Make America Grift Again

26:02I know. But— Yeah. Same idea, though, right? Just a downgrade. Yes, definitely a downgrade. When the New York Times visited the White House in December, Tweedledum and Tweedledummer, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, gleefully showed reporters the shoes that Trump had bought them and, quote, Vance lifted his leg in the air to show the president the pair he was wearing, end quote. quote, I cannot even imagine this scene. And Trump allegedly ordered the footwear after stopping a meeting to criticize Rubio and Vance's, quote, fucking shoes, according to Vance himself. Those who have been gifted the shoes include Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

26:53And I'm just going to say, if you have more than one nanny going with you to Epstein's Island, you can probably afford to buy yourself a pair of shoes, among others. Well, he can afford, but it's a cult, so he has to wear them. I know, clear. And this - What do we call this cult? We call this the shoonitary executive. Love it. Love it. Leah, you were on fire today. You know, I did Emma's Women's History Month rock ride this morning, which I love. And I've also been listening to Casey Musgrave's new single nonstop since early this week. And I feel like those two things really kind of revved me up.

27:30How long was the MRI? 30 minutes. So manageable. Anyways, the Maga He-Men have really been on one as of late. So in addition to this, you know, gifting of the shoes, Trump reportedly just asks these guys their shoe size and they shout something out. And now there are all of these photos on the internet of these dudes stomping around in shoes that are way too big for - So I didn't realize he asked them and they're lying about their shoe size. Yes, they lie about their shoe size. Happy Women's History Month. Again, it is all about gender. You can basically understand everything that is going on through these lens.

28:11They all have complexes about their dick size, and we are all living with the consequences of that. Oh my, I mean, wow. I genuinely did not know that. Another quick update from the Manosphere, and this does seem like a gift of pettiness along the lines of what Leah just related. So this is just in time for Women's History Month. Apparently, Florshine's parent company, the Waco Group, is among the businesses and corporations that sued the Trump administration over tariffs. And in fact, Waco is now seeking a refund from the federal government over the tariffs that it paid. Fine. Last month, when the Supreme Court invalidated the tariffs, the head of the Florsheim Company, Thomas Florsheim Jr., he's the CEO of that parent company, Waco, co-authored a piece that was published in The Contrarian, and the piece was titled, Business Leaders Welcome SCOTUS Tariffs Decision.

29:07He's also gone even further with his critique of the tariffs and his embrace of the Supreme Court's decision two weeks ago in an interview with Spectrum News, Florsheim averred that the Trump tariffs had really hurt the business. According to him, at one point, the tariffs actually exceeded the price of the shoes themselves, forcing the company to shift their production from China to India. But then India got sacked with a bunch of tariffs and they were back to square one. All of this tariffing, he says, has made business planning absolutely impossible. So with all of this in mind, you'd think that maybe Florsheim might be a little excited about the fact that his brand is at the top of POTUS's list of favorite things.

29:50But when he was asked about the president's gifting habits, Mr. Florsheim said he was unaware of the president's gifting practices, and he politely declined to comment further. As Mariah Carey said, I don't know her. This should have been the response of the men's hockey team. But... I mean... I just want to go buy some Florsheim shoes now. I know that he likes them, but like this guy is standing on business. And I appreciate it. Thomas Florsheim of the Waco. There are the occasional unexpected heroes in this timeline. And I think Florsheim may be one of them. There's no business like shoe business, he said.

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34:23That's spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com forward slash strict. Rules and restrictions may apply. Okay, a handful of additional dispatches from government of the Manosphere. God, more bleak dystopia. The FBI director, Kash Patel, has announced that UFC fighters will now be either routinely or like just as some kind of, I don't know, shtick, training FBI agents. I'm not quite sure what the full scope of it is, but really disturbing either way. This is a time. This is a place. What better occasion, Kate? I was going to say, this actually makes a lot of sense. No, but no, but yeah, but he's FBI, you know, this is like, I feel like, no, no, no.

35:05Do you think Mullen wants in on this? It's a unitary executive. Okay. I'm just saying he might want his people to get in on the UFC as well. I mean, this is Mark Wayne Mullen's moment. Like, you did not have no space between your first and middle names for nothing. Like, this is where he is going to add value. This is the first time, I think, that anyone in this cabinet may actually be trained to offer real assistance to another agency or their own agency for the purposes that they are ostensibly charged with deploying. This might be it. Jokes write themselves. All right. In more news from the Manosphere, Senator John Cornyn has apparently abandoned his longtime support for the legislative filibuster in order to grovel before Trump to get his endorsement in the Republican primary runoff that he is now facing against Ken Paxton.

35:54The two went to a runoff when Cornyn, who is the incumbent, was challenged and failed to clear the threshold in the primary and now says he supports abandoning the filibuster in order to pass the Save America slash Save Act, which just as a reminder is a series of voting requirements, including voter ID requirements and voting restrictions, including one that requires all registering voters to provide proof of citizenship that contains their current name. And a lot of people have observed that this requirement may serve to and may even be an effort to disenfranchise the millions of women who either don't hold a passport or don't have a birth certificate that reflects their married name.

36:33And obviously, because it would likely disenfranchise millions of people, the president is super into it, meaning that John Cornyn is apparently now super into it as well. You would think that running against someone whose corruption is so extreme it actually generated an impeachment in Texas, like against an impeached perfidious adulterer whose wife has sought a divorce on biblical grounds, would be enough to secure an electoral victory. But here we are. Here we are. More news flashes from the Manosphere. Last week, the Pentagon barred press photographers because they had released, quote-unquote, unflattering photos of Pete Hegseth.

37:16The most surprising aspect of this story is that not all photographers were actually barred. Yes, you can laugh there. In other news, the Department of Defense has refused to provide escorts for ships that are operating in the Strait of Hormuz because the DOD says that the area is, quote-unquote, too dangerous. which is weird because the president of the United States recently had this to say about conditions in the street. Take a listen. Are you talking to the CEOs of various oil companies encouraging them to use a straighter corporate right now? Yeah, I think they should. I think they should.

37:50I think they should use it. In my opinion, look, we took out just about all of their mine ships in one night. We're up to boat number 60. I didn't realize they had that big a navy. I would say it was big and ineffective. But every one of their ships, just about all of their navy is gone. It's bottom of the sea. Mr. President, how do you hope you're impressed? Mr. President, how do you lay any minds in the straight-up arm moves? We don't think so. So very, very unitary. Love it. Really is a theme this week. Okay, so maybe last piece of big news from— Oh, no. It's not the last. Don't overpromise.

38:30The Manosphere is the gift that keeps on giving. It's women's history month. They went all out. They sure did. It's not even half over yet either. Okay, fine. Not the last, but in some ways, the most insane piece of Manosphere news this week. Nope, not even Kate. Let me just tell you what I'm going to say. We got a series of Doge Bro depositions this week. These came as part of one of the cases, one of the many cases challenging Doge's destruction of various aspects of and divisions of the federal government. And I just have to say, if you're interested in going beyond sort of ambient levels of rage to full-on incandescent rage, you should watch some of the videos of these clueless man-children who spent part of the last year destroying much of the American government in ways that we will probably feel for the rest of our lives.

39:15So we're just going to bring you a couple of highlights slash lowlights. Let's start with this clip from a case involving the National Endowment for the Humanities. These moments from one of the depots also speak to just how unitary our executive is, which is to say not so unitary at all. Do you have an understanding about who is creating the directives and the priorities for your team to address? Elon had made it clear that there was a number of small agencies that needed Doge leads. So him. Okay. Your understanding is that Elon Musk kind of created the idea for the work that your team was engaged in?

40:04Based on the executive order. Right. Okay. This is a sample of Nathan Kavanaugh's, and this is with a C, so no relation, except spiritually, to SCOTUS pro Brett deposition. You don't regret that people might have lost important income to support their lives? No. I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from$2 trillion to close to zero. Did you reduce the federal deficit? No, we didn't. So we've talked about boy math. There definitely seems to be some of that here. But also, is this boy-rocracy? Like, these guys are all the things they accuse bureaucrats of being incompetent, clueless, out to lunch, dumb.

40:47I mean, these guys basically went into the Iran war with a fuck around and find out approach. Like, oh, the Strait of Hormuz, mines, the global oil market. Oh, yeesh, never thought of that one. Honestly, a part of me wonders if like they're going to get like homophobic with the Strait of Hormuz and start calling it like the gay of Hormuz or something. Like this is the insane levels of their approach to government. And it is just the overconfidence of mediocre white men as a model for government. Like, this is government of the manosphere. But more Doge Bro depositions. Here is a mashup slash mixtape, 404 Media made, of Doge Bro Justin Fox explaining what DEI is.

41:32How do you interpret DEI?

41:44There was the EEO explicitly laid out. The details, I don't remember it off the top of my head. It's okay. I'm asking for your understanding of it. Yeah, my understanding was exactly what was written in the EEO. Okay, so can you... I don't remember what was in the EEO. So right now, do you have an understanding of what DEI is? Yeah. Okay, so what's your understanding as you sit here today in this deposition?

42:08Well, it was exactly what was written in the EEO. And so any time that we would look at a grant through the lens of complying with an executive order, we would just refer back to the EEO and assess if this grant had relation to it. Okay. But I guess stepping back from your methodology strictly in terminating the grants, do you have an understanding as you sit here today of what DEI means? Yeah. Okay. So what's your understanding of what it means? Well, it is exactly what was written in the EO. Okay, so. And I don't have the EO in front of me, but we would always reference back to the EO and make sure that this grant was in compliance with the EO.

42:51I understand that. Okay, but I'm not asking necessarily about what was in the EO. I'm asking very specifically about your present understanding of DEI. Do you have a present understanding of DEI? Okay. Can you explain what that present understanding is? Well, it is just easier for me to be referencing back to the EO. Obviously, he was wrong, and he needs to listen to this podcast because he would know that DEI means dicks, ex-husbands, imbeciles, incels, idiots, or some combination thereof. As the New York Times reported, the Doge Bros used ChatGPT to scan contracts for DEI. And one of the prompts that they used was, quote, from the perspective of someone looking to identify DEI grants, does this involve DEI?

43:41Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with yes or no, followed by a brief explanation, end quote. Literally, this is the chat GPT version of the guy with the butterfly name. So the Doge staffer in this mashup was apparently convinced, among other things, that a project about a woman's experience during the Holocaust was an example of forbidden DEI content. And I will just say that again. A movie about women during the Holocaust was, quote, DEI, and so the grant had to be canceled because women are illegally woke, especially in the month of March, I guess. Yeah, as is the Holocaust.

44:20So the entire Doge thing is really, to me, the same vibe as having Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, like mediocre at best. But these depositions are, on a happier note, a testament to something litigation can do, even if that litigation doesn't result in a judgment that completely stops or fixes all of the harms. The American Historical Association, one of the plaintiffs in this particular case, made these depositions publicly available on YouTube for all to see these dogebros asses hanging out, like future employers of America, please bookmark these videos. And again, people - I mean, can we stop and just say, there's one thing a historian group is going to do, and that's make a fucking archive.

45:05Yes, and I am so glad, so glad they did. After we finished recording, a judge ordered the videos be taken down from the internet because we can't have nice things. But this is the internet, so they're still available. Back to our regular episode. Speaking of body parts hanging out, We do have more on the manosphere, this time from the judicial branch of the manosphere. So Judge Lawrence Van Dyke of the Ninth Circuit, the homosexual who made a video dissent in a gun case, that video dissent showed the judge assembling a gun. Check it out if you haven't. But not to be outdone by his own video dissent, Judge Van Dyke authored a dissent that began, and I quote, this is a case about swinging dicks.

45:54girl i'm just glad that he did not videotape because restraint because restraint um because he really could have he confined himself to the written word here and yes i guess small blessings it's a traditional dissent i mean the content isn't traditional but it isn't a traditional dissent which i appreciate i really want to know why these guys are so obsessed with genitalia okay i think you know right i guess we did touch on that earlier but the case in which this dissent appeared involved a sex discrimination challenge to a nude spa that would not admit a pre-operative trans woman or women. And the Ninth Circuit concluded the business likely was in violation of various non-discrimination ordinances.

46:33And Judge Van Dyke really whipped it all out in response. So after that opening sentence, the following lines also appeared in his dissent. Quote, you may think that swinging dicks shouldn't appear in a judicial opinion. You're not wrong. But as much as you might understandably be shocked and displeased to merely encounter that phrase in this opinion, I hope we can all agree that it is far more jarring for the unsuspecting and exposed women to be visually assaulted by the real thing. Sometimes it feels like these supposed adults in the room have collectively lost their minds. Woke regulators and complicit judges seem entirely willing, even eager, to ignore the consequences that their Frankenstein social experiments impose on real women and young girls.

47:17All right. This is where the courts and the executive are intersecting, because this is the language of all of those Trump administration EOs. I will also note that Judge Van Dyke, in his dissent, notes that the owners of the spa that won't admit the pre-op trans person are Christians. So this is also the intersection of the whole First Amendment with substantive due process and anti-discrimination, all of the things. Because the judge is such a gentleman, he did take a beat to respond to his colleagues who thought his dissent was maybe just a little too edgelordy for Article 3. And here's what he had to say.

47:56Quote, my distressed colleagues appear to have the fastidious sensibilities of a Victorian nun when it comes to mere unpleasant words, in my opinion. End quote. He also continues, quote, the fact that so many on our court want to pretend that this case is about anything other than swinging dicks is the very reason the shocking language is necessary. The panel majority uses slick legal arguments and deflection to studiously avoid eye contact with the actual and horrific consequences of its erroneous opinion. All right. Well, that was a truly shocking piece of judicial writing. And I guess we have the Victorian sensibilities of the majority of the Ninth Circuit, according to Judge Van Dyke.

48:35And I think even Trump, I think, doesn't want this. I don't know exactly who he's speaking to with this kind of opinion. I imagine the guy in the Oval Office. But I don't think anyone wants to read this, quite honestly. I don't know. I think the whole, like, he says what he means. He's plain spoken. That's the kind of lane this occupies. And if you're auditioning to be America's next top justice, maybe this is where it's at. I mean, he has a true portfolio now. He has visual media. He has written media. It's like Elle Woods' application to Harvard Law School. Yes. Literally in the attention age, this is how you get on the Supreme Court.

49:12It's possibly right. He just needs a podcast now. God, is that dispiriting. Oh, Melissa, don't call that into being. Well, I've smart you. If there is going to be a first sitting federal judge to launch a podcast, it's probably not. Do not count out Jim Ho. I think that's probably right. Yeah, it's true. You heard it here first. Let's delve in a little further on the issue of ethics and governance in the executive branch. And we'll do this before we turn squarely to the Supreme Court. Listeners, our favorite attorney general, one Pamela Jo Bondi, has decided that there is a problem with DOJ and ethics.

49:48True. Specifically, though, she believes the problem is that DOJ lawyers might be too ethical and too hemmed in by those pesky state bar associations that police ethical standards for the profession. Pamela Jo, you were almost there. So close. You were so close. So close. Right. Right. So what Melissa is alluding to is the fact that DOJ is trying to exert more control over state bar ethics probes that can result in disciplinary actions against federal government lawyers. State bars can actually be pretty important accountability institutions. People might recall that state bars had some success in meeting out some professional sanctions against lawyers who had assisted in trying to undermine or overturn the 2020 election.

50:29And so, of course, as accountability institutions, Bondi wants to go after state bar associations. DOJ proposed a new regulation that would let it let DOJ intervene in state bar disciplinary investigations, including with the authority to review allegations against DOJ lawyers first and essentially divest those bar associations of jurisdiction over those matters while DOJ is like running its own investigation, which I'm sure will be a very serious one. It's pretty obvious that this is a recipe for DOJ obstruction of any state bar investigations of current or former, because I think the regulation or at least the proposal extends to former DOJ lawyers.

51:06So I think the one silver lining here is I feel like it does actually sound like people over there are like a little bit nervous about bar associations now or in the future going after Justice Department lawyers who engage in unethical conduct. And, you know, I take some small joy in that fact. Okay, so it takes small joy in that, but I mean, federalism just took a seat on the couch and would like a word, like what the fuck? Pamela Jo Bondi butterfly mean. Is this federalism? But, you know. But do you think this is a result of the D.C. Bar Association refusing to make her brother the president?

51:38Because remember, a lot of lawyers came together. Precipitating reasons for this proposed regulation. You know, among others, Deputy AG Todd Blanche and former DOJ official and now judge Emile Beauvais, Dark Lord of the Third Circuit, have faced ethics complaints in state bar organizations? Hmm. Also to be added to this list of individuals facing state bar association complaints is our favorite friend of the pod, former USA Dick Ed Martin. There is a complaint that actually stems from his time as the acting USA Dick. The bar complaint says that Martin engaged in misconduct when he sought to punish Georgetown University Law Center for things related to DEI.

52:20This is the non-Dicks, ex-husbands, and imbeciles version of DEI. But obviously, Ed Martin was engaged in the new form of DEI when he was trying to punish Georgetown University Law Center for engaging in DEI, I guess. The complaint from the Bar Association accuses Martin of conducting unauthorized ex-parte communications with a judge, among other things. Hmm. Let's take one more beat on ethics, the DOJ and House Bondi. I know we just mentioned the fact that Pam Bondi's brother once ran to be the president of the D.C. Bar Association. Well, guess what? He didn't win, but he's still in the news.

53:02We could have added this to the grifting segment, but it might as well be put here as well. Last week, two Democratic lawmakers, Senator Adam Schiff and Representative Dave Minn, a former law professor, asked the U.S. Department of Justice's watchdog to review whether U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has properly recused herself from cases that involve clients of her brother, Brad Bondi, who is a partner of Paul Hastings. So in their letter, Schiff and Min said that in January, brother Bondi posted on LinkedIn several victories he and his team won in 2025, including one on behalf of Nikola founder Trevor Milton, who was convicted of fraud in 2022 and then pardoned by President Donald Trump last year.

53:41Other defendants Bondi represented had their criminal cases delayed unnecessarily or dropped. The letter then said, quote, given the troubling pattern at the Department of Repeated Interventions or Dismissals in cases involving Brother Bondi, although they called him Mr. Bondi, we are concerned that DOJ officials, including the attorney general, may have failed to ensure the independence of internal accountability mechanisms. Hmm. So there are lots of things that could potentially have triggered this decision to change the rules surrounding state bar associations, like maybe many of the above.

54:13But I will also just say that the conservative legal movement has actually been gunning for state bar associations and kind of accountability for federal government lawyers since the Reagan administration. Deborah Pearlstein has a forthcoming book that actually goes through the history of this. It's fascinating. I mean, she had an op-ed in the Times this week about this latest regulation. And so it's maybe these things like spur them to actually do it now, but like the roots are quite building. Totally. All right, should we move on to SCOTUS? Why not? So folks, at a public event last Monday in D.C., Justices Jackson and Kavanaugh had an exchange about the court's shadow docket.

54:50The exchange was teed up when the moderator of the event, a federal judge, asked the justices about our friend, Professor Steve Laddick's fantastic book, The Shadow Docket. And KBJ had some things to say about the shadow docket. So she suggested that the emergency filing numbers would decrease if the court didn't grant as many of the emergency applications that were filed. Does seem like sort of a supply and demand, you know, concept here. She also generally said, quote, it's not, that is the shadow docket is not, quote, serving the court or this country well. And she referred to the court's involvement as a, quote, real unfortunate problem that reflected, quote, a warped kind of proceeding.

55:32Now, this is not breaking news if you have read her dissents in many of the court's shadow docket grants, but it is still striking to hear her speaking in a different register, like in a public forum as opposed to in her written opinions, and making clear just how serious a problem she thinks this is. Yeah, and Brett, for his part, intellectually outmatched, obviously, attempted to both sides the issue. He noted that the court also granted some requests on the shadow docket that were brought by the Biden administration. This happened at a remarkably lower rate and where lower court rulings were truly unhinged, like barring the federal government from having any communications with social media companies.

56:09But no matter, he also, as ever, made the court out to be the victims here, saying, quote, none of us enjoy this. And by this, he obviously meant following precedent, normal judicial process, and the rule of law. Boo-hoo, Bwet, it's so hard on you, I'm sure. All right, let me switch gears. We never get to do anything related to SCOTUS that we actually like, but there is actually some positive news. It has been reported that the federal judiciary approved the creation of a new Supreme Court Defender Office to help with the representation of indigent defendants. The idea seems to be that the office will serve as a counterweight to the U.S.

56:49Lister General in federal criminal cases, and that it is an effort to close the quote-unquote advocacy gap between federal prosecutors and criminal defendants who appear before the court. It is a dedicated office that will aim to offer a comprehensive global view on criminal defense and a ready-made set of resources accessible to criminal defense lawyers. Obviously, we are excited about this development. We'll see how it plays out and as the details get worked out. But we just want to commend all of the individuals who worked so hard to make this happen and to say, plus one, we are on board too.

57:22So let's briefly turn to argument recaps. We wanted to just note the other arguments the court heard the same week that it went wild on guns and drugs in United States versus Himani. We covered Himani in depth at our West Coast live shows. Yeah, we literally went all the way to the bottom of the NBN jar in those live shows. We did, which meant we didn't have a chance to really talk about at all about the other two oral arguments. So we're going to briefly cover them now. OK, the first oral argument was in Hunter versus United States. And in that case, the court is considering the scope of appellate waivers.

57:52Appellate waivers concern the rights that defendants give up when they sign a plea agreement waiving their right to appeal. And in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport, the court is considering whether federal law precludes state common lawsuits against a broker who allegedly negligently selected a motor carrier. The argument in Hunter was just wild. If you ever listen to oral arguments, I would definitely recommend listening to this one. And part of why we at least wanted to mention this one is the case was argued by one Lisa Blatt, which meant we were again treated to the Lisa Blatt show of interrupting justices and talking to them like they're real people.

58:30And she was really on another level in this one. And honestly, the federal government lawyer was too. But here is an exchange that was in a slightly different register that also kind of made my skin crawl. So naturally had to share it. I like that. I mean, yeah, that sounds good. I hadn't heard that one. But yeah, but I just think in terms of just— Four circuits. That's the Four Circuits standard. I'm just trying to get Justice Alito's vote. And what I'm trying to say to Justice Alito is I care about the rest of you, too. But thank you very much. Very, very few advocates have that. I'll just stop that.

59:06Goal. Oh, yeah, I didn't. Yeah. He seemed to really like he really did. that. But then there was another moment also in Blatt's argument that showed a different side of Justice Alito. And this was him taking apparently offense to something Justice Sotomayor had said about his previous colloquy with Blatt and Alito using that to kind of have what I read as a minor temper tantrum about how wronged he is by the current questioning format, which, you know, means that a lot of people get to go after him and he doesn't get to have the last word. So let's play that clip here. Justice Alito? Well, let me begin with Justice Sotomayor's rebuttal of what she took me to be asking about regarding constitutional rights.

59:54Now, she will have the right to say rebuttal, which I won't have a chance to answer under this questioning regime that we have now. Apparently, seniority doesn't have its purple chest. I love it. He is, as always, a messy bitch from New Jersey who leans into the drama. He's so rude. He is. Like, I get to go too early in the order, and so I don't get to come. Then so do my oranges get to say whatever she wants about me. Okay, justice for New Jersey. Jesus. I get the last word. I get the last word. I mean, come on. This is like the Real Housewives series where they flip tables. I love Jersey. I love the Jersey Shore.

1:00:29Oh, my God. Is he the Teresa Giudice of the court? You can hear him slapping the tables. You know he's trying to flip the lectern. I think it's bolted to the floor. So it probably won't work there. He'll probably have a grievance about that too. Probably. This is reminding me of that flight to, and I was going to a National Constitution Center conference and Melissa and Joe Gorga were on the flight. Also on the flight was Robbie George from Princeton, and surprisingly, they didn't know each other. But I knew both of them. Well, I know Robbie George is, but I have no idea who the Gorges are. You can tame multitudes.

1:01:05But we will. You'd be in the Robbie George camp for this one. I don't think he knew he was up there with the Gorges. The two of us share so much. Okay, so moving on. Let's briefly cover the opinions we got from the court last week. First up is Gillette v. New Jersey Transit Corporation, in which the court unanimously held that the New Jersey Transit Corp is not an arm of the state for interstate sovereign immunity purposes. Sovereign immunity is protection from lawsuits, basically, which states enjoy. The New Jersey Transit Corp was created by the state of New Jersey, but it's structured as a legally separate entity from the state and from the New Jersey Department of Transportation.

1:01:40And it has the traditional powers to sue and be sued and hold property and make contracts and incur debt. And all of that meant, the court concluded, that the Transit Corp was not an arm of the state or part of the state, which would entitle it to sovereign immunity, so that two individuals who had been struck by New Jersey transit buses, one in New York, one in Pennsylvania, these were two separate cases that came up to the court together, but this finding meant that they could sue the Transit Corporation in their respective state courts for their injuries. We also got an opinion in Urias-Oralana v.

1:02:13Bondi, where the court unanimously decided that when federal courts of appeals are reviewing a Board of Immigration Appeals determination that an asylum seeker didn't experience persecution based on a set of facts that are undisputed, the courts are to review the BIA's determination under what is known as the Substantial Evidence Standard. That's a very deferential standard, which means that most asylum seekers will likely lose. But importantly, the court's opinion, which was written by Justice Jackson, did not extinguish the prospect of federal court review entirely. As she explained, the courts can set aside a BIA determination that an asylum seeker didn't experience past persecution or doesn't have a well-founded fear of future persecution if the finding isn't supported by substantial evidence.

1:02:57So last beat on the Supreme Court, the latest NBC News poll suggests that the percentage of voters with, quote, significant levels of confidence in the Supreme Court has dropped to its lowest point since NBC began polling on the issue in the year 2000. So 22 % of voters said they had a great deal or quite a bit of confidence. 40 % had some. 38 % had very little or no confidence. It's working people continue sending strict scrutiny to friends and family challenge continues. So that's the legal news for the last week. And now you'll get to enjoy another part of the Bad Decisions Tour, West Coast version, And that's our interview with Representative Jimmy Gomez of California.

1:03:44Well, hello there, Los Angeles.

1:03:50Thank you so much for being here, Representative Gomez. You are the perfect person to kick off this show because you are literally in the thick of things. You're here on the ground in L.A., which has been the site of a lot of, shall we say, unconstitutional things over the course of the last couple of months. and you also sit on numerous House committees in D.C. So you, sir, have all of the tea and it's time to start spilling it. So we're actually going to start by asking... Most of it. Most of it? All right. Spill what you can. Yeah, the stuff I won't get arrested for, I will definitely spill.

1:04:23Okay. You figure out where those boundaries are. Yeah, yeah. This is a legal podcast, so... Okay, so, and actually, that's a good segue to the first topic we wanted to ask you about because you are part of ongoing litigation to ensure that Congress can exercise its oversight responsibilities, which are secured by statute, and they include visiting detention centers without advance notice. And, you know, that's actually an issue that's close to home for us. Your colleague, Representative LaMonica McIver, who's a friend of the pod, is actually being criminally prosecuted for daring to engage in exactly the kind of oversight that the statute protects.

1:04:57So last week, we had a development, which is that a district court blocked the administration's latest effort to obstruct members of Congress from accessing federal immigration facilities. Can you talk to us a bit about that litigation? Yeah, that came about when, first, during the first Trump administration, we inserted language into an appropriations bill that said that no money could be used to block members of Congress from doing surprise inspections of any facility that held immigrants or undocumented or people that were accused of being in the country illegally. And we put that language in.

1:05:35We were being able to go and do spot inspections. Because if you give them notice, they'll clean everything up. There won't be anybody there. So when we started doing this, when the raid started here in June, the first thing I did the day after I got off the plane from D.C., I went to the detention center to do a spot inspection and they, they denied my, uh, ability to enter. And what we found out later is what they do very often is they lie. And when, and they said, shocked, shocked, shocked. And they, and they said that I wasn't allowed in or other members of Congress because there was a thousand protesters outside.

1:06:16There was no one outside except attorneys and the press. So we saw this, so we got together, and I was looking at suing myself for the fact that they're denying members of Congress access. And the thing was, they denied people from all over the country. We ended up getting 12 members to sue with Jonah Goose, myself, Norma Torres, and we won the, it took months, but we won the first temporary injunction. What ended up happening, they allowed us to get in, and then they said, well, it doesn't apply any longer because the one big beautiful bill, the$175 billion slush fund, didn't go through the normal appropriations process.

1:06:57Therefore, it doesn't apply. So then they even tried to say it didn't apply to downtown LA, what they call B18, because that is a field office and not a detention center. So they were just making shit up every single step of the way. And then we finally had, we finally got to the point just last week where we won another injunct temporary relief. And then that was, it only applied to the 13 members of Congress, but then they just expanded it to the entire 435. So we can stop and.

1:07:36And during the summer, one member said, oh, I'm going to get us an appointment. and do you want to come? I said, they're just going to clean it up. So what we, we, they moved it back seven days, then they moved it back another seven days. So we finally got in after, after, um, two weeks, that facility can hold up to 244 individuals in nine different, uh, cells. So can, can we actually talk a little bit about what you've seen in the visits to the detention centers? Because, you know, last week we got news that another detainee, Emmanuel DeMoss, died in ICE custody because of an untreated tooth infection.

1:08:13And earlier today, the Associated Press and Mother Jones reported that staff at the largest ICE detention facility, Camp East Montana, are apparently taking bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide. So can you talk about what you saw in your conversations with people who have loved ones who have been detained or who themselves have been detained? Well, so that visit I was just mentioning, we show up, we finally get inside. No one was inside except two people. It can hold up to 244. And it smelled like they used bleach to clean every part of the detention facility. So that's why we have to do these spot inspections because we know they're cleaning it up.

1:08:59We found out they diverted anybody that would normally go into that facility to Orange County and to Santa Ana. So what we're looking for, do they have proper medical treatment? Is it overcrowded? Do they have access to attorneys? Do they have proper food? That's what we're looking for. And what we've learned, there's been more deaths in detention centers in 2025 than the past 10 years combined. So we look for people that were picked up and detained to see if they're not getting forced to sign what they call expedited removal orders. So the, and one woman just recently, when I went back to see, she got arrested the day before she was eight months pregnant, couldn't find her using this, something called the aid number.

1:09:45Next day, people were like, well, she called and told her, her boyfriend or her husband, she was arrested by ICE. The next day we find out she was already in a different country. Like never, never included. They never, and when I went and asked for her, they said she wasn't there. So they like they I think they're also hiding what they're doing with people. Well, let's back up a few steps before we even get to the detentions. Like there are all of these immigration stops have been happening here in Los Angeles. And I'd like to talk with you about a case that we've covered on the podcast, Nome versus Vasquez Perdomo.

1:10:23And the case is named for Crispy Noem. More on her in a little bit. But again, it's about immigration stops here in Los Angeles. And a federal district court issued an order that blocked ICE from making immigration stops that were based on the individual's apparent race, ethnicity, language spoken, as well as a number of other traits. But then the United States Supreme Court on the shadow docket stayed the district court's order, which then freed ICE to do exactly the kind of racial profiling that the district court had said was impermissible. And because this was the shadow docket, the court didn't explain itself, as is so often the case on the shadow docket.

1:11:03But Justice Kavanaugh did write separately to offer a pretty magical thinking account of what the immigration stops at issue really looked like. So on his telling, these stops are short, they are respectful, They end, I know, they end whenever the officers realize that an individual they are targeting is a citizen or is lawfully present. So that is the Kavanaugh account of what these stops look like. And I have a feeling, Congressman, that that doesn't align with what you have heard from constituents about what folks are actually experiencing on the ground at the hands of ICE. So can you talk about that?

1:11:40Yeah, what we've seen, right after these raids started, I pointed out that they were targeting people just based on their ethnicity, the jobs that they were doing, and if they had an accent or not. And this is, we just see it. There's 500 ,000 people who are undocumented of European and Canadian descent. You think they're on the west side pulling people over? Fuck no, right? They're not pulling, like, they're not doing, like, sorry. You guys can beep it out, right? Oh, no. We swear gratuitously. We're keeping it in. We're keeping it in. But here's the thing. So I said that on cable. Fox News made a big deal out of it.

1:12:21But you just see it over and over and over again. It is obvious what they were doing. I don't know MS-13 gang members being day laborers at a Home Depot, right? Or working on the back of a kitchen at some restaurant. So they are deliberately targeting people because if you look like me, you look like anybody of Latino descent, you're guilty. And that's what they basically allowed to be legal in this country. And the district court found exactly as you're describing. And the Supreme Court just basically sashayed in and said, like, no, we disagree. And then Kavanaugh had the kind of gumption to write separate.

1:13:00Caucasity. The caucasity. I guess that's what you call it. Mighty white of him. Mighty white of him. To write separately, to essentially excuse it. And, you know, there was many, many things wrong with that separate concurrence. But one of the many was the sentence that I'm going to read right now, which he says, the interest of individuals who are illegally in the country in avoiding being stopped by law enforcement is ultimately an interest in evading the law. That is not an especially weighty legal interest. So not only is there the obvious targeting of a subset of a potentially undocumented population based on things like race, ethnicity, language spoken, job worked.

1:13:40It is also the case, even if there are obviously some undocumented individuals, there are many, many individuals who identify as Latino or Hispanic, millions in the Los Angeles area, who are also subject to the targeting that Kavanaugh just blessed and that I think has set in motion much of what we have seen in the last year in Los Angeles and across the country. I think of my mom. My mom's been in this country for 40-plus years. She became a citizen after Pete Wilson was threatening to take away people's benefits, Social Security. He was going after undocumented and people who were of Latino descent.

1:14:18And I was worried about her getting pulled over because she doesn't speak. Her English is pretty broken up. She has an accent. and she doesn't carry her passport on her or an ID that says, oh, I'm a US citizen. So she could be arrested. And then when she was in Mexico for a number of months, we thought about sending one of us down there to escort her back because she would be targeted just because of who she is. And that's a reality and that's what people live in fear in every single day in Los Angeles and across the country. Kids all of a sudden are not going to school. All of a sudden, people who are diagnosed with certain diseases are not going to get those treatments.

1:15:04Somebody told me that one of their patients needed to get dialysis and stop showing up. Like, you have to have functioning kidneys to be able to live. But that is happening every single day because of the fear that this administration has caused through every single neighborhood that I represent. And not just the administration, but that the Supreme Court has permitted. Brett Kavanaugh owns kind of everything that you just listed.

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1:19:21If you love Positive America and want more of my political analysis, you should subscribe to my newsletter, The Message Box. I'm Dan Pfeiffer, former senior advisor to Barack Obama. And in Message Box, I break down what's actually happening in politics and what it's going to take to beat Donald Trump in MAGA. If you follow every poll and every twist and turn in the campaign, message boxes for you. This isn't just hot takes. Every edition delivers clear analysis, behind-the-scenes insight, and practical strategy you can actually use whether you're working on a race, organizing your community, or just trying to win the argument in your group chat.

1:19:50So if you're listening to this, hit pause, go to your browser, and head to crooked.com slash yeswedan because I have a special offer for Crooked Media fans. You'll get 20 % off a message box for an entire year. So go to crooked.com slash yeswedan.

1:20:10So let's shift gears a little bit. You are on the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. We are obviously living through a wildly irresponsible, reckless, catastrophic attack slash strike slash regime change against Iran. And as ever, it feels like there's a disconnect between what Trump and those surrounding him are saying and what reality actually is. On one hand, nuclear facilities were destroyed last summer. On the other hand, they were on the cusp of a nuclear weapon. So how does all of the noise surrounding what the administration is doing speak to the wisdom and sanity or lack thereof of what the administration is doing vis-a-vis Iran?

1:20:55This administration has no respect for the law, for Congress, for facts. And what they will do is they'll try to develop a fact pattern to justify any course of action. So when it came to investigating these facilities, oh, too many people protest. Oh, it's not a detention center. It doesn't apply. So they just developed these facts. When it comes to Iran, same thing. They are lying. that I have not heard anything that supports their views. And even if you look at the public record, it's all there. Tulsi Gabbard, who she's crazy as they come, and should never be trusted, but she spoke in front of Congress and said that Iran, last spring she said Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.

1:21:52Trump on the plane, a reporter asks him, and he goes, Tulsi doesn't know what she's talking about. That's why he made her director of national intelligence. Great role for someone who doesn't know what she's talking about. Exactly. And then they do Operation Midnight Hammer when they drop the bomb on Ferdow. Then he said, oh, it was beautiful. It was great. All of a sudden we obliterated their program. And there was public reporting that it only set back that program by a few months. And that person got fired. right they asked them to actually go back and uh look at that intelligence again and then the person came back with the same intelligence and got fired um and then other people got fired because they were going against the public the the narrative that trump put out so same thing is happening now what like how many uh different rationale has he given one it was oh to help the protesters.

1:22:49Two, to stop the ballistic missile program, but that doesn't, the Department of Defense says that's not going to be operational to actually get a missile to the United States until 2035. Three, a nuclear program that was supposed to be obliterated last summer, they're only weeks away, but all intelligence says that they've actually, they have, they're not actively pursuing, right? That is in the public sphere, that intelligence. And Trump is just using it as an excuse. Then you have Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, well, we had an attack because if Israel attacked Iran, then Iran might attack our facilities.

1:23:32So they're trying to find a legal rationale to support their actions, but their actions are illegal. This sounds like originalism. Huh? This sounds like originalism. Exactly. they're strict constitutionalists or constructionists no they're like everything they're doing they engage in a war of choice and they're trying to disguise it as a war of necessity and when all the facts come out the people who either voted no on the war powers resolution or are like justifying these actions it's going to come back to bite them in the ass and I hope that we hold them accountable for lying to the American public

1:24:17so representative gomez um you've mentioned so far um marco rubio tulsi gabbard president trump we've mentioned brett kavanaugh all of these are guaranteed buzz kills so let's shift the vibes a little bit um you are like brett kavanaugh a father in fact you are the founder of the congressional dads caucus so what is the congressional dads caucus doing right now to help all of us raise the nation's children and make this a safer more productive environment for them yeah well uh the congressional dads caucus we're up to um 50 members now uh they're only democrats uh democrats and republicans so weird yeah so So, and what we're doing, we're trying to put forward an agenda that works for working families.

1:25:12And also lead the Democratic caucus in a direction that kind of boxes the caucus in. So when we take the majority, that these issues remain at the top of the legislative agenda. So on March 17th, we're hosting the first ever national summit on the caregiving crisis. And we're doing that in order to highlight the needs of people that are taking care of newborn babies and kids, but also the sandwich generation that's also taking care of their elderly parents. And how there's not enough support and what does it do to the family? What does it do to our economy? family. An average family pays 26 % of their income towards childcare.

1:25:59And then you add in housing, that's another 30%. And we had a national summit on the housing affordability crisis in September. So what we're doing is we're trying to build this support and box people in. And then at the same time, getting dads that are members of Congress to say, dads have a responsibility to take care of our kids, not only at home, but also in the halls of Congress. Yes, yes, all of those things.

1:26:29Yeah, it is, I think, in terms of a hopeful note to end on, kind of recasting caregiving as an issue that dads need to have some ownership in is so important. So thank you for that work and for leaving us with a bright spot of hope, especially the kind of embedded premise that is that when the Democrats take the majority, we want to have the agenda ready to go on day one, and it sounds like you are hard at work at that. So thank you so much. Thank you. All right, Representative Gomez, it was great to have you. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. That was a fun conversation, and it reminds me of something to share before we get to our favorite things.

1:27:06So people are probably aware of this, but I'll remind you in case you're not, we are less than nine months away from the midterms, and there is a lot of work that you can do right now. November, we'll decide control of Congress, and also tell us whether Trump is going to maintain his Republican trifecta. And our friends at Vote Save America are here to help if you are eager to get started doing your part now. They will give you tips. Which you should be. Which you should be. They will give you tips on how and when and where to donate to make sure your money goes the furthest, how to confidently talk to people in your life about midterms and key issues, and opportunities to take action with your community in real life.

1:27:38I'm already hosting a fundraiser for a state race this upcoming weekend. So yes, people need to start doing things now. Yeah, it's like nine months is not that long. It's go time, bitches. Yeah, it is. Okay, so go to votesaveamerica.com. You can sign up to be part of the work this year and then send the sign-up link to five friends. This is paid for by Vote Save America. Learn more at votesaveamerica.com. This ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Now on to our favorite things, which is authorized by a candidate in the candidate's committee, namely the president and Florsheim shoes.

1:28:10JK. Just kidding. No, not actually. One of my favorite things is people doing work for the midterms starting now and signing up for votesaveamerica.com. Also, as I mentioned earlier, Kacey Musgraves has a new single, Dry Spell, a new album that will come out in May. I'm obsessed with the single. It calls to mind earlier work in Golden Hour, and it's just great, very catchy. Judge Young, a Reagan appointee, had a fantastic district court opinion on a stay issue, denying a stay of the remedies he had ordered in response to the federal government's illegal targeting of students and non-citizens based on pro-Palestinian speech.

1:28:47And the opinion wrote, quote, now that it suits their interests, it is ironic to hear the public officials wail that they are but bit players in a fractured government claiming that the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service is somehow not before the court and unrepresented here. As this court recognizes, the entire theory of this administration is that of a unitary executive with no agency independence where every single employee within the article to executive dances to the tune of the president, end quote. Receipts. Exactly. Love it. Favorite thing. There's also a forthcoming law review article I recently read and really enjoyed.

1:29:22It is by Genevieve Lakeer and Sonia Starr, forthcoming in the Texas Law Review, called The War on DEI as a Project of Constitutional Subversion. So would definitely recommend that as well. Awesome. I wonder, Melissa, we should, I guess it's too late to add any citations, But it sounds like there might be some kind of connections between we are sort of arguing that at least the gender-related executive orders are part of this kind of constitutional reimagining that the administration is pursuing. So that's what we argue in this forthcoming Supreme Court review piece. So I'll have to check that one out.

1:29:54I am going to totally shift gears and recommend a little bit of fiction. So I just read The Correspondent, which my book club discussed. And I actually liked it kind of a lot, but it was extremely divisive in my book club. and that actually makes for a good book club book because we really debated it. And so I recommend it if you're looking for a book club book. I also just started the Hail Mary Project, which my 11-year-old read and, or actually he and my husband listened to like back and forth to travel basketball like over many weekends. And I thought it was YA, but it's more kind of sci-fi.

1:30:24I don't know if it's technically YA, but it's incredibly fun. And there is a big movie based on the book coming out later this month with Ryan Gosling, who plays this, well, the scientist, middle school teacher, the kind of protagonist. Anyway, it's incredibly riveting. Finally, I think I've previously recommended the novel Vladimir, which I loved and is now a Netflix show that I started watching and have been enjoying. But if you haven't read the book, really read the book, maybe before you watch the series and then do that too. That's it. I also wanted to plus one Vladimir. Kate has been literally pouring this book into my ear for months, but I still haven't read it.

1:31:01So I just decided instead to watch it on Netflix because it stars some people I really like. Rachel Weisz, for example. Leah Woodall, really, really cute. And also my personal favorite, the Silver Fox, John Slattery. So it's really fun. It has a lot of like break the fourth wall moments that are really funny. So highly recommend that. Also wanted to recommend the documentary that's now out from HBO and Soledad O 'Brien, The Devil is Busy, which is all about the post-Roe landscape. Really fantastic. Out in the Bay Area, I should have mentioned this then, but I actually didn't start reading the book until on the way back from the Bay Area.

1:31:39So this is Thavala Nolan's Good Woman, A Reckoning, which is a fantastic collection of feminist essays. And if you're not familiar with Thavala Nolan's writing, you should be. Her debut collection, Don't Let It Get You Down, Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body, was an absolute tour de force. And this new collection is, I think, even better. So very, very highly recommend. And I'm also watching Ryan Murphy's love story, like everyone else, about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bissette. And although I am thoroughly enjoying it, the thing I really want to recommend or like wish for, bring into existence, is a soundtrack from this.

1:32:15Because the music is absolutely fantastic. It is a time capsule of all of the great hits from the 1990s. Intern Jordan would be absolutely obsessed. The music is so on point. The cranberries, better than Ezra, James, absolutely amazing. And of course, the clothes are nostalgia-inducing and amazing too. I'm also really excited to report that there have been more Stricties in the wild. Saw a couple of you at the airport in Los Angeles. Great to see you. And had the good fortune to be seated next to Strictie Justine at a dinner last week. She enjoys the podcast and I enjoy chatting to her. and we were still basking in the glow of our warm West Coast welcome.

1:32:58So thanks to everyone who made that tour such a resounding success. That reminds me, I also met a strictie in the wild, Hillary at the University of Michigan, who is a student here, and on the West Coast glow, I am wearing a shirt that was given to us by one of our West Coast listeners that features the Portland frog and says, ribbit, resist, repeat, and no hope without hop. And I love it. And it's sort of a Shepard Ferry-esque rendition of the toad, for those of you not watching on YouTube. Portland frog, not toad. Oh, forgive me. Sorry. Sorry. Kate. I also just read Tuck Everlasting with my eight-year-old, and there's a toad who appears in sort of a couple of pivotal moments.

1:33:40I think that's why toad was front of mine. Also, I'm not sure I could totally tell that that was a frog and not a toad. But I guess he is the Portland frog. Totally. Strict Scrutiny is a Crooked Media production hosted and executive produced by Leah Lippman, Melissa Murray, and me, Kate Shaw. Our senior producer and editor is Melody Rowell. Michael Goldsmith is our producer. Jordan Thomas is our intern. Music by Eddie Cooper. Production support from Katie Long and Adrian Hill. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Thanks to our video team, Ben Hethcote and Johanna Case. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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1:34:31If you love Positive America and want more of my political analysis, you should subscribe to my newsletter, The Message Box. I'm Dan Pfeiffer, former senior advisor to Barack Obama, and in Message Box, I break down what's actually happening in politics and what it's going to take to beat Donald Trump mega. If you follow every poll and every twist and turn in the campaign, MessageBox is for you. This isn't just hot takes. Every edition delivers clear analysis, behind-the-scenes insight, and practical strategy you can actually use, whether you're working on a race, organizing your community, or just trying to win the argument in your group chat.

1:35:00So if you're listening to this, hit pause, go to your browser, and head to crooked.com slash yeswedan, because I have a special offer for Crooked Media fans. You will get 20 % off a MessageBox for an entire year. So go to crooked.com slash yeswedan. No No And