which is a fantastic collection of feminist essays. And if you're not familiar with Thavalla Nolan's writing, you should be. Her debut collection, Don't Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body, was an absolute tour de force. And this new collection is, I think, even better. So very, very highly recommend. I'm also watching Ryan Murphy's Love Story, like everyone else, about JFK Junior and Carolyn Bessette. And although I am thoroughly enjoying it, the thing I really want to recommend or like wish for, bring into existence, is a soundtrack from this because the music is absolutely

• 1:28:54Melissa Murray?

  fantastic. It is a time capsule of all of the great hits from the 1990s. Intern Jordan would be absolutely obsessed. The music is so on point. The Cranberries, Better Than Ezra, James, absolutely amazing. And of course, the clothes are nostalgia inducing and amazing, too. I'm also really excited to report that there have been more Stricklys in the wild. Saw a couple of you at the airport in Los Angeles. Great to see you. And had the good fortune to be seated next to Strickly Justine at a dinner last week. She enjoys the podcast and I enjoyed chatting tour. And we were still basking in the glow of our warm West Coast welcome. So thanks to everyone who made that tour such a resounding success.

• 1:29:39Leah Litman?

  That reminds me, I also met a Strickly in the wild, Hillary, at the University of Michigan, who is a student here, and on the West Coast glow, I am wearing a shirt that was given to us by one of our West Coast listeners that features the Portland Frog and says, "Ribbit, Resist, Repeat, and No Hope Without Hop." And I love it.

• 1:30:00Kate Shaw?

  And it's sort of a Shepherd Fairy-esque rendition of The Toad, for those of you not watching on YouTube.

• 1:30:04Leah Litman?

  Portland Frog, not Toad.

• 1:30:06Kate Shaw?

  Oh, forgive me. Sorry.

• 1:30:07Leah Litman?

  Sorry.

• 1:30:08Melissa Murray?

  Kate?

• 1:30:09Kate Shaw?

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

• 1:30:22Melissa Murray?

  Totally.

• 1:30:25Kate Shaw?

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

• 1:31:07Speaker 02

  On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings. Do not spend it alone. Spend it with me, Alex Wagner, for Crooked Media Presents: Live Election Results. We're gonna have Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vitor, Stacey Abrams, Dan Pfeiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced. And they're all gonna help us make sense of what's happening as the election results roll in. So, here's what you need to do. Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube and tune in on Tuesday, November 3rd, at 9:00 PM Eastern, 6:00 PM Pacific, for hot takes, catharsis, and as many results as we can possibly analyze.

• 1:32:17Speaker 18

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