October 8, 2025 • 45 mins
I’ve Had It’s Jennifer Welch examines how Republicans run their states into the ground with absurd policies. Lisa Graves details her new book Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and six surgeon generals have co authored
an offed warning against RFK Junior endangering the health of
the nation. We have such a great show for you
today from the I've Had It podcast. Jennifer Welch stops
(00:22):
by to talk to us about how Republicans run their
states into the ground with absurd policies. And then we'll
talk to Lisa Graves about her new book Without Precedent,
how Chief Justice Roberts and his accomplices rewrote the Constitution
and dismantled our rights.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
But first the news, Mike, the White House has signaled
it may try to deny backpaid for low federal workers.
I'm married to a federal worker. We've had to have
some tough conversations around our dinner table about what it
means if she doesn't get paid, even though right now
she's at work in her office, and a lot of
people don't realize this is the reality for the essential worker,
(01:00):
is that they're working right now and she's doing the
job that she took, and that they're potentially not paying her.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
So some staff is not getting paid and other staff
is getting paid, but all members of Congress are getting
fucking paid. So if you're Mike Johnson, you're cashing your
check even if your staff is not. So I think
that's a pretty fucked up piece of fuck Erry. I
want to add that, look, Trump administration and one Russell
(01:28):
Tivaught have worked real hard to try to make this
as scary and painful for federal workers as possible. But
what I think is interesting about this shutdown, and I
think of many of the people, I was the most
worried about the shutdown because I honestly thought that Democrats
would lose their nerve. I thought that Republicans would just
like full on slash the entire federal budget. I thought
(01:51):
this would be a disaster. I was really worried that
Democrats wouldn't be able to message a shutdown. And you
know what's happened. Democrats have done a really good job, honestly,
and even leadership, which is very cautious and loyally, They've
actually been everywhere talking about this shutdown, talking about healthcare,
and you're seeing people are blaming Republicans for the shutdown,
(02:12):
and they also understand that the shutdown is about healthcare,
and I think that was exactly the goal. So I'm
actually kind of impressed. I sort of got to hand
it to Congressional and Senate Dems. You guys have messaged
this in a way that is resonating. Must give credit
where it is due, Jesse.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
It seems that Trump and all of boxers are on
the defense and they're getting a little shook about this.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
That tells me that the Dems are doing better than
usual because many of the times they ignore everything and
just bluster, bluster bluster. This feels more like that thing
where they're like oopside done, goofed.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, I kind of think it worked.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, well we hopefully we'll know soon because yeah, not good. Okay.
Pam Bondi on the stand today, not doing her best,
losing her shit over Epstein files.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I'm kind of obsessed with Pam Bondy losing her shit
over the Ebstein files. My favorite clip comes from my
guy from California, Adam Scheff. By the way, Adam Schiff
has really been through it, and he said some really
scary threats and he continues to just go for it.
And what he did today, which I think was really
(03:31):
successful was he read through all the questions that Pam
Bondi refused to answer, and they were questions, you know,
that were like, did you consult with this ethics person,
did you do this? Did you do that? And as
he read through all these questions that she refused to answer,
because remember this is an oversight committee hearing the goal
of oversight is to have oversight. As he started reading
(03:53):
through the questions, she became more and more combative and insane.
It was a super interesting that I thought was her
freaking out. And then she said, she said, you have
to apologize to President Trump. And the thing is like
Republicans live in this uncanny valley where like everything is
(04:14):
about their leader and allegiance to their leader, but the
rest of us actually don't live in that world. So
when she was like, you're gonna need to apologize to
President Trump, it just felt so jarring and it was
a sort of amazing moment that they live on this
earth too, agreed.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
So there's a huge swing district at Iowa that Dems
are hoping to take back with which is represented by
Iowa Rep. Marianetta Miller Meeks. Aka, mmm, I'm sure that's
what everyone around the hood calls her. Yeah, she says
she'll do town halls when health freeze is over.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Wait.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Why because they're running scared and they know they can't
face people after what they've done.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, well, just wait till health insurance goes up thirty
forty fifty sixty seven percent. I mean, you think it's
bad now, you think the soybean bailout, the farmers getting
another soybean bailout. By the way, just in case you're wondering,
the Chinese not buying soybeans from us buying soybeans from Argentina,
a country we are currently bailing out. So if that isn't.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
The art of the deal, I don't know what is.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Like. It seems to me like this is not the
art of the deal. This is the art of the whatever.
I mean, what are we doing? Man?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Well, I was struck this week by the thing of
that we are having a discussion about how other countries
when they institute their fascism trying to think it through
a little bit, and ours it's just whoops, Okay, maybe
we'll reverse that.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah. One of the many good things about our authoritarianism
is that it's very stupid and no one has sought
out anything. Shockingly, trump Ism continues unovated, and speaking of
not having thought through.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Things, Yeah, are you flying anytime soon? Because I'm glad
I'm not. Kevin Newsom sent some very disturbing tweets about
how Burbank Airport and for those who are not up
on their California geography, since I know even LA residents
sometimes don't fly into Burbank iPhone a lot since that's
the side of town. I stayed on. Burbank's a popular
airport in the northern part of Los Angeles, and it
(06:21):
had no air traffic controller for six hours on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
You might want to skip Burbank, you know.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Let's just remember we're skipping Newark before this, which is
the international airport.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Can I have a minute to just inject a little
personality into this, a little bit of my personal life.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Are you going to complain about how it's not the
Bob Hope Airport?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
My long suffering spouse was so excited to discover deals
out of Newark that he was in and out of Newark.
I said, you know, I don't think you're really supposed
to fly. He was like, it's so cheap, so if
you're my husband Burbank Airport. I think there are deals.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
There, probably is. It's also very commune. You get in
and out so fast. I'm like lafter.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Jennifer Welsh is the host of the podcast I've Had It.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Jennifer, thank you for having me. Mollie,
I'm so excited to have you because I like, we've
known each other for maybe like eighteen months, does that
sound right? But what you do is so important and
I'm just a fan, and so I'm glad that I'm
glad to get to have you on Well, I'm a
(07:28):
big fan of yours. My husband and.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I used to follow you on Twitter when Twitter what
we supposed to follow you, but when Twitter was Twitter, Yes,
And I remember at one point you followed my husband back.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I've been like six years ago or something.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
He's like, Molly John Fast followed me back and I
was like.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Oh my god, that's incredible.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, So we're miss yours.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
I miss I miss like old Twitter where you could
just say stuff. But it is interesting, like we are
in this moment where we are being governed by a
body that consists almost entirely of online posters. It's insane.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I mean when I think about the governing body and
I think about like Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, jd Vance Bondie,
and we're celebrating villains. The villains are being celebrated when
we have been so primed to celebrate heroes. Yea for
(08:26):
the marginalized. The flip in the script is even though
it's been coming and it's tippers and the making, it
still causes whiplash because when I see people, especially I
just moved from Oklahoma, that have like Trump stickers or
Trump merch, I just think, I can't imagine supporting him
number one. But even if you were like a country
(08:47):
club Republican and you did it importantly, wearing the merch
is just a next level self owned that I just
am not prepared for.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
When do the American people get to a moment where
they are like watching the videos of the Ice militia
breaking into people's houses with the black Hawk helicopters. I mean,
the Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, was describing what's happening
in Chicago, and I had seen some reporting of it.
The AP had something on it, but I was like,
(09:18):
when I saw it was like black Hawk helicopters, these
smoke bombs or whatever, these tear gas near a school.
Then Pritzker was talking about it in this press or
how they killed someone. They don't know exactly the but
you know, they killed a father of two. There's conflicting
reports about how that went down. But like this is
(09:41):
terrifying stuff, Like when do people start associating this with
the merch and the brand.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
I think there's degrees of maga, and I think you
have the thirty percent that are cult okay, and then
you have a huge portion of the electorate that happens
in all fifty states. And I call these people polite
Republicans or country club Republicans. And these voters vote for
(10:09):
their own wallet. They feel entitled to not pay that
much in taxes. They believe that they are superior because
they are quote unquote job creators. And recently, a woman
in Oklahoma City where I used to live, I one
hundred percent she Republican her whole life, Her housekeeper, and
her housekeeper's son got deported.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Painful, excruciating tears. She loved.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
This woman, had helped raise her kids, had worked in
the home for twenty years. This Republican lifelong Republicans sent
me a text message that said, thank you for all
the work you're doing to expose what they're doing to
hard working, honest immigrants. So when will it affect the
country club polite Republicans? When it affects them personally, because
(10:58):
we have Bill a society that values individualism over collectivism
and all of that, it's manifested into the biggest selfish
individual on the planet.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Trump.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
He is a symptom of all of our worst impulses
as a country.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, you know, it is so interesting because when and
I you know, when they had the RNC and they
had those mass deportation now placards that they were waving,
I remember thinking to myself, like, they don't understand what
this means, and the polling on it is so interesting
because it so shows how Poles misinform right. Immigration was
(11:39):
supposed to be a winning issue for Trump. That's why
they went so hard on it. I mean, and I
think what's interesting when you watch the ADMIN right now
is that they see they're underwater and immigration, so now
they do crime because they feel that crime is still
a little bit better, pulls a little better than ripping
(11:59):
apart families and sending them to countries they never lived in.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yeah, so I think that the crime thing works very
well with I would say what I call suburban Republican
voters who live in get communities, cookie cutter houses, and
they've never fallen prey to crime in their entire lives.
And the Republicans have done a very good job demonizing cities,
and they have campaigned on this and propagandized big blue
(12:27):
cities long before Trump that multicultural cities are where all
the problems are. So if you live in you know,
suburban Atlanta, suburban Oklahoma City, and you think that, oh
my god, if I go to a big city, I'm
going to fall, you know, prey to crime, it really
hits hard with them. And so the problem for me
(12:47):
is when are Democrats going to start flipping the script
and berating red states.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
I am sitting here.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I just moved from a red state where they've had
a MAGA super majory for over sixteen years. Mollie, Oklahoma
ranked fiftieth in education. We used to have a governor
named Brad Henry. He was a Democrat. We were ranked
either fourteenth or sixteenth in education, and just sixteen years
were ranked fiftieth it is ranked fiftieth for places for
(13:17):
women to live, and it goes down the list. It's
a bottom five state because specifically of maga Republican policies.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
And you could just go down the list, just swing
through the whole. Give give me a few of the
policies you think make Oklahoma the worst, because I'm curious
Republicans don't like to talk about policies and people tend
to tune out when Democrats talk about policy. But give
me the policies that you think have made Oklahoma the worst.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Well, I'm the abortion ban across the board. They have
defunded education and they scapegoat unions as a way to
do that, teachers union, right, and Democrats instead of valuing
and promoting teachers, and we have to be on a
perma campaign at all times. We had this, Uh, Superintendent
(14:05):
Ryan Walters, I'm sure you're.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Who he just resigned on, right, because can you explain
why he resigned because it wasn't because of the Trump Bibles,
or it was because of the Trump Bibles, and if so,
that's pretty fucking stupid.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Okay, So he bought the Trump Bibles. He mandated the
Ten Commandments being all of the classrooms.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Trump Bibles like talk about an oxymoron. But anyway, go on.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yes, Then recently there was a conference call that he
was on a video conference call where Ryan Walters had
porn playing on the screen in the background, and this
was all over Oklahoma news. And this is the man
who's constantly like the gender mafia, teachers' unions are going
(14:50):
to trans your kids out, and they're wacken weeners at
school and they're doing all this stuff. I mean this
just constantly, this guy propagandizing you can't send your kids
to school, they're not safe because of these woke radical teachers.
And then he has this computing with porn on that.
People saw my personal theory on this, and I have
a lot of experience living in religious culture and it's
(15:15):
totally different.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
People don't understand what the Bible Belt is like.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
In the Bible Belt, people believe in spiritual warfare and
they believe it to be very real, like angels and
demons flying around all the time.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
That's why we've actually socially. We had drinks and you
were trying to explain this to me before and I
was like, no, that can't be right.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
No, they believe it they believe it, and so when
Tarp talks about in this binary language, we're good, they're evil.
These Bible belt people are very primed to believe that
because they've heard of their whole lives. Well, I think
a lot of these people have been religiously abused. I
think they suffer from religious abuse. Ryan Walters is no exception,
(15:57):
and I think he has a lot of suppressed sexual
is shoes. There's an image around the Internet from a
local blogger in Oklahoma City called the lost Ogel where
Ryan Walters is sitting with a friend and they're like
touching each other on a park bench and they have
their hands placed on each other's thighs.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Well, to me, when you know video.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Cameras are going, you're gonna be audience show. Somebody, look
at how straight I am. I'm sitting here watching this porn.
You're masking something, you know, it's the whole symptom of it.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
It's also the whole thing is that you're like very religious.
So any porn, straight or gay seems I mean, as
the daughter of an erotic novelist, feels like the not
the vibe.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
I think the reason they all like Trump so much
is because they all have secrets. At the end of
the day, everybody likes to screw moally, whether you like
to screw, gay screw or straight screw or self screw.
Everybody likes to screw right, even Bible thumbers. And it's
genetically hard.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Am I the most person conversation go on? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, and so a lot of they They have so
much shame surrounding sex. Like I remember my first boyfriend
in high school. His name was Sean. His dad was
a Southern Baptist preacher. Of course, we started screwing, as
high school seniors do, and his mother caught him masturbating
at one point, shamed the shit out of him, and
(17:23):
he was grounded for four months. I didn't get to
see Sean for four months because he was doing what
all eighteen year old kids do.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
That's real, that's great, that's really bad, that's really good.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
There is so much shame surrounding sexuality, and then if
you put on a bisexual tendency or homosexual then it's
just exacerbated. And so I think my my thing with
MAGA is it's a crazy Christian repressed sexual urges broken
(17:57):
in our child issues, and these people are running the
country I think you probably saw AOC's clip yesterday talking
about like that the villains are such dorks.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Like yes, yes, yes, yes, I mean that is a
good point. And that was an amazing video because then
on Fox you had what's her name showing Laura what's
you know? Laura Ingram showing a video to Stephen Miller
where AOC is talking about how he's four eleven and
(18:30):
you can see Stephen Miller getting more and more agitated.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Yeah, I saw that this morning, and number one, my
first takeaway was, of course they're talking about this because
they can't talk about the fact that Moses Mike Johnson
will not swear in the Housewoman from Arizona so that
they can release.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
The FCN files. They're not going to talk about inflation.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Of course, he's not going to talk about healthcare because
he passed the largest cut to medicate in the history
of this country.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
So of course they're talking about that.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
And Stephen Miller and all of the other people, they
all have these really fragile egos. And could you imagine
Molly being a conservative and navigating a remote control for
a television You could run into Jimmy Kimmel, you could
run into Stephen Colbert. You could run into a cracker
barrel commercial, run into a bad bunny, you could run
into somebody that's Asian. Oh my god, everybody in this
(19:24):
sitcom is black. I mean, can you imagine how fragile
of an individual and what a titty baby you would
have to be to navigate a remote control.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
It's just depigable. So let's talk about this theory that
this is, Like my optimistic theory is that we are
in the last grasps of Christian nationalism. That some of
why we got here is because America is diversifying so rapidly,
and these people are so scared and they just don't
(19:59):
think that they can compete in a meritocracy. Really, that's
really what this is. Do you think that's right? Or
I mean, I've grown up in a completely different world
than you have, so I'm curious to know your take. Okay,
the people that.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Are Christian nationalists, they were raised and their culture is
the following church and being patriotic that has browbeat into them.
And so a part of Evangelical Christianity, which encompasses a
lot of different denominations, is the prosperity gospel, and people
(20:35):
believe it is their business that if somebody met you,
if you were growing up in Oklahoma and you were
a Jewish, young Jewish girl, people's parents, your peers, parents
would believe that it was their job to get all
up in your business and make sure you were saved.
I remember I was twelve years old. Some girls from
my cheerleading squad said, Jennifer, where do you go to church?
(20:57):
I said, we don't go to church, and they said
have you ever been saved? And I'm like, from what
except that Jesus Christ is your lord and personal saf here.
And it went on and on and on and still
into my adulthood. There is this toxic busy body that, oh,
we mind our own business about everything, but when it
comes to saving people, we have to. But if you
(21:19):
think about it's also the business model of churches to
recruit people so they can expand. So you have capitalism
meets Christian nationalism meets patriotism, and so they believe it
is their biblical duty to make the country a Christian
nationalist country. Sadly, Molly, I think that people in the
(21:43):
Supreme Court believe that too, and they have tried to
support decades. And I was always founding the Alarm in Oklahoma.
When I would host a party for some poor Democrat
that was running for governor or something and a host Fikagiliama,
they always fucking love this heartbreak hotel. Yeah, but I
would always warn my friends, they're going to come after abortion.
(22:06):
They want to be at Christian nationals. Think about all
these nuts that we live around, and people think, oh, no,
that's not going to happen. But they are very insane
and very motivated and very ambitious.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah, it's so weird because you think about like sometimes
you'll see what other countries think of us, and they
are horrified. Right, Like we threw out all our scientists,
We cut all of our scientific funding, and we had
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, go in
and cut cancer research for children. It's like a satire
(22:38):
of things going wrong. Yes, and a lot of that, Like,
it doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
A lot of people, like from your vantage point, were like,
how can Christians be this way? For me, it doesn't
surprise me at all because the Christians I grew up
around cared about recruiting others to be in the fold.
But it was a conflict resist picking up the carpet,
sweeping under the rug and rolling it back down. All
you have to do is ask Jesus for forgiveness. Then
(23:07):
you're immediately forgiven. You don't have to go through any
process of self discovery and work on yourself. And so
to me, it makes perfect sense that the most religious
people are the most devout followers of Trump, because I
grew up around these people and they live in cognitive
(23:28):
dissonance at all times. Their preachers, you know, have a
couple of girlfriends or a couple of boyfriends. There's always
some scandal in the church, some scandal with children or whatever.
They they oh, well, he said sorry, and he went
back to the Lord, and then they just continue going
to these churches. So the corruption that we've seen in churches,
(23:50):
I think also primed the public for the corruption you
see in this administration. And you talk about what other
countries think about the United States. Even before up in Europe,
they thought we were a really religious country and they
were a very religious First world country.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
But it is it's interesting because it's like we're religious,
but we're not spiritual. You know. I grew up Reformed Jewish,
really Unitarian. My stepmother's U Turhn minister. The idea the
whole goal of religion right is to connect to some
kind of spirituality. But none of this is really for that.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
No, and and where I live, and you know, you've
probably seen these these people in the parking lot outside
the White House talking in tongues before they go.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
We've seen that clip. No, I have not.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Okay, this is like a couple of months ago, Mollie.
So you've got like the some people that work in
the West Wing. I think it might be that nut
Paula White's steps. They're standing out, somebody's videoing it, somebody's
leading a prayer, they're doing the hands up, the praise
Jesus thing, and then a couple of them are standing
there literally speaking in tongues. And my opinion is that
(25:02):
these people have been religiously abused since birth. They have
been told you are not good, you have to be saved,
you were born bad. If you are not good, Satan
is going to torture you in hell forever. And you
start telling a three year old, four year old rights traumatic,
these people suffer from religious abuse. And so my thing is,
(25:26):
if we make it through this, we need to have
like universal therapy for a lot of really damaged people,
because we have a very damaged electorate.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah, I mean, among other things. Do you think trump
Ism is it sort of a religion or is it
part of the like is it which comes first the
megachurches or I mean, obviously the megachurches come first, but
are they Are they connected to each other or do
they replace each other.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
I think it's the father, son, holy Spirit. I think
it's the trend. I think you have patriotism where somebody's
whole identity is being an American. And that's something that
for democracy we've had on steroids compared to other democracies.
This forced patriotism that America puts on people, plus religion,
(26:18):
and then now the third part of that is maggot
And it fits. All of those things fit so well
together because all of them remove what religion claims you
have is free will. But that's one of the lies
of religion, is that you have free will because they're
forcing you.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
They're the thought police.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Trump is the thought police, Stephen Miller thought police. So
to me, all of the when I talk to people
like you that live on the coast or I was like,
how Trump's not a Christian? How do these Christians like him,
and I'm like, this man is an evangelical pastor to
a t. He's slick, he's a liar, he's a grifter,
he's the thought police. He thinks he knows better than everyone.
(27:00):
These people are primed to worship this man. And sadly,
Molly when he hugged the American flag. Maga has done
and Republicans have done such a good job saying that
Democrats hate the country, and these very simple statements, Democrats
hate the country, Democrats are for crime, and then you
see him hug the flag.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
It hits hard.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
It hits hard with simple minded people because for them,
critically thinking is not only painful, it's a sin.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
If you ever question like.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Well, was Mary really a virgin? Or did Noah get
all those animals on the arc? I remember asked my
religious prints and they're like, that's blasphemy.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
You're going to burn in hell for that. That's a sin.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
So critical thinking is something punishable if you were a
part of this faith which think about how primed they
are to fall created this cult.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Maga, Yeah, oh, Jennifer, will you come back. Yes. Lisa
Graves is the former chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary
Committee and the author of Without Precedent, How Chief Justice
Roberts and his accomplices we wrote the Constitution and dismantled
(28:15):
our rights. Welcome to Fast Politics, Lisa Graves, Gosh, thank
you so much for having me on. Molly, delighted to
have you. So let's talk about the Roberts Court. Yeah,
so I have a new book, Yes, yes, yes, Without
Precedent about.
Speaker 4 (28:30):
The Roberts Court, you know, every week. Although I suppose
at this point I'm not surprised, but we all should
be surprised by what this Roberts Court is doing in
putting its thumb on the scale of justice in favor
of Trump after it gave him unprecedented immunity from girl
prosecution last year. It's been on overdrive this year, blocking
well reasoned decisions by lower court judges who've been acting
(28:52):
consistent with the law, and that has really emboldened and
already emboldened Trump even further.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Right, So, like you should start with Thomas on precedent. Yes,
a recent bit of insane news.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Yeah, I didn't queue this up, it just happened, which
is that this past week Clarence Thomas reportedly told a
group of lawyers and students that he didn't think that
president was really binding at all, and that the Court
should feel free to disregard it whenever they want. And
so this was a very unbelievable correct attack on what'son
as stereotocisis, which, as just A Sanarie O'Connor pointed out
(29:31):
long ago, is not just the principle of the Court's
consistency in following legal president, it also is important for
the legitimacy of the court. So the people don't think
that the law just sways based on a replacement by
one person or a particular person on the court. Otherwise
it's just a group of people in robes deciding their
(29:52):
personal views and imposing them as law.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
No, it's true, So let's talk about what this court
looks like. Roberts sort of made different arguments for different
makeups of the court. I feel like i'd love you
to talk us through sort of your central argument here
on the Roberts Court.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
You know, Roberts is the first beneficiary of the No
More Suitors campaign.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Explain what that means.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
David Suiter was chosen for the US Supreme Court by
George Herbert Walker Bush, and he was someone who had
been endorsed by Republican politicians. He'd been a justice on
the New Hampshire Supreme Court, and when he got to
the court, he said he was going to follow legal precedents,
and he did, and that infuriated the Republican Party and
the Federal Society elite because they didn't want a judge
(30:37):
who was going to follow precedent. They wanted someone on
the court who would be a reliable vote for overturning
precedents they didn't like. And so that resulted in a
campaign called No More Suitors. It was actually sort of
launched at a Federal Society event in the early two thousands,
and John Roberts was the first beneficiary of that. He
(30:57):
was chosen for the Supreme Court because they thought he
would be a reliable vote, and in fact, insiders in
the George W. Bush administration said as much, including Gret Cavanaught,
as I noted the book, said that he could be
trusted on the court unlike Suitor. That's the reality, right,
And then you could see that play on in real
time because just as Robert's nomination was pending for the
(31:18):
Chief Justice position on the Court, George W. Bush appointed
or named his private lawyer, who was then the White
House Counsel, Harriet Myers, to the court, and there was
an uprising by people like Robert Bork and others saying
that she wasn't reliable enough, it would be a failure
in their effort to this right wing movement to capture
the court, and so Bush withdrew Myers' nomination and a
(31:41):
put up Alito, and both Roberts and Alito were confirmed
within six months of each other as part of this
dark many campaign to ensure that there were no more
suitors on the court, meaning no more really independent judges
who would follow the law, follow the president, and honor
those rulings.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
I'm sorry, Well, so.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
That's the beginning. And then, of course we have these
three Trump appointees joining Thomas, Alito and Roberts and putting
this agenda into overdrive, culminating although it's not the end
of the story. In the immunity decision last year, which
was counter constitutional ruling to let Trump off the hook
for the crimes he was indicted for and to say
that he could not violate the coronal law if he
(32:23):
was engaged in official acts and now here he is
engaged in official acts, and lower courts are following the law,
following the statutes, the constitution, legal precedents, regulations, contracts, and
restraining him, issuing temporary restraining orders. And this court is
going out of its way not just to you know,
not just to basically affirm in essence, the immunity decision,
(32:45):
but to give him more than immunity from chrone prosecution,
to give him basically a blank check to continue these
extreme policies that have transgressed our laws, and to do
so by overturning those well reasoned decisions of lower court
judges and doing so in the dark night, without even
bothering to describe how those precedents, how those statutes are
(33:05):
no longer apparently good law. When it comes to Trump, I.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Would argue that SBA was one, even though that came
before immunity was like one of the first times where
they were like, we're just going to do it on
the docket. Because SBA was they overturned a v Wait
a year and before they really overturned ro Vweight and
they're like, we're just going to let this stand because
we don't need to explain anything to you. You owe us.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
That's a super keen observation. This is not new behavior
by this Roberts Court. It has been playing this game
with our rights for a while now, including on the
right to access reproductive care, the right to access abortion.
But also we saw that in some of the redistricting
cases where they allowed the twenty twenty two interm election
to go forward even though the maps were in violation
(33:51):
of the Voting Rights Act, that flipped the Congress to
the Republicans and Mike Johnson ultimately at the Helm. Then
they revisited those cases, and then now they're signaling that
they're about to do so again in terms of limiting
the application of what's left of the Voting Rights Act
after Roberts already decimated key parts of it.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
For example, when I think about the Texas redistricting, a
normal Supreme COURTPS would say, no, you can't do that.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
Yeah, you know, this is a case where there are
a couple of decisions, and I'm not going to get
into the weeds on it, but one of the big
decisions was just this last year where previously the Roberts
Court said, you know, we're okay with extreme partists and
Jerryman and the Supreme Court in the federal courts are
not going to do anything about it, but state courts
could still administer in laws around fair maps, and the
(34:38):
court assured people that it would still bar racial jerrymandering.
That was still forbidden, but extreme partisan jerrymandering was not.
Then came the South Carolina case where the Republican legislature
bleached black voters out of the first district in South
Carolina in order to basically protect Nancy Mace's seat, and
(34:58):
there was ample evidence a three judge panel finding that
this was done on a racial basis, and just last year,
the Roberts Court said, oh, well, we're not going to
count that as racial gerimandering because it's partisan gerimandering. So
you can have a racially desperate impact and even the
racial intent that the lower court found, and it's okay
as long as the purpose is to block democrats from
(35:21):
getting fair maps.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
I mean, at every point this Supreme Court has been like,
we're just going to do whatever we want in the
service of grabbing power. Do you think that's right and
do you think there's I mean, this is the highest
court in the land, and they basically told us that
they are in the tank. Is there any way to
(35:42):
push back against.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
This, Well, if I had an emoji, would be the
plus one hundred. What you said just there. Out of
control is a polite word for it, because it is,
in my view, a kind of judicial hunter, where the
court is just dictating these dramatic changes in the law
because it has the power to do so, because it
has the numbers, basically, and because it has the arrogance
(36:05):
to do so. So. It has no problem issuing partisan
ruling after partisan ruling, no desire seemingly to try to
make arguments that we would be persuasive to the democratics
appointees to the court, no seeming desire in some cases
to even adhere to the facts that were found below.
Just rewriting both the facts and the law. And this
is in many ways exactly what the court packing machine,
(36:29):
the court capture machine that Leonard Leo and his billionaire
funders wanted to put together a court that we behold
into their agenda above all. But we've seen that it's
so dangerous what this court has done because it didn't
just let Trump hop the hook retroactively. It basically last
summer paved the way for his return to power. By
(36:51):
signaling to some of the American people that Trump could
do no wrong and did no wrong, suggesting that the
prosecutions that were legitimate prosecutions in defense of our capital
from the insurrection that Trump unleashed and the effort to
subvert the results of the twenty twenty election, that that
was somehow an illegitimate criminal investigation of Trump. And now
(37:12):
that Trump has been swept back into power, he has
basically overturned all the barriers against a president directing political prosecutions,
which that prosecution of Vald Trump was not a the
direction of Biden, was not a the direction of the
Attorney general mayor Garland. It was by a special counsel
looking at the facts and the law to determine whether
(37:32):
the case should be pursued, along with the other cases
against Trump that were pursued, not at the direction of
a president. And so here we are with this court that,
to say it modestly, as you point out, is out
of control. And what are we going to do about it? Well,
nothing can change in this Congress, and nothing no reform
would be signed by this president. But that doesn't mean
(37:54):
we don't have to come together to build a robust
movement to reform the Court and restore our rights, and
in fact, the majority of the American people get that
this court is out of control, is not trustworthy, is
not protecting our rights. Pulling out this week just shows
that the Court is at the same level of disapproval
of lack of trust, lack of public trust as it
(38:15):
was in twenty twenty two in the immediate aftermath of
the Dobbs ruling and the revelations of investigative reporters of
the corruption that has engulfed the Roberts Court.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
There used to be a time when Roberts cared about polling,
or pretended to care about palling.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Well, he was, in my view, and what the book
describes as how he had taken this very patient view
toward this revolution so as not to jolt the public
into action or reaction. That's part of his description of
one of his concerns of quickly overturning precedents. I think that,
you know, so he was methodically saying, I've got a
(38:50):
lifetime appointment. I'm going to take my time and just
you can see the slates of cases. One year it's
political election cases like Citizens United. Another year it's voting rights,
they're going to take that on and start to dismantling it.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Another year.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
You know, it's abortion they're going to another year, they're
going to advance religious rights as a sword to attack
anti discrimination less. So they've been acting like they have
a slate of political issues that he's taking on methodically.
But I think what happened is that after the trumpet
point he's got in the court, he had no real
reason to go slow anymore. And in fact, if he
pick up the pace, he might be left behind and
(39:24):
not exert the maximum power on the court. And so
I think in that sense, in some ways, it really
reveals Robert's true roots, which are he started as a
Reagan revolutionary in the Reagan administration, one of the hardliners
trying to move the law to the right, even beyond
you know, Reagan's campaign appearances, his anti civil rights rhetoric
over two decades and more. And so Roberts now has
(39:47):
the majority he needs to construct that Reagan revolution, that
very right wing regressive movement that dates back to Barry
Goldwater and his predecessors, and to do it from the bench.
And I think that that's the legacy he wants, not
the legacy of having wide respect by the American people
as a whole, but by being the man who delivers
on those revolutionary promises.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, no, I know is the off ramp? Protests is
the off ramp? Polling is the off ramp. There is
no off ramp. What is the off ramp? Here? Is?
Does he read the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal? Like,
if you're looking at Trump as a you see that
the only way that Trump responds is to the market.
(40:30):
So if the stock market creators, Trump will start doing
things like what is the off ramp for this?
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Well, the Walls Journal ed page has already been weaponized
basically against Roberts. When he was trying to allow that
decision of the abortion restriction to proceed without overtly overturning Row,
they attacked him. It's not as though they're going to
attack him now. I think, although you know, obviously there
have been some differences that the ed page has indicated
about Trump, but the reality is that I don't think
(40:59):
that guides Roberts. I think you're right that if there
were more of a business reaction, maybe a case that
implicates those interests could go the other way. We might
see that ultimately on tariff. But on the other hand,
what we've seen is that it seems like Wall Street
has done three things. One is it has enriched itself
(41:19):
under Trump. Two, in some ways it has priced in
the chaos of the tariffs in essence by you know,
some of the ways that some of the ways that
it is envisioning the broader global economy in terms of
what's going to happen globally. And Third, it has in
my view, embraced this sort of taco meme that Trump
always chickens out when it comes to that part of
(41:41):
the agenda, that he just wants to get something, get
some praise, look like he has a win, but he's
not going to actually follow through on, for example, the ridiculous,
seemingly AI generated tariffs that he announced on the White
House lawn this spring.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
The tariff case so is a really interesting case because
it's the Supreme Court's real patrons versus Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
Yeah, I mean that that's the case where the amicus
briefs are coming in against his assertion of this tariff
power from the billionaire Charles Koch's back groups, saying, you know,
clearly the Constitution vests the tariff power with Congress and
the President can't do this unilaterly. And so it's possible
that in that particular case, ultimately on the merits, not
(42:28):
in this temporary sort of impoundment zone where they're allowing
Trump to redirect funds that Congress is appropriated that have
been signed into law by President, but that they may
in this area say no, just as the shadow docket
order today where the Roberts Court said it's not going
to allow him.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
To fire Lisa Cook.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
Yeah, fire's Cook. But they allowed him to fire you know,
member of fifty.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Right, everyone else, but Lisa Cook is my stocks right.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
So when it comes to like the the federal reserve
or perhaps maximizing terre of policy, that that's those those
are two areas where maybe the Court could be counted
on to not go along with Trump. But that is
precious little for the rest of the rest of us.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
That's a complete fucking disaster. I mean, I'm not saying
it's good, but you know, they did say we're not
going to let you fire Lisa Cook, and then they
said you can't fire Lisa Cook for now, right right?
Speaker 4 (43:24):
Well, And the other part is, you know, I think
that Roberts is so calculating that. Look, with Jerown Powell's
tenure up in May and the other vag it's pending,
Trump could get a majority and get control of that
the seven member board that really sets monetary policy for
the Fed, without the Roberts Court helping him. So I
think it's just one of these sort of log rolling
(43:45):
by some time situation and May and they may not
necessarily give him the approval the fire in that one
singular agent.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, Lisa Grave's such a disaster. Hey, you for coming on, Molly.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
I have to tell you I'm still hopeful because hope
is a choice. And if we give in or give up,
these regressive measures will continue and will worsen. But if
we don't give in, and we don't give up, we
do have a chance of building the effort to reform
this court and restore our freedoms. Thank you Aale, Thanks Molly,
thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
No more perfectly Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Really, I personally, you know, it's been my thing that
I've been very mad about democratic collecteds and what they're
doing lately. And here's gonna be my bone and a
few to break here again. The fact that we are
not raging about Mike Johnson seating Adelita Grijalva after her election.
I think that they should be throwing fits outside the
Republican Caucus every day over this.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Yeah, or why not some kind of sit in about this?
You know, like why is it not happening? I think
that's a real question.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Well, I think we know why it's not happening, which
is that Trump had best friend whose name is Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Yeah. Correct, and that, my friends, is our moment of fuckory.
Mike Johnson refusing to swear in an Arizona member of
Congress because he does not want to release the Epstein files.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
(45:26):
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and six surgeon generals have co authored
an offed warning against RFK Junior endangering the health of
the nation. We have such a great show for you
today from the I've Had It podcast. Jennifer Welch stops
(00:22):
by to talk to us about how Republicans run their
states into the ground with absurd policies. And then we'll
talk to Lisa Graves about her new book Without Precedent,
how Chief Justice Roberts and his accomplices rewrote the Constitution
and dismantled our rights.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
But first the news, Mike, the White House has signaled
it may try to deny backpaid for low federal workers.
I'm married to a federal worker. We've had to have
some tough conversations around our dinner table about what it
means if she doesn't get paid, even though right now
she's at work in her office, and a lot of
people don't realize this is the reality for the essential worker,
(01:00):
is that they're working right now and she's doing the
job that she took, and that they're potentially not paying her.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
So some staff is not getting paid and other staff
is getting paid, but all members of Congress are getting
fucking paid. So if you're Mike Johnson, you're cashing your
check even if your staff is not. So I think
that's a pretty fucked up piece of fuck Erry. I
want to add that, look, Trump administration and one Russell
(01:28):
Tivaught have worked real hard to try to make this
as scary and painful for federal workers as possible. But
what I think is interesting about this shutdown, and I
think of many of the people, I was the most
worried about the shutdown because I honestly thought that Democrats
would lose their nerve. I thought that Republicans would just
like full on slash the entire federal budget. I thought
(01:51):
this would be a disaster. I was really worried that
Democrats wouldn't be able to message a shutdown. And you
know what's happened. Democrats have done a really good job, honestly,
and even leadership, which is very cautious and loyally, They've
actually been everywhere talking about this shutdown, talking about healthcare,
and you're seeing people are blaming Republicans for the shutdown,
(02:12):
and they also understand that the shutdown is about healthcare,
and I think that was exactly the goal. So I'm
actually kind of impressed. I sort of got to hand
it to Congressional and Senate Dems. You guys have messaged
this in a way that is resonating. Must give credit
where it is due, Jesse.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
It seems that Trump and all of boxers are on
the defense and they're getting a little shook about this.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
That tells me that the Dems are doing better than
usual because many of the times they ignore everything and
just bluster, bluster bluster. This feels more like that thing
where they're like oopside done, goofed.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, I kind of think it worked.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, well we hopefully we'll know soon because yeah, not good. Okay.
Pam Bondi on the stand today, not doing her best,
losing her shit over Epstein files.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I'm kind of obsessed with Pam Bondy losing her shit
over the Ebstein files. My favorite clip comes from my
guy from California, Adam Scheff. By the way, Adam Schiff
has really been through it, and he said some really
scary threats and he continues to just go for it.
And what he did today, which I think was really
(03:31):
successful was he read through all the questions that Pam
Bondi refused to answer, and they were questions, you know,
that were like, did you consult with this ethics person,
did you do this? Did you do that? And as
he read through all these questions that she refused to answer,
because remember this is an oversight committee hearing the goal
of oversight is to have oversight. As he started reading
(03:53):
through the questions, she became more and more combative and insane.
It was a super interesting that I thought was her
freaking out. And then she said, she said, you have
to apologize to President Trump. And the thing is like
Republicans live in this uncanny valley where like everything is
(04:14):
about their leader and allegiance to their leader, but the
rest of us actually don't live in that world. So
when she was like, you're gonna need to apologize to
President Trump, it just felt so jarring and it was
a sort of amazing moment that they live on this
earth too, agreed.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
So there's a huge swing district at Iowa that Dems
are hoping to take back with which is represented by
Iowa Rep. Marianetta Miller Meeks. Aka, mmm, I'm sure that's
what everyone around the hood calls her. Yeah, she says
she'll do town halls when health freeze is over.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Wait.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Why because they're running scared and they know they can't
face people after what they've done.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, well, just wait till health insurance goes up thirty
forty fifty sixty seven percent. I mean, you think it's
bad now, you think the soybean bailout, the farmers getting
another soybean bailout. By the way, just in case you're wondering,
the Chinese not buying soybeans from us buying soybeans from Argentina,
a country we are currently bailing out. So if that isn't.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
The art of the deal, I don't know what is.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Like. It seems to me like this is not the
art of the deal. This is the art of the whatever.
I mean, what are we doing? Man?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Well, I was struck this week by the thing of
that we are having a discussion about how other countries
when they institute their fascism trying to think it through
a little bit, and ours it's just whoops, Okay, maybe
we'll reverse that.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah. One of the many good things about our authoritarianism
is that it's very stupid and no one has sought
out anything. Shockingly, trump Ism continues unovated, and speaking of
not having thought through.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Things, Yeah, are you flying anytime soon? Because I'm glad
I'm not. Kevin Newsom sent some very disturbing tweets about
how Burbank Airport and for those who are not up
on their California geography, since I know even LA residents
sometimes don't fly into Burbank iPhone a lot since that's
the side of town. I stayed on. Burbank's a popular
airport in the northern part of Los Angeles, and it
(06:21):
had no air traffic controller for six hours on Sunday.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
You might want to skip Burbank, you know.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Let's just remember we're skipping Newark before this, which is
the international airport.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Can I have a minute to just inject a little
personality into this, a little bit of my personal life.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Are you going to complain about how it's not the
Bob Hope Airport?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
My long suffering spouse was so excited to discover deals
out of Newark that he was in and out of Newark.
I said, you know, I don't think you're really supposed
to fly. He was like, it's so cheap, so if
you're my husband Burbank Airport. I think there are deals.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
There, probably is. It's also very commune. You get in
and out so fast. I'm like lafter.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Jennifer Welsh is the host of the podcast I've Had It.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Jennifer, thank you for having me. Mollie,
I'm so excited to have you because I like, we've
known each other for maybe like eighteen months, does that
sound right? But what you do is so important and
I'm just a fan, and so I'm glad that I'm
glad to get to have you on Well, I'm a
(07:28):
big fan of yours. My husband and.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I used to follow you on Twitter when Twitter what
we supposed to follow you, but when Twitter was Twitter, Yes,
And I remember at one point you followed my husband back.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I've been like six years ago or something.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
He's like, Molly John Fast followed me back and I
was like.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Oh my god, that's incredible.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, So we're miss yours.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
I miss I miss like old Twitter where you could
just say stuff. But it is interesting, like we are
in this moment where we are being governed by a
body that consists almost entirely of online posters. It's insane.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I mean when I think about the governing body and
I think about like Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, jd Vance Bondie,
and we're celebrating villains. The villains are being celebrated when
we have been so primed to celebrate heroes. Yea for
(08:26):
the marginalized. The flip in the script is even though
it's been coming and it's tippers and the making, it
still causes whiplash because when I see people, especially I
just moved from Oklahoma, that have like Trump stickers or
Trump merch, I just think, I can't imagine supporting him
number one. But even if you were like a country
(08:47):
club Republican and you did it importantly, wearing the merch
is just a next level self owned that I just
am not prepared for.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
When do the American people get to a moment where
they are like watching the videos of the Ice militia
breaking into people's houses with the black Hawk helicopters. I mean,
the Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, was describing what's happening
in Chicago, and I had seen some reporting of it.
The AP had something on it, but I was like,
(09:18):
when I saw it was like black Hawk helicopters, these
smoke bombs or whatever, these tear gas near a school.
Then Pritzker was talking about it in this press or
how they killed someone. They don't know exactly the but
you know, they killed a father of two. There's conflicting
reports about how that went down. But like this is
(09:41):
terrifying stuff, Like when do people start associating this with
the merch and the brand.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
I think there's degrees of maga, and I think you
have the thirty percent that are cult okay, and then
you have a huge portion of the electorate that happens
in all fifty states. And I call these people polite
Republicans or country club Republicans. And these voters vote for
(10:09):
their own wallet. They feel entitled to not pay that
much in taxes. They believe that they are superior because
they are quote unquote job creators. And recently, a woman
in Oklahoma City where I used to live, I one
hundred percent she Republican her whole life, Her housekeeper, and
her housekeeper's son got deported.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Painful, excruciating tears. She loved.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
This woman, had helped raise her kids, had worked in
the home for twenty years. This Republican lifelong Republicans sent
me a text message that said, thank you for all
the work you're doing to expose what they're doing to
hard working, honest immigrants. So when will it affect the
country club polite Republicans? When it affects them personally, because
(10:58):
we have Bill a society that values individualism over collectivism
and all of that, it's manifested into the biggest selfish
individual on the planet.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Trump.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
He is a symptom of all of our worst impulses
as a country.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, you know, it is so interesting because when and
I you know, when they had the RNC and they
had those mass deportation now placards that they were waving,
I remember thinking to myself, like, they don't understand what
this means, and the polling on it is so interesting
because it so shows how Poles misinform right. Immigration was
(11:39):
supposed to be a winning issue for Trump. That's why
they went so hard on it. I mean, and I
think what's interesting when you watch the ADMIN right now
is that they see they're underwater and immigration, so now
they do crime because they feel that crime is still
a little bit better, pulls a little better than ripping
(11:59):
apart families and sending them to countries they never lived in.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yeah, so I think that the crime thing works very
well with I would say what I call suburban Republican
voters who live in get communities, cookie cutter houses, and
they've never fallen prey to crime in their entire lives.
And the Republicans have done a very good job demonizing cities,
and they have campaigned on this and propagandized big blue
(12:27):
cities long before Trump that multicultural cities are where all
the problems are. So if you live in you know,
suburban Atlanta, suburban Oklahoma City, and you think that, oh
my god, if I go to a big city, I'm
going to fall, you know, prey to crime, it really
hits hard with them. And so the problem for me
(12:47):
is when are Democrats going to start flipping the script
and berating red states.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
I am sitting here.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I just moved from a red state where they've had
a MAGA super majory for over sixteen years. Mollie, Oklahoma
ranked fiftieth in education. We used to have a governor
named Brad Henry. He was a Democrat. We were ranked
either fourteenth or sixteenth in education, and just sixteen years
were ranked fiftieth it is ranked fiftieth for places for
(13:17):
women to live, and it goes down the list. It's
a bottom five state because specifically of maga Republican policies.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
And you could just go down the list, just swing
through the whole. Give give me a few of the
policies you think make Oklahoma the worst, because I'm curious
Republicans don't like to talk about policies and people tend
to tune out when Democrats talk about policy. But give
me the policies that you think have made Oklahoma the worst.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Well, I'm the abortion ban across the board. They have
defunded education and they scapegoat unions as a way to
do that, teachers union, right, and Democrats instead of valuing
and promoting teachers, and we have to be on a
perma campaign at all times. We had this, Uh, Superintendent
(14:05):
Ryan Walters, I'm sure you're.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Who he just resigned on, right, because can you explain
why he resigned because it wasn't because of the Trump Bibles,
or it was because of the Trump Bibles, and if so,
that's pretty fucking stupid.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Okay, So he bought the Trump Bibles. He mandated the
Ten Commandments being all of the classrooms.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Trump Bibles like talk about an oxymoron. But anyway, go on.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yes, Then recently there was a conference call that he
was on a video conference call where Ryan Walters had
porn playing on the screen in the background, and this
was all over Oklahoma news. And this is the man
who's constantly like the gender mafia, teachers' unions are going
(14:50):
to trans your kids out, and they're wacken weeners at
school and they're doing all this stuff. I mean this
just constantly, this guy propagandizing you can't send your kids
to school, they're not safe because of these woke radical teachers.
And then he has this computing with porn on that.
People saw my personal theory on this, and I have
a lot of experience living in religious culture and it's
(15:15):
totally different.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
People don't understand what the Bible Belt is like.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
In the Bible Belt, people believe in spiritual warfare and
they believe it to be very real, like angels and
demons flying around all the time.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
That's why we've actually socially. We had drinks and you
were trying to explain this to me before and I
was like, no, that can't be right.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
No, they believe it they believe it, and so when
Tarp talks about in this binary language, we're good, they're evil.
These Bible belt people are very primed to believe that
because they've heard of their whole lives. Well, I think
a lot of these people have been religiously abused. I
think they suffer from religious abuse. Ryan Walters is no exception,
(15:57):
and I think he has a lot of suppressed sexual
is shoes. There's an image around the Internet from a
local blogger in Oklahoma City called the lost Ogel where
Ryan Walters is sitting with a friend and they're like
touching each other on a park bench and they have
their hands placed on each other's thighs.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Well, to me, when you know video.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Cameras are going, you're gonna be audience show. Somebody, look
at how straight I am. I'm sitting here watching this porn.
You're masking something, you know, it's the whole symptom of it.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
It's also the whole thing is that you're like very religious.
So any porn, straight or gay seems I mean, as
the daughter of an erotic novelist, feels like the not
the vibe.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
I think the reason they all like Trump so much
is because they all have secrets. At the end of
the day, everybody likes to screw moally, whether you like
to screw, gay screw or straight screw or self screw.
Everybody likes to screw right, even Bible thumbers. And it's
genetically hard.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Am I the most person conversation go on? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, and so a lot of they They have so
much shame surrounding sex. Like I remember my first boyfriend
in high school. His name was Sean. His dad was
a Southern Baptist preacher. Of course, we started screwing, as
high school seniors do, and his mother caught him masturbating
at one point, shamed the shit out of him, and
(17:23):
he was grounded for four months. I didn't get to
see Sean for four months because he was doing what
all eighteen year old kids do.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
That's real, that's great, that's really bad, that's really good.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
There is so much shame surrounding sexuality, and then if
you put on a bisexual tendency or homosexual then it's
just exacerbated. And so I think my my thing with
MAGA is it's a crazy Christian repressed sexual urges broken
(17:57):
in our child issues, and these people are running the
country I think you probably saw AOC's clip yesterday talking
about like that the villains are such dorks.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Like yes, yes, yes, yes, I mean that is a
good point. And that was an amazing video because then
on Fox you had what's her name showing Laura what's
you know? Laura Ingram showing a video to Stephen Miller
where AOC is talking about how he's four eleven and
(18:30):
you can see Stephen Miller getting more and more agitated.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Yeah, I saw that this morning, and number one, my
first takeaway was, of course they're talking about this because
they can't talk about the fact that Moses Mike Johnson
will not swear in the Housewoman from Arizona so that
they can release.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
The FCN files. They're not going to talk about inflation.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Of course, he's not going to talk about healthcare because
he passed the largest cut to medicate in the history
of this country.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
So of course they're talking about that.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
And Stephen Miller and all of the other people, they
all have these really fragile egos. And could you imagine
Molly being a conservative and navigating a remote control for
a television You could run into Jimmy Kimmel, you could
run into Stephen Colbert. You could run into a cracker
barrel commercial, run into a bad bunny, you could run
into somebody that's Asian. Oh my god, everybody in this
(19:24):
sitcom is black. I mean, can you imagine how fragile
of an individual and what a titty baby you would
have to be to navigate a remote control.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
It's just depigable. So let's talk about this theory that
this is, Like my optimistic theory is that we are
in the last grasps of Christian nationalism. That some of
why we got here is because America is diversifying so rapidly,
and these people are so scared and they just don't
(19:59):
think that they can compete in a meritocracy. Really, that's
really what this is. Do you think that's right? Or
I mean, I've grown up in a completely different world
than you have, so I'm curious to know your take. Okay,
the people that.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Are Christian nationalists, they were raised and their culture is
the following church and being patriotic that has browbeat into them.
And so a part of Evangelical Christianity, which encompasses a
lot of different denominations, is the prosperity gospel, and people
(20:35):
believe it is their business that if somebody met you,
if you were growing up in Oklahoma and you were
a Jewish, young Jewish girl, people's parents, your peers, parents
would believe that it was their job to get all
up in your business and make sure you were saved.
I remember I was twelve years old. Some girls from
my cheerleading squad said, Jennifer, where do you go to church?
(20:57):
I said, we don't go to church, and they said
have you ever been saved? And I'm like, from what
except that Jesus Christ is your lord and personal saf here.
And it went on and on and on and still
into my adulthood. There is this toxic busy body that, oh,
we mind our own business about everything, but when it
comes to saving people, we have to. But if you
(21:19):
think about it's also the business model of churches to
recruit people so they can expand. So you have capitalism
meets Christian nationalism meets patriotism, and so they believe it
is their biblical duty to make the country a Christian
nationalist country. Sadly, Molly, I think that people in the
(21:43):
Supreme Court believe that too, and they have tried to
support decades. And I was always founding the Alarm in Oklahoma.
When I would host a party for some poor Democrat
that was running for governor or something and a host Fikagiliama,
they always fucking love this heartbreak hotel. Yeah, but I
would always warn my friends, they're going to come after abortion.
(22:06):
They want to be at Christian nationals. Think about all
these nuts that we live around, and people think, oh, no,
that's not going to happen. But they are very insane
and very motivated and very ambitious.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah, it's so weird because you think about like sometimes
you'll see what other countries think of us, and they
are horrified. Right, Like we threw out all our scientists,
We cut all of our scientific funding, and we had
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, go in
and cut cancer research for children. It's like a satire
(22:38):
of things going wrong. Yes, and a lot of that, Like,
it doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
A lot of people, like from your vantage point, were like,
how can Christians be this way? For me, it doesn't
surprise me at all because the Christians I grew up
around cared about recruiting others to be in the fold.
But it was a conflict resist picking up the carpet,
sweeping under the rug and rolling it back down. All
you have to do is ask Jesus for forgiveness. Then
(23:07):
you're immediately forgiven. You don't have to go through any
process of self discovery and work on yourself. And so
to me, it makes perfect sense that the most religious
people are the most devout followers of Trump, because I
grew up around these people and they live in cognitive
(23:28):
dissonance at all times. Their preachers, you know, have a
couple of girlfriends or a couple of boyfriends. There's always
some scandal in the church, some scandal with children or whatever.
They they oh, well, he said sorry, and he went
back to the Lord, and then they just continue going
to these churches. So the corruption that we've seen in churches,
(23:50):
I think also primed the public for the corruption you
see in this administration. And you talk about what other
countries think about the United States. Even before up in Europe,
they thought we were a really religious country and they
were a very religious First world country.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
But it is it's interesting because it's like we're religious,
but we're not spiritual. You know. I grew up Reformed Jewish,
really Unitarian. My stepmother's U Turhn minister. The idea the
whole goal of religion right is to connect to some
kind of spirituality. But none of this is really for that.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
No, and and where I live, and you know, you've
probably seen these these people in the parking lot outside
the White House talking in tongues before they go.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
We've seen that clip. No, I have not.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Okay, this is like a couple of months ago, Mollie.
So you've got like the some people that work in
the West Wing. I think it might be that nut
Paula White's steps. They're standing out, somebody's videoing it, somebody's
leading a prayer, they're doing the hands up, the praise
Jesus thing, and then a couple of them are standing
there literally speaking in tongues. And my opinion is that
(25:02):
these people have been religiously abused since birth. They have
been told you are not good, you have to be saved,
you were born bad. If you are not good, Satan
is going to torture you in hell forever. And you
start telling a three year old, four year old rights traumatic,
these people suffer from religious abuse. And so my thing is,
(25:26):
if we make it through this, we need to have
like universal therapy for a lot of really damaged people,
because we have a very damaged electorate.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah, I mean, among other things. Do you think trump
Ism is it sort of a religion or is it
part of the like is it which comes first the
megachurches or I mean, obviously the megachurches come first, but
are they Are they connected to each other or do
they replace each other.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
I think it's the father, son, holy Spirit. I think
it's the trend. I think you have patriotism where somebody's
whole identity is being an American. And that's something that
for democracy we've had on steroids compared to other democracies.
This forced patriotism that America puts on people, plus religion,
(26:18):
and then now the third part of that is maggot
And it fits. All of those things fit so well
together because all of them remove what religion claims you
have is free will. But that's one of the lies
of religion, is that you have free will because they're
forcing you.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
They're the thought police.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Trump is the thought police, Stephen Miller thought police. So
to me, all of the when I talk to people
like you that live on the coast or I was like,
how Trump's not a Christian? How do these Christians like him,
and I'm like, this man is an evangelical pastor to
a t. He's slick, he's a liar, he's a grifter,
he's the thought police. He thinks he knows better than everyone.
(27:00):
These people are primed to worship this man. And sadly,
Molly when he hugged the American flag. Maga has done
and Republicans have done such a good job saying that
Democrats hate the country, and these very simple statements, Democrats
hate the country, Democrats are for crime, and then you
see him hug the flag.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
It hits hard.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
It hits hard with simple minded people because for them,
critically thinking is not only painful, it's a sin.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
If you ever question like.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Well, was Mary really a virgin? Or did Noah get
all those animals on the arc? I remember asked my
religious prints and they're like, that's blasphemy.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
You're going to burn in hell for that. That's a sin.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
So critical thinking is something punishable if you were a
part of this faith which think about how primed they
are to fall created this cult.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Maga, Yeah, oh, Jennifer, will you come back. Yes. Lisa
Graves is the former chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary
Committee and the author of Without Precedent, How Chief Justice
Roberts and his accomplices we wrote the Constitution and dismantled
(28:15):
our rights. Welcome to Fast Politics, Lisa Graves, Gosh, thank
you so much for having me on. Molly, delighted to
have you. So let's talk about the Roberts Court. Yeah,
so I have a new book, Yes, yes, yes, Without
Precedent about.
Speaker 4 (28:30):
The Roberts Court, you know, every week. Although I suppose
at this point I'm not surprised, but we all should
be surprised by what this Roberts Court is doing in
putting its thumb on the scale of justice in favor
of Trump after it gave him unprecedented immunity from girl
prosecution last year. It's been on overdrive this year, blocking
well reasoned decisions by lower court judges who've been acting
(28:52):
consistent with the law, and that has really emboldened and
already emboldened Trump even further.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Right, So, like you should start with Thomas on precedent. Yes,
a recent bit of insane news.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Yeah, I didn't queue this up, it just happened, which
is that this past week Clarence Thomas reportedly told a
group of lawyers and students that he didn't think that
president was really binding at all, and that the Court
should feel free to disregard it whenever they want. And
so this was a very unbelievable correct attack on what'son
as stereotocisis, which, as just A Sanarie O'Connor pointed out
(29:31):
long ago, is not just the principle of the Court's
consistency in following legal president, it also is important for
the legitimacy of the court. So the people don't think
that the law just sways based on a replacement by
one person or a particular person on the court. Otherwise
it's just a group of people in robes deciding their
(29:52):
personal views and imposing them as law.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
No, it's true, So let's talk about what this court
looks like. Roberts sort of made different arguments for different
makeups of the court. I feel like i'd love you
to talk us through sort of your central argument here
on the Roberts Court.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
You know, Roberts is the first beneficiary of the No
More Suitors campaign.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Explain what that means.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
David Suiter was chosen for the US Supreme Court by
George Herbert Walker Bush, and he was someone who had
been endorsed by Republican politicians. He'd been a justice on
the New Hampshire Supreme Court, and when he got to
the court, he said he was going to follow legal precedents,
and he did, and that infuriated the Republican Party and
the Federal Society elite because they didn't want a judge
(30:37):
who was going to follow precedent. They wanted someone on
the court who would be a reliable vote for overturning
precedents they didn't like. And so that resulted in a
campaign called No More Suitors. It was actually sort of
launched at a Federal Society event in the early two thousands,
and John Roberts was the first beneficiary of that. He
(30:57):
was chosen for the Supreme Court because they thought he
would be a reliable vote, and in fact, insiders in
the George W. Bush administration said as much, including Gret Cavanaught,
as I noted the book, said that he could be
trusted on the court unlike Suitor. That's the reality, right,
And then you could see that play on in real
time because just as Robert's nomination was pending for the
(31:18):
Chief Justice position on the Court, George W. Bush appointed
or named his private lawyer, who was then the White
House Counsel, Harriet Myers, to the court, and there was
an uprising by people like Robert Bork and others saying
that she wasn't reliable enough, it would be a failure
in their effort to this right wing movement to capture
the court, and so Bush withdrew Myers' nomination and a
(31:41):
put up Alito, and both Roberts and Alito were confirmed
within six months of each other as part of this
dark many campaign to ensure that there were no more
suitors on the court, meaning no more really independent judges
who would follow the law, follow the president, and honor
those rulings.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
I'm sorry, Well, so.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
That's the beginning. And then, of course we have these
three Trump appointees joining Thomas, Alito and Roberts and putting
this agenda into overdrive, culminating although it's not the end
of the story. In the immunity decision last year, which
was counter constitutional ruling to let Trump off the hook
for the crimes he was indicted for and to say
that he could not violate the coronal law if he
(32:23):
was engaged in official acts and now here he is
engaged in official acts, and lower courts are following the law,
following the statutes, the constitution, legal precedents, regulations, contracts, and
restraining him, issuing temporary restraining orders. And this court is
going out of its way not just to you know,
not just to basically affirm in essence, the immunity decision,
(32:45):
but to give him more than immunity from chrone prosecution,
to give him basically a blank check to continue these
extreme policies that have transgressed our laws, and to do
so by overturning those well reasoned decisions of lower court
judges and doing so in the dark night, without even
bothering to describe how those precedents, how those statutes are
(33:05):
no longer apparently good law. When it comes to Trump, I.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Would argue that SBA was one, even though that came
before immunity was like one of the first times where
they were like, we're just going to do it on
the docket. Because SBA was they overturned a v Wait
a year and before they really overturned ro Vweight and
they're like, we're just going to let this stand because
we don't need to explain anything to you. You owe us.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
That's a super keen observation. This is not new behavior
by this Roberts Court. It has been playing this game
with our rights for a while now, including on the
right to access reproductive care, the right to access abortion.
But also we saw that in some of the redistricting
cases where they allowed the twenty twenty two interm election
to go forward even though the maps were in violation
(33:51):
of the Voting Rights Act, that flipped the Congress to
the Republicans and Mike Johnson ultimately at the Helm. Then
they revisited those cases, and then now they're signaling that
they're about to do so again in terms of limiting
the application of what's left of the Voting Rights Act
after Roberts already decimated key parts of it.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
For example, when I think about the Texas redistricting, a
normal Supreme COURTPS would say, no, you can't do that.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
Yeah, you know, this is a case where there are
a couple of decisions, and I'm not going to get
into the weeds on it, but one of the big
decisions was just this last year where previously the Roberts
Court said, you know, we're okay with extreme partists and
Jerryman and the Supreme Court in the federal courts are
not going to do anything about it, but state courts
could still administer in laws around fair maps, and the
(34:38):
court assured people that it would still bar racial jerrymandering.
That was still forbidden, but extreme partisan jerrymandering was not.
Then came the South Carolina case where the Republican legislature
bleached black voters out of the first district in South
Carolina in order to basically protect Nancy Mace's seat, and
(34:58):
there was ample evidence a three judge panel finding that
this was done on a racial basis, and just last year,
the Roberts Court said, oh, well, we're not going to
count that as racial gerimandering because it's partisan gerimandering. So
you can have a racially desperate impact and even the
racial intent that the lower court found, and it's okay
as long as the purpose is to block democrats from
(35:21):
getting fair maps.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
I mean, at every point this Supreme Court has been like,
we're just going to do whatever we want in the
service of grabbing power. Do you think that's right and
do you think there's I mean, this is the highest
court in the land, and they basically told us that
they are in the tank. Is there any way to
(35:42):
push back against.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
This, Well, if I had an emoji, would be the
plus one hundred. What you said just there. Out of
control is a polite word for it, because it is,
in my view, a kind of judicial hunter, where the
court is just dictating these dramatic changes in the law
because it has the power to do so, because it
has the numbers, basically, and because it has the arrogance
(36:05):
to do so. So. It has no problem issuing partisan
ruling after partisan ruling, no desire seemingly to try to
make arguments that we would be persuasive to the democratics
appointees to the court, no seeming desire in some cases
to even adhere to the facts that were found below.
Just rewriting both the facts and the law. And this
is in many ways exactly what the court packing machine,
(36:29):
the court capture machine that Leonard Leo and his billionaire
funders wanted to put together a court that we behold
into their agenda above all. But we've seen that it's
so dangerous what this court has done because it didn't
just let Trump hop the hook retroactively. It basically last
summer paved the way for his return to power. By
(36:51):
signaling to some of the American people that Trump could
do no wrong and did no wrong, suggesting that the
prosecutions that were legitimate prosecutions in defense of our capital
from the insurrection that Trump unleashed and the effort to
subvert the results of the twenty twenty election, that that
was somehow an illegitimate criminal investigation of Trump. And now
(37:12):
that Trump has been swept back into power, he has
basically overturned all the barriers against a president directing political prosecutions,
which that prosecution of Vald Trump was not a the
direction of Biden, was not a the direction of the
Attorney general mayor Garland. It was by a special counsel
looking at the facts and the law to determine whether
(37:32):
the case should be pursued, along with the other cases
against Trump that were pursued, not at the direction of
a president. And so here we are with this court that,
to say it modestly, as you point out, is out
of control. And what are we going to do about it? Well,
nothing can change in this Congress, and nothing no reform
would be signed by this president. But that doesn't mean
(37:54):
we don't have to come together to build a robust
movement to reform the Court and restore our rights, and
in fact, the majority of the American people get that
this court is out of control, is not trustworthy, is
not protecting our rights. Pulling out this week just shows
that the Court is at the same level of disapproval
of lack of trust, lack of public trust as it
(38:15):
was in twenty twenty two in the immediate aftermath of
the Dobbs ruling and the revelations of investigative reporters of
the corruption that has engulfed the Roberts Court.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
There used to be a time when Roberts cared about polling,
or pretended to care about palling.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Well, he was, in my view, and what the book
describes as how he had taken this very patient view
toward this revolution so as not to jolt the public
into action or reaction. That's part of his description of
one of his concerns of quickly overturning precedents. I think that,
you know, so he was methodically saying, I've got a
(38:50):
lifetime appointment. I'm going to take my time and just
you can see the slates of cases. One year it's
political election cases like Citizens United. Another year it's voting rights,
they're going to take that on and start to dismantling it.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Another year.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
You know, it's abortion they're going to another year, they're
going to advance religious rights as a sword to attack
anti discrimination less. So they've been acting like they have
a slate of political issues that he's taking on methodically.
But I think what happened is that after the trumpet
point he's got in the court, he had no real
reason to go slow anymore. And in fact, if he
pick up the pace, he might be left behind and
(39:24):
not exert the maximum power on the court. And so
I think in that sense, in some ways, it really
reveals Robert's true roots, which are he started as a
Reagan revolutionary in the Reagan administration, one of the hardliners
trying to move the law to the right, even beyond
you know, Reagan's campaign appearances, his anti civil rights rhetoric
over two decades and more. And so Roberts now has
(39:47):
the majority he needs to construct that Reagan revolution, that
very right wing regressive movement that dates back to Barry
Goldwater and his predecessors, and to do it from the bench.
And I think that that's the legacy he wants, not
the legacy of having wide respect by the American people
as a whole, but by being the man who delivers
on those revolutionary promises.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, no, I know is the off ramp? Protests is
the off ramp? Polling is the off ramp. There is
no off ramp. What is the off ramp? Here? Is?
Does he read the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal? Like,
if you're looking at Trump as a you see that
the only way that Trump responds is to the market.
(40:30):
So if the stock market creators, Trump will start doing
things like what is the off ramp for this?
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Well, the Walls Journal ed page has already been weaponized
basically against Roberts. When he was trying to allow that
decision of the abortion restriction to proceed without overtly overturning Row,
they attacked him. It's not as though they're going to
attack him now. I think, although you know, obviously there
have been some differences that the ed page has indicated
about Trump, but the reality is that I don't think
(40:59):
that guides Roberts. I think you're right that if there
were more of a business reaction, maybe a case that
implicates those interests could go the other way. We might
see that ultimately on tariff. But on the other hand,
what we've seen is that it seems like Wall Street
has done three things. One is it has enriched itself
(41:19):
under Trump. Two, in some ways it has priced in
the chaos of the tariffs in essence by you know,
some of the ways that some of the ways that
it is envisioning the broader global economy in terms of
what's going to happen globally. And Third, it has in
my view, embraced this sort of taco meme that Trump
always chickens out when it comes to that part of
(41:41):
the agenda, that he just wants to get something, get
some praise, look like he has a win, but he's
not going to actually follow through on, for example, the ridiculous,
seemingly AI generated tariffs that he announced on the White
House lawn this spring.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
The tariff case so is a really interesting case because
it's the Supreme Court's real patrons versus Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
Yeah, I mean that that's the case where the amicus
briefs are coming in against his assertion of this tariff
power from the billionaire Charles Koch's back groups, saying, you know,
clearly the Constitution vests the tariff power with Congress and
the President can't do this unilaterly. And so it's possible
that in that particular case, ultimately on the merits, not
(42:28):
in this temporary sort of impoundment zone where they're allowing
Trump to redirect funds that Congress is appropriated that have
been signed into law by President, but that they may
in this area say no, just as the shadow docket
order today where the Roberts Court said it's not going
to allow him.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
To fire Lisa Cook.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
Yeah, fire's Cook. But they allowed him to fire you know,
member of fifty.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Right, everyone else, but Lisa Cook is my stocks right.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
So when it comes to like the the federal reserve
or perhaps maximizing terre of policy, that that's those those
are two areas where maybe the Court could be counted
on to not go along with Trump. But that is
precious little for the rest of the rest of us.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
That's a complete fucking disaster. I mean, I'm not saying
it's good, but you know, they did say we're not
going to let you fire Lisa Cook, and then they
said you can't fire Lisa Cook for now, right right?
Speaker 4 (43:24):
Well, And the other part is, you know, I think
that Roberts is so calculating that. Look, with Jerown Powell's
tenure up in May and the other vag it's pending,
Trump could get a majority and get control of that
the seven member board that really sets monetary policy for
the Fed, without the Roberts Court helping him. So I
think it's just one of these sort of log rolling
(43:45):
by some time situation and May and they may not
necessarily give him the approval the fire in that one
singular agent.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, Lisa Grave's such a disaster. Hey, you for coming on, Molly.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
I have to tell you I'm still hopeful because hope
is a choice. And if we give in or give up,
these regressive measures will continue and will worsen. But if
we don't give in, and we don't give up, we
do have a chance of building the effort to reform
this court and restore our freedoms. Thank you Aale, Thanks Molly,
thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
No more perfectly Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Really, I personally, you know, it's been my thing that
I've been very mad about democratic collecteds and what they're
doing lately. And here's gonna be my bone and a
few to break here again. The fact that we are
not raging about Mike Johnson seating Adelita Grijalva after her election.
I think that they should be throwing fits outside the
Republican Caucus every day over this.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Yeah, or why not some kind of sit in about this?
You know, like why is it not happening? I think
that's a real question.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Well, I think we know why it's not happening, which
is that Trump had best friend whose name is Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Yeah. Correct, and that, my friends, is our moment of fuckory.
Mike Johnson refusing to swear in an Arizona member of
Congress because he does not want to release the Epstein files.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
(45:26):
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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