The Lawlessness, Chaos, & Cruelty of Trump 2.0

Melissa, Kate, and Leah continue to assess the fallout from the second Trump administration, including his blatant disregard of the law in firing many inspectors general. They also discuss the mental gymnastics required to blame Wednesday’s tragic plane crash on DEI, the repercussions of the administration's executive orders targeting trans people, and two crucial state supreme court races. 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:12Speaker 01

  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."

• 0:43Melissa Murray?

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

• 0:51Leah Litman?

  I'm Leah Litman.

• 0:52Kate Shaw?

  And I'm Kate Shaw. The Supreme Court is on recess this week. The White House, regrettably, is not. So we are going to start this episode with some breaking news largely involving the torrent of lawlessness, chaos, and cruelty emanating from the nation's capital, Washington, D.C. Obviously, we will also cover the executive order lowering the price of eggs. Just kidding, there has still been no executive order or other executive action addressing the cost of basic goods, despite the fact that we were told that is what this administration would inaugurate. But why would they?

• 1:22Leah Litman?

  And yet somehow, the vibes or the price of eggs apparently don't feel so high when the leader of the free world is blaming black people, women, and people with disabilities for all of the world's problems. Maybe that's the executive action on eggs that we've all been waiting for. But after we survey whatever is happening at 1600, we are also going to check in on two different state courts, the continuing saga that involves North Carolina Judge Jefferson Griffin's Twirl villain mustache here. Refusal to acknowledge his loss to Justice Allison Riggs on the North Carolina Supreme Court. We will also talk about the fast approaching election for a crucial pivotal seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. First, the fire hydrant of news from DC.

• 2:06Leah Litman?

  And I say fire hydrant and not fire hose because literally this administration is taking a dump on all of us. This week, the chaos and cruelty were ratcheted up, way up, beyond what previous American democracy dials could have registered. So we will walk through some of that. And because the administration is definitely pursuing the Steve Bannon, Steve Miller flood the zone with absolute bullshit strategy, we probably won't be able to cover everything that they've done, or certainly, we won't be able to cover everything in the amount of detail that we'd like. But we will get through as much as possible.

• 2:40Kate Shaw?

  So let's dive right in. First up, we have had not one, not two, but by my count, three different symbolic massacres since we last gathered. So you've perhaps heard of Richard Nixon's 1973 Saturday Night Massacre, in which Nixon directed Justice Department leadership to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox because Cox was getting uncomfortably close to the truth about Watergate and the president's involvement in the cover up. So the top two officials at DOJ resigned rather than carry out what they believe to be an unlawful order from the president, because that's what government officials of conscience of whatever political stripe or party used to do. Well, last week, Trump said, "Hold my Diet Coke," and began filling out the other days of the week with his own massacres.

• 3:22Leah Litman?

  Just across many different fronts, this administration is truly, truly committed to making Richard Nixon great again. Of course, it began with, if the president does it, it's not illegal immunity ruling, and it has snowballed way beyond that, as we are about to cover. So first iteration, on a Friday night, Trump sent messages asserting, without legal authority, because who needs law anyways, that he was firing many of the inspectors general in the federal government. Inspectors general, or IGs, are important federal government watchdogs who look for waste, fraud, abuse, and also protect whistleblowers. So obviously, this administration- Wants to show them the door slash give them the Heisman,

• 4:04Leah Litman?

  even though some of the inspectors general in question were people Trump himself appointed the last time he was in office, which really shows you, right, like how much escalation I think there has been between Trump 1.0 and 2.0.

• 4:18Kate Shaw?

  Because that was a squish and this is the real hardcore version. No, that's basically what he was communicating, or he just like didn't notice or care and was like, all the IGs, I want them out. Except, interestingly, there were some exceptions, like Michael Horowitz at DOJ, for reasons I still don't think we know, was not on the list, although maybe there's a second batch coming. They wanted, you know, sort of spread the deeds out over different days of the week.

• 4:38Leah Litman?

  There are only five working days, Kate.

• 4:40Kate Shaw?

  But anyway.

• 4:41Leah Litman?

  The other two are for golf.

• 4:43Kate Shaw?

  Yes, true, true. So just to underscore something that Leah just said, to be crystal clear, the law very clearly does not permit these firings in this way. One of the many post Watergate reform laws, like we're definitely going to be talking about Nixon and Watergate a lot today and probably for years. So one of these laws was passed in the late 70s and amended since then, but it creates these positions, inspectors general, and it does let the president remove IGs. But the president is required to notify Congress 30 days in advance, and this is for good reason, like to protect any investigations the IGs may be in the middle of. And it also gives Congress the chance to object to the removal of an IG if Congress thinks the removal is not on the up and up. But shockingly, Trump did not adhere to this procedure. So my view,

• 5:27Kate Shaw?

  for what it is worth, is that by law, these IGs still have their jobs. The head of the IG Council, an organization called SIGI, sent a letter saying as much late Friday, and some of the IGs in the fired batch actually seemed to have agreed and refused to vacate their offices. At least one IG of the Ag Department was subsequently escorted out of her office by security after she refused to leave. And even though I think she was right on the law, and so was the SIGI head, unfortunately, the short term resolution to this kind of legal standoff often turns on who is armed, which is obviously the security guards in this instance. But for, again, what it is worth, I think if one or more of these IGs wants to fight this out in court, I give them good odds, even in front of this Supreme Court, because they're not, the president's not actually prevented from firing them,

• 6:11Kate Shaw?

  he just has to take some steps first, and even that was too much for Trump.

• 6:14Melissa Murray?

  It's like the DACA case. Like, you could do this, you just have to follow the right procedures, and they never follow the right procedures. They do not.

• 6:21Leah Litman?

  So I am glad to hear you think, Kate, that the IGs have good odds in front of this court. Obviously, I agree that this statute is less restrictive of the president's ability to remove executive branch officers than the kinds the court has struck down recently, like in sale of law and free enterprise fund. Those actually limited the substantive bases that the president could remove these officers. But I will note that two things are kind of giving me pause here, really three things. One is, I have seen some smart, right-leaning commentators, Jack Goldsmith among them, say he thinks this court would not rule for the IGs and would probably strike down this law. Also, that's just like one predictive

• 7:06Leah Litman?

  piece of evidence. And then second is, if you take their unitary executive bullshit seriously, then why could Congress impede the executive's ability to execute the law as they see fit by removing these officers? Obviously, I totally agree, the extent of the burdens are different and different in kind, but if you are a full-blown, unitary executive whatever, who knows? And then the third thing that, and I feel like I'm going to keep coming back to this, is I'm just very concerned about what this Trump victory and a Republican Senate and Republican House mean for this court. Because I worry, it means the Republican appointees will feel less constrained and less bound by public

• 7:47Leah Litman?

  opinion and politics and political pushback, and more emboldened to let their free flags fly and just do whatever moves them because they don't think they will face consequences for doing that. And so all of that makes me a little nervous. I don't know.

• 8:03Kate Shaw?

  I have used the IG example for years as, you know, a modest kind of constraint that Congress can place on the president. Congress places qualification requirements, like the FAA administrator is supposed to be knowledgeable.

• 8:15Leah Litman?

  A real-world road rules contestant?

• 8:17Melissa Murray?

  That's a secretary. That's not the FAA, that's the Secretary of Transportation.

• 8:21Leah Litman?

  Of course.

• 8:23Melissa Murray?

  Polly Shore is being confirmed.

• 8:26Leah Litman?

  How about DJ Polly D? DJ Polly D.

• 8:29Kate Shaw?

  So anyway, so these front end qualifications Congress has put in for hundreds of positions and these occasional back end modest requirements, procedural ones the president has to follow, while still getting to fire whomever he pleases, you know, at least in these kinds of positions. And I don't think until recently that was controversial. And for what it's worth, I think that Goldsmith, who wrote this piece in Lawfare about this, is wrong. But my prediction is nevertheless probably still too optimistic.

• 8:51Leah Litman?

  What if the president just really needs to get rid of the woke deep state, Kate? He can. He can. No, those 30 days. Those 30 days, right? Like, not...

• 9:02Melissa Murray?

  Okay, as much as I would love for you two ladies to debate Kate's optimism versus a real world view of things, and as much as I'd love to hear more about the deep state versus the sheep state, this does feel a little bit like a sheep state with all these guys just falling into line. But there's more news. So in addition to all of that, Trump illegally fired several other executive officers as well. And he did so in a way that seems designed to provoke a test case that would allow the Supreme Court to revisit the constitutionality of independent agencies. Yes, this is a question that we have talked about on this podcast a lot over the last couple of years, and they haven't broken through, but this, this may be the opportunity. So what did he do? Donald Trump fired the National

• 9:47Melissa Murray?

  Labor Relations Board member, Gwynn Wilcox. And as you know, despite board members having statutory removal protection, he took this extraordinary step. Anyway, what this means is that the NLRB no longer has a quorum, and accordingly, the agency can no longer do its work. And what is its work? Its work is enforcing labor laws because obviously this election was all about working people, workers, the rights of workers. And all of those union leaders who were all in line for Donald Trump, I hope you feel really supported now because this is what supporting labor looks like under this administration. Congratulations.

• 10:27Leah Litman?

  This is an awful development if you cared at all about the labor laws of this country being enforced and the NLRB, like many boards and commissions, must by law be bipartisan. So the Democratic Board members are technically appointed by the president, but by tradition, those names come from the other party. So for example, in the Obama White House, you know, they got the names from Mitch McConnell. But Trump doesn't care about those traditions, and it's not hard to imagine him just never filling those vacancies.

• 10:54Kate Shaw?

  Or maybe those bipartisanship requirements are unconstitutional as well.

• 10:56Leah Litman?

  Exactly.

• 10:57Kate Shaw?

  Really look forward to the Jekylls.

• 10:58Leah Litman?

  Because unitary executive theory, right? Like, the executive branch is Republican for all time, and so Democrats don't get to propose executive branch nominees.

• 11:09Kate Shaw?

  Yeah.

• 11:10Leah Litman?

  QED.

• 11:11Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, so that seems like where we may be headed with respect to these bipartisanship requirements. But as to this particular instance, beyond just the NLRB's inability to do its important work in the absence of a quorum, it's clear that on existing law, the statutes passed by Congress and not invalidated by the Supreme Court.

• 11:27Leah Litman?

  Stop talking nonsense. Why do you keep talking about the law?

• 11:34Kate Shaw?

  I'm going to keep doing it, and I will tell our listeners.

• 11:37Leah Litman?

  Kate with another hashtag take. Hot take from Kate.

• 11:41Kate Shaw?

  That my hot take is the law says the president has to give some reasons to fire a member of the NLRB. I know.

• 11:47Leah Litman?

  We need to make this a recurring segment, like Kate's hot take. Kate, Kate in the law. No, I just like Kate's hot take.

• 11:53Kate Shaw?

  I'll do it. I'm happy. We can have me eat some, like, hot vegan wings, maybe, while I do it.

• 12:00Leah Litman?

  Oh, hot ones, okay. Love it.

• 12:02Kate Shaw?

  I think we need to think through how to do this. But anyway, I am going to press on and remind people that that's the law. The Supreme Court's conservatives have been gunning for an opportunity to overrule the precedent that says it's okay to constrain the president's ability to remove members of these boards and commissions. So that case they're gunning for is the 1935 decision Humphrey's executor. And this might be the actual vehicle for the court overruling that case. And I'm gonna, I don't know, disappoint you guys by suggesting here I'm not going to make an optimistic prediction about Humphrey's executives arriving. So I think, you know, it's a question of whether the Commissioner Wilcox, who has said she will challenge her firing, actually proceeds with it. And if so, we are, I think, very likely looking at the demise of one of the last real internal

• 12:45Kate Shaw?

  checks on the president, which, you know, couldn't come at a better time. So there we are.

• 12:49Melissa Murray?

  In addition to all that, there's more. Donald Trump also fired two EEOC commissioners, and the EEOC is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and is basically charged with administering all of the laws that deal with fair employment. Trump also got rid of officers at the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. That is an arm of the federal government that is charged with, among other things, safeguarding data privacy. And obviously, this is an administration that cares a lot about your data privacy, see E G, the TikTok ban. In taking these steps, the Trump administration denied the EEOC a quorum. So as with the NLRB, they can no longer do things, including voting on any of the issues that come before them.

• 13:31Melissa Murray?

  And that, too, is bad for workers in many respects. But maybe not so bad because the new EEOC Acting Chair has recently announced that instead of dealing with all of the different things that come before this particular commission, the EEOC is now going to be focused on whether or not private businesses allow trans people to use bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity. That is now the commission's top priority. So on balance, maybe net zero?

• 14:03Kate Shaw?

  See, now you're looking for silver linings, Melissa. We're really looking for silver linings here.

• 14:06Melissa Murray?

  I am. I am.

• 14:08Kate Shaw?

  All right. So just to finish rounding out the list of massacres that we alluded to upfront. So on Monday, the White House sent an email that purported, also in clear violation of the civil service laws, to fire Can't stop, won't stop. A dozen-plus members of Jack Smith's team. The letter, as I read it, just throws some vaguely law-like language atop the claim. I have an article too. It says, "I get to do what I want." And then says, "I can't trust you to carry out my policy priorities, so you're out." And, you know, these were civil servants. They have statutory protections against being removed in a fit of presidential peak. So we will, once again, see if one of them brings a challenge. I mean, just as to all of these developments, I have to say, I'm sure you guys have had similar conversations in the last week, but I have heard

• 14:51Kate Shaw?

  Multiple former DOJ officials basically say this was the worst day or the worst week in the department's history. Just like, I don't think we can overstate how devastating and disruptive these moves, and in particular, just the summary firing of all of these career prosecutors were to kind of the morale inside that operation. And obviously, that's the point.

• 15:11Leah Litman?

  And these were people who worked for Jeff Sessions, so they've seen some things. And the toilet bowl guy.

• 15:18Kate Shaw?

  Matthew Whitaker.

• 15:19Leah Litman?

  Matthew Whitaker, right? So don't forget him.

• 15:23Kate Shaw?

  His portrait is still hanging there. Who knows? He may be back in.

• 15:25Leah Litman?

  DOJ's seen some things, but not this.

• 15:30Leah Litman?

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• 17:26Leah Litman?

  There are even more DOJ developments we wanted to note that again speak to just how quickly they are unraveling this major institution of American governance. So, the department moved to drop the special counsel's cases against Trump allies Walt Nada and Carlos de Oliveira, which were of course related to the obstruction of justice, unlawful retention of classified documents slash America's secrets in Mar-a-Lago bathrooms case out of Florida. Yeah, that one. And then, also, the person who is in charge of prosecuting public corruption resigned, which is great because there's definitely no corruption going on right now in front

• 18:11Leah Litman?

  of our eyes. So, I just wanted to mention a few examples of things that are definitely like not corrupt and don't come anywhere close to corruption. One is Facebook slash Meta settling a lawsuit against Donald Trump. You know, Trump sued Facebook slash Meta when he was deplatformed and they agreed to pay him $25 million even though it's clear, pretty clear, the lawsuit is meritless. So, this seems kind of like a freebie. A tip. Right. A tip, Leah. It's a gratuity. A gratuity. Right. And that's apparently not the only example of entities thinking about settling suits in ways that seem like windfalls for Trump. So, the New York Times reported

• 18:56Leah Litman?

  that Paramount is in talks to settle a $10 billion lawsuit Trump filed against CBS for how 60 Minutes edited Kamala Harris's interview. Right? If you want to talk about a meritless lawsuit, right?

• 19:08Melissa Murray?

  Taylor Sheridan would never, like, sullying the Paramount name right there.

• 19:15Leah Litman?

  But again, this seems like a mechanism to basically funnel payments to the president to make him happy. And we are also seeing in real time-

• 19:27Melissa Murray?

  Well, Paramount has some other stuff going on, like, so-

• 19:29Leah Litman?

  Exactly.

• 19:30Melissa Murray?

  One of the things happening is that there is a potential merger between Paramount and Skydance that obviously will have to be-

• 19:36Leah Litman?

  And whose approval do they need?

• 19:37Melissa Murray?

  Ah, hmm.

• 19:39Leah Litman?

  The federal governments.

• 19:41Melissa Murray?

  Interesting.

• 19:42Leah Litman?

  Yeah.

• 19:43Melissa Murray?

  It seems like there's a connection.

• 19:45Leah Litman?

  Nope, can't be. These things are totally unrelated. This is just how government works. People-

• 19:49Melissa Murray?

  Yeah, tips.

• 19:50Leah Litman?

  Just, exactly, throw tens of millions of dollars from officials-

• 19:54Melissa Murray?

  To settle meritless lawsuits about how you edit an interview, for which you likely have First Amendment protection. But, no biggie.

• 20:00Leah Litman?

  Yes.

• 20:01Melissa Murray?

  No big deal.

• 20:02Leah Litman?

  And this is also happening at the same time that we are witnessing Elon Musk's very ever-present role in fairly significant personnel decisions at the federal government. And this, of course, is the person who poured tens of millions, right, just like substantial sums into electing Donald Trump and seems to have purchased himself the role of being effective free leader of the world slash co-president or varsity president, you know? And so, all of that is happening, again, at the same time, the head person for public corruption at DOJ has decided, "I'm out."

• 20:41Melissa Murray?

  I have to say, just back to the Elon Musk thing, I never thought I would find myself on the same page as Steve Bannon, but I, too, am a little uncomfortable with how much South African influence is pervading this administration. It's a little, it's a little-

• 20:58Leah Litman?

  South African influence that's sympathetic to the German far-right, you know, could go on here, but, um-

• 21:05Kate Shaw?

  I mean, like Bannon said at first, but I was like, oh, wow. Am I like, are we on the same page? Like, we might be. Interesting.

• 21:12Leah Litman?

  I just wanted to draw a parallel here in the strange Bedfellow's allies thing, because what this is showing is just how absurd, outlandish, horrific it is to effectively put, you know, one of the richest men in the planet in control of the government after he's paid his way to do that. And he's basically throwing the public under the bus and doing what he wants. And this is leading to a strange allyship between you, me, and Steve Bannon in the same way that like, when the Supreme Court inevitably knocks down one of the insane things out of this administration, it will not speak to the reasonableness of the Supreme Court, just like we are not here saying, Steve Bannon, voice of reason.

• 21:54Kate Shaw?

  Got some good ideas.

• 21:55Leah Litman?

  Right, exactly, exactly. It is just a reflection of where the Trump administration is trying to move the goalpost to.

• 22:02Kate Shaw?

  Just how shark jumping all of this is.

• 22:05Leah Litman?

  Yes.

• 22:06Kate Shaw?

  Yes. Back to Paramount for just one second. There is something so insane about the president as plaintiff, right? Like, just that, you know, he, the idea that-

• 22:17Leah Litman?

  That's a Law Review article right there. Let's do it. Let's do it.

• 22:20Kate Shaw?

  I'm in. But I mean, the idea, now, this stuff is not going to end up in court because people are all bending the knee and settling.

• 22:26Leah Litman?

  Exactly.

• 22:27Kate Shaw?

  But if the Supreme Court is going to invent a doctrine that ex-presidents, like, can't ever be criminally prosecuted, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say they should also invent a doctrine that while you're the fucking president, you can't sue people.

• 22:38Leah Litman?

  No, no, no, no, no, because that's exercising the executive power gate. So, right?

• 22:43Kate Shaw?

  To shake down media companies.

• 22:45Leah Litman?

  Exactly.

• 22:46Kate Shaw?

  Got it. Okay. All right. Well, then, I don't know. Maybe we can't write the Law Review article together because I think we have a fundamentally different view of how this works.

• 22:53Leah Litman?

  Well, no, we would just need to seriously consider that reasonable position in which there's a deep debate in the literature about.

• 22:59Kate Shaw?

  Okay. Got it, got it.

• 23:00Leah Litman?

  And all we're really doing, we're not suggesting a path forward, we're just complicating the inherited narrative.

• 23:05Kate Shaw?

  Yes.

• 23:07Kate Shaw?

  Sometimes, honestly, the news cycle makes me want to flee to those, like, ridiculous tropes of Law Review, of legal scholarship. It just feels like a safer place to be right now.

• 23:14Leah Litman?

  Lit review and then complicating things.

• 23:18Kate Shaw?

  All right, but we got to get back to the news cycle.

• 23:20Melissa Murray?

  Okay. Back to the news. Okay, so we've been joking around, but this is actually really important and incredibly tragic. We want to not only acknowledge, but discuss the devastating and tragic plane crash at Washington National Airport last Wednesday. As many of you know, a Black Hawk helicopter collided with a regional jet that was traveling from Wichita, Kansas to Washington DC, and all 67 persons onboard the helicopter and the jet are presumed, at this point, we're taping on Friday afternoon, to be dead. And this is obviously a catastrophic event, a massive national tragedy. But what makes it worse is that we actually don't know

• 24:02Melissa Murray?

  whether or not it was avoidable, although the signs suggest that it likely was avoidable. So here's what we do know. In their first week in office, the Trump administration moved very quickly to disassemble the civil service and regulatory agencies, including many of those housed within the Department of Transportation. And that, of course, is the agency charged with airplane safety. So just to walk through a few things. On the first day of the Trump administration, the FAA, that's the Federal Aviation Administration, the head of that administration, the FAA Administrator, quit after Elon Musk told him to resign. The Administrator and Musk had butted heads over SpaceX many times before, including when the FAA Administrator proposed fines for rocket explosions.

• 24:48Melissa Murray?

  And that's not all. Within 48 hours of Trump taking office, he fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration, the TSA, and the head of the Coast Guard. He also eliminated all the members of a critical aviation security advisory group, the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which has, over the last several decades, made recommendations for improving aviation security, the vast majority of which have been implemented. And the memo firing committee members said the firings were part of a, quote, "commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security," end quote. Just time out here. A lot of this stuff was implemented post 9/11 because a massive

• 25:28Melissa Murray?

  terrorism act was affected through the use of airplanes that became targeted missiles. And this is just mind blowing. I still remember all of the Republicans, like, "the law and order, secure the homeland, Republicans." How are they down for this? Like, what happened?

• 25:46Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, I mean, this overarching, just like insane monomaniacal commitment to downsizing government, hollowing out the civil service and destroying the regulatory state like may already be yielding tragic life and death consequences like and maybe actually materialized on the evening of this plane crash. So again, facts still emerging, but an initial FAA report noted that air traffic control staffing the night of the crash was, quote, unusual and that a single air traffic controller was handling both helicopters and planes when those jobs are usually and by design performed by two different people.

• 26:22Melissa Murray?

  They also operate on two different radio systems. So if there are two people monitoring them, they can be on the two different systems. But if one person is charged with dealing with both, they have to toggle back and forth between them, perhaps increasing the opportunity for error. So again, these are all of the things that are going on at the Department of Transportation. But there's still more. So exactly one week before this fatal crash, the Trump administration signed a presidential memo terminating the Biden administration's FAA hiring policy. The Biden administration had tried to hire more air traffic controllers in order to ease this manpower shortage and because of the increase in flight congestion

• 27:02Melissa Murray?

  at major airports. The memo, which is entitled President Donald J. Trump Ends DEI Madness and Restores Excellence and Safety Within the FAA, basically associates the Biden administration's hiring policies with unchecked, unmerited hiring of minorities and other individuals who fall under the broad and continually shifting moniker of DEI, which obviously must be eliminated. So how exactly does this great administration purport to restore excellence and safety to the FAA once it's eliminated all of this hiring under DEI? Well, first, they appoint Sean Duffy as Secretary of Transportation. And if you don't know who

• 27:45Melissa Murray?

  Sean Duffy is, wait for it. Duffy began his time in public life as a member of the real world. And we're not just talking about a sentient being walking around in the world. No, we actually mean MTV. The Real World, where you take eight strangers, put them in a house and see what happens. But perhaps more relevant to his credentials is Duffy's time as a contestant on the Real World spinoff, MTV's Road Rules. What was this deeply meritocratic appointment doing in the lead up to this tragic plane collision?

• 28:17Leah Litman?

  He was issuing his own kind of DEI policy, I guess, the permissible kind. So a new Department of Transportation memo directs that the Department of Transportation and Department of Transportation-supported programs will, quote, "give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average," end quote. Because if there's any way to hire the best people and ensure aviation and highway safety, it's selecting for high marriage and birth rates? What? Like, this is some weird shit.

• 28:53Kate Shaw?

  So newly installed in the role after the crash, Duffy did, I think, actually shed some real light on this when he said, obviously, it is not standard to have aircraft collide. I want to be clear on that. So that was really helpful.

• 29:04Leah Litman?

  Clear, for sure. Message received, sir.

• 29:09Kate Shaw?

  Knocked that first statement right out of the park.

• 29:11Melissa Murray?

  Was Puck not available? Was Puck not available for this position? Do you know who Puck is?

• 29:17Kate Shaw?

  I think he was like a villain on reality television early on. Is that right? That's about all I got.

• 29:23Leah Litman?

  You know, I personally would have gone with Johnny Bananas. But...

• 29:27Kate Shaw?

  Or Survivor? What was Puck on? He was Real World?

• 29:29Leah Litman?

  He was on The Real World, yes.

• 29:30Kate Shaw?

  Okay.

• 29:31Leah Litman?

  Okay. And of course, now leading the Department of Defense is Pete Hegseth, another DEI hire, at least as we understand DEI, and we explained it last episode, which we won't repeat here. The New York Times has reported that the Blackhawk helicopter may have deviated from its planned course. And what was Pete Hegseth doing during his first few days on the job as Secretary of Defense?

• 29:58Melissa Murray?

  Shoring up America's homeland.

• 30:00Leah Litman?

  If by going on Fox News to rant about DEI is shoring up America's homeland, then yes, because and this sets the stage for what I think we also wanted to talk about, which is because there is truly no law to which this administration will not stoop, Trump in a press conference after the crash blamed the crash on, you guessed it, DEI. When asked by a reporter how he knew diversity had something to do with the crash, after saying the investigation was still ongoing, Trump said,

• 30:33Speaker 07

  Because I have common sense. Okay. And unfortunately, a lot of people don't.

• 30:39Leah Litman?

  So maybe we should talk about what DEI means here and also J.D. Vance's later extrapolation of this principle. So when Trump is saying he's blaming DEI, he is blaming racial minorities, women, and people with disabilities for the crash. Like, it doesn't seem to matter who the air traffic controllers or pilots were. Like, this is the new all-purpose excuse for men's failure. Like, it just cannot be white men's fault.

• 31:09Melissa Murray?

  Basically, this is the government version of Agatha all along. It was DEI all along. And J.D. Vance, I thought, just literally took this to a whole new level, a really just gross, disgusting level. So J.D. Vance, once it became clear that the plane and the helicopter were actually piloted by white men, had this to say.

• 31:31Speaker 08

  Something the president said that I think bears reemphasizing, which is that when you don't have the best standards in who you're hiring, it means, on the one hand, you're not getting the best people in government, but on the other hand, it puts stresses on the people who are already there.

• 31:47Melissa Murray?

  I got nothing for this. Like, absolutely nothing.

• 31:52Leah Litman?

  It is not the case that he is saying having non-white men in these positions. It's what's causing it. It's that the existence of DEI somehow kills the vibes of white men.

• 32:07Melissa Murray?

  It's just so hard to work with people of color and women that you just like forget how to do your job. Like, how does this plane work?

• 32:15Kate Shaw?

  And obviously, if in fact it was a person of color who was the pilot in one of the instances, like, they would turn the dial up to DEFCON. But even in the absence of that, they think they have a theory, which is, yes, essentially, the environment itself that might contain lingering Biden hires who might not be white men is somehow responsible. It is absolutely vile.

• 32:40Melissa Murray?

  So, in this leadership vacuum that we're calling "The News Cycle," someone stepped in to fill the void. So, former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg had this response on Twitter.

• 32:54Kate Shaw?

  And we should say, he does know what he's talking about, because there were multiple fatal air crashes on his watch when he was the Secretary of Transportation, right?

• 33:01Leah Litman?

  No.

• 33:01Melissa Murray?

  No. There were no fatal air crashes.

• 33:05Kate Shaw?

  Zero. In fact, when?

• 33:06Leah Litman?

  And I would know, because I'm literally paranoid and terrified of flying. So, when I saw this news, I literally became physically ill and started panicking about all of my upcoming flights. So...

• 33:18Melissa Murray?

  Buttigieg had this to say, quote-unquote, "Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew air traffic control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch. Boom. President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the president to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again. Buttigieg out."

• 33:50Leah Litman?

  And again, just to underscore, we don't know what exactly was the cause of this crash yet, but we do know it is racist, sexist, ableist to just insist without evidence that obviously the problem is that the FAA didn't have enough straight white men, or indeed had any women minorities or people with disabilities. So to return to Pete Buttigieg's statement, this was one of the rare statements from a Democratic political official that actually tried to take the fight to Donald Trump. I'm sorry, what is a Democrat? Can you tell me again? What is that? I haven't heard of those recently. I haven't heard from them, if they exist.

• 34:35Leah Litman?

  Well, sometimes I get texts. Right, asking for money. Asking me to chip in, yeah. Yeah. So the Democratic Party is a dependent, should I be claiming them on my tax forms? Only if it's a fetus. Right, fair. Many thoughts about this. One is Sean Duffy, there were people calling for Democrats to hold up his confirmation. Because road rules. Because road rules. Not just because road rules, but because of some of the things the Trump administration was doing. And Senator Schumer and others were like, no, no, no, no, right? Like, we're not going to do that, we're not going to play hardball, we're just going to confirm him.

• 35:12Kate Shaw?

  And it's a Democratic vote. Like, not only did they obstruct it, most, I don't know, 70-plus people, he had a huge, overwhelming confirmation.

• 35:19Leah Litman?

  Yes, for a road rules contestant. This is not to apologize for, in any sense, the choices people made in the 2024 election, but Donald Trump, people report wanting to vote for him because he pretends to be fighting against this system and fighting for them. And the Democratic Party is just constitutionally incapable of doing that, right? Like, they will not stand up, do a politics, right, and try to fight against a system that is failing people because Donald Trump is literally handing over control of the federal regulatory state to Elon Musk, who wants to dismantle it.

• 35:59Leah Litman?

  And again, this is at the price of the public, public safety, public money, right? They are stealing our money, stealing our safety, and the Democrats just cannot be bothered to come up with a talking point or a fight about this. And.

• 36:16Kate Shaw?

  One more thing we wanted to flag about the crash. We learned from friend of the pod, Sheryl and Eiffel, that the victims of this crash included a young civil rights lawyer, Kia Duggins, who had been a member of the Civil Rights Corps and was slated to join the faculty of Howard Law School. Our hearts go out to her friends and her family and colleagues at Howard. May her memory be a blessing.

• 36:42Leah Litman?

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• 37:27Leah Litman?

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• 38:21Melissa Murray?

  Moving away from the crash for a moment, we should underscore that the FAA isn't the only example of what Leah was just talking about, this idea of handing over control of the government to unelected people like Elon Musk. The Washington Post reports that the highest ranking career official at the Treasury Department announced his plans to leave government. Apparently, the official got into a dispute with Elon Musk and his allies, quote, "over access to sensitive payment systems," end quote. Musk's surrogates apparently wanted access to a payment system that the government uses to disburse trillions of dollars, to which the government official

• 39:01Melissa Murray?

  was like, "Seems like a bad idea," and said no, and this caused the dispute. I mean, what on earth? What is happening here?

• 39:12Kate Shaw?

  Give Musk and his lackeys all of the federal government's bank account information and just trust us not to misuse it.

• 39:20Melissa Murray?

  I mean, this is like literally when you get held up in a park and they're like, "Give me your ATM card."

• 39:24Kate Shaw?

  Yes.

• 39:25Melissa Murray?

  Only, yeah.

• 39:27Kate Shaw?

  Only 10 trillions and trillions of dollars.

• 39:30Melissa Murray?

  Only trillions and trillions of dollars at oligarchs.

• 39:34Kate Shaw?

  Yep. All right. Well, so don't worry, there's lots more. So, related to what is happening at the FAA and DOT is the administration's announced, I don't actually know what to call this, buyout slash maybe bait and switch non-buyout. So, I don't think we know-

• 39:49Melissa Murray?

  Public-private partnership.

• 39:51Kate Shaw?

  We'll describe it rather than just parrot buyout. So, the Office of Personnel Management, the basically human resources agency for the whole federal workforce, apparently in conjunction with or with the fingerprints of Doge Bro slash co-president Elon Musk, kind of, you know, all over this initiative, sent the federal workforce, maybe all of it, maybe a subset, not totally clear, an email basically saying, "If you resign by next week, you will get paid for eight months." Or you can stick around and risk being furloughed and eventually fired. So you guys will be shocked to hear me say this whole thing legally.

• 40:29Leah Litman?

  What's your hot take?

• 40:30Kate Shaw?

  It is.

• 40:30Leah Litman?

  What's your hot take?

• 40:31Kate Shaw?

  How about this, though? But law aside, it is just wildly counterproductive if you were trying to keep talented people around to tell everyone, just leave, just go. I mean, I guess if making government employment intolerable and letting attrition weed out a lot of people is too slow, this is one alternative to just grind the capacity of government to a halt immediately. But I'm not sure how else to understand this effort but in that spirit.

• 40:59Leah Litman?

  Someone was binging Severance. It's OK. And, you know, you're calling it buyout slash non-buyout because it's not actually a buyout, right? If you looked closely at it, it was like if you agree to resign, we'll maybe let you work remotely for the next few months, but also your agency head could redeploy you anyways. So JK, unclear.

• 41:18Kate Shaw?

  But then there was some like follow up, like kind of Q and A advice that seemed to say you definitely will get to take the time to go get another job or to take a vacation. But none of that.

• 41:27Leah Litman?

  That's the public-private partnership.

• 41:29Kate Shaw?

  And so definitely don't assume that that is actually the term that they are offering you if you, a federal employee, are listening.

• 41:38Leah Litman?

  So moving on to other meshigas, we are only now getting to what happened last Monday night when the federal government threw an Office of Management and Budget memo from the acting director purported to pause trillions of dollars in government spending, so federal grants and loans, until they could be vetted to be sure said grants and loans were not advancing woke ideology, including, because we are living in the stupidest and deadliest timeline, quote, Marxist equity, transgenderism, and Green New Deal social engineering policies, end quote. The memo was supposed to go into effect at 5:00 PM last Tuesday, but even before that, it was kind of in effect.

• 42:22Leah Litman?

  The portals in the states that process Medicaid payments were reportedly essentially taken offline, even though the administration initially said payments to individuals like Medicare and Social Security wouldn't be affected. And it said also Medicaid wouldn't be affected, but then the press secretary was like, actually, no, I need to double check that. I mean, just. It's a small deal.

• 42:41Kate Shaw?

  Medicaid either is or is not included, but we'll find out and get back to you.

• 42:45Leah Litman?

  Yeah.

• 42:46Melissa Murray?

  In any normal timeline, Congress might have something to say about a blatant usurpation of its authority. But in this timeline, and we can just summarize all of this, Manu Raju, who reported that a bunch of House Republicans this morning at the Doral talked about this move to freeze federal aid. They were defending Donald Trump. This included the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who said he didn't have a problem with the White House decision to pause the aid because that's probably what you ought to do when you're coming in as a new administration. I'm not a lawyer. I can't pontificate on what's legal.

• 43:22Leah Litman?

  But then the piece de resistance of Representative Cole's.

• 43:26Melissa Murray?

  But I'm going to get there. I'm going to get there. Appropriations is not a law. It's a directive of Congress.

• 43:36Leah Litman?

  You know, it's a Valentine.

• 43:38Melissa Murray?

  This is Rudy Giuliani Irrational Basis Review.

• 43:43Melissa Murray?

  The, the, the big one. Irrational Basis Review.

• 43:45Leah Litman?

  Literally, the Constitution talks about appropriations by law.

• 43:51Leah Litman?

  But details.

• 43:52Melissa Murray?

  Or directive.

• 43:53Leah Litman?

  Right.

• 43:53Melissa Murray?

  Or directive, an instruction from Congress. Basically, the people charged with exercising legislative authority are conceding that they DGAF, let this president do what he wants, let the executive branch, like you can just roll all over them. And that is what is happening.

• 44:12Kate Shaw?

  Yeah. So Congress doesn't necessarily appreciate this, but Congress should be able to see that this directive does fly in the face of core constitutional allocation of authority principles. Congress has the power to spend. The president gets to execute the law. There's also a statute called the Impoundment Control Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

• 44:32Leah Litman?

  This question, Kate, where, where was the part that said the federal government gets to hand over trillions of dollars to Elon Musk in disbursements?

• 44:40Melissa Murray?

  That was a different act.

• 44:42Kate Shaw?

  No, no, that's right. That's in the clause. No, it's not my act. It's the Constitution.

• 44:45Leah Litman?

  Actually, it's Amendment 28, which was the equal rights for Elon amendment. Great.

• 44:50Melissa Murray?

  Yeah.

• 44:50Kate Shaw?

  There we go. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, right. It's more.

• 44:52Melissa Murray?

  Did anyone also have like real Youngstown vibes? I mean, like, what a time to teach.

• 44:57Kate Shaw?

  I literally just finished teaching Youngstown. And were you able to do it at like, were you able to put your heart into teaching it? If Congress says you can't do it, that means you can't, President.

• 45:05Melissa Murray?

  Or did you just lay down in the fetal position on the podium?

• 45:07Kate Shaw?

  I need advice for next week, seriously.

• 45:10Leah Litman?

  You know, I gave my students an excerpt of the OLC memo that was like, the president doesn't have unilateral inboundment authority and doing the inherent presidential authority analysis. So that was the approach that I took.

• 45:24Kate Shaw?

  All right. We'll see how it goes.

• 45:26Melissa Murray?

  Or the fetal position. Either one will work. Why not both?

• 45:30Kate Shaw?

  Right. So there are still some lower federal courts that do still dwell in the reality that is bounded by the Constitution, the Supreme Court's articulation of the basic principles contained in it in cases like Youngstown. And in that world, a district judge stayed this order on Tuesday afternoon in response to a complaint filed by a bunch of, you know, service providers who are beneficiaries of federal grants and aid. And this was actually just a brief administrative stay to allow for expedited briefing and argument. But I mean, as I think our description has already made clear, the chaos and confusion are impossible to overstate. And then, because things got crazier.

• 46:07Melissa Murray?

  This was the best part. This was the best part.

• 46:08Kate Shaw?

  I screamed. I was in my office and I screamed.

• 46:11Melissa Murray?

  The scream, I scrump.

• 46:14Kate Shaw?

  They rescinded it with a one-line OMB memo that was like, never mind, oops. And it seemed like.

• 46:23Melissa Murray?

  My bad.

• 46:25Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, not oops, my bad, more like it. Or maybe like a you can't fire me, I quit to the federal courts who were obviously not buying what they were selling. But wow.

• 46:34Leah Litman?

  And then things continued from there because White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt tweeted what seemed to want to be a rescission of the rescission, leading us to wonder, Levitt or? Leave it, lev it?

• 46:49Melissa Murray?

  Always choose, love it.

• 46:50Leah Litman?

  Right, exactly.

• 46:51Melissa Murray?

  Always choose, love it.

• 46:53Leah Litman?

  Choose, love it.

• 46:53Melissa Murray?

  Choose the bear.

• 46:54Leah Litman?

  So it turns out you can't override an OMB memo with a tweet. But you can get federal judges interested in continuing to superintend challenges to whatever it is the administration is doing here when they announce, maybe we're just going to do it after all. So in part because of this tweet seeming to keep this initiative alive. Another federal case, this one brought by a group of Democratic states is likely to produce another preliminary ruling against the administration. The best people, meritocracy in action.

• 47:26Melissa Murray?

  It's the fuck around of times, it was the find out of times.

• 47:28Leah Litman?

  Yes.

• 47:29Melissa Murray?

  Anyway, while all of this was unfolding, Head Start programs, domestic violence shelters, veterans programs, et cetera, et cetera. All of these programs that are funded by federal dollars were basically preparing to furlough staff, notify their beneficiaries and other participants that they would no longer be getting the services to which they had previously been entitled. Now, it seems that all of these services are on again, but again, that seems only to be because of the whims of this particular administration and the intercession of principled judges. So watch the space, at least until the next OMB memo, and we'll see what happens.

• 48:13Melissa Murray?

  And if you are the recipient of federal largess, buckle up. So, one, what do these people have against Meals on Wheels? But two, lest you think this OMB saga is over, I wanted to remind you all of what happened with the travel ban slash Muslim ban during the first Trump administration, which is, remember the chaotic order that Trump just kind of shared that no one knew about, caused chaos at the orders? It was paused by courts, then they come back with a new modified order that looks slightly more law-like, some additional lipstick on the pig. And that one also gets enjoined by some lower courts, but then it expires and they eventually produce a third that they claim to have emerged-

• 48:56Leah Litman?

  This one with a little less Islamophobia.

• 48:57Kate Shaw?

  Less Islamophobia.

• 48:58Leah Litman?

  Well, that they claimed to have a little bit less Islamophobia and they claimed to have resulted from some sort of interagency process. And that third iteration of the same impetus is eventually upheld by the Supreme Court. So we should not lose sight of the fact that, again, this might be part of the flood the zone with shit strategy. Again, much to cover here. We definitely wanted to spend some time on the fast-moving, cruel executive orders that target the trans community. So the administration has now issued multiple additional executive orders targeting trans people in truly vile, despicable, and unconstitutional ways. These are the second act to and follow from a previously announced executive order that

• 49:39Leah Litman?

  declared two genders and purported to defend women from gender ideology extremism. That previous order is already having devastating consequences. As part of the declaration that there are only two sexes and its insistence, trans people don't exist, the administration issued a directive to ensure males are not detained in women's prisons. That was part of the EO. The Huffington Post has since reported on some of the chaos and cruelty this has caused in prisons. It described an account from a person incarcerated at a women's facility that maintained officers were taunting trans inmates, saying, "We don't have to call you women anymore," taking them to segregated housing, a form of solitary confinement, possibly to eventually transfer them to men's prisons, where they would face staggeringly high risks of sexual assault, harassment, and more.

• 50:24Leah Litman?

  Also, out of fear of some of these executive orders, which threaten federal funds unless, you know, entities go along with the administration's vile pronouncements, you know, some entities have announced they will stop providing gender-affirming care because they are concerned about losing out on federal funds. So UVA's Health Services, for example, announced that last week. And at the time we were recording on Friday, you know, that announcement was still in place.

• 50:48Kate Shaw?

  Okay, so that's sort of the fallout from the first executive order. What do these new executive orders do? So they purport to totally ban transgender individuals from the military with just shockingly offensive language about the unfitness of trans people to serve. It isn't totally clear how the order will impact current trans military members, but it clearly would prospectively ban the admission into the military of any trans people.

• 51:11Melissa Murray?

  That's only the first executive order. The second one purports to crack down on schools' ability to support trans students and educate people about gender identity, although we should be very clear, the order is broadly about education and school curricula, not simply about the question of trans rights and gender and sexuality. But what the EO actually does with regard to gender and sexuality is that it attempts to require all schools that receive federal funding to stop any effort to protect trans and non-binary students and to abandon any accommodations, acknowledgements, or inclusions of such students. It also says that these schools must stop supporting diversity measures and requires

• 51:51Melissa Murray?

  them to advance, quote, "patriotic education," which the order defines as, quote, "an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America's founding and foundational principles," end quote. It also requires, quote, "a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history and the concept that celebration of America's greatness and history is proper," end quote.

• 52:19Leah Litman?

  Hmm. This made me wonder whether the order might make MAGA itself of dubious legality, since the premise of MAGA is that America is not already great, right, and needs to go through some sort of regreting.

• 52:34Kate Shaw?

  That's an excellent observation.

• 52:35Melissa Murray?

  That's like MAGA is a Jamaican mom who constantly wants you to improve yourself.

• 52:40Kate Shaw?

  Up your game a little bit, yeah.

• 52:41Melissa Murray?

  Yeah, this order is like, you were always fabulous, sweetie. It's the Kris Jenner of EOs, actually.

• 52:48Leah Litman?

  It really feels like all of these orders were slapped together by some people between the ages of 18 to 22 who have been deeply radicalized by the manosphere.

• 53:02Leah Litman?

  And it's that that's what I'm picking up.

• 53:06Melissa Murray?

  And Kate, do you have a hot take about the about this and the law?

• 53:10Kate Shaw?

  I mean, we do have a First Amendment still. The justices sometimes seem interested in that. And so

• 53:14Melissa Murray?

  Sometimes, but only on the religion side.

• 53:16Kate Shaw?

  Typically, but typically money corporate spending, too. But there's a few parts of the First Amendment that they're enthusiastic about. I mean, you know, it's this is this is a vile both. I mean, the kind of trans EOs in general are disgusting discriminatory. And also, all of these, in particular, the school executive order seems like an obvious and flagrant violation of the First Amendment. And look, are there absolutely a lot of lower federal court judges who will agree with that? Yeah, I don't think there's any question, but the Supreme Court, obviously, who knows?

• 53:51Melissa Murray?

  I thought you were going to mention the federal law that prohibits federal officials from telling schools what they can and cannot teach. It's not supposed to be up to federal officers. And we've heard ad nauseam how education is a local issue. So I'm really frankly surprised to see this EO existing. And yeah, and also the spending clause would like

• 54:11Leah Litman?

  Exactly. Whatever the Supreme Court says, right? The federal government is not supposed to be able to impose like novel, out of left field, out of nowhere, conditions that just

• 54:19Kate Shaw?

  The executive branch isn't at all.

• 54:20Leah Litman?

  Turn topsy turvy, right?

• 54:22Kate Shaw?

  Like The vagueness, the midstream changes, and also it's not even the branch that's supposed to be imposing these conditions. I know it's hard to keep it. It's hard to actually provide a comprehensive accounting of all of the constitutional infirmities with an order like this.

• 54:37Melissa Murray?

  Yeah, I just want to take stock so far. George W. Bush, Steve Bannon, and now Kate and the law. And Lee and I have vaguely agreed with all three, all of these.

• 54:46Kate Shaw?

  Big tent, guys.

• 54:47Melissa Murray?

  What a world, what a world.

• 54:51Melissa Murray?

  All right, we should also talk about the executive order addressing Guantanamo Bay. As many of you might have remembered from the early aughts, Guantanamo detention really worked well for detaining suspected terrorists. That was highly ironic, but because it was obviously problematic, Trump's people decided, why not build a huge, bigly new facility to detain people at Gitmo?

• 55:19Leah Litman?

  Horrible idea. In addition to it being a horrible idea, the order itself is at war with Donald Trump's self-presentation that he is going to overcome resistance from other governments and successfully close the border. At the signing ceremony, he suggested that detention is necessary because third countries might refuse to take back their nationals and because if these individuals weren't detained, they would be able to come back into the United States. Again, all of this seems to be in tension with Trump's talk about taking a firm line at the border. Like, why do we need this new facility if you, strong man, are taking firm steps to secure the border? I'm confused. Just me. Also, Guantanamo has never been used to detain people who are apprehended in the

• 56:04Leah Litman?

  United States. Sending people there would effectively be a removal from the United States and should be subject to all of the legal protections and review governing removals. Like, this is just insanity.

• 56:22Leah Litman?

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• 57:59Kate Shaw?

  I actually wanted to point out one piece of good news, which is actually some of the early polling on some of this madness does give the sense that the public actually isn't all that into this dumpster fire. So Reuters and Ipsos did some polling at the end of the first week when a lot of these orders had just been issued. And actually, I think it's fascinating, and I don't think it got a ton of play, so I did want to just mention a couple of highlights. So one, ending birthright citizenship is very unpopular. So 59% opposed, 36% approve.

• 58:29Leah Litman?

  Weird.

• 58:29Kate Shaw?

  So weird. I mean, at this point, look, they chose Donald Trump. I wouldn't have been that surprised at any of this. So actually, I did find it kind of heartening that some of the numbers came out the way they did. Pardoning the J6ers, 62% opposed. Ending all DEI programs and firing officials involved in DEI, 51% disapprove, 44% approve. So still more unpopular. Ending federal efforts to hire women and minorities, that's how the question was phrased, only 37% approve of doing that, 59% disapprove. And here's my favorite, you guys, renaming the Gulf of Mexico. It seems kind of anodyne. People hate it. 70% of survey respondents are opposed to renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

• 59:12Kate Shaw?

  So again, it just does suggest to me that, does polling mean anything? Who knows? And these are initial impressions. But I do not think that the stuff that they are, you know, serving up is wildly popular with most of the American public.

• 59:24Leah Litman?

  Are we supposed to take from this that the kids are OK?

• 59:27Kate Shaw?

  No.

• 59:28Melissa Murray?

  Okay. It could be worse. They could be like, yes, give us more. You're so good at this. You're so good at being optimistic. I love this about you. So like, this is bad. It's bad.

• 59:39Leah Litman?

  I have something that isn't good news, but kind of humorous news, kind of. So the Wall Street Journal reported that as the Internal Revenue Service was trying to search and delete references to DEI, the IRS removed some mentions of equity and inclusion from the Internal Revenue Manual that had some unintended consequences, such as deleting language about the inequity of holding on to a taxpayer's money and also omitting references to requiring the inclusion of taxpayer identification numbers on forms.

• 1:00:17Melissa Murray?

  All right. It's not just the federal government doing weird stuff. We should also turn to the state courts where weird stuff also continues to happen, especially in the state of North Carolina. So Kate, do you have an update from the Tar Heel state?

• 1:00:32Kate Shaw?

  Regrettably, I do. So Jefferson Griffin is still refusing to stop, to let it go. Reminder, he was running for the North Carolina Supreme Court. He lost to Justice Allison Riggs, but he is still pursuing, I think now, three cases in Wake County Superior Court. The North Carolina Supreme Court has stayed the election board certification, so those cases can go forward. Griffin, as a reminder, is continuing to press these theories about why tens of thousands of votes should be thrown out, even though none of those arguments were offered before the election. There was an oral argument in the Fourth Circuit last Monday about whether the whole case should be transferred to federal court. Sounds like that argument was pretty messy and confused. And it seems likely that Griffin's tactic

• 1:01:17Kate Shaw?

  here is trying to get a favorable ruling in one of these many pending state cases and then get a tied vote in the North Carolina Supreme Court. Leaving that ruling in effect, I just cannot imagine a more shameless and undignified way to try to get a seat at the top of a state's system of justice. But that seems to be what we're witnessing.

• 1:01:36Melissa Murray?

  ProPublica had a great piece of reporting last week involving interviews with some of the voters whose votes Griffin is actually challenging in his quest to be North Carolina's next Supreme Court Justice. Among those was a 22-year-old who doesn't drive because he has epilepsy and so he doesn't have a driver's license. For that reason, when he votes, he uses his social security number and a state-issued ID that isn't a driver's license. Obviously, Jefferson Griffin took this personally, wants to throw out his vote because this individual is not using an actual driver's license. There's another voter, this is Frank Jarvis, who says he is extremely upset. His wife's registration was challenged. They

• 1:02:19Melissa Murray?

  live in the state's eastern coast and they identify as, quote, "traditional conservatives and Republicans." And right now, they find that all of this, quote, "leaves a terrible taste in my mouth. No matter what side is doing this, I don't need that kind of person representing me on the Supreme Court," end quote. So it's not playing well in North Carolina, Jefferson Griffin, but you keep, you keep trying, I guess.

• 1:02:44Leah Litman?

  So another state court development, we wanted to talk about Wisconsin elections for their state Supreme Court. So you all probably remember what an enormous deal it was in 2023 when Justice Janet Protasiewicz beat Dan Kelly for a seat on their state Supreme Court. This election is just as big. So Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, a liberal, is retiring. That means there's an open seat, which means that once again, control of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin hangs in the balance. The candidates are Susan Crawford, who's a circuit judge in Dane County, and Brad Schimmel. From 2015 to 2019, Schimmel was the 44th Attorney General of Wisconsin, but lost his reelection bid in 2018. After the loss, Republican Governor Scott Walker appointed him to a Wisconsin Circuit Court

• 1:03:28Leah Litman?

  seat. There are already huge amounts of money pouring into the race. Elon Musk has dipped his toe in because it's not enough to be co-president of these United States. In a tweet, he said-

• 1:03:39Melissa Murray?

  You have to be co-governor of Wisconsin, too.

• 1:03:41Leah Litman?

  Also, shadow state Supreme Court Justice. In a tweet, he said, quote, "Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!"

• 1:03:50Kate Shaw?

  I can't believe they're still trying this line, like, voting fraud. It just, I mean, it's insane. But the fact that he has jumped in at all and is flexing his money in his muscles is just like, is so worrying.

• 1:04:03Leah Litman?

  Voting fraud is effectively DEI, right? It's code for something, right? And it's code for

• 1:04:09Kate Shaw?

  Letting people in Milwaukee vote.

• 1:04:10Leah Litman?

  Racial minorities voting, right? Exactly. And so if you are unsure where to focus your attention since November, since January, if there's so much and it is too much and you have felt just at a loss, this is your moment to get involved. You know, this is the sort of state race where you can make a difference. They often come down to a small number of votes and getting money in now, volunteering now, is a great way for ensuring a happy result in April.

• 1:04:37Kate Shaw?

  So, another development in the states to mention, Louisiana prosecutors have obtained an indictment of a New York doctor who prescribes and mails medication abortion, including two patients in Louisiana. New York has a shield law that should protect physicians like the one named in the indictment, but we will see sort of how this conflict of laws and legal regimes plays out. This is something we knew was coming, basically immediately following Dobbs. It seems like it's now here.

• 1:05:04Melissa Murray?

  All right, we should also take up some of the new cases that the court will review. The court took cert on Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board versus Drummond and Saint Isador of Seville Catholic Virtual School versus Drummond. These are challenges to the permissibility of a religious public charter school, and they'll be consolidated for review. We should note that Justice Barrett has recused herself from the consideration of the case. And to be clear, a justice does not have to provide any explanation for a decision to recuse, but it is noteworthy. That Justice Barrett got some flak for failing to recuse herself when the court

• 1:05:44Melissa Murray?

  heard an earlier case, DeJoy versus Groff, where the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic and a number of Notre Dame professors were involved in either filing briefs or working on that case. And Justice Barrett, as listeners will recall, was a professor at Notre Dame's law school prior to her appointment to the Seventh Circuit. Here, in this case, there are ties to the clinic, again, but I think a more relevant fact is that Professor Nicole Stell Garnett, also a Notre Dame professor and reportedly Justice Barrett's best friend, has been an advisor to St. Isidore's, one of the litigants in this case. So this is all to say that the attention to the court's ethical practices are not necessarily ill-spent.

• 1:06:29Melissa Murray?

  The justices are being more careful about when they recuse, what the appearance of impropriety might look like, and that, I think, is to the benefit of the court and the public.

• 1:06:40Leah Litman?

  Given this cert grant, as well as the executive order we were talking about on patriotic education, wanted to re-recommend work by Professor Caitlin Millot at Arizona State, The Education Democracy Nexus. I also recently read Mike Hickson Bow's book, They Came for the Schools, extremely topical and very well done.

• 1:06:58Melissa Murray?

  Kate, I need some new reading material. Do you have any recommendations? I don't want anything Treaclee or Sackarin, so none of your hot takes. So what do you have?

• 1:07:08Kate Shaw?

  Okay, I actually am reading Color Television, which you recommended to me. Oh, yeah, Dancy Senna's.

• 1:07:13Melissa Murray?

  But I've read that already.

• 1:07:14Kate Shaw?

  I know.

• 1:07:14Melissa Murray?

  Do you have anything else for me?

• 1:07:16Kate Shaw?

  Well.

• 1:07:16Melissa Murray?

  I want something that's bracing, gonna get me revved up, and maybe keep me a little pissed off. What do you got?

• 1:07:21Kate Shaw?

  I am waiting with bated breath for the arrival of my five copies of Leah Litman's new Lawless.

• 1:07:27Melissa Murray?

  I don't think I know her. Who's Leah Litman? Tell me about Lawless.

• 1:07:31Kate Shaw?

  Well, I haven't gotten it yet, but I think it's gonna be a book.

• 1:07:34Melissa Murray?

  Don't Mariah Carey me, girl.

• 1:07:38Melissa Murray?

  Wait, our girl Leah has a book and it's called Lawless.

• 1:07:41Kate Shaw?

  It's called Lawless.

• 1:07:42Melissa Murray?

  Say more. Say more. I'm already intrigued.

• 1:07:44Kate Shaw?

  The subtitle has evolved a little bit. Leah, will you remind me of the current subtitle? How the Supreme Court Runs On?

• 1:07:49Melissa Murray?

  Conservative Grievance.

• 1:07:50Kate Shaw?

  Conservative Grievance. Say it with us, listener. Fringe Theories.

• 1:07:54Melissa Murray?

  And Bad Vibes.

• 1:07:55Kate Shaw?

  Okay, and Bad Vibes.

• 1:07:57Melissa Murray?

  That's exactly what I needed. Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. Inject it into my veins. I'm smashing the Buy Now button at bookshop.org.

• 1:08:06Leah Litman?

  Can I tell you the chapter title of the final chapter?

• 1:08:09Kate Shaw?

  Please do.

• 1:08:10Melissa Murray?

  Tell my favorite listening.

• 1:08:10Kate Shaw?

  A little peek behind the curtain.

• 1:08:12Leah Litman?

  It's called The American Psychos of the Supreme Court.

• 1:08:15Kate Shaw?

  Oof.

• 1:08:16Melissa Murray?

  Lawless.

• 1:08:17Kate Shaw?

  Are there body parts in freezers? Metaphorically.

• 1:08:20Melissa Murray?

  You'll have to stay tuned. Yes. Spoiler.

• 1:08:25Kate Shaw?

  Seriously, Run, Don't Walk to either bookshop or your local independent bookstore, or if you must, some behemoth that also provides the signal of books and audiobooks. But get this book. It's going to be a really, really important.

• 1:08:37Melissa Murray?

  Preorder it. Download it while it's hot. Put it on your nightstand when you get it and read it rigorously.

• 1:08:44Leah Litman?

  And then send one to Sam.

• 1:08:45Melissa Murray?

  Oh, you can actually gift one to your favorite justice.

• 1:08:49Leah Litman?

  Exactly.

• 1:08:50Melissa Murray?

  Yeah, yeah. Congratulations, Leah. We are all waiting with bated breath for this. And Kate, much better than your last recommendation to me, which was Brett Kavanaugh's The Book of Basketball.

• 1:09:07Melissa Murray?

  That was written by Brett Kavanaugh. Just kidding. That's actually a very good book. Bill Simmons. All right, we've got a little bit left for you today, a little bit of housekeeping. But we also wanted to note some strict scrutiny in the wild. We always love it when we see you guys out in the world and you come and say hello to us and tell us how much you love the pod. And so we are especially grateful to Amanda at Rowan State University, who was at a talk that I gave for MLK Day and gifted me with a lovely crocheted dumpster fire stuffy. And she said she was inspired by Leah and Kate and your favorite thing, recommendations for crocheted stuffies. So many thanks to you, Amanda. It was great to meet you at Rowan University.

• 1:09:52Leah Litman?

  So as you may know, the fires in Los Angeles have been devastating. And as someone who loved, loved, loved, loved living in Southern California, you know, we wanted to do everything we can to help those affected and support the organizations rallying around neighbors in need in the months ahead. So we just launched Friend of Los Angeles merch in the Crooked store with 100% of the proceeds going to Vote Save America's Action Wildfire Relief Fund. Show off your LA pride with a new hat or tee to pair with your favorite Dodgers merch, or those athleisure pants you wear exclusively to Arowan, all while supporting organizations like the LA Regional Food Bank, the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation, and Latino Community Foundation.

• 1:10:32Leah Litman?

  Shop now at crooked.com/store or donate directly to the fund at votesaveamerica.com/rerief. This message has been paid for by Vote Save America. You can learn more at votesaveamerica.com. This ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:10:48Melissa Murray?

  Also, listeners, last week on Assembly Required, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey joined Stacey Abrams for a conversation on how to communicate effectively with your elected representatives and support organizations who are pushing back on the new administration. They also shared tips for amplifying useful Democratic information online. It's a terrific listen, incredibly helpful, and it made us feel a little more hopeful. So make sure you check it out wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.

• 1:11:18Kate Shaw?

  Strict Scrutiny is a Crooked Media production, hosted and executive produced by Leah Littman, Melissa Murray, and me, Kate Shaw, produced and edited by Melody Rauel. Michael Goldsmith is our associate producer. Audio support from Kyle Seglan and Charlotte Landis. Music by Eddie Cooper. Production support from Madeline Herringer and Ari Schwartz. Matt DeGroot is our head of production. And thanks to our digital team, Phoebe Bradford and Joe Motosky. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Subscribe to Strict Scrutiny on YouTube to catch full episodes. 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.

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

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  So how do they look?

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  But our logo isn't brown.

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