BREAKING: SCOTUS Blocks Trump's Mail-In Ballot BS

Kate, Leah and Melissa hop on to break down the Supreme Court’s decision to block the Trump administration’s Postal Service regulation announcing it would not deliver mail-in ballots unless states adopted a bunch of last-minute, unnecessary, burdensome, and impossible policies governing mail in ballots. They cover Trump’s tantrum over the decision, Brett Kavanaugh’s endlessly pathetic pick-me energy, and Sam Alito’s God tier false equivalencies. Take the Strict Scrutiny survey https://crooked.com/strictsurvey. New Strict merch available here https://store.crooked.com/products/were-gonna-need-a-bigger-court-graphic-t-shirt. You can now listen to Strict Scrutiny for CLE credits in California, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington, and Oregon! More info at crooked.com/strict_cle http://crooked.com/strict_cle Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE on November 6th in Washington, DC: Crookedcon.com http://Crookedcon.com Buy Melissa’s book,The U. S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-constitution-annotated-for-the-contemporary-reader-melissa-murray/8e7f0dfa472fc3ca?ean=9781668221938&next=t& Buy Leah’s book, Lawless https://bookshop.org/p/books/lawless-how-the-supreme-court-runs-on-conservative-grievance-fringe-theories-and-bad-vibes-leah-litman/5b562d6fcb316d6e?ean=9781668054642&next=t, now out in paperback Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/strictscrutinypodcast/?hl=en,Threads https://www.threads.net/@strictscrutinypodcast, andBluesky https://bsky.app/profile/strictscrutiny.bsky.social For a transcript of an episode of Strict Scrutiny please email [email protected] mailto:[email protected]

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• 0:00Leah Litman?

  Strict Scrutiny is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It's back to school season, and this year, 5 million children across Texas are going to be greeted by the 10 Commandments in their classrooms. Texas politicians passed a law requiring the 10 Commandments in every public school classroom, forcing their religion on every kid in those schools. 28 families in Texas, supported by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, are taking the fight to the Supreme Court, and we need you to amplify their voices before the Supreme Court gets its hands on this case. We've already talked about on the podcast how the Fifth Circuit decision allowing this practice was total BS. I mean, it had to liken the 10 Commandments to basically like a poster, almost suggesting,

• 0:43Leah Litman?

  "Oh, what, you triggered libs?" But the reality is, there's a human cost of Christian nationalist policies like these 10 Commandments laws, as well as the decisions the Supreme Court hands down. Public schools are supposed to be accessible to all. They're not supposed to be instructing on the state's preferred religion or the state's edited version of scripture. Visit au.org/10c to learn more about this case and how you can help join the fight to protect church-state separation.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Coca-Cola. For the big, for the small, the short, and the tall. Peacemakers, risk-takers. For the optimists, pessimists. For long-distance love. For introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers. For old friends and new. Coca-Cola. For everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you.

• 1:44Speaker 02

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

• 1:57Speaker 03

  She spoke not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, "I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks."

• 2:27Leah Litman?

  Hi, all. It is the Ladies of Strict Scrutiny, coming to you with a quick morning-after analysis of the Supreme Court's decision to block the Trump administration's Postal Service regulation announcing that the Postal Service did not want to deliver mail-in ballots unless states adopted a bunch of last-minute, unnecessary, very burdensome, and likely impossible-to-meet policies governing mail-in ballots.

• 2:47Kate Shaw?

  Okay, so the top-line, most important thing to know in terms of the upcoming, critical midterm elections is this: It is now crystal clear that, under the law, the Trump administration cannot interfere with absentee voting via the Postal Service. That means if your state allows you to vote by mail, you will be able to do so, consistent with your state's rules, regardless of the Trump administration's diabolical efforts to the contrary.

• 3:12Leah Litman?

  The Supreme Court told the administration that it cannot use the Postal Service to steal or rig an election by throwing out thousands of ballots and disenfranchising people. I'm just going to say, right answer, took a long time to get there. Specifically, the court declined to issue a stay, which is a pause of the lower court's ruling that had invalidated the Postal Service's regulation. So we're going to spend a little bit of time analyzing what the court did, which is going to involve a fair bit of mocking Brett Kavanaugh, the most pathetic and needy pick-me justice who may have ever lived, and then Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, who took their addled, pickled, Fox News-consuming, right-wing manosphere, podcast-listening brains to new lows.

• 3:55Leah Litman?

  In addition to all of that, just wanted to emphasize: Do not congratulate. Do not give the Supreme Court credit for telling Donald Trump that he doesn't have the power to rig an election in the sloppiest, most chaotic, wildly illegal, last-minute dash way possible. Shorter, Leah, do not give the Supreme Court credit for finally deciding to crack open their copies of the Constitution and read the elections clause. Okay. Just to remind you all, the other reason you ought not congratulate the Supreme Court is because this is the same court that just a few months ago killed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and cleared the way for a little unprecedented, completely unorthodox, mid-cycling

• 4:36Leah Litman?

  redistricting where Republicans are authorized and indeed encouraged to cheat democracy and erase the political power of Democratic voters, and Black voters in particular. This is the same court that, just a few weeks ago, opted not to block the underlying executive order, the same one that announced Donald Trump's plans to try and interfere with this election, including using the US Postal Service to do so. And then just kind of strung us along for these valuable days as the election drew ever nearer, as we all wondered, are we really going to have an election that works in any meaningful way or not? And luckily, the answer, for now, is yes, we will, but the court is again kind of crowning

• 5:17Leah Litman?

  itself the ultimate decider of that critical democratic question. And just to elaborate on what Melissa was just saying, it is because of the earlier Supreme Court decision that the only thing that is blocked right now is the Postal Service regulation announcing plans to decline to deliver batches of ballots. Other portions of the lawless executive order are actually not blocked, including the portions of the executive order threatening to investigate and prosecute state and local election officials who allow individuals to vote whom the administration believes are actually not authorized to vote. This could still chill election officials' implementation of their own election rules, and that is on the Supreme Court. And the only reason we are still even having to

• 6:00Leah Litman?

  talk about, "How will this midterm operate? Will it actually proceed?", is because the Supreme Court declined to block the executive order at a time when some states had already begun to allow people to vote. So let's break down the order that the court issued late Monday night. In just a couple of sentences, the Supreme Court order gave two reasons for why the lower court could block the Postal Service regulation, or at least why the Supreme Court wouldn't disturb that lower court order. First, the Supreme Court's order said the government is, quote, "unlikely to succeed on the merits." That is, a majority of justices seem to be of the correct view that the Postal Service does not, in fact, have the authority to engage in mass disenfranchisement efforts that would supplant state election rules.

• 6:42Leah Litman?

  Second, the Supreme Court's order said the, quote, "equitable factors do not favor the government." Equitable factors include things such as whether the party seeking relief from the court, here, the federal government, is likely to suffer irreparable harm, and how the other parties might be harmed as well. All right, so that was the majority order, and it was very short, very spare. What wasn't spare were some of the separate opinions. And I just want to say, as a pro tip to everyone out there listening, shutting up is free. Saying and writing nothing beyond that is free and costless. So whenever possible, err on the side of efficiency and just shut the fuck up.

• 7:23Melissa Murray?

  And not letting your whole ass hang out.

• 7:26Leah Litman?

  That part. But again, proving that it's never the right course to not let your whole ass hang out, and proving that his appointment was never going to be free or costless for most of us, Brett Kavanaugh decided to weigh in anyway. And again, with real cost to all of us who have to read what he had to say, Justice Kavanaugh decided that he was going to make it very clear that he actually does think that the president can use the Postal Service to wipe out state rules regarding mail-in ballots, just can't do it right now. Right? So this is what Kavanaugh wrote, quote, "There is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority."

• 8:08Leah Litman?

  But he said that applying the rule now isn't justifiable because election officials will not have enough time to grapple with it.

• 8:16Melissa Murray?

  Shorter, Brett Kavanaugh, "I would still really like to be Chief Justice, Mr. Trump." So while this is a-

• 8:22Leah Litman?

  No, do it the right way. "I would still like to be Chief Justice, Mr. Trump, please."

• 8:27Kate Shaw?

  Only you can do it that way, Melissa.

• 8:29Leah Litman?

  Yeah, I can't do that.

• 8:32Leah Litman?

  So while it's a 7-2 decision on the bottom line of whether to disturb the lower court's injunction blocking the Postal Service regulation, with only Thomas and Alito noting their dissents, Kavanaugh's concurrence signals that he's probably going to rule in Trump's favor if this issue comes up before the 2028 election with more lead time. So I think it's probably better to think of this as a 6-3 majority.

• 8:54Kate Shaw?

  So thankfully, right, looking on, obviously, the bright side here, Gorsuch and Barrett do not join this concurrence, which hopefully means they are on board with the idea that this rule is illegal, not just now, but in general. Not sure I would totally take that to the bank, but that at least is how I am going to optimistically construe their failure to join this concurrence.

• 9:14Leah Litman?

  The bar is in hell, Kate.

• 9:15Kate Shaw?

  And also, I know, it's there, but they also, I think, and this is obviously critical, don't join the unhinged Alito-Thomas dissent, which we are going to go deep on in a moment.

• 9:24Leah Litman?

  Because they have dignity, Kate. They still have some shards of dignity.

• 9:28Kate Shaw?

  I think that they shame maybe still has some power for them, that I think is important. And also, I think they are at least somewhat, even if tenuously, connected to reality, which I think means they realize that the court would own the absolute chaos around this election that would ensue if, in fact, they decided to let Trump move forward with this order and this regulation. So I guess the best read here is that, however on board they are, and I think it's enthusiastically on board with the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, the destruction of real multiracial democracy, they're not fully on board with this sort of blatant election interference. So-

• 10:06Leah Litman?

  I just want to add, late-breaking, we got a Truth Social post from the president reacting to this.

• 10:12Kate Shaw?

  Oh, really? Since we sat down and what does he say?

• 10:14Leah Litman?

  Oh, yeah, in which he refers to Thomas and Alito as, quote, "legends both" of his appointees.

• 10:22Melissa Murray?

  Oh, my God, that's a t-shirt. That is the t-shirt. We gotta, we gotta get that t-shirt for ourselves.

• 10:28Leah Litman?

  Of the justices he appointed who ruled against him, he says, quote, "These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court. They are merely a shell of their original selves."

• 10:39Kate Shaw?

  They've been body-snashed, uh-huh.

• 10:41Leah Litman?

  He goes into the terrorist ruling that is causing all of this, you know, expense, as well as this election ruling that is destroying America.

• 10:49Kate Shaw?

  Wait, Brett doesn't even get an atta boy for the concurrence?

• 10:51Leah Litman?

  He does not.

• 10:52Kate Shaw?

  Oh, my God.

• 10:53Leah Litman?

  And then, "I said pick me, pick me." I know, you have to know that Brett Kavanaugh is just fucking crying himself, you know, in his pillow right now.

• 11:01Melissa Murray?

  Brett Kavanaugh with Arthur the Aardvark fists right now. Oh!

• 11:05Kate Shaw?

  Where else does he go?

• 11:07Leah Litman?

  The president closes with this, quote, "It is not easy for me to write this criticism of the United States Supreme Court. It will likely cost me dearly for years to come, sir, if only."

• 11:24Kate Shaw?

  Wow. More breaking news on this, on this recording, ladies.

• 11:28Melissa Murray?

  So I, I love this breaking news because like, let's just be honest, like the Supreme Court nominally gave him a loss, but this whole thing has taken so much time. It's sowed so much chaos. I'm sure that the chaos itself is by itself a suppressive action. Like there will be people who are like, do I even need to vote? Like, should I vote? There's so many questions. Like the, the court has given him a huge assist, even if ultimately this is a formal loss. So my guy, like, take, take the W. Like you got a W and someone even entertaining this absolute nonsense.

• 12:03Kate Shaw?

  Well, and, and I think that's part, part of the sort of back to the kind of pragmatic sort of effect here. Yes, this should mean that people are able to vote in the way that they always have in their states. But yeah, I really do worry about all of the uncertainty that has hung around voting by mail in recent weeks because of Trump and because of SCOTUS may mean that people are confused and scared and don't vote by mail. So it's really important there be a full court press to get the word out that Trump has failed here and you get to vote the way that you voted before he tried to put this executive order into place. So.

• 12:35Melissa Murray?

  Thank you for that PSA. Let's go back to our originally scheduled programming, which involves dragging Brett Kavanaugh.

• 12:44Melissa Murray?

  I gotta talk to you about this Cav currents, right? I think Coach K is branching out on his Cav currents vibes, right? So this particular Cav currents is doing something that Brett Kavanaugh did in the birthright citizenship case. So do you remember when he wrote his concurrence in birthright citizenship? He was like, I'm ruling against you, Daddy Trump, but don't worry, I'm still preserving the option for you to later do some totally illegal shit, right? I want you to be able to do that. So this is the same vibe here. He is basically like, we're not going to do it in this election, but 2028 is coming up and pretty sure there's some statutory authority for the US Postal Service to do this here. Speaking of statutory

• 13:28Melissa Murray?

  authority, I've got to wonder if Brett Kavanaugh is even inclined to actually do this major questions doctrine thing for real, for real, because he really, really never seems to want to do it when it would apply to Donald Trump. So listeners, if you haven't been listening to Strict Scrutiny for your entire life, what are you even doing with your life? But let me catch you up real quick. The major questions doctrine is a totally made up fanfic thing that Neil Gorsuch likes to cozy up to every night before he goes to bed. And it basically requires Congress to first explicitly authorize any sweeping program that an administrative agency might seek to put in place. For example, student loan relief. This court loves to

• 14:11Melissa Murray?

  apply the major questions doctrine mostly to the Biden administration. It has applied the major questions doctrine to Donald Trump in the context of tariffs, but mostly because that was an opportunity to further embed this made up fanfic into jurisprudence, not because it actually was a major question. In any event, Coach Kavanaugh here doesn't seem to ever want to do the major questions doctrine because if you applied this made up fanfiction, it would totally apply here. This is a major program of sweeping repercussions. Shouldn't the court intervene here and make sure that Congress specifically authorized the US Postal Service to completely federalize elections and take all control of elections away from the states? Because that seems pretty consistent with a major policy shift.

• 14:53Kate Shaw?

  Seems big. Seems big. Big if true.

• 14:56Melissa Murray?

  It does. But Kavanaugh thinks the agency can do it anyways because he can't read. I'd like to offer him some free tips. One is that by the time I was in kindergarten, I could read. Second is by the time I was a teenager, I learned that not everyone will like me and that's okay. By my 30s, I had even learned to be comfortable with that fact. I know that I could do hard right things, even if those things might be unpopular.

• 15:24Leah Litman?

  I do want to do hard right things, not correct things.

• 15:29Melissa Murray?

  Exactly. Not, not, not the meaning here, Brett. But please see your therapist for some help for how you might be able to evolve to get on my level.

• 15:38Kate Shaw?

  Indeed.

• 15:46Melissa Murray?

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• 16:29Melissa Murray?

  code SCRUTNY for up to 20% off home and sleepwear. That's code SCRUTNY for up to 20% off on home and sleepwear. And if you see a post purchase survey, please be sure to mention that you heard about Cozy Earth right here. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If I could wake up tomorrow and be better at one thing, it would probably be, I don't know, putting things out of my mind, like just being able to compartmentalize stuff so I can chill and relax without having to do everything I can to handle it immediately. If I could choose a second thing, it would be small talk. Not great at it, not good at it. Honestly, not even really passable. Better is a feeling and it's defined by you. And for BetterHelp, it's a BetterHelp therapist

• 17:11Melissa Murray?

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• 17:35Melissa Murray?

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• 18:19Melissa Murray?

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• 18:55Kate Shaw?

  I'm going to pivot to something not, not at all evolved, in fact, like very unevolved, which is the pièce de raison, the dissent of one Samuel Alito, joined by one Clarence Thomas. They basically indicate TLDR that they would allow King Trump to do everything and anything, including rigging and stealing the upcoming midterm elections.

• 19:16Melissa Murray?

  Where to even start with this completely unhinged dissent? Like these guys, whoa, what, like, sirs, what are we doing here? Let's highlight a few very chef's kiss features of this dissent. So first of all, this duo has a very creative HGTV inspired approach to statutory interpretation that is rife with false equivalencies. The other thing this dissent does is it victim blames the states and Democrats for basically getting themselves into this mess because they objected to a federal takeover of the election process. Again, truly peak Lido to blame the victim. The other thing that it does is it embraces

• 19:57Melissa Murray?

  wholeheartedly with their full chest, all of these voter fraud conspiracies in the absence of any, any evidence. I mean, it's truly, I saw Goody Proctor forging mail-in ballots with the devil in the moonlight. Like, it's that kind of vibe. And all of this, I think, goes to the fact that at bottom, these two literally could not give a fuck about voters or democracy or an expression of the people's will, because really what they want is what they have right now, which is Donald Trump in office doing the most.

• 20:31Kate Shaw?

  So Alito packs a lot in. We're going to just, again, as Melissa said, take through some of the highlights slash lowlights. One is Alito claims that the Postal Service has the authority to implement this regulation that might disenfranchise literally millions of people and erase state laws governing mail-in ballots. In some ways, both on procedural and substantive grounds, both because the Postal Service has the substantive authority and because, he says, the Administrative Procedure Act doesn't actually allow you to challenge certain kinds of Postal Service regulations. And one of the ways he does that is by focusing on a particular regulation of Postal Service power, including its power to dispose of stuff in the mail that is supposed to be limited to, quote, "non-mailable matters",

• 21:13Kate Shaw?

  like stuff that exceeds size and weight limits. And he refers to this provision of the Postal Service law as, quote, "tucked away in a corner and niche and thus essentially irrelevant in the context of what he views as this broad, nearly plenary power of the Postal Service to regulate all aspects of the mails."

• 21:32Melissa Murray?

  This is the very HGTV forward interior design approach to statutory interpretation. We're just rearranging some furniture here, by which I mean congressional enactments, and asking whether this statute has good feng shui. But I mean, Leah, are you even surprised? This is basically the same play that Alito did in Louisiana versus Calais, where he's like, you know what? Let me update Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. I mean, this is like.

• 21:59Leah Litman?

  Makeovers, interior decorating, and more.

• 22:01Melissa Murray?

  But this is like Trading Spaces when there was Hildy. Hildy was the decorator in Trading Spaces who would literally come in and paint your fucking living room black and put like a vase in the middle of your dining room table filled with nothing but eggs and be like, it's gorgeous. Like.

• 22:16Kate Shaw?

  It sounds like how Melania redesigned the, the East Wing for that first Christmas they had in the White House.

• 22:21Melissa Murray?

  Oh, yes, with the menopause trees. Yes, that was crazy.

• 22:24Leah Litman?

  This is a shape rotating approach to statutory interpretation.

• 22:28Kate Shaw?

  This is textualism, guys. This is.

• 22:30Leah Litman?

  Right. But like, seriously, I have no idea what it means to say that some statutory enactments are niche or tucked away in a corner, other than that it allows a justice to say that these parts of the statute that I don't like and that prevent me from reaching my desired outcome don't count. Basically, it means, what are some statutes between friends and fascists?

• 22:52Melissa Murray?

  Nobody puts Congress in a corner except Justice Alito. Justice, where is Johnny to come and like redeem all of this Johnny from Dirty Dancing? Anyway.

• 23:03Kate Shaw?

  We knew which Johnny you were talking about.

• 23:05Melissa Murray?

  I just like, I don't know. I don't know.

• 23:07Kate Shaw?

  That was for me. I got you.

• 23:08Melissa Murray?

  No, no, it's for the millennials.

• 23:11Kate Shaw?

  Oh, the youngs who don't know they're Dirty Dancing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, watch that film.

• 23:16Melissa Murray?

  I mean, literally, we've never like sweated looking at Patrick Swayze while playing a DVD and rewinding.

• 23:21Kate Shaw?

  They haven't lived. They haven't.

• 23:22Melissa Murray?

  They have not lived. Anyway.

• 23:25Kate Shaw?

  Sorry, back to the substance.

• 23:31Melissa Murray?

  Folks, in truly epic false equivalencies, Justice Alito suggested in this dissent that the Postal Service regulation committing to throw out your ballots on Moss if any ballot in a batch of ballots doesn't comply with these arbitrary rules, he says this is no different than, quote, "the basic requirement to list the recipient's address on one side." Sir, FYI, my kids would send mail back from camp and I'm just going to say, schools are not teaching kids how to address an envelope. And I didn't realize that I actually had to do this. So I don't know how my kids learned to address an envelope, but they can't. And the mail still got to my house. So the Postal Service still delivered it.

• 24:12Melissa Murray?

  So I'm not actually sure this is the argument he thinks it is. Anyway. The second point Justice Alito makes is that this entire fiasco is really the fault of liberals, Democrats and the states themselves who decided to challenge this. So it's not the Trump administration's fault. The Trump administration gets no blame for announcing plans to interfere with the midterm elections by taking over the Postal Service and using it to federalize the elections. According to Justice Alito, quote, "The plaintiff states and the courts bear a substantial share of the blame for the rule's timing." That is obviously because the states decided in April to challenge this and litigation cast a cloud over the government's ability

• 24:52Melissa Murray?

  to make a rule. Also, I might want to put the court in here too, for saying that the litigation wasn't ripe in the first instance. So maybe that also put some time on the clock. I don't know. I'm not sure it's all the victims' fault here.

• 25:04Kate Shaw?

  Yeah. And there's also kind of as a substantive response on this timing question, just a reminder that even though the administration was subject to an injunction, the Postal Service did go ahead and issue a rule anyway. So the litigation does not seem to be the thing that caused any delay. The Postal Service moved forward anyway. So, you know, what's, I guess, a little thing like causation when you can just say that Trump is the victim and, you know, blue state AGs and the Democratic appointees are the problem?

• 25:31Melissa Murray?

  Also Taylor Swift. Yes. Also, to the extent Alito is suggesting that everything would have been hunky dory had the rule been finalized by mid-August, that is just wrong. That would not have been enough time for implementation without mass disenfranchisement. States had already printed ballot return envelopes and informed voters of the election rules by that point. And in what can only be described as an effort to cultivate collegiality among colleagues, Justice Alito also tries to lay the blame for all of this on his colleagues, the other Supreme Court justices. As he puts it, quote, "The government had to wait nearly another

• 26:10Melissa Murray?

  full month for this court to weigh in." This is a less than subtle attack on Justice Jackson. If you haven't picked up on this, there are stories in the right wing media suggesting that Justice Jackson caused some delay because she dained to put pen to paper and write a dissent. In a footnote to the order announcing that the court would immediately put into effect its ruling nullifying the Voting Rights Act, which then set off the last minute redistricting, even in places where primaries were underway, Justice Alito also suggested that that was Justice Jackson's fault because she had dissented from the order. And Justice Alito responded that the, quote, "constitutional question was argued in conference nearly seven months

• 26:52Melissa Murray?

  ago." And that kind of language obviously set off all of these right wing takes about how Justice Jackson and the Democratic appointees, but mostly Justice Jackson, are to blame for the court unleashing chaos in the upcoming midterm election. So FYI, according to right wing media, if black people are disenfranchised, it's because this black woman decided to write some stuff down. Who taught her to read anyway and to write?

• 27:15Kate Shaw?

  Hundred percent. Yeah. And just to reveal how conspiracy theory mag-upheld he is, Alito repeats, like with a straight face, the demonstrably false claim that the regulation interfering with mail ballots is needed to, quote, "better detect election fraud." To be clear, as a reminder, there is exactly zero evidence in the record of this. There is exactly zero evidence of this period in or out of the record. And against this evidence-free conspiracy claim, Sam Alito balances the difficulty to election officials. He's basically saying, "As for the equities, which we talked about earlier, the government has a strong interest in enforcing the rule and implementing it. It will also enhance the visibility of federal ballot mail to better detect election fraud." Then he says, "On the other side of the balance,

• 27:59Kate Shaw?

  the plaintiff states invoke the practical effects of implementing the rule close to the midterm elections." So notice who is not in this scale anywhere to be found. You have the Trump administration on one hand, state election officials on the other. The millions of voters who cast their ballots by mail, nowhere to be seen, including voters who cast their ballots by mail because that is the way elections are conducted in their states, or because they live in a rural area, or they are disabled, or elderly, and voting by mail is literally their only option to vote. Those people and their democratic interest in participation get nary a mention in Alito's balance of the equities.

• 28:36Melissa Murray?

  Let's be fair to him. He does say explicitly that he takes that problem very seriously, but it is not enough to convince him.

• 28:44Kate Shaw?

  Well, but he's talking about the burdens on election officials, not voters. He says, "I take the problem very seriously." And the problem he's talking about is the burden on election officials who have to scramble to change their rules. I thought it would have been so easy to write a sentence or to acknowledging the disenfranchisement.

• 29:00Melissa Murray?

  The voters into that.

• 29:01Kate Shaw?

  I didn't see it on the page.

• 29:03Melissa Murray?

  I think a fair reading is that he bundled the voters into that. He just doesn't give a fuck about any of it.

• 29:07Kate Shaw?

  Look who is straying to fairly read Sam Alito. There's enough, okay, I hear you on there's enough fair criticism. We don't want to do any unfair. But I actually think that when you read this closely, he is talking about plaintiff states, not voters.

• 29:22Melissa Murray?

  Representing the people because he's always believed that the states represent the people most clearly. See dots.

• 29:26Kate Shaw?

  Through their legislatures. Yeah, that's true.

• 29:29Melissa Murray?

  So probably need to wrap this up. And in some ways, the best thing about this is that Alito would be mad as hell if you even suggested that this opinion suggests he is a political hack. He would be the victim of false allegations and attacks.

• 29:47Leah Litman?

  Definitely don't go on social media and say that Justice Alito is a political hack who listens to right wing radio and podcasts and Fox News all the time, so much so that his brain is actually pickled. Definitely don't say that.

• 29:58Melissa Murray?

  Definitely don't say that. But what you should say is absentee mail and ballots remain intact for the upcoming midterm. The Postal Service, Trump administration cannot interfere with them because for this Supreme Court, last minute sloppy election subversion is just too far. They would prefer that the administration lie better or implement the Republican Party's long-term anti-democracy agenda rather than just going out on Trump's own, I think.

• 30:26Leah Litman?

  That seems right. That seems right. Lie better. Also, sorry, while we were recording, we got the absolute best victim blaming analog. So Cash Patel is currently testifying before the Senate and Durbin asked him about the FBI revisiting its hiring criteria and no longer excluding people who had engaged in bestiality.

• 30:50Speaker 06

  What about the bestiality? Tell me what it said before.

• 30:56Speaker 07

  It automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it. Obviously, we are never going to hire the criminals.

• 31:04Speaker 06

  This side of what? The bestiality?

• 31:06Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 31:06Speaker 06

  So you disqualified the animal?

• 31:09Leah Litman?

  And, yes. Okay. And Cash Patel responds, "Applicants who have engaged in bestiality means they were victims of bestiality because they were forced to do so."

• 31:22Melissa Murray?

  The sheep made me do it.

• 31:24Leah Litman?

  The FBI, we are not going to criminalize and prevent victims from serving, like, the FBI hiring people who were forced to have sex with animals against their will.

• 31:36Melissa Murray?

  Leah, I don't think you've really fully grappled with the full effects of the sheep state. And I think we're going to have.

• 31:42Leah Litman?

  I just, I'm sorry. I had to bring your attention to this trying to monitor in the event there were any additional breaking Supreme Court related things that that one crossed my feed.

• 31:52Kate Shaw?

  In Congress anymore. And yet you have exchanged Durbin as this question. Wow.

• 31:57Leah Litman?

  FYI, if Pam Bondi had said this, she would be out. I mean, she is out. The fact that Cash Patel continues to be employed by the federal government is proof positive that not having a uterus is the single best career move you can make in this administration. Single best.

• 32:15Kate Shaw?

  Absolutely.

• 32:16Leah Litman?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Kate Shaw?

  All right. Well, glad to leave things.

• 32:21Leah Litman?

  Bye. Dual meaning there. Sheep state and animals.

• 32:25Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 32:32Melissa Murray?

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

• 33:00Melissa Murray?

  I felt a jackhammering pain in my jaw. Like someone sawing my bones. Barbed wire in my shoulder.

• 33:07Kate Shaw?

  Like a cattle prod in my hip. Like I put my foot in a blender.

• 33:11Leah Litman?

  Pain is different for everyone. But where pain starts, Gernavix Suzetragine begins. Gernavix is a non-opioid 50-milligram prescription tablet for adults with moderate to severe acute pain that reduces pain signals before they reach the brain.

• 33:26Kate Shaw?

  Before those signals tell the brain to feel. Like I punched an angry beehive.

• 33:30Leah Litman?

  And pain reduction can finally begin. Do not take Gernavix with CYP3A inhibitors. Avoid use with grapefruit or liver problems as these may increase side effects. Tell your doctor about all your medicines if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. Gernavix may make certain medicines and birth control less effective. Side effects include itching, muscle spasms, rash, and elevated muscle enzymes. To learn more about Gernavix, ask your doctor. Call 1-833-589-PAIN or visit Gernavix.com.