Gambling Away the Future: Kalshi, SCOTUSBlog, and Trump’s Bet on the Midterms [SUBSCRIBER-ONLY]

Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael take a break from case law to discuss the possibility of stolen midterms, the evil lawyers defending Kalshi and Polymarket, and SCOTUSBlog’s subtle conservative makeover. If you're not a 5-4 Premium member, you're not hearing every episode! To hear this and other Premium-only episodes, access to our Slack community, and more, join at fivefourpod.com/support http://fivefourpod.com/support. 5-4 is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Alli Rodgers. Leon Neyfakh provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Transcriptions of each episode are available at fivefourpod.com http://fivefourpod.com Follow the show at @fivefourpod on most platforms. On BlueSky, find Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social, Michael @fleerultra.bsky.social, and Rhiannon @aywarhiannon.bsky.social. Our Sponsors: * Check out Mint Mobile and use my code mintmobile.com/fivefour for a great deal: https://www.mintmobile.com * Check out Quince and use my code FIVEFOUR for a great deal: https://www.quince.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Hey, everyone. This is Leon from Prologue Projects. For this subscriber-only episode of Five to Four, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are taking a spin through some of the biggest legal stories in the news. The risk of election interference in the midterms, Minnesota's lawsuit against the gambling app, sorry, prediction market platform, Kalshi, creeping changes at SCOTUS Vlog, and more. This is Five to Four, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

• 0:36Peter Shamshiri?

  Welcome to Five to Four, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have destroyed our civil rights, like Barry Weiss is destroying CBS News. I'm Peter. I'm here with Rhiannon.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Zero out of five stars. Or like, what's the what's the performance review looking like, you know? Bad, bad, bad, bad over there.

• 0:52Peter Shamshiri?

  I think she's doing great. I think she's doing great. You just hate to see powerful lesbians succeed.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Introduce Michael.

• 0:58Peter Shamshiri?

  The first person to get introduced shouldn't talk so much, frankly.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 1:02Peter Shamshiri?

  That's part of the format.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  I should have just said, hey.

• 1:05Peter Shamshiri?

  So don't blame me.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  You're right. You're right.

• 1:06Peter Shamshiri?

  Also, Michael is here.

• 1:08Michael Liroff?

  Hey, everybody. Hi. I am here.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Women speak on this podcast.

• 1:15Michael Liroff?

  That's right. Someone's gonna talk shit about Barry Weiss. It's gonna be Rhiannon.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Exactly. I'm first in line, bro.

• 1:23Peter Shamshiri?

  We're recording this not too long after the hire of Ross Douthat. Ross Douthat, poached from The New York Times. What a career arc for a boy. He's been at The Times since he was like 29, which blows my mind. He's like 45 or something. Before that, he was just like a National Review guy. These guys are just kissed by sunshine, dude. Just like, you're writing like bullshit conservative nonsense for National Review, and then The New York Times hires you? And then God knows how much Barry's paying him, right? Must be a fortune.

• 1:56Michael Liroff?

  I do think he's gonna be a disaster, though, right? Like, these are not translatable skills. Being good at writing op-eds, which it's debatable whether he's good at writing op-eds. But writing op-eds, period, of any quality, there's nothing to do with being good on camera.

• 2:12Peter Shamshiri?

  Well, The Times has been putting him on camera in like a video podcast format.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  For their podcasts, yeah. He's been interviewing some characters.

• 2:21Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 2:22Peter Shamshiri?

  And I would say it's unpleasant to look at. As a consumer, like, I watch New York Times podcasts, like, opinion podcasts, because I'm a little debate pervert. I've got a brain worm. I mean, he is... There's no other way to put it. He's an ugly man. It's hard to look. And I feel like the powers that be are doing this stuff on purpose. They're like, look at him. You have to. You have to look at him. We don't even know what he's gonna do yet, right? Like, what his role is. I'm picturing like an Andy Rooney segment.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Totally. I think it'll be a segment.

• 2:54Peter Shamshiri?

  What's like a few minutes with Andy Rooney, or whatever it is? And he's like, what's up with women dressing like whores? Or something, right?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  What is up with borders and how porous they are? It's scaring me and my family.

• 3:05Peter Shamshiri?

  Doing an Andy Rooney bit, but it's like complaining about abortion, would be funny. And if they do that, I respect it a lot, actually.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Just at the desk, messy desk, and it's like, oh, women having choices.

• 3:17Peter Shamshiri?

  Right. Complaining about women in the workplace, and the camera is like panning over to like an intern, a female intern, or whatever.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Or his literal producer. Yeah.

• 3:26Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, yeah. I have a bit in my in my head where he does a women ruining the workplace thing, which he's done. He's not saying, yes, they are. He's just investigating this cultural idea.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  He's wondering.

• 3:39Peter Shamshiri?

  But it would be funny to do that exact thing, except your only example is Barry Weiss at CBS, right? And that's the whole segment. All right. Today, we're doing a bit of a grab-bag episode. There are a few things we wanted to talk about, a few news items, topics of interest floating in the ether that we wanted to grab out. One of them is the midterm elections. Are they going to be stolen? Every summer before the elections, we have to have an episode that's like, are they about to be stolen? Is something weird about to happen? Hey, folks, if you want to hear the rest of this episode, you're going to have to subscribe. This episode is one of our premium Patreon-only episodes. Membership starts at just $5 a month. So if you want to hear the rest, join us at patreon.com/54pod.

• 4:23Peter Shamshiri?

  That's 54pod, all spelled out. Members get a bunch of stuff. Not only do you get access to the premium episodes, but access to subscriber-only events, discounts on merch. And at the $10 a month level, you get bigger discounts on merch and membership in the incredibly rowdy Five to Four Slack. So again, that's patreon.com/54pod. 54pod, all spelled out. Become a member today.