Yes, We’re in a Constitutional Crisis

Live from Fordham Law, Leah, Melissa, and Kate stay on the Trump 2.0 chaos beat. They cover the continued ransacking of the federal government by the new administration, lawlessness at the DOJ, and the gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Finally, they take some time to consider just how much this new administration hates women. Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025! 3/6/26 – San Francisco 3/7/26 – Los Angeles Learn more: http://crooked.com/events Order your copy of 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/9781668054628 Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/strictscrutinypodcast/?hl=en, Threads https://www.threads.net/@strictscrutinypodcast, and Bluesky 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.

• 0:01Leah Litman?

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• 0:43Leah Litman?

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• 1:25Leah Litman?

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• 2:00Speaker 01

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

• 2:13Speaker 02

  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."

• 2:44Kate Shaw?

  Hello and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it.

• 2:49Melissa Murray?

  Because the Trump administration 2.0 is in full can't stop, won't stop mode with an onslaught of executive orders and other actions that seem designed to break the constitutional order and maybe even the world order, we are not going to be actually talking about the court today. The court's also been on vacation, like, where are those guys? Like, mustique? Where are they? Who knows? The court's not in session, but the federal government is. So we're going to be covering much of what the Trump administration has been doing over the last week. So this is all to say that we are staying on the chaos beat. And we should note that we are recording live at Fordham Law School on... (audience cheering)

• 3:32Melissa Murray?

  Big crowd here at Fordham Law School, and they're excited. And we're recording on a Thursday evening, and the way this usually plays out is that we record on Thursday, and then there's all kinds of stuff that happen on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then this episode gets released on Monday. So we don't even know what's going to happen. So a lot of this may be preempted by other things, but take it as a time capsule of a moment that we were in on a Thursday night and that there's more to come. And we're just going to soldier on and do the best that we can.

• 4:04Leah Litman?

  So we are going to start with a rundown of the most outrageous recent developments. It would take us days to get through all of them, so we're just going to cover some highlights, really lowlights and not JVN-approved lowlights. This is going to include some new moves made inside the administration by Musk, Trump, and some perhaps less familiar figures such as the acting deputy attorney general, who we'll call Dagbag, Emile Bové, and interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, aka USA Dick.

• 4:39Melissa Murray?

  Yes, good, good.

• 4:41Leah Litman?

  Yeah, so we're also going to cover some developments in courts involving some of the administration's actions. So it's going to be a lot of stuff on DEI for men with bad personalities. And if there's time, we will take a step back and focus on what these early moves tell us about the substantive vision of women and their place in society that seems to drive Trump, Musk, Vance, the Doge-bags, maybe we should call them doggy-bags, Doji-bags, they are full of shit, the Muskrats, evil musketeers, and whoever else is calling the shots over there in the Mojo Dojo Casa White House.

• 5:18Kate Shaw?

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

• 5:22Leah Litman?

  I feel like Charlie XCX at the Grammys, right? Like, performing guests, anyways.

• 5:28Kate Shaw?

  There's no delay, though, so they can't believe anything out. Okay, and I actually want, before we dive in, to make one threshold observation, which is that Leah has been saying for years that the meanest thing you can do to the conservative justices on the Supreme Court is to accurately describe their rulings.

• 5:45Leah Litman?

  Not a joke, not a joke, just a fact, that is a deep-cut RuPaul Drag Race reference, just to be clear.

• 5:52Kate Shaw?

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

• 6:31Leah Litman?

  So we spent a lot of time in our last episode talking about Doge, and we'll do a bit more of that today. But we're going to start with the Department of Justice, which is actually becoming pretty Doge-like. Get it, like, D-O-J, Doge. D-O-G-E, Doge. Okay, anyways. We are recording this live show in the city of New York, a great city, with

• 6:55Leah Litman?

  a not-so-great mayor.

• 6:57Melissa Murray?

  He's pretty mid. He's pretty mid.

• 6:59Leah Litman?

  Eric Adams. So, right. Where do things stand with Mr. Adams, Melissa?

• 7:07Melissa Murray?

  So, he seems very committed to the rat situation, which I appreciate. Very committed to threading his eyebrows, which I'm always here for some strong manscaping. So, good for him. But until last Monday, Mayor Adams was actually under federal indictment, which, make America great again, make America Tammany Hall again, whichever you choose, not great for the city of New York. He had been charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York with corruption charges, specifically bribery and the solicitation of foreign campaign contributions. Now, when this was first announced,

• 7:51Melissa Murray?

  we were a little dubious about how those charges would ultimately fare before our very corruption-forward Supreme Court, which in recent years has taken a hatchet to various federal anti-corruption laws. But it appears that we will never actually have the experience of reciting faithfully the conservative justices' anti-corruption/corruption-forward decisions, because this particular case is never going to get to the United States Supreme Court, because Acting Deputy Attorney General Dag Bag, Emile Bové, who was also one of Donald Trump's lawyers in the New York hush-money trial and who is now emerging as a top lieutenant in the Trump DOJ,

• 8:34Melissa Murray?

  has decided to put the kibosh on this prosecution.

• 8:39Kate Shaw?

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

• 8:47Leah Litman?

  Thursday, 6:00 PM, we should say.

• 8:50Melissa Murray?

  It's gonna be a long night.

• 8:51Kate Shaw?

  It could be a very long night. So let's just bring you up to speed on where things stand as of, what is it? 6:15 Eastern Time. On Monday, as Melissa mentioned, in a letter that I personally hope will be widely taught in both legal ethics and government lawyering classes for years to come. In that letter, Bovee directed Danielle Sassoon, then the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to dismiss the case against Adams. Dismissed without prejudice so the charges would remain dangling out there. Seemed like that was part of the point. And Sassoon, we learned just before the recording started, resigned rather than agree to dismiss the charges. Remember, she was the acting U.S.

• 9:34Kate Shaw?

  Attorney designated by the Trump administration. She was picked for, elevated for, this role by Trump. And that's part of why this resignation is such a big deal. So she wrote a letter to the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, saying she could not-

• 9:50Melissa Murray?

  Pamela Jo Bondi. Say her name. Say her full name.

• 9:57Kate Shaw?

  I told Melissa I would, and I already failed.

• 10:00Melissa Murray?

  It's a very Florida name. Like, I grew up in Florida. In the fifth grade, there were five girls who all had Jo as their middle name. So this is very specific, very up in the moment.

• 10:11Kate Shaw?

  I will not omit that again. Pamela Jo Bondi. In the letter, Sassoon explained that she could not in good faith request that these charges be dismissed. And Bovee responded with an eight-page screed of his own, saying that Sassoon's resignation was accepted in light of her refusal to comply with his directive, and also saying many, many other things. So we are mostly going to focus on the initial letter, and there is a lot in it. That's the initial letter directing Sassoon to dismiss the charges. First, there is the fact that Bovee decided to put in writing this letter at all. It is in some intention with stringer bells sage advice not to take notes on a criminal conspiracy.

• 10:53Kate Shaw?

  So, I mean, to be clear, the main Justice Department could have leaned on the Southern District of- ...New York quietly could have tried. Putting this letter into the public domain reflects a choice, and I think a choice to signal and to broadcast real antipathy for these kinds of anti-corruption prosecutions.

• 11:12Leah Litman?

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

• 11:39Melissa Murray?

  Light conspiracy.

• 11:40Leah Litman?

  Light conspiracy. Don't take notes.

• 11:43Melissa Murray?

  All right, so what did the DOJ letter directing the dismissal of the Adams prosecution actually say? Well, first, it makes clear that Main Justice did not decide to dismiss these charges against Adams because it had determined that there was a problem with the case or with the underlying evidence that had been gathered in support of the prosecution. So that was not the issue. Rather, the decision to let this light corruption slide, as it were, is because Mayor Adams, in the administration's own judgment, apparently needs to be free and on the streets to help the federal government enforce the immigration laws. Hmm. Let's put this differently.

• 12:28Melissa Murray?

  This is a non-prosecution that apparently is in exchange for Mayor Adams's cooperation with the Justice Department, the Immigration Department's decision to enforce the immigration laws and do this mass deportation scheme. Literally. And Sassoon's letter also says as much. It says, quote, "Adams's attorney repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with immigration enforcement." So apparently that was what was on offer, and the DOJ said, "Yes."

• 13:03Leah Litman?

  Exactly. Yes, please.

• 13:06Kate Shaw?

  Look, to be fair, the initial DOJ letter did contain some suggestion that the case should be dismissed for other reasons. Not because of the weakness of the evidence or the legal theory, but because the charges were at least being pursued too close to the mayoral election, right? They were impeding Mayor Adams' reelection bid. And also, there was a suggestion that the previous presidential administration was essentially punishing Adams for his criticism of their immigration policy. And that at least was the ostensible reason provided in part of the letter. But all of that, even inside the four corners of the letter, seems pretty pretextual because the letter then goes on to say, quote, "We are particularly concerned about the impact of the prosecution on Mayor Adams' ability to support critical

• 13:49Kate Shaw?

  ongoing federal efforts to protect the American people from the disastrous effects of unlawful mass migration and resettlement." So it really does seem to be a thank you for your cooperation kind of situation.

• 13:58Leah Litman?

  And as we all know, tips and gratuities to officials are perfectly legal, right? Per the US Supreme Court.

• 14:05Melissa Murray?

  Non-prosecution, the best tip.

• 14:07Leah Litman?

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

• 14:52Melissa Murray?

  Can I ask a question, though, just as a con law matter? Do you remember that whole Prince thing about how the federal government cannot commandeer state officials into the service of a federal program?

• 15:01Leah Litman?

  It's true, but what if the federal government instead implies that a state officer's freedom depends on whether they are keeping daddy happy by enforcing federal immigration law? Conscription.

• 15:14Melissa Murray?

  Exactly.

• 15:15Leah Litman?

  Exactly.

• 15:16Melissa Murray?

  Totally fine.

• 15:17Leah Litman?

  Then it's totally fine. So after the Department of Justice's Public Integrity section was informed they would be taking over Mayor Adams' case, the acting head of the unit and his boss, the senior most career official in DOJ's Criminal Division, both resigned. Like, this is Trump's Saturday night massacre when Nixon was firing officials who wouldn't do his bidding to keep him above the law, and this is just another Thursday afternoon, less than a month into the Trump administration. This is an order so foul, so transparently corrupt, Trump-selected officials are resigning rather than touch it. So, The New York Times also reported that Mr. Bovee, in accepting Sassoon's resignation,

• 16:02Leah Litman?

  informed her that the prosecutors who worked on the case, Adams' case, were being placed on administrative leave and would be investigated by the Attorney General and the Justice Department's internal investigative arm.

• 16:14Melissa Murray?

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

• 16:25Kate Shaw?

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

• 16:35Melissa Murray?

  You're a true fan, you know.

• 16:37Kate Shaw?

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

• 16:49Leah Litman?

  It'll be Big Balls. That's a joke.

• 16:53Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, so, we don't know, but I am quite sure that is going to be quite a hearing if and when somebody puts their name to this ask and has to answer questions about why.

• 17:06Melissa Murray?

  Maybe it'll be Elon Musk.

• 17:10Melissa Murray?

  Anyway, guess what? We're not even done covering the DOJ. That was just one episode in this week at your Department of Justice. There are more DOJ slash New York City hijinks that we can talk about. Last night, newly confirmed Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi announced that the Justice Department is suing the state of New York. At her press conference, Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi announced that DOJ has, quote, "filed charges against Kathy Hochul, Tish James, and others," end quote. Now, that is not actually true because Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi was talking about a civil suit that does not involve charges at all.

• 17:52Melissa Murray?

  It is a challenge to the city's immigration policies, so it's not a criminal prosecution, and therefore, the term "charges" is really not apt. But why would the nation's top law enforcement official pay attention to these minor, minor distinctions between a criminal prosecution and a civil suit? The best people, the meritocracy in action. I think so.

• 18:18Kate Shaw?

  All right, so staying on the topic of New York, because there is, yes, more. So, the great controller of our city, Brad Lander, who is also running for mayor without federal charges dangling over him, announced yesterday some not-so-great news, which is that the federal government has apparently clawed back $80 million in funds that were not only approved, but evidently also dispersed to New York. The funds were appropriated by Congress to help New York cover the costs of housing and providing other services to migrants in the city. I do not know the mechanism by which this clawback was achieved, but I do know that it seems outrageous. The administration is, to be clear, absolutely entitled to change its immigration enforcement policy. Like, no one disputes that, but it cannot do it in this way.

• 19:02Kate Shaw?

  I mean, that, I think, observation could hold true for much of what we have seen in recent weeks and what we're going to talk about. But we should say that Lander has pledged to challenge the federal government's actions in court, and so that's something that we're going to keep an eye on.

• 19:14Melissa Murray?

  And what this amounts to, they literally took $80 million out of New York's bank account? Like, that is looting the American people, and we should link this back to corruption. Like, you would think New York City's mayor would be making a stink about this.

• 19:31Leah Litman?

  Alas, he has been bought off with a non-prosecution decision by the Trump administration. Like, it is the corruption all the way down.

• 19:39Melissa Murray?

  All right, there's more. We're not done. Literally, covering DOJ in this environment is like drinking from a fire hydrant. So, we recently learned that the Trump DOJ is planning to take a pass on enforcing anti-corruption laws. So, kel surprise, right? This is no surprise. Not only is corruption going to be encouraged, anti-corruption laws will not be enforced. And, as with many of the administration's moves, reading about this felt a little bit like reading an Onion headline, but it's not. So, pursuant to a new executive order that was issued, the administration has plans to stop enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

• 20:21Melissa Murray?

  The FCPA is a 1977 federal law that prohibits US citizens and entities from bribing foreign government officials in order to benefit their business interests. Seems like a good idea. But, I guess the administration decided that it was going to take too long to wait for a case to get up to the United States Supreme Court so they could strike down the FCPA. So, the Trump administration decided just to do this with a stroke of the pen instead. And, I have to wonder, what big law is going to do? Because like, a lot of big law firms have huge FCPA practices. So, I mean, if there is a burgeoning coalition to fight back here, I think it's white shoe law firms.

• 21:01Leah Litman?

  From your lips.

• 21:04Kate Shaw?

  Complementing this executive order, ordering literally non-enforcement of this Corrupt Practices Act, Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi has also announced that the administration will disband the National Security Division's Corporate Enforcement Unit and drastically limit prosecutions under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA. You know, does seem to reduce to make corruption great again.

• 21:32Leah Litman?

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• 23:48Leah Litman?

  So let's move from the acting deputy AG Dagbag and the newly confirmed AG to the interim US Attorney for DC, as we said, USA Dick, a guy by the name of Ed Martin. So a few days before Beauvais's absurd Adams letter, Martin sent a fawning letter to Elon Musk and Doge compatriot Steve Davis that was evidently sent via X only, as one does, you know, when you're a government-

• 24:17Kate Shaw?

  The new postal service is just X.

• 24:18Leah Litman?

  Right.

• 24:19Kate Shaw?

  That's what we're gonna have to all communicate using.

• 24:20Leah Litman?

  When you're a government official communicating with private citizens.

• 24:22Melissa Murray?

  Sliding into your DMs, as it were.

• 24:24Leah Litman?

  Yeah. Yes. So the topic of this letter appears to be reporting on the names of individuals in Doge wreaking havoc on the federal government, and Martin pledged in the letter that, quote, "If people are found to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically, we will investigate them and we will chase them to the end of the earth to hold them accountable", end quote. That last part is bolded in the letter. So too is a sentence in the next paragraph, which reads, quote, "Noone is above the law." Yes, that's spelled N-O-O-N-E. Who is noone, you ask?

• 25:07Melissa Murray?

  Only the best person, I think. Definitely.

• 25:11Leah Litman?

  Someone who's part of the meritocracy.

• 25:13Melissa Murray?

  100%. So Martin is really distinguishing himself even among this administration of absolute winners. So after being installed as interim US Attorney for the District of the District of Columbia, he fired dozens of prosecutors who were involved in the prosecution of the January 6 protesters. So again, very, very normal.

• 25:37Leah Litman?

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

• 26:18Melissa Murray?

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

• 26:38Leah Litman?

  Wait, wait, question. Did those January 6 defendants, were they needed to help enforce federal immigration law?

• 26:43Melissa Murray?

  Probably, yes. Probably, probably.

• 26:46Leah Litman?

  Awesome.

• 26:47Melissa Murray?

  Or the Voting Rights Act.

• 26:48Leah Litman?

  Yes.

• 26:49Melissa Murray?

  It's hard to say.

• 26:50Kate Shaw?

  It's a deep cut.

• 26:51Melissa Murray?

  Very deep cut. All right, well, it turns out that one of the January 6 defendants who got one of these, get, literally, get out of jail free cards, was Martin's own client. So Ed Martin was still representing this guy. He hadn't actually withdrawn from the representation of this defendant. And when that was brought to Martin's attention, like, hey, there's a little conflict here, he said that he believed that he had withdrawn from the case, but it turned out that he hadn't. And when he went to actually get dismissed from the case, having already directed the dismissals of those charges, the district

• 27:34Melissa Murray?

  judge who he went before basically told him that he would not be granting leave for Martin to withdraw because Martin was no longer a member in good standing of the federal court there. That is how you do it, okay? Like, legend.

• 27:53Leah Litman?

  Yes.

• 27:54Melissa Murray?

  Absolutely iconic. The district court was like, yeah, your card's no good here. Thank you.

• 28:01Kate Shaw?

  And, and, you know, correctly, there's at least one ethics complaint growing out of all of this that has been filed against him by the 65 Project, so we will see where that goes. I mean, I truly cannot imagine what the, I think, hardworking, decent people in the US Attorney's Office in DC must be making of all of this, their nominal head, who can't even withdraw from his unethical representation because he has let his bar membership lapse.

• 28:26Melissa Murray?

  Only the best people.

• 28:27Kate Shaw?

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

• 28:32Melissa Murray?

  I never, I really was not expecting to hear.

• 28:35Leah Litman?

  No, me either.

• 28:39Kate Shaw?

  You sort of forgot that that whole thing happened.

• 28:41Melissa Murray?

  It's almost like he's been under a bridge somewhere.

• 28:43Leah Litman?

  Right. He had just kind of become irrelevant.

• 28:46Kate Shaw?

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

• 29:26Leah Litman?

  Well, no, he, he, he too is needed to help enforce federal immigration law.

• 29:29Kate Shaw?

  And the Voting Rights Act.

• 29:31Leah Litman?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Melissa Murray?

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

• 30:14Melissa Murray?

  knowledge of. Interestingly, the first 30 odd days of the Trump administration seems to be following Project 2025 pretty much down to the letter, so maybe there was some overlap.

• 30:27Kate Shaw?

  Hasn't even been 30 yet, Melissa, can you believe it?

• 30:28Melissa Murray?

  It's not, it's

• 30:29Kate Shaw?

  Who knows, when we hit the 30 day mark, I don't know where we're gonna be.

• 30:32Melissa Murray?

  How many days has it been?

• 30:33Kate Shaw?

  Twenty some?

• 30:34Leah Litman?

  Twenty-five, when we're recording.

• 30:36Melissa Murray?

  We are 25 days into a four-year sentence, oh my god.

• 30:39Leah Litman?

  And four years is optimistic.

• 30:42Kate Shaw?

  Oh god.

• 30:43Melissa Murray?

  Well, there is that third term. Exactly. Anyway, we know that Russell Vaught is part of the unilateral funding freeze. He hadn't even been confirmed to OMB when he got that going. But despite that, you would think that the fact that he paused all of this federal funding would have been a moment for the senators on both sides of the aisle to be like, hey, is this the guy we want running OMB? But apparently not. Vaught sailed through the Senate, was confirmed, and for good measure, he was then subsequently made the acting director of the Consumer Financial

• 31:25Melissa Murray?

  Protection Bureau, the CFPB, whose real director, Donald Trump, fired last Friday, two Fridays ago.

• 31:32Leah Litman?

  Yeah. So for folks who might not be familiar with it, the CFPB does super important work. It supervises banks and other financial institutions. It protects consumers by doing consumer education, investigating complaints filed by consumers, finding companies that engage in fraudulent and abusive practices. And so, of course, these guys were like, that one's gotta go.

• 31:51Melissa Murray?

  Very, very populist.

• 31:53Leah Litman?

  Yes.

• 31:54Melissa Murray?

  Definitely good for the price of eggs.

• 31:55Leah Litman?

  Yeah. And, you know, I think this too is part of the corruption-forward ethos of the administration, because guess who was and is trying to do something that the CFPB might have regulated?

• 32:08Leah Litman?

  Our secret president, Elon Musk, who wants to create-

• 32:11Melissa Murray?

  That's so secret.

• 32:12Leah Litman?

  You're right. Who wants to create some sort of Musk buck and use X as a digital payment system. And federal regulators had, to no surprise, been carefully reviewing and scrutinizing digital payment systems because of security risks, fraud risks, and more. And that's no longer a problem.

• 32:29Melissa Murray?

  Coincidence.

• 32:30Kate Shaw?

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

• 33:11Melissa Murray?

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

• 33:16Kate Shaw?

  I mean, all roads lead back to Clarence Thomas somehow, so yes.

• 33:19Melissa Murray?

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

• 33:31Leah Litman?

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

• 33:37Melissa Murray?

  Well, you have good reason to be panicked because there was yet another airline collision, this time in Arizona, on Duffy's watch. So again, I just want to point out, meritocracy.

• 33:48Leah Litman?

  Yes.

• 33:49Melissa Murray?

  Meritocracy. All right. This airline collision, there was a fatality involved. This is really a catastrophe, deeply concerning if you ever do air travel, which a lot of us do. But interestingly, guess where you're not going to hear about this sort of thing? Typically, it's been the case that when there is an incident like this, there would be an ordinary press release because the National Transportation Safety Board would release one. But in one of the most- Disturbing instances of the unholy entanglement between the United States government and Elon Musk's X. It was announced that going forward, the only way that investigative information and information

• 34:31Melissa Murray?

  about agency news conferences will be released is through X itself. So X is not only going to be your mail service and your digital payment system. It is also going to be the way in which the United States government communicates with all of us about airline safety and maybe other things. So this seems great for free markets and competition and data privacy.

• 34:58Leah Litman?

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

• 35:29Kate Shaw?

  They're just rotating, Leah, they're giving everybody a turn.

• 35:31Leah Litman?

  Right, yeah, and it just so happens that OANN's turn is forever.

• 35:35Kate Shaw?

  Right.

• 35:37Melissa Murray?

  But don't you love the idea of Page Six in the Pentagon?

• 35:41Leah Litman?

  I don't think they're on the list.

• 35:42Melissa Murray?

  Pete Hegseth having lunch with, like, so good.

• 35:47Leah Litman?

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

• 36:31Kate Shaw?

  All right, so we have a lot of other moves in other agencies we want to cover. We talked last week in our last episode about the abrupt termination or pause, but potentially longer term pause of many of the programs run by USAID. There was a lot of additional reporting just in the last week about USAID workers literally stranded when the agency abruptly placed employees on administrative leave, stopped their programs, ordered many people back to the United States. I mean, and to be clear, these are individuals, many of them, who are essentially US diplomats. They hold diplomatic passports, they represent the United States and carry out US aid policy in programs all over the world. And last Friday, many of them were told they would have to immediately leave their posts,

• 37:14Kate Shaw?

  meaning pack up their lives, pull their kids out of schools. One family reported having to leave a post and not bring their dog with them, which like for us, all of us as dog owners, is just like an unthinkable thing for the government to have done of all the horrible things the government has done in recent weeks. It also kind of appears, since we last recorded, that the Doge cabal has now set its sights on the Department of Education in a way it hadn't even a week ago. And can I just like pause to say how truly like a military takeover it feels to be saying things like, or reading things like, okay, the Department of Education has fallen, right? And it's like, no, no, wait, it might be holding on. It might not have fully fallen yet. This is the tenor, I think, of our conversations and much of the coverage this week, and it's chilling.

• 37:55Leah Litman?

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

• 38:30Leah Litman?

  Sorry.

• 38:31Melissa Murray?

  All right. So it seems that the Musk rats have stormed the Department of Education and have announced that they are unilaterally terminating nearly $1 billion in US DOE contracts, including essentially eliminating a research office that was intended to track student progress. And there's already a lawsuit challenging that, and we're going to turn to it in a minute. But that's sort of where things are. They are definitely in the building.

• 38:56Leah Litman?

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

• 39:09Melissa Murray?

  They're trying to get a desk at the Pentagon.

• 39:12Leah Litman?

  I just could not with that. But much of what is happening is in clear violation of laws passed by Congress, leading me to say, like, babe, wake up, new unitary executive theory just dropped. Not only is all of the executive power vested in presidents, Republican presidents, all legislative power is also vested in presidents. You would think Congress would mind and...

• 39:40Melissa Murray?

  You would be wrong.

• 39:41Leah Litman?

  Right. Yeah, you would be wrong. Because when Senator Tom Tillis was asked about Elon Musk exercising Congress's power of the purse, Tillis answered, quote, "That runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense, but it's not uncommon for presidents to flex a little bit on where they can spend and where they can stop spending."

• 40:02Melissa Murray?

  I don't even understand that statement. Like, how can a little flex be unconstitutional in the strictest sense, but still be okay?

• 40:11Leah Litman?

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

• 40:24Leah Litman?

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• 41:07Leah Litman?

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• 41:50Leah Litman?

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• 42:24Leah Litman?

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

• 42:40Kate Shaw?

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

• 43:23Leah Litman?

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

• 44:02Kate Shaw?

  So let's start by mentioning one that was just filed that I think makes a really important argument that's distinct from those that have been filed already. And it's a suit filed against both Elon Musk and Doge, and it is challenging the extraordinary power that Musk and Doge are exercising as inconsistent with the Constitution and specifically with the appointments clause. So the claim is that this kind of power can only be exercised by officers of the United States, individuals Appointed as the Constitution requires for those who exercise significant authority on behalf of the United States. So if it's a principal officer, the president has to nominate and the Senate has to confirm. And even inferior officers can only be appointed through the mechanisms that the Constitution

• 44:43Kate Shaw?

  allows if Congress acts to confer the appointment authority somewhere other than the president with Senate confirmation. None of that happened here. And so the focus of the suit is just that, you know, this extraordinary power that they are wielding as to the Education Department, that's the focus of this lawsuit, but the arguments absolutely apply much more broadly.

• 45:00Melissa Murray?

  All right. We also want to talk about some of the personnel-related actions and the litigation that those actions have prompted. So just to give you like a snapshot, over the last three weeks, the first three weeks of his administration, Donald Trump has fired the following people. Career officials at the DOJ and the FBI for no other reason than the fact that they worked on the January 6 prosecutions. He has fired a number of inspectors general, the internal watchdogs of the federal government. They fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, which is an entity that enforces the civil service laws and protects whistleblowers. It's fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics, because that person is in charge of ethics.

• 45:42Melissa Murray?

  It's fired a board member of the NLRB, preventing the board from having a quorum and not being able to do its work enforcing labor laws. It's fired the head of the CFPB. It's fired the FEC commissioner. It's fired the EEOC commissioner. And it's fired much of the Kennedy Center's board and replaced them with new board members, including one Usha Vance.

• 46:07Leah Litman?

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

• 46:28Melissa Murray?

  It sounds like something I read in Project 2025.

• 46:31Leah Litman?

  What's that, don't know her?

• 46:33Kate Shaw?

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

• 46:54Leah Litman?

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

• 47:36Leah Litman?

  president's ability to remove them and thus are able to be somewhat independent from politics and the president.

• 47:42Kate Shaw?

  So this has been, you know, building for a while, but it's still a very big deal. The announcement came in the form of what's known as a 530D letter the Department of Justice actually sent to the Senate. And that happens sometimes. The executive branch decides not to defend a statute or a precedent. You know, a recent example was when the Obama administration decided to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act. It announced that it had concluded that DOMA was unconstitutional and it announced that in a letter, a 530D letter sent to the Senate. But, you know, here, obviously, the upshot of this argument, if accepted by courts, is that many, maybe not all, but many of the restrictions that exist in statutes that constrain the ability of the president to just summarily remove anyone he chooses, will be unconstitutional

• 48:24Kate Shaw?

  and thus one of the last remaining checks on the president inside the executive branch will be gone. And as we've said previously on the show, it couldn't come at a better time. So, you know, we should say these arguments are not identical to the arguments against the job protections that members of the civil service enjoy. Because on the list of individuals that we've mentioned are a number of civil servants who don't have the exact same protections that the members of boards like the NLRB have, but they may be gearing up to make that argument, too, that all of the protections that career civil servants enjoy are similarly impermissible in that they encroach on the president's power, which, again, apparently includes not just all of the executive power, but all the legislative power and maybe all of the judicial power, too.

• 49:08Melissa Murray?

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

• 49:35Leah Litman?

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

• 49:46Kate Shaw?

  We are all so grateful, Leah.

• 49:48Leah Litman?

  So, the column by Noah was, "Don't worry, the system is working great because courts are invalidating some of these Trump orders." I don't even know where to begin with how absurd and wrong-headed this is. Like, the fact that these cases are even getting to court is itself, I think, like, a mark that something has gone horribly wrong, like an indication of a real crisis. Like, the president is engaged in systemic and systematic legal violations, seems to view the law as like a decorative wall plant, and courts are not going to be able to stop everything because some of what the administration is

• 50:32Leah Litman?

  doing is legal but wildly destructive, and the damage is going to be long-term and hard to reverse. And also, courts are more likely to do their jobs and enforce the law ruling against the administration if people are agitated and if there is public outcry. And using your platform to give the Public false assurances, right, to tell them basically to calm down and to take away some of the public outcry is a choice. And this guy's metier is bad lawyer brained, nay Harvard law professor brained face. He is just vamping and primping in Bloomberg and I have no patience for it.

• 51:14Kate Shaw?

  We're so we're definitely not getting invited to do a live show at Harvard and I am OK with that.

• 51:18Leah Litman?

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

• 51:44Melissa Murray?

  He's dead, he's dead.

• 51:45Leah Litman?

  Oh, I'm not done. I'm not done. I'm Elena Kagan with some douchebag at the lectern in front of me and I am not done.

• 51:55Kate Shaw?

  Go off, go off.

• 51:56Leah Litman?

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

• 52:17Melissa Murray?

  I'm gonna stop you because we are an equal opportunity destroyer podcast and it's time for Yale Law School to enter the chat.

• 52:23Kate Shaw?

  That's right. OK, yeah. So let us set up the Jed Rubenfeld intervention. What triggered this intervention was one of the district court losses that we have mentioned, which was a ruling by District Judge Paul Engelmeier in the Southern District of New York, which was really just a very preliminary ruling pausing Elon Musk's underlings from accessing the Treasury payment system until a couple of days later, when an actual hearing could occur. It was a very modest, light-touch order. But J.D. Vance.

• 52:55Leah Litman?

  Took it personally.

• 52:56Kate Shaw?

  And he took to X, which is apparently how we all communicate and exclusively must communicate. To inch awfully close to encouraging defiance of court orders.

• 53:06Melissa Murray?

  Awfully close?

• 53:07Kate Shaw?

  I am in a strike. So Steve Lottek had a good column about this, reading in the most charitable, conceivable way what J.D. Vance was saying. It's not how J.D. Vance intended it, but let me read the couple of sentences and then we can decide sort of how close he came, and maybe, you know, he is all the way there, to outright encouraging outright defiance. So Vance said, quote, "If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power." So I think there is a kernel of truth there. A judge directing a military operation, telling a general where to send troops, everyone agrees, courts can't do that, would

• 53:52Kate Shaw?

  clearly constitute a political question, not suitable for judicial resolution. The point, though, is irrelevant because no judge is trying to do anything close to those examples, and thus, the claim is deliberately misleading and seems designed to stoke opposition to courts in ways that could be quite dangerous if the administration decides it needs to actually amass public support for outright defiance. Okay, that's the context. Now enter Yale Law School's Jed Rubenfeld. You want to do the honors, Melissa?

• 54:21Melissa Murray?

  I'll read it. I'll read it. So weird. Okay, I'm the voice of Jed Rubenfeld. J.D. is correct about this, and his examples are exactly right. Where the executive has sole and plenary power under the Constitution, as in commanding military operations or exercising prosecutorial discretion, judges cannot constitutionally interfere.

• 54:43Melissa Murray?

  That's, yeah, I mean, but there was more to it. Like, I think contextually, this wasn't about military operations, and both of them knew that. So this is just a very Yale Law School kind of thing to do.

• 54:55Kate Shaw?

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

• 55:22Melissa Murray?

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

• 55:44Leah Litman?

  So what irks me is like, they are equating two very different things and suggesting like a false equivalency, right, and conflating easy cases in both directions, right, and suggesting there's some gray area here. Also, the Marshall thing, that just annoys me because it's like, did you not read the rest of the story about how Andrew Jackson eventually came to the court and the federal government's defense when South Carolina attempted to nullify federal law and basically said, as president, I have a duty to enforce federal law and it would destroy the union, right, if officials could just be like, oh, I'm going to veto, nullify that federal law? Like, again, read a book.

• 56:23Leah Litman?

  Okay, so to make things better, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt entered the chat.

• 56:31Speaker 05

  Now, before I take questions, I would like to address an extremely dishonest narrative that we've seen emerging over the past few days. Many outlets in this room have been fear mongering the American people into believing there is a constitutional crisis taking place here at the White House. I've been hearing those words a lot lately. But in fact, the real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges in liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump's basic executive authority. We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law. And they have issued at least 12 injunctions against this administration in the past 14

• 57:16Speaker 05

  days, often without citing any evidence or grounds for their lawsuits. This is part of a larger concerted effort by Democrat activists and nothing more than the continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump.

• 57:30Leah Litman?

  Bless her heart.

• 57:34Melissa Murray?

  First of all, Caroline, we weren't even in the room. Like, we're the ones constantly saying we are in the throes of a constitutional crisis, and we are, and we weren't even there, so...

• 57:44Leah Litman?

  But she's listening.

• 57:45Melissa Murray?

  She's listening, obviously, friend of the pod, Caroline.

• 57:50Melissa Murray?

  But yeah, like, this is what that is. This is a genuine constitutional crisis. I'm glad she recognizes, I'm glad someone recognizes it. Also, now you have a problem with forum shopping after Judge Matthew Kaczmarek? Like, girl, come on, we've got the receipts. Okay. Also, the idea that judges have cited no evidence or grounds, like, again, do you read? Did you read the orders?

• 58:16Leah Litman?

  No, like, the answer is clearly no.

• 58:18Melissa Murray?

  All right, okay, so that's all I'm gonna say about that.

• 58:21Leah Litman?

  Yeah, also, 12, like, that's it? Consider the denominator.

• 58:26Melissa Murray?

  True.

• 58:31Leah Litman?

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• 59:47Kate Shaw?

  So we have maybe 10 or so minutes remaining. So in the last part of the show, we wanted to take a few minutes to talk about an important through line in some of the administration's orders and actions, which we have talked about kind of individually but haven't pulled together, which is sort of the view of sex and gender that emerges from some of these moves. And in some ways, like, the question almost answers itself, which is like, what do the Doge bros think about women having power and autonomy? But let's unpack just-

• 1:00:14Melissa Murray?

  Spoiler alert, it's not good for you ladies.

• 1:00:16Leah Litman?

  So there was an insane story that didn't get enough attention about the Commandant of the Coast Guard.

• 1:00:23Melissa Murray?

  Commandant.

• 1:00:24Leah Litman?

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

• 1:00:38Melissa Murray?

  Citing DEI.

• 1:00:39Leah Litman?

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

• 1:00:48Melissa Murray?

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

• 1:01:22Leah Litman?

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

• 1:02:10Melissa Murray?

  That's staying in. Leave it in, yeah. That's staying in.

• 1:02:13Leah Litman?

  Sweet.

• 1:02:14Kate Shaw?

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

• 1:02:56Kate Shaw?

  So let's actually ask how committed the administration appears to be to defending women.

• 1:03:01Melissa Murray?

  Not so much, I think. So there are two things to mention here. One, I don't think they're necessarily interested in defending women, but more importantly, the constitutional scheme that we have been living under since 1996 with the United States versus Virginia, and maybe even earlier with Craig versus Boren, the 1970s sex equality case, basically says that the government cannot make policies in order to protect women, that that is a species of paternalism rooted in sex-based stereotypes about gender roles. And the fact that we're even talking about protecting women, that like the federal government is issuing executive order after executive order in defense of women and this kind of

• 1:03:44Melissa Murray?

  paternalism, gives us the very distinct feeling that the very bedrock principles of constitutional sex equality are under threat. And if you were confused about that, just consider some of the language in the Dobbs opinion that didn't get a lot of attention because they were too busy rolling back the right to an abortion. In Dobbs, Justice Alito says that, you know, there is no root for the abortion right in equal protection, and he goes all the way back to Gudaldig, a case where the court said pregnancy discrimination is not sex-based discrimination because not all women get pregnant.

• 1:04:21Melissa Murray?

  It was the 70s. There were no women on the court. And that's, but there were other cases since then. 1996, United States versus Virginia. 2003, Hibbs. And they ignore all of this. And then, of course, Justice Alito says that women are not without electoral and political power. So apparently, we aren't because we need defunding. So there's a real inconsistency here, and everything's up for grabs.

• 1:04:46Kate Shaw?

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

• 1:05:29Leah Litman?

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

• 1:06:07Melissa Murray?

  A real F-word.

• 1:06:08Leah Litman?

  Exactly. A government of oligarchs and patriarchs.

• 1:06:12Melissa Murray?

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

• 1:06:48Leah Litman?

  D E I for brain worms. And we are going to mark this occasion, not with champagne toasting the end of the administrative state,

• 1:07:00Leah Litman?

  but with raw milk, people. Raw milk. That's right. We're gonna do it by chugging some milk. Raw milk.

• 1:07:07Kate Shaw?

  It is, this milk is pasteurized, and very, very pasteurized.

• 1:07:12Leah Litman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:13Melissa Murray?

  All right, to that, gentlemen, cheers.

• 1:07:16Kate Shaw?

  Cheers.

• 1:07:17Leah Litman?

  Cheers.

• 1:07:18Melissa Murray?

  Cheers.

• 1:07:22Kate Shaw?

  Are you really gonna drink this?

• 1:07:25Kate Shaw?

  I'm an oat milk girly myself. I'm gonna leave this here.

• 1:07:28Leah Litman?

  Yeah, same.

• 1:07:29Melissa Murray?

  Delicious.

• 1:07:30Leah Litman?

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

• 1:07:46Kate Shaw?

  Luckily, it's very close by.

• 1:07:48Melissa Murray?

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

• 1:08:02Kate Shaw?

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

• 1:08:38Leah Litman?

  This is a hard one.

• 1:08:39Melissa Murray?

  Dig deep.

• 1:08:41Leah Litman?

  I appreciated a post by friend of the pod, guest of the pod, Sheryl and Eiffel, on her Substack in which she said, like, "I see a lot of statements along the lines of no one is doing anything," but that's not true. There are people doing things, and if you are doing things, like, you see them too. And that has partially been my experience, and I appreciated that.

• 1:09:03Melissa Murray?

  So I am taking solace in the fact that I believe the children are future. And it's not just a song. Middle school students at a US base in Germany walked out of school in protest when Secretary Pete Hegseth came to visit.

• 1:09:20Melissa Murray?

  Right on, kids.

• 1:09:23Melissa Murray?

  I'm also cheered that, you know, there are high school students around the country, including here in this room tonight. We'd love to say hello to Dr. Rachel Helpers' Supreme Court class and the feminists of Trinity who are back there, too. They are doing the work, learning about the Constitution, learning about Supreme Court cases, and the fact that they are pitching in and doing this work right now is huge.

• 1:09:49Melissa Murray?

  So that's giving me hope. And the fact that Leah is going to dispose of this bear carcass. Moments of levity like that.

• 1:09:56Leah Litman?

  That and Noah's body. That's not going in.

• 1:10:01Melissa Murray?

  All right. This is all to say that we are in the midst of a genuine constitutional crisis. Do not lose sight of that. Do not let them gaslight you into believing that it's not true. Like, this is the moment, and one day we'll ask ourselves what we do in this moment, and that's serious. These are tough times. Hang in there. If you're even a fraction of as incensed as we are about all of this, please make a phone call, donate some money to organizations doing this litigation, support journalism by subscribing to the places who are doing great investigative work, like ProPublica and Wired, and keep listening to Strict Scrutiny because we'll keep pushing this stuff out.

• 1:10:41Melissa Murray?

  We will be back next week, and hopefully we will continue to keep lighting a fire. Under ourselves and all of you.

• 1:10:49Leah Litman?

  So before we are back next week, a few notes from this week. Elon Musk's Doge gang just got slapped down by a federal judge, but not before infiltrating the Treasury first. If you're wondering how we let billionaires hijack the government, tune into the newest episode of Assembly Required. This week, Stacey Abrams unpacks how Musk and his cronies carved out unchecked power and what we can do about it. With Wired editor Leah Feiger, they unpack Doge's grip on the Treasury.

• 1:11:15Kate Shaw?

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

• 1:11:40Leah Litman?

  And if you're looking for more essential conversations, tune into Pod Save the People, where organizer and activist Dorey McKesson, along with Kaya Henderson and Miles Johnson, bring a sharp take on news, culture, and social justice, focusing on the stories that too often go overlooked. This week, they dive into how an AI program wrongfully jailed an innocent man for 17 months and what that means for the future of justice. Listen to Pod Save the People every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. So someone on Goodreads wrote in a review that they were reading this book, Lawless, and didn't realize that it was Leah Litman from Strict Scrutiny or that she had a book. And I feel like this is a failure on my part. I do have a book coming out, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance,

• 1:12:24Leah Litman?

  Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. And also, it relates back to Mojo Dojo Casa House. There is a Mojo Dojo Casa House reference in the very first chapter to it. So if you would like to hear the equivalent of my pimply, virgin, edgelord, friendless libertarian Doge bro reads, but for Supreme Court justices, you should preorder it now. And again, it is called Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. As RuPaul said, never be afraid of a shameless plug.

• 1:12:55Melissa Murray?

  Strict Scrutiny is a Crooked Media production hosted and executive produced by Leah Littman, me, Melissa Murray, and Kate Shaw. We are produced and edited by Melody Rauel. Michael Goldsmith is our associate producer. We get audio support from Kyle Seglan and Charlotte Landes. Our music is by Eddie Cooper and production support comes from Madeline Herenter and Ari Schwartz. Matt DeGroot is our head of production and we are very grateful for our digital team, including Joe Motosky. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. You can subscribe to Strict Scrutiny on YouTube to catch full episodes. You can find us at youtube.com/AtStrictScrutinyPodcast. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to Strict Scrutiny in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. And if you want to help other people find the show, please rate and review us. It really helps.

• 1:13:38Leah Litman?

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

• 1:13:54Speaker 06

  This is the Agosto Papá Podcast.

• 1:13:56Speaker 07

  All right, brindis season is here. What are we toasting with?

• 1:13:58Speaker 06

  Yo, Jason, Remy Martin Cognac. Por qué no?

• 1:14:01Speaker 07

  Wait, Remy Martin? Why not? We're leveling up, bro.

• 1:14:04Speaker 06

  New phase, new experiences, and our taste is leveling up too.

• 1:14:07Speaker 07

  Mira tú, tres compas leveling up. Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royal. All right, I see you.

• 1:14:13Speaker 06

  And you can enjoy it your way. Neat, on ice, or in a cocktail.

• 1:14:16Speaker 07

  Facts, bro. Let's raise a glass. Brindemos por los nuestros. Para arriba con los nuestros, para el centro con los momentos, y para adentro with Remy Martin. Salud. Remy Martin Cognac, fine champagne, 40% alcohol by volume, imported by Remy Control, USA Inc., New York, New York. Please drink responsibly.

• 1:14:35Kate Shaw?

  Monday Night brings one more big matchup to settle into. And when every play matters, the last thing you want to do is step away to figure out dinner. That's where DiGiorno comes in. Get a DiGiorno pizza ready before kickoff, then enjoy restaurant-quality taste fresh from your own oven while you stay locked into every play. Stock up on DiGiorno over the weekend so when Monday night rolls around, the only thing you sweat is the game. Shop now at the link in the episode description. It's not delivery, it's DiGiorno.