Is Sam Alito On His Way Out?

The legal news just kept coming this week, and Melissa, Leah, and Kate break it all down. Could Friend of the Pod Sam Alito be retiring? Possibly! Can Pete Hegseth retaliate against Senator and veteran Mark Kelly for free speech? No! Just how wild was Pamela Jo Bondi’s Epstein files testimony in Congress? Pretty flippin’ wild! They also cover the latest out of Minnesota, Democratic representatives tearing the head of ICE a new one, some very bad news for humans who enjoy clean air, the Heritage Foundation’s crusade against birth control, and other legal flotsam and jetsam. Favorite things: Kate: Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6FuWd4wNd8&list=RDG6FuWd4wNd8&start_radio=1; Universities Are Sending Trump a Dangerous Message https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/02/09/colleges-universities-trump-administration-political-interference/, Arne Duncan & David Pressman (Washington Post); The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-field-of-blood-violence-in-congress-and-the-road-to-civil-war-joanne-b-freeman/34bbbeff0861262f?ean=9781250234582&next=t, Joanne B. Freeman Leah: We Have to Look Right in the Face of What We Have Become https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/opinion/ice-victims-hearings-justice.html, Jamelle Bouie; What It Means to Be a White ‘Race Traitor’ https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/magazine/minneapolis-good-pretti-race-traitors.html, Nikole Hannah-Jones (NYT) Melissa: MS NOW Presents: Clock It https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ms-now-presents-clock-it/id1707410660 with Symone Sanders Townsend & Eugene Daniels; A Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem’s Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside DHS https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/chaos-kristi-noem-homeland-security-f095ac95?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqeqh1m27oCwDddZq15ust2uzI2opFuGl8tONNYRuR0NluH3oiu3fw-HQCSf6zs%3D&gaa_ts=698f3907&gaa_sig=39zUxj_FnjdpWZkG-fv4pUzJszEiStKZ-CpZQPUUHEZUs7lwMqnBkceuvLOaM0AoA0XEVC8LV8Hwy63mbtUHOw%3D%3D (WSJ); Jessica Bichler https://www.jessicabichler.com/ for NC State Senate Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2026! 3/6/26 – San Francisco 3/7/26 – Los Angeles Learn more:http://crooked.com/eventsPreorder Melissa’s book, The U. S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-constitution-annotated-for-the-contemporary-reader-melissa-murray/8e7f0dfa472fc3ca?ean=9781668221938&next=t&Buy Leah's book,Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Lawless/Leah-Litman/9781668054628Follow us onInstagram https://www.instagram.com/strictscrutinypodcast/?hl=en,Threads https://www.threads.net/@strictscrutinypodcast, andBluesky https://bsky.app/profile/strictscrutiny.bsky.social

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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

• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 2:10Speaker 03

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

• 2:23Speaker 04

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

• 2:53Melissa 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 today. I'm Melissa Murray.

• 3:00Kate Shaw?

  And I'm Kate Shaw. And we are in our final week of the long stretch between the January and February Supreme Court sittings. So this is a stretch in which there were no Supreme Court arguments and actually no opinions from the court.

• 3:10Melissa Murray?

  Must be nice.

• 3:11Kate Shaw?

  It has been.

• 3:12Melissa Murray?

  Quiet quitting.

• 3:13Kate Shaw?

  For them and for us. I think we've all enjoyed this last week and this coming week of our collective respite before the court returns, both to issuing opinions and to hearing arguments. But there has been, even in the absence of SCOTUS, a ton of legal news that we're going to cover today. That's coming out of the executive branch, out of the lower federal courts, even out of a Congress, which seems to be maybe...

• 3:35Melissa Murray?

  Wait, did we get one? We got a Congress?

• 3:38Kate Shaw?

  It's a little too soon to say for sure, but there are definitely indications that we might have an Article One that's doing things.

• 3:44Melissa Murray?

  Is it a pre-Congress?

• 3:46Kate Shaw?

  It might be. You take it before the actual Congress.

• 3:50Melissa Murray?

  Like, yeah, or a fetal Congress?

• 3:51Kate Shaw?

  Okay. I'm not sure. I think we will see. But it was showing signs of, you know, actually interest in overseeing the executive branch and communicating with the public. So we're going to cover all of that.

• 4:05Melissa Murray?

  But before we get to this week's news, I'm going to preview one of my new favorite things. It's a mystery called "The Case of the Possibly Retiring Justice," and I have some breaking clues. Not entirely ready to call it breaking news, but as Leah noted in our last episode, a number of clues have emerged over the past couple of weeks pointing to the possibility that friend of the pod, one Samuel A. Alito, may be preparing to hang up his robes and turn full time to pursuing his passions: right-wing news, flags, general conservative

• 4:46Melissa Murray?

  grievance, and Wagner. So, let's enumerate the clues. First, Justice Alito recently celebrated 20 years on the court at the end of January. And ladies, I know you felt every one of those 20 years in your uterus, but it was just 20 years. Actually, not a long time when you really think about it, but it felt like a million years. That is usually a very good milestone on which to retire, like a round number. You can mark it. I don't even know what the gift is for 20 years. It's definitely not paper. It's like a medal of some sort. But that's a good time.

• 5:26Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, okay.

• 5:27Melissa Murray?

  The second clue is that the signs are not looking great for the Republicans in the midterms. So, they have their big, beautiful disastrous bill that has made everyone poor. The eggs are still expensive. Nobody has healthcare, and they don't seem to care about it. That means that they may very well lose the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate. And if they lose the Senate, that obviously makes it so much harder for the president to get through his SCOTUS fetus nominee. That means if you retire before you lose the Senate, then you make the whole glide path so much easier for getting in your preferred candidate. Do it before the midterms changes everything. So, that's

• 6:12Melissa Murray?

  the second clue. The third clue is that this is obviously someone who wants to ensure that he is replaced by a like-minded successor, right? So, you gotta do this while the iron is hot, while the Senate is in position. And then, the final clue is that the publication date for his forthcoming book, So Ordered, which, as Leah noted last week, is going to be published during the first week of October term 2026. And that is usually a time when sitting justices are quite busy.

• 6:48Melissa Murray?

  Which means it's not exactly a great time to release your new book if you want to promote said book. So I will just drop that. I will also note a very fawning op-ed by former clerk with cases pending at the Supreme Court right now, Ben Aguanaga, who talked about the decency, the core decency and goodness of his former boss. All of this may suggest that we are just in commemoration mode. 20th anniversary has come and we are just lauding the great man as one does. But personally, I think this feels a little bit like the right wing ecosystem kicking into high gear. What do you think, Kate?

• 7:31Kate Shaw?

  It does feel like that. And I will say that we are not the only ones to have noticed that evidence seems to be mounting. So friend of the pod, Ellie Mastal penned a column last week in The Nation magazine titled, quote, "Is Sam Alito Preparing to Disrobe?"

• 7:44Melissa Murray?

  Amazing title.

• 7:45Kate Shaw?

  So let's raise right past that image.

• 7:48Melissa Murray?

  Image is terrible. Zero out of 10. But very good wordplay.

• 7:51Kate Shaw?

  Very clever. Yes, absolutely. We salute you, our friend. So we will just note that if there is an announcement, if our speculation and Ellie's is right, it is possible that it could come very soon. So many, although not all SCOTUS retirement announcements come at the end of the term, but there's no requirement that that be the case. And in fact, if the kind of electoral math that Melissa was alluding to is part of the calculus here, then sooner would make a lot of sense. So thinking about a few recent retirements, Justice Stevens announced his retirement in April, Justice Souter in May, and Justice Breyer announced his retirement at the end of January in 2022, providing when he did that his retirement wouldn't take effect until the end of the term, assuming that his successor had been nominated and confirmed by then. He was, of course, succeeded by

• 8:36Kate Shaw?

  Justice Jackson, who replaced him after the end of that term. And kind of given that the Senate is unlikely to want to focus on a SCOTUS nomination and confirmation hearings during the fall of an election year, it feels like they would want to do it sooner rather than later. I presume he would do something similar to Justice Breyer, make the retirement effective at the end of the term and contingent on confirmation of a successor. But it could be, you know, just a matter of weeks if we are right in our speculation.

• 9:03Melissa Murray?

  All right. So this all begs the question, listeners, who might America's next top justice be? Right now, we are just going to do a lightning round of the folks we think are likely high on the lists of possible replacements, not necessarily because their jurisprudence has been so eye-popping, although some cases it has been, but because they have really been putting themselves out front. They are true Meredith Grey pick-me candidates. And of course, we will revisit all of this if in fact, there is an announcement. But just to give you a flavor of what might be in the offing, let's go through them. First up, my first pick-me is Judge Andy Oldham of the Fifth Circuit. As we've noted, he

• 9:44Melissa Murray?

  has really brought some thirsty energy to the Fifth Circuit, and he's been doing so for some time. He's also staked out positions that are so extreme that even the Supreme Court feels compelled to say, easy, Tiger, slow this down, keep smacking him down. These decisions that have literally required the court to intervene include his non-delegation doctrine opinion in Consumers Research Council, his opinion striking down a ghost gun regulation in Bondi versus Vanderstock, and the flavored tobacco case, FDA versus wages and Red Lion, in which he was unanimously reversed. They call that a bench slap. He also wrote a particularly

• 10:22Melissa Murray?

  hackish opinion suggesting that President Joe Biden was too senile to pardon people. Yes, really, he did. He's also 47, which means he is exactly the right age, and if past his prologue, he is also an Alito clerk, so there is some nice symmetry here. And our friend Mark Joseph Stern at Slate actually had a piece on the prospect of an Oldham candidacy last year, so we recommend that to you as well. Another entrant, also from the Fifth Circuit, is a perennial favorite in these stakes, and that is, of course, one Judge Jim Ho. He is a Thomas clerk and, as you know, a perennial pick-me conservative

• 11:06Melissa Murray?

  who's been on this bench for years. He's been a huge proponent of the made-up major questions doctrine, including a case that sought to blow up the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's nuclear waste storage, because obviously, just letting any fool store nuclear waste sounds like a perfectly good idea. Picking Judge Ho might give the Democrats an opening to focus on corruption and billionaire benefactors because, as we know, there have been ties to both Justice Thomas and Harlan Crow that Judge Ho has been privy to. That might be a mark against him, but here's the rub. Judge Ho would also be the first Asian American ever nominated to the court, and

• 11:47Melissa Murray?

  that might give the Republicans some fodder if the Democrats came out hard against him. Also, Judge Ho is in his 50s, so I don't know. Seems like on the older side. It would probably be better if he was 15. What do you think?

• 12:02Kate Shaw?

  They do want to install a justice who will serve four decades and I think probably under 50 if they can.

• 12:08Melissa Murray?

  I think the justice should be able to drive, though. It's a line in the sand.

• 12:13Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, I mean legally able. In New York, so many people just can't, so who knows? But so moving on to a slightly younger potential nominee, Judge Eileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida. So if you remember, classified documents in bathrooms and ballrooms, Cannon really needs no introduction. Her pro-Trump rulings in the Mar-a-Lago episode, which involved Trump being criminally indicted for taking and retaining documents following the conclusion of his first presidency, were truly jaw-dropping. This is a patronage administration, and Cannon has displayed the kind of loyalty that would make Roscoe Conkling proud. You have to see Death by Lightning if you haven't.

• 12:53Melissa Murray?

  That's a deep cut. Wow.

• 12:54Kate Shaw?

  And she's not a New Yorker. She's a Floridian. But anyway, she delivered for Trump in spades in that case, and it feels like it now might be her turn, and she is on the younger end. So I think she is definitely high on the list.

• 13:06Melissa Murray?

  One thing that might cut against her. I think it's going to be a big leap from the District Court to the Supreme Court. I think she has to make a pit stop at the 11th Circuit.

• 13:13Kate Shaw?

  Totally possible. Okay, so another possibility, speaking of the Courts of Appeals, Judge Naomi Rao of the D.C. Circuit. You know, she was on shortlists during the first Trump term. She has definitely delivered some pretty outlandish rulings in favor of Trump since being installed on the D.C. Circuit, including in the contempt case out of Judge Boesberg's chambers. Still, you know, you hate to say it, but I don't actually see things breaking her way.

• 13:37Melissa Murray?

  Do we hate to say it?

• 13:39Kate Shaw?

  No, that was complete sarcasm. I don't hate to say it. I love to say it. I mean, although, look, I think she probably would be less insane than some of the people on the list, so, you know, hard to know exactly what to root for here. But in some ways, like, I find her outlandish rulings harder to swallow because I do feel like on some level she knows better. Like, she was once a scholar of administrative law who wrote some, you know, perfectly reasonable things, and she no longer is that. But 53, she's probably older than they want, and I also do think-

• 14:08Melissa Murray?

  Yeah, she's a lady.

• 14:09Kate Shaw?

  She is a lady, right? Which, you know, so is Eileen Cannon. I'm not sure that's a strike against her. But I think that actually with Rao, some GOP senators, this was at least the kind of scuttlebutt last time she was in the mix, is that she's not conservative enough despite her dogged efforts on the bench in recent years to prove them wrong, and I'm not sure she has successfully shaken that concern.

• 14:27Melissa Murray?

  I don't know. She's done a pretty good job of rehabbing her credentials.

• 14:30Kate Shaw?

  She's tried, yeah. She definitely has.

• 14:32Melissa Murray?

  She really has. Any other new and up-and-comers you want to flag?

• 14:35Kate Shaw?

  Let me just tick through a few. Judge Patrick Boumatai of the Ninth Circuit, Judge Lawrence Van Dyke also of the Ninth-

• 14:40Melissa Murray?

  Oh, he's the video dissent. Pew, pew.

• 14:43Kate Shaw?

  In the gun case, yep, that's him. I mean, that's a way to get noticed. Stanford Stormtrooper Stuart Kyle Duncan, Justin Walker of the D.C. Circuit, Greg Cassis-

• 14:51Melissa Murray?

  I literally thought there was a judge named Stanford Stormtrooper. I'm like, that's a very interesting name. I've never heard of him. But yes, Kyle Duncan.

• 15:01Kate Shaw?

  Okay, very sort of like outside possibility, but throw in the mix, newbie gen mascot of the Third Circuit. And what about an erstwhile U.S. Attorney, Alito Haba, Lindsey Halligan?

• 15:12Melissa Murray?

  Oh, I love that these two might actually get a Senate confirmation hearing. That would be novel and unprecedented. Amazing.

• 15:18Kate Shaw?

  That's not happening. I just wanted to put them on the list. All right.

• 15:22Melissa Murray?

  You just went like that was just literally a shit.

• 15:24Kate Shaw?

  I just wanted to remind people that these are lawyers given serious jobs in this administration.

• 15:29Melissa Murray?

  Well, Kate, I'm surprised that you did not mention one Emile Bové of the Third Circuit. This is, of course, the former Trump henchman, turned DOJ number three, turned Third Circuit judge because of course, who is probably best known through the reports of whistleblower Ariz Rovini, who reported that during the alien enemies litigation, quote, "Bové stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts, 'Fuck you,' and would ignore any such order." Ooh, that's going to be spicy in the confirmation hearings. Tell us, sir, about your relationship with DOJ. I will say that Judge Bové has so far avoided getting pulled into the contempt proceedings before Judge Boesberg. Maybe that's because he's also a judge right now.

• 16:14Melissa Murray?

  That could probably be part of it. But it is still wild that he is on the bench and wilder still that he likely will be on the shortlist if Alito does retire.

• 16:26Kate Shaw?

  Indeed.

• 16:27Melissa Murray?

  Obviously, listeners, we will have a more refined list if and when an announcement is made. It probably will be made via a leak to Politico, so stay tuned for that. I hope the chief justice will be enforcing those NDAs rigorously, as was promised.

• 16:46Kate Shaw?

  See, of course, the leak could come either from the court or from the White House, and Roberts doesn't have jurisdiction over the White House staffers because, you know, typically there's a letter that gets delivered to the White House. So, but yeah, I agree with you, Melissa. It's probably a leak rather than an announcement. That is the way we will find out.

• 17:02Melissa Murray?

  I think so.

• 17:05Speaker 07

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• 17:49Kate Shaw?

  All right, let's turn to the news. And as I said at the outset, there has been a lot. We're going to start with Minnesota, and we will also cover various developments in courts and the executive branch that are kind of broadly related to the administration's brutal immigration enforcement strategy. We will then cover some other developments in courts and the executive branch. And again, wonder of wonders, the Congress.

• 18:08Melissa Murray?

  All right, first up, ICE out of Minnesota. Listeners, on Thursday, Borders Arena Tom Homan announced that the federal government's siege of Minnesota, what they were calling Operation Metro Surge, is ending. Now, wait, I have questions. Is this a not-so-fast-I-will-believe-it-when-I-see-it moment? Or is this actually cause for celebration? Or maybe it's both. It does feel really important to note that the ordinary citizens of the state of Minnesota have driven off a paramilitary force occupying Minneapolis, although they've obviously paid for this in literal blood. But we should note that the organizing around everything, from warning whistles and networks to mutual aid, has actually been amazing, and it has kept so many people safe. We don't

• 18:53Melissa Murray?

  know yet whether ICE is gone or what the aftermath from Minnesota will be, but we know that attorneys are working on this and that there are still enormous numbers of Minnesotans who have been snatched off the streets. Some of them are actually citizens and legal residents. Some of them have been sent to Texas while they have release orders pending. So none of this is over for them, but it is an amazing development that ICE will be leaving Minnesota.

• 19:18Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, and an amazing victory for ordinary Minnesotans, holding the line on the Constitution and the rule of law. And on that topic, I wanted to mention a moment from the Olympics last week that makes clear that some athletes understand the Constitution much better than some of our very most esteemed jurists. So one of the members of the U.S. curling team, who also happens to be a lawyer, said in a press conference, quote, "We have a Constitution, and it allows us freedom of the press and freedom of speech, protects us from unreasonable surges and seizures, and makes it so we have to, you know, have probable cause to be pulled over. And what's happening in Minnesota is wrong." There's no shades of gray, end quote. So I heard that last week and I really hoped that Justice Kavanaugh was watching and

• 20:02Kate Shaw?

  listening because I found it to be proof positive that it is possible to love both sports and the Constitution. So yeah, love that moment and it is just sort of more evidence, it has been really clear in this timeline, that the people are doing a much better job defending core constitutional values than our institutions are right now.

• 20:20Melissa Murray?

  I love an attorney slash curler. Like more of that, please. Okay. Next topic, detention policy. In the last episode, we talked about the detention policy that this administration has been trotting out and which has been rejected by just about every court except the Fifth Circuit. Under this new detention policy, the government took the view that anyone who has not been lawfully admitted to the United States, i.e. anyone who may have crossed the border and then stayed in the United States, who the government was then attempting to deport, now had to be detained. And we should say, that's not the way this normally happened. Even if you had crossed the border and were undocumented, you weren't necessarily immediately

• 21:03Melissa Murray?

  detained while deportation proceedings proceeded against you. The group of people who are included in this detention order includes people who have been here literally for decades. And that detention means that they are being held without the chance of a bond hearing. No administration has ever taken that kind of hard line position before. It literally would not be possible to detain everyone in those circumstances. And given the absolutely deplorable conditions of immigration detention and the fact that the administration seemingly wants to deport any non-white individual, the mandatory detention

• 21:41Melissa Murray?

  policy seems like yet another effort to continue this campaign of terror against groups that the administration disfavors.

• 21:52Kate Shaw?

  But it seems that as bad as that was, what Melissa was just describing, even that wasn't enough because the government has also trotted out a separate initiative. It's calling Operation Paris in Minnesota. And this is a program that does not just target those who were not lawfully admitted when they entered the country. It targets some individuals who were lawfully admitted, and, get this, refugees. So the goal of the program literally seems to be to arrest refugees, people who waited, sometimes for years, passing multiple background rounds of screenings and background checks, until they were lawfully admitted to the United States by our government. When someone is admitted as a refugee, just like to give a little background, they are vetted very thoroughly and subsequently allowed to seek a status adjustment, which

• 22:37Kate Shaw?

  often means applying for a green card. That green card is not processed until they have been here, after their admission, as a refugee for a year. And the government has trotted out this new legal theory that the Refugee Act of 1980 allows, or possibly even requires, they seem still to be working out, the kind of anti-immigrant kinks of their theory, but either allows or requires the arrest of any refugee who has been here for a year and has not yet received their green card. But the green card process can take a long time. It is also outside of the control of the individual who has pursued that status adjustment, and it is in the federal government's control. So the upshot of this theory could be that if you are a refugee, you have 365 days of

• 23:20Kate Shaw?

  freedom in the United States, and then you can or will be pursued starting on day 366. It is absolutely horrific.

• 23:29Melissa Murray?

  And because it's absolutely horrific, it's being challenged in court. The case is called UHA and Advocates for Human Rights versus Bondi. The plaintiffs recently obtained a temporary restraining order, a TRO, at the end of January that puts a stop to the policy for now. The government has moved to stay the TRO, so to dissolve it so that they can continue the policy. The district court has rejected this request. There will be an evidentiary hearing in the case this week. And again, we just want to emphasize, this is not the same issue as the broader detention policy that is now before the Fifth Circuit, so completely separate kind of thing. Last Thursday night, we also got a temporary restraining order, TRO, out of Minnesota

• 24:12Melissa Murray?

  in a right to counsel challenge involving the Whipple detention facility in Minneapolis. This was a Fifth Amendment challenge, and the district court found that the plaintiffs had a high likelihood of success on the merits. It is a very, very powerful opinion. The court found that the federal government, when devising its Operation Metro Surge strategy, had, quote, "failed to provide for the constitutional rights of its civil detainees." The court continued, "The Constitution does not permit the government to arrest thousands of individuals and then disregard their constitutional rights because it would be too challenging to honor those rights." Seems true. The judge, Judge Nancy Brazel, ordered the administration to immediately begin providing

• 24:54Melissa Murray?

  detainees with access to phones, including within an hour of their arrival at the facility. She also generally required ongoing access to phones and attorneys with rooms in which they could meet with their clients, and she barred out-of-state transfers during the first 72 hours of any detention.

• 25:11Kate Shaw?

  So that was an incredibly powerful and also very practically important decision. And there was another really important immigration decision last week from the chambers of one Judge Boesberg, who we've already mentioned in this hour. Judge Boesberg is the chief judge of the D.C. District Court. And on Thursday, he issued an opinion directing the administration to provide some of the individuals deported under the Alien Enemies Act many months ago with due process. So yes, these are still ongoing proceedings related to the administration's deportations back in March, when those individuals were flown to the CICOT facility in El Salvador in flagrant violation of Boesberg's own orders. Since then, those individuals were transferred from CICOT to Venezuela. Some of them have left Venezuela, and the ones who are outside of Venezuela are the individuals that this new order covers.

• 25:56Kate Shaw?

  So the judge orders the administration to facilitate the return of these individuals to the United States so they can be given the process that they are owed. They don't need to be released. They can remain in United States custody, but they are owed due process to evaluate the claims that led to their initial expulsion. And the opinion actually is careful not to order the return of individuals still in Venezuela, given the sensitive foreign policy concerns that such an order would trigger.

• 26:23Melissa Murray?

  I want to quote a little bit from this opinion. So Judge Boesberg wrote, quote, "It is worth emphasizing that this situation would never have arisen had the government simply afforded plaintiffs their constitutional rights before initially deporting them." True.

• 26:38Kate Shaw?

  Yeah.

• 26:39Melissa Murray?

  True. And anyhow, just can't believe it has to be said. Why the fuck does this have to be said?

• 26:44Kate Shaw?

  But the tone of, I just like, I really respected both, kind of like, the kind of moral and constitutional gravity and seriousness of that ruling and the one that we were just talking about out of Minnesota regarding that Whipple detention facility. But they're not like, in-histrionic at all, the opinions. They're just like, very calm and measured, but extremely forceful.

• 27:00Melissa Murray?

  No, it's sort of like, hey, guys, I don't know if you know this, but there's this document, it's called the Constitution, and it says pretty clearly and unequivocally that you have to do these things. Have you read it? The answer, of course, is no. And I think that's what makes it such an amazing and powerful ruling. This is just a judge deciding the cases before him, under the law and the Constitution, and he's being very clear that the Constitution itself is clear. Just because the news cycle has moved on from this, just because the administration has decided it's done with its little experiment with a Salvadoran torture prison and the Alien Enemies Act, doesn't mean we're just going to sweep this under the rug. Let's come back to it and acknowledge that this administration has violated the rights

• 27:44Melissa Murray?

  of these people in flagrant, flagrant ways.

• 27:47Kate Shaw?

  Yeah. And it's also like, it is, what he says on the substance here is totally in line with what the Supreme Court has said, which is that due process still applies, even in the Alien Enemies Act context. And I just think it's also sort of doubly impressive that this is Boesberg just like, methodically doing the work, because, look, he's already been mandamus, they are trying to impeach him, Trump and Bondi have repeatedly attacked him personally, like, judges do not love any of this, but he is not going to be cowed into not doing his job, and we salute that.

• 28:20Melissa Murray?

  All right. Speaking of people just doing their jobs whom we salute, let's talk about some of the other folks who are holding the line on this document we call the Constitution. Last week, a federal grand jury refused to indict six members of Congress that the Department of Justice had tried to charge with seditious conspiracy. That is the same charge that E. Stuart Rhodes was convicted of and then later was pardoned by the president. The whole seditious conspiracy charge was animated by a video that these six members of Congress made reminding members of the military that they are actually not permitted to follow illegal orders. Let's roll a clip from that video.

• 29:00Speaker 08

  This administration is pitting our uniformed military

• 29:03Melissa Murray?

  and intelligence community professionals

• 29:05Speaker 09

  against American citizens.

• 29:06Speaker 08

  Like us, you all swore an oath

• 29:09Speaker 10

  to protect and defend this Constitution.

• 29:11Speaker 08

  And right now, the threats to our Constitution aren't just coming from abroad, but from right here at home. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders.

• 29:20Melissa Murray?

  FYI, listeners, the individual speaking includes Senator Mark Kelly, Senator Alyssa Slotkin, Representative Chris Deluzio, Representative Maggie Goodlander, Representative Chrissy Houlihan, and Representative Jason Crow. There was also a related development in the D.C. District Court. In addition to trying to criminally indict these members of Congress who are former military and intelligence officers, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has initiated disciplinary proceedings against Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator and retired Navy captain. I think we should probably note that it seems like Kelly himself is really kind of a burr under the administration's saddle. I don't know if that's because as

• 30:02Melissa Murray?

  a veteran, as a senator from a swing state, Arizona, he might be in a particularly good position to challenge whoever is the successor to this administration, just going to put that out there. He's also the husband of Gabby Giffords. She was, of course, a representative from Arizona who was shot in the head and has become a powerful voice for gun safety laws. These proceedings that Secretary Hegseth initiated included a letter of censure and the initiation of a review that could result in a reduction in Kelly's retirement rank as well as his pension. Kelly has filed a challenge to those proceedings, arguing that they violate both the First Amendment and federal statutes relating to the Department of Defense. That's what the Department of War used to be.

• 30:47Melissa Murray?

  And a federal judge emphatically agreed, granting Kelly a preliminary injunction.

• 30:53Kate Shaw?

  Let me just also quote from that opinion. It's really been quite a week for banger opinions from various district court judges. Quote, "Rather than trying to shrink the First Amendment liberties of retired service members, Secretary Hegseth and his fellow defendants might reflect and be grateful for the wisdom and expertise that retired service members have brought to public discussions and debate on military matters in our nation over the past 250 years. If so, they will more fully appreciate why the founding fathers made free speech to the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights." So I was talking about how, I thought, sober and powerful some of the earlier district court opinions we were discussing were. This one was a bit different in tone. Judge Leon, the author of the opinion, caught some heat online for his liberal use of exclamation marks. I think there were over a dozen. Yeah, it's just punctuation. But the tone, too. Like, it was heated, I would say.

• 31:39Kate Shaw?

  But the substance was really powerful. And I just thought it is. There are so many moments in this kind of hellacious timeline where you kind of wonder if you are crazy. Like, if your reaction to the administration's reaction to the video that we just played a clip from was that this seems insane that the Secretary of War would be targeting and trying to strip the pension of a decorated veteran who is also a United States senator. And, you know, maybe there is the political overlay that Melissa was just alluding to. But that that seems insane, especially where the ostensible predicate for this targeting is obviously protected First Amendment activity. It is just nice to know that Judge Leon agrees with you. This is completely insane. And, you know, the opinion sort of notes with hope that Hegseth might, like, course correct.

• 32:25Melissa Murray?

  Record scratch.

• 32:26Kate Shaw?

  Slash narrator voice, like, he did not course correct because Hegseth took to social media basically right away, pledging to appeal and insisting, quote, "Sedition is sedition." Captain, addressing, I presume, retired Captain Mark Kelly.

• 32:41Melissa Murray?

  Spell it, sir. Spell sedition.

• 32:46Kate Shaw?

  I mean, he went to Princeton. He can probably spell sedition.

• 32:50Melissa Murray?

  I'll believe it.

• 32:50Kate Shaw?

  No comment.

• 32:53Melissa Murray?

  One more important ruling also out of DC, and this one in a case involving federal inmate sentenced to death, but whose sentences were commuted by President Biden to life in prison. Biden issued these commutations in December 2024, just before the end of his term. Trump has long been a death penalty enthusiast. I think that's the most clear way to say it. We can think back to his advocacy for the death penalty for the five black teenagers who were later exonerated. In the Central Park quote unquote wilding case, they are now known as the exonerated five. He was furious about these commutations that President Biden issued. And it's pretty clear from the minute he took office that if he couldn't

• 33:37Melissa Murray?

  override these commutations, he was going to find a way to make the lives of these inmates absolutely miserable. And to it, he has issued an executive order directing the Department of Justice to ensure, quote, "that these offenders are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose." Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi later took steps making clear that her goal was indeed to impose the maximum punishment here.

• 34:06Kate Shaw?

  So this lawsuit filed on behalf of the individuals who had received these commutations challenged the administration's actions with respect to the conditions of their confinement. And last week, Judge Timothy Kelly in the DC District Court sided in part with those inmates. So he actually rejected many of their claims, but found that they were likely to succeed on the merits of their Fifth Amendment claim alleging that the decision by the administration to summarily transfer all of them to a facility known as ADX Florence deprived them of due process. So inmates, even inmates in federal prison convicted of heinous crimes, have a due process right to challenge things related to the conditions of their confinement. And it is very clear that no such process was afforded here. The sequence of events that Melissa was just describing make clear that Trump and Bondi just decided that all these

• 34:51Kate Shaw?

  individuals were headed to ADX because that, they thought, was the toughest place they could be put. There was no consideration given to their individual circumstances, their health, their medical status, any of that. And these officials may, at the end of the day, very likely do have the authority to make that determination. But they have to afford a degree of process before they do that. And the sequence of events that is sketched in the order makes clear that just like there was no process afforded, the order came down from on high, it was implemented, full stop. And that is just not something the Constitution permits.

• 35:25Speaker 07

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

• 36:13Speaker 07

  All right, let's talk about Congress.

• 36:16Kate Shaw?

  It's right there in the first article.

• 36:17Speaker 07

  Sure is. And you read it for the articles, as I continue to tell you all. Last week, with the release of many millions of additional pages from the Epstein files, we learned so much more about the extent of the ties that Jeffrey Epstein had with many of the individuals who happened to be in the Trump orbit. Georgia Senator John Ossoff coined a new term for these individuals. Let's play him here.

• 36:43Speaker 11

  Now, you remember, we were told that MAGA was for working class Americans.

• 36:49Speaker 11

  Do you remember that?

• 36:53Speaker 11

  But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich. It is the wealthiest cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class.

• 37:04Speaker 11

  Ruling our country.

• 37:10Speaker 11

  They are the elites they pretend to hate.

• 37:15Melissa Murray?

  And fortuitously, members of the Trump cabinet were on Capitol Hill last week to testify. And hearing members of Congress press them on these alleged ties was surreal and shocking. And honestly, at times, very, very funny.

• 37:31Kate Shaw?

  Wait, can I just say, when you said members of the, I thought you were going to say of the Epstein class were on the Hill, and it turns out in some instances, it was members of the Trump cabinet who were also members of the Epstein class.

• 37:41Melissa Murray?

  I mean, the Venn diagram is interesting, is all I'm gonna say.

• 37:46Kate Shaw?

  Sure is.

• 37:46Melissa Murray?

  Sure is. All right, let's start off with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Well, revelations in the new document release made clear that Lutnick may have previously misrepresented the extent of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. And what great timing, he was already scheduled to appear at a Senate hearing when, unsurprisingly, people wanted to talk about the fact that maybe he lied about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, a sex trafficking pedophile. So, let's roll that tape.

• 38:18Speaker 12

  I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple with, they were there as well with their children. And we had lunch on the island. That is true, for an hour, and we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife, all together. We were on family vacation.

• 38:47Kate Shaw?

  I mean, there's just so much to unpack here. You know, A, he doesn't really address the misrepresentations he'd previously made about the extent of and the timing of his relationship with Epstein. And there's also the nannies plural, which was

• 39:00Melissa Murray?

  Must be nice.

• 39:01Kate Shaw?

  puzzling.

• 39:03Melissa Murray?

  Or not.

• 39:04Kate Shaw?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Melissa Murray?

  Maybe that's how they roll.

• 39:06Kate Shaw?

  Maybe that is how they roll.

• 39:09Kate Shaw?

  "We left with all of my children." Amazing that these things need to be said.

• 39:14Melissa Murray?

  We had lunch on the island.

• 39:15Kate Shaw?

  Yeah.

• 39:16Melissa Murray?

  As one does.

• 39:16Kate Shaw?

  Again, with all the nannies. I mean, it also was, um...

• 39:20Melissa Murray?

  No, I'm just saying, this reminded me so much of when People defend the Supreme Court justices for their cozy ties with billionaires. Like, it's not a crime to have friends, it's not a crime to have lunch on an island where people sex traffic women.

• 39:34Kate Shaw?

  It's not a crime to have friends with islands that you have lunch on with. And also the nannies, plural. Like, I guess when I heard it, I assumed, OK, that's two nannies, that's crazy. But I guess it could have been even more than two. Like, how many nannies do you think you've traveled?

• 39:45Melissa Murray?

  One for each child, why not?

• 39:46Kate Shaw?

  Four nannies?

• 39:47Melissa Murray?

  You get a nanny, you get a nanny, you get a nanny. Someone could be a nanny.

• 39:51Kate Shaw?

  He conspicuously didn't tell us. OK, so that was Lutnick. But of course, the main attraction this week was Pamela Jo Bondi putting on...

• 39:58Melissa Murray?

  No, no, no. Can I just say?

• 40:01Kate Shaw?

  Yes.

• 40:01Melissa Murray?

  This was...

• 40:02Kate Shaw?

  We've been waiting, we've been so patient.

• 40:03Melissa Murray?

  The Real Housewives of the White House. Am I right? This was a reunion show.

• 40:08Kate Shaw?

  Of the Justice Department, but yes, yes.

• 40:09Melissa Murray?

  If Andy Cohen had showed up to gavel in this hearing instead of Jim Jordan, I would not have been surprised because this was fireworks, theatrics, just absolute fuckery on every possible level. I did not think she could outdo herself, and yet she did. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Florida.

• 40:33Kate Shaw?

  I want us to overlay the Florence and the Machine and Taylor collab, Florida. It's one hell of a drug, but I just have to say it since we...

• 40:45Melissa Murray?

  It really is, it really is.

• 40:47Kate Shaw?

  That is sort of the anthem, I guess, of this hearing, as I think about it.

• 40:51Melissa Murray?

  Sorry, folks, if you're from Florida. I'm from Florida, too. I know that's why I speak, that's why I can say this. It's like, this was literally like high school. I, it was, I have a little PTSD.

• 41:03Kate Shaw?

  As I told Melissa before we started recording, I don't think I've ever watched like a single minute of any of the Real Housewives shows. But I, everything you said sounds right, and it just also was the most unhinged display an Attorney General of these United States has ever mounted. I mean...

• 41:19Melissa Murray?

  Correct.

• 41:19Kate Shaw?

  She shouted.

• 41:20Melissa Murray?

  Correct.

• 41:21Kate Shaw?

  She interrupted. She went on truly deranged, non sequiturs. She flashed her binder to inadvertently reveal that DOJ is apparently spying on members of Congress as they visit the department to view unredacted versions of the Epstein files. I mean, it was, so Ruth Marcus, in a New Yorker column, called it kind of roller derby, which I thought was like, close, but also, I mean, I want, I too wanted to reach for a sports metaphor.

• 41:45Melissa Murray?

  Okay, Coach.

• 41:46Kate Shaw?

  But roller derby is, it was not curling, let me tell you that. But it was like, roller derby is combat and is tough and the players look cool. Sometimes they do get bloodied and like, that's part of it. This was just like, not that. And, I mean, so the week started, for many of us, with the Benito Bowl, aka the Super Bowl halftime show.

• 42:03Melissa Murray?

  Wait, was that the concert at which people also played football?

• 42:05Kate Shaw?

  That was the concert in which some people watched people play football. It was an incredible concert. It was too short. It should have been, you know, three hours instead of 13 minutes. But this was like, the Bondi Bowl, which was literally, in every conceivable way, the polar opposite of the Benito Bowl. And that, I think, is the best sports analogy I can offer.

• 42:23Melissa Murray?

  We gotta play some highlights. Pamela Jo Bondi, my girl, you have outdone yourself, so we're gonna roll some tape. Let's start with Pamela Jo Bondi really vindicating Senator Ossoff's thesis about the so-called Epstein class. Here she is, responding to a question from Jamie Raskin about Epstein.

• 42:41Speaker 13

  This administration released over 3 million pages of documents, over 3 million, and Donald Trump signed that law to release all of those documents. He is the most transparent president in the nation's history. And none of them, none of them, asked Merrick Garland over the last four years one word about Jeffrey Epstein. How ironic is that? You know why? Because Donald Trump, the Dow, the Dow right now, is over.

• 43:20Speaker 13

  The Dow is over $50,000. I don't know why you're laughing. You're a great stock trader, as I hear, Raskin. The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P at almost 7,000, and the Nasdaq smashing records. Americans' 401Ks and retirement savings are booming. That's what we should be talking about.

• 43:44Speaker 14

  You can let her filibuster all day long, but not on our watch. Not on our time. No way. And I told you about that, Attorney General, before you started.

• 43:52Speaker 13

  You don't tell me anything.

• 43:53Speaker 14

  Oh, I did tell you, because we saw what you did in the Senate.

• 43:56Speaker 13

  Was there a lawyer? Not even a lawyer.

• 43:57Speaker 14

  Vinnie will be in order.

• 44:03Kate Shaw?

  Something just...

• 44:03Melissa Murray?

  Ma'am?

• 44:04Kate Shaw?

  Her brain is short-circuited.

• 44:05Melissa Murray?

  This is a wet heat.

• 44:06Kate Shaw?

  It's short-circuited because... Do you know why? Because Donald Trump and then just all of a sudden, she begins to...

• 44:13Melissa Murray?

  It was like, literally, I was like, are her batteries dying?

• 44:16Kate Shaw?

  It looked like somebody needed to reboot her. But like, her notes, do you think they just said, when, if you're in a bind and you don't know what to say, just say, "The Dow is over 50,000"? And she was like, remembered that she had nothing to say about how ironic is it that none of them asked Merrick Garland these questions, and then because Donald Trump, and she could not finish the sentence because Donald Trump, and so she switched to talking about the Dow?

• 44:41Melissa Murray?

  Well, let me just take Pamela Jo Bondi seriously for a moment. I will just say to this incredible non sequitur and just like weird tangent. The stock market is not the economy. Not every American has a retirement account. So, all of this is great for literally the Epstein class and people with retirement accounts, not for ordinary Americans who are literally trying to make it in this actual economic hellscape that you and your friends have created.

• 45:11Melissa Murray?

  And rant.

• 45:12Kate Shaw?

  100%. No, no, absolutely. But they want both to pivot to the stock market because that is the thing they care about, because that is what they and their ilk thinks matters.

• 45:20Melissa Murray?

  Strike for non responsiveness.

• 45:22Kate Shaw?

  If only. Okay, so that was maybe the highlight.

• 45:26Melissa Murray?

  No.

• 45:27Kate Shaw?

  But there were, no, there are others. Okay, so we wanted to play a powerful moment that Representative Jayapal sort of created that put the lie to Bondi's suggestion that the DOJ was interested in working with and cares about and had, you know, talked to and taken seriously Epstein survivors. So let's play that clip here.

• 45:47Speaker 15

  To the survivors in the room, if you are willing, please stand. And if you are willing, please raise your hands if you have still not been able to meet with this Department of Justice. Please know for the record that every single survivor has raised their hand. Attorney General Bondi, you apologized to the survivors in your opening statement for what they went through at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein. Will you turn to them now and apologize for what your Department of Justice has put them

• 46:26Speaker 15

  through with the un, absolutely unacceptable release of the Epstein files and their information?

• 46:39Melissa Murray?

  Congresswoman, you sat before Merrick Garland sat in this chair twice.

• 46:49Speaker 15

  Attorney General Bondi.

• 46:50Melissa Murray?

  Can I finish my answer?

• 46:52Speaker 15

  No, I'm going to reclaim my time because I asked you a specific question. Attorney General can respond to your question. That I would like you to answer, which is, will you turn to the survivors? This is not about anybody that came before you. It is about you taking responsibility for your Department of Justice.

• 47:11Melissa Murray?

  Let's play another one, because I don't think we can pound the table too hard on this one. Let's play another one here.

• 47:16Speaker 13

  There was one redaction out of over 4,700. And we invited you in. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. He needs to get, you're a failed politician.

• 47:28Kate Shaw?

  There were a number of members of Congress, including Representative Massey, who is working, is working very hard to make me kind of like him, even though he's completely insane and believes nothing that I believe in.

• 47:42Melissa Murray?

  He's the new Neil Gorsuch. A stop clock can be right.

• 47:46Kate Shaw?

  It is just that, maybe. But yeah, so he and Ro Khanna really were the architects of this bill that has forced the disclosure of these millions of documents. And I am not sure sort of what is, what shoes are yet to drop. There's both all the redactions and the millions of pages of released documents and the fact that there are several millions of additional pages that have not yet been released. But every day, it seems, it just takes time for humans to go through these millions of pages, and it is just revelation after revelation. So I think many more shoes to drop, probably with even this tranche of documents, and there may be more documents to come.

• 48:18Melissa Murray?

  All right. Let's move on to another hearing, this one with ICE Director Todd Lyons. As you can probably tell, listeners, from the clips that we just played of the Bondi hearing, House Democrats were on their game. They brought their A-game, they brought the fire, they acquitted themselves incredibly well. And guess what? They continue to do so. In this hearing with ICE Director Todd Lyons, we saw even more of that. Let's start with this exchange from California Congressman Eric Swalwell.

• 48:44Speaker 16

  You said in Phoenix at the Border Security Expo that you wanted to see a deportation process that was like, quote, "Amazon Prime, but with human beings." Mr. Lyons, how many times has Amazon Prime shot a mom three times in the face? None, sir, but you're also... It's the square root of zero. Speaking of human beings, how many times has Amazon Prime shot a nurse 10 times in the back? None. How many times has Amazon Prime dragged a woman out of her car by her hair and then dragged her down the street? None.

• 49:15Melissa Murray?

  And here's Swalwell again, because he has more questions, and he needs some answers.

• 49:20Speaker 16

  Mr. Lyons, will you apologize to the family of Renee Good for being called a domestic terrorist by the President and his leadership? No, sir. Why not?

• 49:32Speaker 17

  Sir, I welcome the opportunity to speak to the family in private, but I'm not going to comment on any active investigation.

• 49:37Speaker 18

  Is she a domestic terrorist?

• 49:39Speaker 17

  Sir, I'm not going to comment on the investigation.

• 49:43Melissa Murray?

  Other representatives read letters from kids detained at ICE facilities. These letters were all published by ProPublica as part of their story about the conditions for children in those ICE detentions. So here's Representative Dan Goldman of New York.

• 49:59Speaker 18

  Do you know what other regimes in the 20th century required similar proof of citizenship?

• 50:07Speaker 17

  Yes, sir.

• 50:08Speaker 18

  What?

• 50:10Speaker 17

  Sir, those very nefarious regimes that did that.

• 50:14Speaker 18

  Is Nazi Germany one?

• 50:15Speaker 17

  Yes.

• 50:16Melissa Murray?

  Representative Delia Ramirez also had some questions about this, and she apparently is a student of history.

• 50:24Speaker 19

  And I have just as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klan hood and the slave patrol. Those activities were immoral then and criminal, and so are yours.

• 50:42Kate Shaw?

  So I guess just this is, these are the pieces of evidence we have to support the thesis that Congress seems to be bestirring itself. There is a lot that you can get done to communicate with the public and to really like hold the feet of these administration actors to the fire, even when you are the minority party. And so I think that calling hearings that are bipartisan hearings, when you have an issue that is as salient in a bipartisan way as immigration, really important, calling the shadow hearings of the sort that we talked about last week is important if there's an issue you cannot get the Republican majority on board with actually highlighting and interrogating. But I do, it does feel like they are doing the work right now, and I guess just we want to see more of it.

• 51:25Melissa Murray?

  Can I give a special shout out to Becca Ballant, who, she's got this little bob, she is crushing it, and she literally went off on Pamela Jo Bondi. She's always really great. She was amazing at the hearing where Jack Smith appeared before the committee and the Republicans all tried to take him down. She was having absolutely none of this. She is always prepared, always fantastic. I don't think she gets her due, so I want to give her a shout out. She is literally one of my favorite things of the week.

• 51:56Kate Shaw?

  Oh, nice. All right. So we're doing that.

• 51:58Melissa Murray?

  Well, I just put that in.

• 51:59Kate Shaw?

  Shout out. That's great.

• 52:00Melissa Murray?

  That's a preview.

• 52:01Kate Shaw?

  Yes, but more to come. Okay. So shifting now both from immigration and congressional oversight to some other topics and staying on the broad subject of the chaos and lawlessness that this administration is unleashing, we're going to turn to election interference, a couple of new salvos in the war on the planet, and efforts to stamp out the last shreds of diversity and efforts to achieve diversity in our institutions.

• 52:24Melissa Murray?

  So let's start with Fulton County, Georgia. The affidavit that was used to obtain the warrant that was then used to search Fulton County, Georgia's records was recently released and wow, wow. The affidavit originated from a referral that was sent by Kurt Olson, who is Trump's Director of Election Security and Integrity. Olson was also the leader of Stop the Steal in 2020. Again, there are no new ideas. He also spoke with the president repeatedly on January 6 of 2021. It was wild. The warrant also incorporates research from an election denial activist whose claims have since been debunked and who was also convicted of videotaping people in the bathroom without their knowledge. Absolutely the best people.

• 53:10Melissa Murray?

  And the warrant, just for good measure, included material from a witness who downloaded his data from quote unquote "zebra duck."

• 53:21Kate Shaw?

  You cannot make this up.

• 53:22Melissa Murray?

  You can't. The warrant says, quote, "If these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, it would be a violation of federal law." I didn't think you were allowed to get a warrant or an indictment by saying, "If there's probable cause here, then you should give me a warrant or an indictment. So give me a warrant or an indictment." Right? I mean, I thought the whole point was like you actually have to establish probable cause for said warrant or the indictment to issue. Right? Or did I just read that whole Constitution thing wrong?

• 53:53Kate Shaw?

  If you read fast, you don't see the F, and I think that's the hope.

• 53:56Melissa Murray?

  Yes, alas, that is where we are.

• 53:59Kate Shaw?

  Just play with the fonts a little bit and you just get the deficiencies were the results.

• 54:02Melissa Murray?

  Just two letters.

• 54:03Kate Shaw?

  Yeah.

• 54:03Melissa Murray?

  Very impactful, very meaningful, very easy to skip over.

• 54:07Kate Shaw?

  Yeah, details, details.

• 54:09Melissa Murray?

  Again, we cannot emphasize enough how concerning the developments in Fulton County, Georgia are. This is truly, in our view, an effort to, one, go back to 2021 and promote this election denialism, but also to look forward to the next election and essentially show that they can do this. They can go and take over a locality, a municipality, and seize their voting records and make them come to heel. Like, this is just gearing up for the next fight.

• 54:42Kate Shaw?

  Right, it is a terrifying trail run because these are old records, but once they have kind of desensitized the public and pressured election officials into giving them old ballots.

• 54:53Melissa Murray?

  Why not get new ones?

• 54:54Kate Shaw?

  It's not a long distance to write asking for ballots in the November election this year as the election is underway. No, it's a terrifying and alarming development.

• 55:07Speaker 07

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

• 55:48Speaker 07

  On election night, we will all be feeling a lot of feelings. Do not spend it alone. Spend it with me, Alex Wagner, for Crooked Media Presents Live Election Results. We're going to have Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vitor, Stacey Abrams, Dan Pfeiffer, Aaron Ryan, and many more special guests to be announced, and they're all

• 56:06Melissa Murray?

  All going to help us make sense of what's happening as the election results roll in. So here's what you need to do. Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube and tune in on Tuesday, November 3rd at 9:00 PM Eastern, 6:00 PM Pacific for hot takes, catharsis, and as many results as we can possibly analyze.

• 56:35Kate Shaw?

  All right, let's shift to more terrifying and alarming developments, and this one in climate news. So last week, the Trump administration issued its final rule repealing what's known as the Endanglement Finding, a determination under the Clean Air Act that, yes, climate change endangers human health and the environment, seems uncontroversial, and yet.

• 56:53Melissa Murray?

  And yet.

• 56:54Kate Shaw?

  And yet. The agency formally made this Endanglement Finding back in 2009 after the Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts versus EPA, and that finding has been the basis for a lot of environmental regulation since then. So this repeal last week of the finding was paired with the announcement of a rollback of climate emission standards for light and medium and heavy-duty vehicles, and it also lays the groundwork for the rollback of lots of other regulations, including of coal plant emissions, emissions from oil and gas wells, and more. Trump and the EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin were just like all smiles as they announced this at the White House. They were crowing about lessening the burdens on business. They were taking shots at the Obama and Biden administrations. And you know what? It was sort of conspicuous.

• 57:38Kate Shaw?

  They stayed silent on the tens of thousands of deaths and millions of additional asthma cases that experts expect the increased air pollution from these repeals and rollbacks will cause. And that does not even touch the human toll of the effect of these rollbacks on the climate more broadly and what that will do to all of us.

• 57:57Melissa Murray?

  But don't worry, everyone. Interior Secretary Doug Borgum took to the airwaves to reassure everyone that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant at all. In fact, he says, "We need it to survive, and you can just snort it off a toilet seat, and you will be just fine." Wait, wait, wrong, wrong secretary. That was actually RFK Jr. talking about his past drug use, right? I cannot keep these folks.

• 58:23Kate Shaw?

  He told us he used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats. He was not afraid of a germ. Leah Litman has entered the chat. This is a great moment.

• 58:30Melissa Murray?

  Like, oh, hi, Leah.

• 58:32Leah Litman?

  I just entered with you talking about him snorting cocaine off of

• 58:37Melissa Murray?

  Okay, can I, can I?

• 58:37Leah Litman?

  toilet bowls?

• 58:39Melissa Murray?

  I'm just gonna say, I found this week to be an absolute, like, just whirlwind of men putting things in the group chat that didn't need to be there. Like, I didn't need

• 58:51Kate Shaw?

  There were women too.

• 58:52Melissa Murray?

  No.

• 58:53Kate Shaw?

  Pamela Jo Bondi was also doing that.

• 58:54Melissa Murray?

  Well, she was there, but the Olympian who admitted to cheating on his girlfriend, like, that's true.

• 58:59Leah Litman?

  Oh, that was incredible.

• 59:01Melissa Murray?

  Why is this in the group chat?

• 59:01Leah Litman?

  That was an incredible moment. But like Pam Jo Bondi's portfolios over pedos, like, that, that was-

• 59:07Kate Shaw?

  I'm so sorry you weren't here. We, we, we got to play that.

• 59:09Melissa Murray?

  Men, I did not need to know this about RFK Jr. Like, I, like-

• 59:15Kate Shaw?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:15Melissa Murray?

  There's so many things you could probably snort cocaine off of. Why toilet seats? You're a Kennedy, for God's sake. You have houses.

• 59:22Kate Shaw?

  Strength is the immune system, Melissa, I think is the point he was making.

• 59:25Leah Litman?

  But Jinx Monsoon, the drag queen, has the greatest segment about snorting cocaine off of things in the All-Star season. If you haven't watched-

• 59:34Melissa Murray?

  This is Re calls, Gregory's.

• 59:35Kate Shaw?

  Is the toilet seat a recommended surface?

• 59:37Melissa Murray?

  It's not, but I'm not going to identify what is because this is a family-friendly podcast.

• 59:44Kate Shaw?

  Not today.

• 59:47Melissa Murray?

  Also, hello, listeners. I just joined because I'm recording from Duke. Thank you very much to the Duke Law School for setting up a recording studio for me.

• 59:56Kate Shaw?

  We really missed you in the first hour, but I'm so glad you're here for the end. Things got a little off the rails. So, we were actually talking about Doug Burgum, who had taken to the airwaves reassuring everybody that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. And Melissa had her wires crossed and said that Burgum said, "It's okay, you can snort carbon dioxide off a toilet."

• 1:00:12Melissa Murray?

  I didn't say, I just speculated that maybe you could. I didn't say he said that. I said, "Maybe it was something you could snort off a toilet seat."

• 1:00:20Leah Litman?

  It would be like a little bit tough to get an exhaust pipe, like, over the toilet seat, like, logistically-

• 1:00:25Kate Shaw?

  Oh, come on. Dream big, earlier.

• 1:00:28Leah Litman?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:00:28Melissa Murray?

  I mean, if you can send a man to the moon, what else can't this country do?

• 1:00:32Leah Litman?

  That's fair. That's fair.

• 1:00:33Melissa Murray?

  Don't, don't you skimp on America, Leah. Be a patriot. We can do that.

• 1:00:38Kate Shaw?

  All right. But so wrapping the endangerment finding repeal, just like the, the horror show of this last week is really a lot to encapsulate in a single hour. But you just, you know, the endangerment finding repeal, the fact that the immediate revocation of the emissions, the vehicle emission standards, follow that, and the groundwork for all of the other, like, horrible things they're gonna do on this basis, and you add that to the Paris- Agreement withdrawal, the underlying climate treaty withdrawal, it is just kind of impossible to get your head around the devastation that this administration is wreaking on the planet. In addition to, you know, our focus, the havoc it is wreaking on the United States Constitution. But the damage goes way, way beyond that document. And one last quick beat on climate change. This is not like the biggest deal in

• 1:01:21Kate Shaw?

  the world, but it is just their dogged focus on implementing their mission in every nook and cranny of the federal government and our collective lives is almost something that you have to salute because the henchmen of this administration seem to have noticed that there is a discussion in a manual produced by the Federal Judicial Center for Judges that talks about climate change to sort of help judges resolve climate change cases, given the complex scientific background of some of these cases. And the henchmen of this administration successfully bullied the Federal Judicial Center into removing that chapter from the manual. Great job, all.

• 1:01:59Leah Litman?

  But like, what did they get in return? Because they're still shitting all over the lower federal courts and they are still not upping the funds to provide the lower federal courts with additional security. So.

• 1:02:11Kate Shaw?

  Oh, I'm, they're not, this is a terrible deal for the Judicial Center.

• 1:02:13Leah Litman?

  Oh, no, I know. I just, I want to know.

• 1:02:15Kate Shaw?

  Why?

• 1:02:15Leah Litman?

  Why? Why did you obey in advance?

• 1:02:18Kate Shaw?

  Yep.

• 1:02:18Melissa Murray?

  Master negotiator, John G. Roberts, at the Federal Judicial Center. All right. I also want to take a beat and talk about some of the fallout from the Supreme Court's decision in SFFA versus Harvard. That decision was announced, listeners, in 2023, and it prohibited the use of race-conscious admissions in college admissions processes. And race-conscious admissions processes are those where you explicitly consider race, right? Well, the Third Circuit decided to have a word. It struck down the race-neutral measure that was aimed at increasing diversity in selective Philadelphia-area schools. The case involved a challenge to an

• 1:03:02Melissa Murray?

  admissions policy that introduced six preferred ZIP codes. Students who resided in the six ZIP codes and who met the school district's new criteria were admitted automatically to any of the four most coveted schools to which they applied. Students who met the criteria from other districts were then entered into a lottery. And five of the six ZIP codes had a majority Black and Hispanic population.

• 1:03:25Leah Litman?

  So the Third Circuit concluded that, quote, "viewing the record in the light most favorable to the parents, there is sufficient evidence for a reasonable fact-finder to conclude that the admissions policy had a discriminatory purpose and impact requiring strict scrutiny," end quote. Note that here, the discriminatory purpose seems to be the desire to constitute a racially diverse student body. And that, the collapsing those motives with race-conscious measures, is part of what we were so concerned about in the aftermath of SFFA.

• 1:04:03Melissa Murray?

  Even thinking about diversity is against the law.

• 1:04:06Leah Litman?

  Yeah. The word "woke" is going through my mind, and apparently I am in...

• 1:04:11Kate Shaw?

  Unconstitutional.

• 1:04:12Leah Litman?

  Exactly. Very unconstitutional.

• 1:04:15Melissa Murray?

  This was race-neutral. It did not consider race at all, just prescribed these zip codes. And here's the thing, if you don't want the zip codes to correlate with race...

• 1:04:26Leah Litman?

  Right.

• 1:04:27Melissa Murray?

  Stop redlining or doing residential segregation.

• 1:04:30Leah Litman?

  Desegregate.

• 1:04:31Melissa Murray?

  Yeah. Try that.

• 1:04:33Leah Litman?

  Right. Exactly.

• 1:04:35Kate Shaw?

  Unless you do want them to correlate with race and you just don't want anybody to be able to do anything to actually desegregate schools, which I think is...

• 1:04:39Melissa Murray?

  Basically, that seems to be the possibility.

• 1:04:42Leah Litman?

  The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to discriminate on the basis of race in housing.

• 1:04:47Kate Shaw?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Leah Litman?

  Right?

• 1:04:49Melissa Murray?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:50Leah Litman?

  Yeah. That's how that quote works.

• 1:04:52Melissa Murray?

  This is very much like the Thomas Jefferson High School case that the Supreme Court denied cert on, but obviously, even though they declined to take up that case for review, this issue is coming back before the court. And I know that America's wokest warrior, Clarence Thomas, is going to have a lot to say about the history of redlining and residential segregation. Can't wait for it.

• 1:05:14Leah Litman?

  Yeah. Speaking of things we can't wait for, Babe, new Heritage Foundation track just dropped. And... Wake up.

• 1:05:24Melissa Murray?

  Oh, guess what?

• 1:05:25Leah Litman?

  It's a doozy, right? In addition to coming for multiracial democracy, they are coming for the slivers of sex equality and gender equality that we have. Because the Heritage Foundation...

• 1:05:38Melissa Murray?

  Just enumerate them. They're coming for your birth control. They're coming for your jobs. And they're coming for your uteruses.

• 1:05:45Leah Litman?

  And probably your ability to wear pants.

• 1:05:47Melissa Murray?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Leah Litman?

  Go to school.

• 1:05:49Melissa Murray?

  Have short hair.

• 1:05:50Leah Litman?

  Have a credit card. Sneakers. Sneakers are probably not okay. Open a bank account in your own name. Probably talk.

• 1:05:57Melissa Murray?

  Vote.

• 1:05:57Leah Litman?

  Probably have thoughts.

• 1:05:58Melissa Murray?

  Vote.

• 1:05:59Leah Litman?

  Vote. I think that's a... Run for office. A rough cut.

• 1:06:04Melissa Murray?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Leah Litman?

  Yeah. So, the Heritage Foundation, which of course is the artist that brought us Project 2025, released its 250-year roadmap to, quote, "save America," end quote. Because Project 2025 apparently wasn't enough, and they have more to do. So this pamphlet is very clear. They are coming for your birth control, among other things, to ladies. Also, I would just like to note that in the very first Trump administration, I posted on Facebook, "Ladies, go out and gather birth control. Get an IUD. Stock up because they are coming for it."

• 1:06:48Leah Litman?

  And everybody freaked the F out on me and was like, "You're fear mongering, girl." And...

• 1:06:54Melissa Murray?

  You were a Cassandra. You were a prophet.

• 1:06:56Leah Litman?

  It's not that hard. They hate women.

• 1:06:58Melissa Murray?

  No. So, let's talk about this. The report is ostensibly concerned with flagging birth rates, at least among certain populations. I can tell you the populations, they don't want to have rising birth rates and whom they don't care are not having babies. The report also notes, quote, "Several factors conspire to reduce birth rates." Here's one: a lack of paid family leave.

• 1:07:21Kate Shaw?

  No.

• 1:07:22Melissa Murray?

  Just for thinking.

• 1:07:23Kate Shaw?

  Not actually one of them.

• 1:07:24Melissa Murray?

  No, it actually wasn't. That was me just like putting my Heritage Foundation hat on and thinking, what does actually contribute to a flagging birth rate?

• 1:07:32Leah Litman?

  How about sex stereotypes about who's responsible for family care?

• 1:07:37Melissa Murray?

  Sex stereotypes, burdensome student loans, lack of paid family leave, gender wage gap. Anyway, so the factors, though, that the report did call out, not the ones we just mentioned, that need to be addressed include, quote, "The proliferation of birth control, more prospects for women to receive higher education and work outside of the home, the delayed financial independence of young adults, and the government's role in old age social security." Tradwives, older people, they're coming for all of your stuff. Like, again, I cannot emphasize this enough. Law and culture work in tandem. This Tradwives thing that they're doing, this is not inadvertent, it's not a coincidence.

• 1:08:21Melissa Murray?

  They are trying to emphasize to young women that the whole feminist project was a ruse, that women are not better off. In fact, they're exhausted and tired, and they're trying to juggle having it all, and it's bad. And what you really just want to do is go back to the home and raise your children without all these worries, and that's actually a better life. Here's the thing, ladies, you can actually have it all if the government actually creates structural opportunities for you to do so, like the paid family leave, like not paying you less than what a man makes, like not giving you a wage gap when you have a baby. There are so many fucking things that could happen that could make all of this happen. So you could have a job and a family and not have to choose between one or the other. Ask me how I know.

• 1:09:07Leah Litman?

  You know, on the other hand, we really have made considerable strides in sex equality, given that this week we learned that apparently a woman is allowed to fire a pilot after they fail to take the blanket from one.

• 1:09:21Melissa Murray?

  That was my favorite thing, Leah.

• 1:09:22Leah Litman?

  I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.

• 1:09:23Kate Shaw?

  But you also missed us talking about the fact that it wasn't even a Cozy Earth blanket, as far as we know.

• 1:09:27Leah Litman?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:09:28Melissa Murray?

  Yes.

• 1:09:29Leah Litman?

  Of course it wasn't. They have no taste. They have no taste.

• 1:09:32Melissa Murray?

  No. We're gonna get to that.

• 1:09:34Kate Shaw?

  We will get to that.

• 1:09:35Melissa Murray?

  Great. I'm so happy.

• 1:09:36Kate Shaw?

  Okay.

• 1:09:37Melissa Murray?

  Okay.

• 1:09:37Kate Shaw?

  So that is it for the news. It does feel like it has been an even more insane week than usual, both with the executive branch just really ratcheting it up, but also with both. Some of the Democrats in Congress and many lower court judges actually fighting back. I mean, we talked about this a little bit before you came on, Leah, but it's like, we had obviously a number of really important rulings from lower court judges. And some of them are just talking in a different register than courts typically do. And it does feel like they are talking to all of us because they have sort of lost faith in the people above them that they might be talking to. Because I don't know what's going to happen with a lot of these district court orders. And I think that they realize that. And some of it is, you know, still really sober and serious. But it does

• 1:10:18Kate Shaw?

  feel like there's been like a semantic and maybe substantive shift in, in just like what we are seeing from the lower courts. And it's really, really important. Anyway, so all of that has happened without SCOTUS. Welcome, friends. Welcome, friends. But SCOTUS is back shortly. There are opinions scheduled, or at least possible, this coming Friday. Arguments start back up on Monday, the 23rd. So unless we have any emergency episodes before then, we will be back in your ears with a February preview on Monday, the 23rd. So now let's talk about our favorite things. Okay, we've already also referenced the Benito Bowl halftime show. Love it. It was incredible. I watched it, obviously, in real time and then maybe two or three times since and have been listening incessantly to his sort of whole back catalog, which is

• 1:11:02Kate Shaw?

  really extensive, over the last week. It's the anthem. It's amazing. David Pressman and Arne Duncan had a great op ed in the Washington Post. Universities are sending Trump a dangerous message. That is really about, obviously, just the importance of solidarity and collective action, but also about how universities have, to some degree, fought back. I saw a push notification that, I guess- Not all of them. The administration is suing Harvard. Right now, definitely not all of them. Plenty have capitulated. This is something that we have written about. But some are fighting back. But even where there's fighting back happening, the argument in this op ed is that at some instances, it's been too legalistic a response. There needs to be a political response as well as a legal response, and the legal response is not enough. So I thought that was really powerful. Two more things. I finally read historian Joanne Friedman's Field of Blood, which was- She was my TA in college. Oh, really? Yeah.

• 1:11:47Kate Shaw?

  Amazing. I also actually listened to it and she reads it. Was her, is her voice as just like mellifluous and like- Yeah. Hypnotic? That, okay. So it seems like it in an audiobook. Anyway, it was kind of wild to read that the week of Pam. Japandi's truly unhinged appearance in Congress. And then I will just say, Melissa Slajdla, you're going to talk about this, but I too read with my jaw on, in the basement of my house, the story in the Wall Street Journal about Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski. And if you haven't read it, run, get a gift link, subscribe, whatever you have to do, read the story. I'm done.

• 1:12:18Leah Litman?

  Okay, so I'm going to plus one several of those recommendations, including Benito Ball and the Wall Street Journal story. I will not steal, Melissa, your thunder on this, since I may have accidentally already done so. So I will list three others, four others. Jamelle Bouie's piece, We Have to Look Right in the Face of What We've Become in the New York Times, underscoring the importance of even assuming they actually do a full drawdown in Minnesota. We can't just let that slide. We need an accounting, we've referenced this before, something like a truth and reconciliation commission that is extremely important. Second, Nikole Hannah-Jones, What It Means to Be a White Race Traitor

• 1:12:59Leah Litman?

  in the New York Magazine is a very searing look, contextualizing the commentary and treatment of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Preddy in a long history of attacking white Americans who deign to challenge racial subordination. Third, Heather Ann Thompson's new book, Fear and Fury, I thought was just a terrific read. I absolutely loved it. And finally, I, as I mentioned a bit ago, I am at Duke Law for a symposium they are holding, and I am absolutely loving it. I met several Striktes in the wild, so I wanted to give special shouts

• 1:13:43Leah Litman?

  out to Emma, Gabby, Zoe, Skylar, and also the team at the Duke Law Journal, who put together this symposium and accepted our article. This is the Legalistic Non-Compliance piece that I wrote with Dantie Ginn, that we've talked about a little bit before, Claudia, Jared, Avery, Danny, and others. It's just been a really wonderful time here.

• 1:14:07Kate Shaw?

  Awesome.

• 1:14:08Melissa Murray?

  All right. I would like to shout out a new podcast. It's from friend of the pod and former guest Simone Sanders Townsend and Eugene Daniels, and it's called Clock It. And it is about the intersection of politics and culture. And it is a breezy rollicking ride. I love, love, loved it. In addition to Simone and Eugene's new podcast, I also want to call out another podcast. And this one is from the Crooked Network. It is, of course, our brother show, Pod Save America, but is a particular episode. This one with perhaps our favorite pod bro. I feel weird saying that, knowing that Love It is probably listening. But Tommy Viatour had a terrific conversation on Pod Save America with Pablo

• 1:14:50Melissa Murray?

  Torre about the way in which the Trump administration uses sports, and in particular, UFC and mixed martial arts, to curry favor and cultivate the maniverse. And I didn't know anything about UFC or mixed martial arts, but this, I thought, was really, really interesting and compelling, and just a great listen, all the way around. Well done, Tommy.

• 1:15:10Kate Shaw?

  And can I say Pablo, in general, is sort of, has a bunch of different platforms, and is doing, I think, really important work in noting that the right kind of owns not just the sort of martial arts world that you're talking about, Melissa, but just like kind of sports more broadly. And it's so culturally important and powerful. And he is doing the work of kind of infusing it with a different kind of politics. And I just really respect what he's doing.

• 1:15:31Melissa Murray?

  Tommy did a good job, too.

• 1:15:32Kate Shaw?

  And also, Tommy's wonderful. And he's our most recent guest, but we're fond of all, to be clear.

• 1:15:40Melissa Murray?

  I don't know.

• 1:15:44Melissa Murray?

  I mean, I think they have to prove it to us. Like, we did not get to go down under, as it were.

• 1:15:50Kate Shaw?

  Well, this is salty that we were not just in Australia.

• 1:15:53Melissa Murray?

  Or New Zealand, for that matter.

• 1:15:55Kate Shaw?

  Did they go to both?

• 1:15:56Melissa Murray?

  I don't know. They were down under. Okay, that's all I know.

• 1:16:01Kate Shaw?

  All right.

• 1:16:01Melissa Murray?

  Anyway. All right. My last favorite thing, and this is one that's been teased. So thank you, Leah and Kate.

• 1:16:09Melissa Murray?

  It's not just Congress that's given us a glimpse of housewife behavior. Even the Wall Street Journal has gotten into the act. So last week, the Wall Street Journal had an article titled, "A Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem's Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside the DHS." Well, this was about a time when Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski were on a plane. And then they got off the plane and then they forgot Kristi's blanket. And then they couldn't find Kristi's blanket. So they fired the pilot because the pilot didn't find them Kristi's blanket. And then they realized they were stuck somewhere without a plane to fly them back. So they had to rehire the pilot. And you just can't make this stuff up. But the thing that I found especially interesting was the salacious detail that follows.

• 1:16:53Melissa Murray?

  So quote, the journal says, "After photos in the Daily Mail showed Lewandowski going back and forth between his apartment and Noem's across the street last year, the secretary moved into a government-owned waterfront house on a military base in Washington that is provided to the leader of the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard falls under Noem's purview at DHS during peacetime. Lewandowski also spends time at the house. The DHS spokesperson said Noem moved to the house for increased security and pays rent. Lewandowski and Noem, who are both married, have publicly denied the reports of an affair. But people said they do little to hide their relationship inside the department.

• 1:17:35Melissa Murray?

  The DHS spokeswoman said the department doesn't waste time with salacious and baseless gossip. Well, luckily, I do."

• 1:17:44Kate Shaw?

  I mean, there's just a little more. We have to talk about this story for another.

• 1:17:48Melissa Murray?

  Wait, wait, I just want to say one thing. How are you going to put in Project 2025, how you're going to destroy no-fault divorce when this is going on? This is exactly what no-fault divorce was made for.

• 1:17:58Kate Shaw?

  They don't have to get divorced. They can just carry on as they are. I mean, like, the spouses have the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever. Oh, yeah. I just, I don't know who the many sources for this Wall Street Journal triple bylines piece were, but maybe spouses, certainly many people in the administration talked to these reporters. The knives are clearly out. Maybe you need some NDAs. John Roberts can help here. Walk across the street, go to the court. When you're as hated as these two clearly are, I don't think any NDA is going to make a difference. This is just. I'm just so glad these two low-scent trolls may have found one another. There is a lid for every pot, really. Yes.

• 1:18:41Kate Shaw?

  It is. Yeah, it is. In addition to the blanket story that Melissa told and the sort of, you know, the walkie-talkies across the street. Yeah, it is just counting Tom Homan appearances on television, comparing them to Gnome's appearances. Who's the real borders arena? It's me.

• 1:19:01Kate Shaw?

  Lewandowski's efforts to obtain not just credentials, but a firearm to carry.

• 1:19:08Kate Shaw?

  It is. It is. And this was kind of maybe clear in the excerpt that Melissa just read, but it's just wild revelation after wild revelation, followed by this like very perfunctory non-denial denial from the DHS spokesperson. Like, they're not even really trying to dispute any of it. It's just salacious, baseless gossip that I love. Yes. We all love it. It actually really sparked joy this week in a really challenging week. And so, thank you to the Wall Street Journal. I mean, Murdoch occasionally gives us a real, he really gives us a solid. This was one. This was solid. This was good. This was good.

• 1:19:52Kate Shaw?

  And there is actually one more favorite thing that I kind of want to offer up as a collective favorite thing.

• 1:19:58Melissa Murray?

  Yes.

• 1:19:58Kate Shaw?

  Which is the campaign of Democrat Jessica Bichler for the North Carolina State Senate seat in District 7 in New Hanover County, North Carolina. Jessica, we were so excited to learn that you were a strict scrutiny listener and that the show played a part in your decision to run for the State Senate. Jessica heard about Vote Save America's candidate recruitment program on our show and filled out an online form, not knowing where it would lead, and is now running for, again, North Carolina State Senate, District 7, to try to break the Republican supermajority and flip New Hanover County blue. Jessica, we're so excited you're running. Listeners, figure out how you can help support Jessica. This is just like really, really exciting. And we're going to follow this race closely.

• 1:20:43Kate Shaw?

  And Jessica, you are one of our very favorite things this week.

• 1:20:46Melissa Murray?

  Okay, housekeeping. Listeners, guess what? We are less than a month away. We're actually exactly three weeks away from seeing you live and in person on the best coast. If you haven't gotten your tickets yet for our LA show at the Palace Theater on March 7th, what are you waiting for? John Lovett will drive you there himself. Ask me how I know.

• 1:21:10Kate Shaw?

  He won't. He probably won't.

• 1:21:13Melissa Murray?

  But it's going to be so amazing. LA is one of our favorite cities. We love the West Coast. We are going to have so much fun. It's actually going to be unhinged. If you haven't seen one of these live shows- We promise not to leave our blankets in San Francisco. We won't. We also promise not to shoot any dogs while we're out there. It's going to be great, though. We are going to be doing the absolute most in San Francisco and then on to LA. You can get your tickets at cricket.com/events. So do not wait. Do this now. It's going to be so much fun. We can't wait to see you.

• 1:21:48Kate Shaw?

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

• 1:22:29Speaker 07

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

• 1:23:10Speaker 21

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