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 the Biden administration has banned unpaid medical bills from appearing on credit reports. We have such a great show for you today, The Mary Trump Shows Own Mary Trump stops by to talk about what Trump tool point OH may look like. Then we'll talk to the Shadow Docket author Steven Gladock about the Supreme Court's upcoming decision on corporate transparency.
But first the.
News Smili, Happy new year to you and the listeners. We're back in full force again.
Yes, and we're back and not a moment too soon.
So let's talk about I would say my least favorite social network, Meta and the Facebook. I'm going to shock you here. When wearing nine hundred thousand dollars watches to press conferences, Mark Zuckerberg continues as a cent into doing bad things.
Yeah, so it turns out that if you don't regulate tech companies, they do not regulate themselves.
Who could have seen this coming? Who could have.
Seen absolutely not regulating companies and then them just doing whatever the fuck they want?
Definitely not numerous segments we taped on this podcast.
Yes, Meta is embracing trump Ism. And while the poor Man's Elon Mark Zuckerberg was often pretended to be a Democrat, it turns out that being a billionaire is its own special religion, its own political party, and so basically Met has gone all in on Trump. They have added Dana White to their board because it was easier than adding Eric. They are no longer going to fact check in fact, they're just going to have community notes. And the reason they're going to do this is because it's cheaper and
also because it's what Republicans want. And also they're going to move their jurisdictions. Shockingly, you'll be shocked to hear from the state of California to the state where all Republicans love love to be where you and I know it well, the state of Texas, where Elon is a special VIP and the judges do a lot of stuff that the right really loves.
I think one of the things that really full under the radar is that former UK Conservative Nick Craig left Meta and then they replaced him with Republican Joel Kaplan, who I'm sure is going to just help that fever swamp of misinformation to just brewin brew and brew over on Facebook.
Yeah, I mean, Nick Laid, let's get too high on our own supply here. All these people care only about one thing, which is meta making more money for zuck You know however that works. But I would like to say that Zuckerberg since he's become red pill, and by redpilled, I mean whatever, who the fuck cares?
This guy sucks.
Zuckerberg cited the recent election as a driving force in his company's decision, slamming government. Yeah, the government that didn't regulate him at all. With that government, very mad at them, and Legacy media, which he killed as pushing the company to censor more and more. Yeah, sure, sure, good stuff, Mark Zuckerberg. You'll remember Facebook had some involvement in the
Rhingen genocide. Looking forward to see what other crimes of humanity they are able to help with during the Trump two point zero.
Speaking of the hells Gate, Molly, we're back to someone. I thank god. I bear no relationship to District Judge Aileen Kennon and her latest decision to help mister Trump.
What are you seeing here, Aileen?
She is auditioning for a job on the Supreme Court. Because every time she has a minute, she does whatever she can to help her man, Donald Trump. You'll remember she was the judge for the document's case, and what did you do? She just was like, my guys, okay, and now here we are. She has an order to prevent Smith and the Justice Department from moving forward with releasing the report until the Twelfth Circuit Court of Appeals has time to review the emergency motion by Trump's co
defendants to block the reports released. So probably a lot of stuff has been seen, maybe some of it hasn't. Again, Trump has successfully used lawyers to punt all of his legal travails. Now he's going to be president again, it's hard to think of. You know, this is what happens when you're affluent and you're white and you can afford endless lawyers, is that you can put off punishment indefinitely.
And that is where we are.
So Judge jay Leen has her you know, she may have her own motive for this, for her own career, but this is certainly not how any of this is supposed.
To work, So Molly. One of the more weird sense of Trump's recent thoughts since the election has been that he's going to control of the Panama Canal and annex Greenland. Today, in an interview, he said he would not rule out using military force for it.
Yeah.
I mean I was elected to make things cheaper, right, that was what the voters wanted him to make things cheaper. They wanted him to curb inflation. Here's how not to do that. Invade Greenland. I try to annex Canada. Look, I think this is in troll. Trump really loves to get libs angry, wants them to seem hysterical, wants them to see you know, this is this Steve Bannon flood. The zone was shit thing where you have so many things going on and so many dangers from Trump that
you can't tell the forest from the tree. Is I truly believe that Donald Trump is not going to go to war with Canada. And I think that it's more important that people focus on his nominees, you know, and pressuring members of the Senate to use their Article to duty to really hold good hearings about people like Cash Battel, and not worry about Trump invading Greenland because nobody wants that. He was not elected to do that, and the whole idea that he would change the name to the Gulf
of America from the Gulf of Mexico. It's a troll. I really think it's worth not falling for it.
Yeah, well, in fun, you and I are the biggest fans of Palace intrigue. But I do have to say I'm popping the popcorn for a thing that we all inevitably knew would happened, which is Maggie Haberman saying that Trump is quite sick of Elon being around.
Yeah.
I mean, we've seen this reported everywhere, but mag he is the person who really does know what's going on in Morlago, unfortunately for her, because I don't know how great it is to know that kind of stuff. But there has never been room and Trump one point h for a co president, and it's hard for me to imagine that Trump will start now.
Now.
Elon is very distracted by trying to manage elections in other countries. I think he feels that his success with Trump has given him a kind of Perhaps he's really good at politics, and he can get far right parties installed in all of the major countries. I think that if you watch his Twitter is what he's trying to do. I wonder how much any of that will work for him.
But I do think if Trump, I think Trump is going to get sick of him and he has you know, he's the richest guy in the world, controls all these satellites, controls all of these government contractors.
Something's got to give.
Let us.
Mary Trump is the host of The Mary Trump Show the author of Who Could Ever Love You?
A family memoir. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Mary.
Trump, Hello, Molly dog Fast.
I'm glad to have you here because we laugh to keep from crying.
Yes, indeed, we're doing it already.
Yeah, we're doing it already.
And it's not because we don't see the seriousness of this moment. In fact, we absolutely do see the seriousness of this moment, which is why I honestly I love you and we're friends, and I know how much you hate doing the media stuff that I make you do here.
Well hate is a strong word, but you know.
I mean this is like I think of you as understanding the States and also being here because you feel that you must.
Yes, I think that's fair.
First, I want to talk about how we feel we've been failed, because I have done a lot of talking about the ways in which I have failed people. You know, I feel that I was wrong about the election. I feel that I was overly optimistic. I had a lot
of priors that I used information to confirm. Now I would like you to talk, because I think of you as thoughtful and also courageous about the ways in which we feel we've been failed, first by the mainstream media, of which there are numerous ways, and then by Democrats more broadly. So talk to me about how the media has failed us.
I want to start with yesterday one because it's top of mind for obvious reasons.
It was yesterday, so we've got a recncy bias going on, but also because it was, up until four years ago, the anniversary of a completely mundane ceremonial process that most Americans didn't even.
Know existed, which was simply the certification of the Electoral College votes to make official whoever was the winner of the presidential election. Now it's a different anniversary.
It is the anniversary of, you know, Donald's attempt to overturn the results of a free and fair election, which resulted in a mob attacking the capital. And I think what we've learned in large part because of media complacency, because of media corporate media's compulsion.
I guess to.
Normalize the abnormal as long as it benefits Republicans.
We learned the answer to a very.
Important question that practically nobody was asking, which is, was the insurrection Donald incited on January sixth, twenty twenty one successful? And yesterday, as his electoral College victory was certified without incident with the usual ceremony and banality.
We learned that the answer to that question is yes, it did.
So I do not think there is enough condemnation to go around for the fact that this magic, monumentally history altering incident on January sixth was memory hold, was made benign, was turned into a pro Republican talking point in what universe is that possible?
So I lay that mostly at the.
Feet of the Republican Party, of course, because they actually had the power to do something about it.
I lay it at the feet of Merrick Garland.
Again, for those of you listening, if you've forgotten who Merrick Garland was, it's completely unoffendable. As far as I understand, he was Attorney General of the United States, who still has two weeks to score us over.
But we'll get to that later. But also the media who just lost interest, like.
The idea that Donald was presented as a normal, reasonable candidate for the presidency without every single opening, you know, lead paragraph and every article about him mentioning that he's a perpetrate or the big lie, a man who incited an insurrection against his own government is an adjudicated rapist, on and on and on and on. Is one of the greatest, gravest failures I've ever witnessed. Yeah, so that's one big way the media has failed. It's not new,
but it's also hasn't always been this way. The focusing on the horse race and ignoring the stakes of things, just the failure to fact check, as if that were some onerous task that's not the business of journalists right right, again, all of which redounds to the benefit of the party that's trying to get away with a line all the time.
I Mean, what I am struck by is the way in which billionaires are not good stewards for the mainstream media. Is that weird shocked in which that is really amazing. You know, we were told in early years Trump one point, oh that billionaires would save the media because they were deeply patriotic and in fact they just completely suck. And also, I might add, with the exception of Mark Cuban, who I think has done some good stuff, but is also not willing to buy the Washington Post.
And you know, like you think.
About Catherine Graham during the period known as Watergate, Trump one point oh made Watergate look like Lincoln. Trump two point oh will make Watergate right. Look, you know, like the teapot dome scandal. I'm going to get somebody writing into me about the true horribleness of the teapot dome.
Probably right. But the point here.
Is that the grand family provided the kind of moral compass that the Washington Post needed in order to bring down the Nixon administration. The Bezos owned Washington Post, in fact, is largely against that kind of journalism, with some exceptions we'll see what happens. But they have been, you know, largely very much for supporting Trump and his machinations and voluntarily.
I think you could argue that.
The million dollars that Bezos, Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and others have given to Donald's inauguration is kind of a ransom, you know, yes, exactly, because none of them gave money to Joe Biden or you who did gave much less, right, So why because they.
Knew that Biden, no matter what they did, Biden wasn't.
Going to go after them. But they know that Donald will. But they're going beyond and above and beyond the call. Because if we talk about media, we also have to talk about social media.
Bezos's Amazon is throwing forty million, setting forty million dollars on fire to promote a Milania Trump documentary, which I don't think there's a big audience for that, but I mean I could be wrong.
It hard for me to imagine. I mean, what are they doing?
It'd be lucky if they could fill the movie theater at mar A Lago for that one.
Who wants it? Does even Mlani want that?
Well, she probably wants the forty million bucks?
Yeah, yeah, come on, yeah exactly. It's a good point.
We've got Musk now saying on Twitter he's they're going to be promoting quote unquote positive posts and suppressing negative posts.
We know what that means, and now meta isn't good to fact check anymore. Right Again, all of which were downs to uh, the person and the party that means to do us the most hard.
Right, But I want to point out here we are at this moment where government regulation like government said we're not going to regulate tech companies for any number of reasons they did. They said, we're not going to regulate tech, We're going to let tech regulate itself. And Tech decided not to regulate itself because why the fuck would they.
Now we have Meta saying that they're going to put they're not going to fact check, and they're going to put Dana White on the board of Meta because Dana White is why why do you put Dana White on the board of Meta? Because you love wrestling or boxing or whatever sport it is. He does what sport is it?
It's not wrestling, It's it's like MMA, but it's.
Not Yes UFC.
You put Daana White and which the two of us are like, I'm like, it's boxing, it's wrestling. You put Data White board of Meta because you love fighting, and that is why No, you put Dana White on the board of Meta because Dana White is a Trump or and you want Trump to love you, and you think that if you put Dana White on your board, it's a little less obvious than putting Junior on the board, But you probably should have just put Junior on the board discussing on well.
He's in Greenland, so he's busy.
I'm having a real serious conversation about this idea that you have to cover Trump and you shouldn't sainwash Trump. Yes, but also you should not swing at every punch, and so the Gulf of America is never going to happen, and it's better to just say Trump is saying, like, if you think about that press conference that Trump had yesterday, because you're listening to this today and today is Wednesday
when this podcast comes out. If you are listening to this podcast and you're thinking about that unhinged presser, the first of many of the Trump two point zero unhinged pressers, if you're thinking about it, think about focus on the part where he said he wasn't going to be able to bring prices down because it was really hard, versus the fact that he was going to make it the Gulf of America versus the Golf of Mexico.
Agree, disagree, and discuss.
Yeah, I completely agree with you that we cannot let everything get our it hooks into us. We should know by now that all of his rantings and ramblings do not equally matter, and that much of the strategy is to overwhelm us, is to exhaust us and demoralize us. And you know, we don't do ourselves any favors. And you know, sometimes like there are things that he might be serious about and that might actually have serious implications,
but you know, we can't do anything about that. We can't do anything about the fact that cash Pttel might be director of the FBI. I mean, Democrats good have but they decided it wasn't worth their while. I guess I don't know.
And they can't. They still can't. Right, Well, let's.
Go back to that, but continue and then we'll go back to that.
Yeah, so he's ranting about the Gulf of America.
If I you're one more person post one of his posts and say, oh, he's really losing it now.
Well he's been losing for seventy years, Okay, so what Oh he's really unhinged, like it's a day ending and why Yeah, Like, we can't do that anymore, right, we can't.
Analyze everything like because you know, the main reason, besides the fact that it's a waste of our energy, what I learned they're at this selection is nobody cares Nobody cares if he's mentally ill. Nobody cares if he is neurologically impaired. Nobody cares how many times he lies or how many times he got convicted of crimes or what he got away with.
Nobody cares. This is what enough people in America wanted, So here we are.
And I would also add, for example, people don't necessarily care that he's a narcissist, like he's a narcissist, but you know, I want to point out like a lot of people are narciss a lot of politicians are narcissists, and a lot.
Of most yeah, eactly, and a lot.
Of celebrities are a narcissists. Why Trump, I think got.
Reelected was because people for a number of reasons, but part of it was that the anti Trump coalition did not come out for Harris. Now I'm not sure that's Harris's fault as much as it's the fault of a coalition that has very specific ideas of what a president should look like or what they want a president to look like. But I want to point out here that as we're looking at this, what I think is really relevant and important is that they said things were too expensive.
A lot of voters said they didn't like that things were more expensive. They didn't like that three hundred dollars worth of groceries didn't.
Look the way it did four years ago. They didn't like that.
They wanted more groceries for three hundred dollars, two hundred dollars, whatever the amount of money you pay weekly for groceries. They wanted more. This, in my head, is the mandate that he was given. Not a huge mandate, but he did win the popular vote. So here he is at this press conference saying what all of us knew when he was running for office, which is you can't really make things less expensive.
Well, and kind of what's worse is that corporate media knew that too. Corporate media now telling us how brilliant the binding economy was. They did not bother to tell us that in the run up to the election. And also, yeah, so again it's all based on smoke and mirrors.
And the problem really is that not only.
Will the people who voted for him not get what they wanted, they and all of us are going to get a lot.
Of things that they did not.
Want, exactly with Greenland, for example.
Yeah, so let's talk about Democrats, because I think you have a really good point before when you were talking about how are Democrats going to oppose the really scary nominees and who are the scariest of the nominees. So, for example, Donald Trump has decided that he would like Cash Pattel to be the head of the FBI. Cash Pattel, author of the famous nuna's memo, has been around national security on the Republican House side, written a lot of
really crazy stuff. Is in my mind, the scariest of the picks.
Discuss let's narrow down to the four obvious ones Tulsa gottwerd As A d and I peteg Seth a DoD Bob Kennedy.
And Health and Human Services Cashpitel. F In the context of Cash Battel, he's dangerous because he will.
Absolutely be the guy going down the enemy's list and wreaking advetage.
He has no other qualifications for this job.
In fact, he is a purveyor of the conspiracy theory that the FBI was behind.
January sixth, which suggests to me.
That he's going to use that totally insane lie as an excuse to clean out the FBI.
Yeah, and there's a scary historical president for the FBI hunting enemies of the president, which we saw in Nixon, and it could be a Hoover Redox.
Yeah.
Plus, of course, the FBI under him will ignore the greatest threat internally to America, which is domestic terrorism perpetrated by mostly white men.
And that is a real worry too.
Yes, so whether again, I think they're uniquely dangerous in their capacities. You put Tulsea Gabbart as in his Director of National Intelligence, our allies stop sharing classified information with US.
Right for sure? Oh, no question, no question.
You know, you put Kennedy in Health and Human Services, you know, buy stock and Ireland's right.
We're going to make polio great again.
And Haig Seth, well, jeez, you know, there's so many problems with heys, but honestly, the biggest one considering the job is he is abjectly unqualified to one organization of what three.
Million employees or something like that. Got can't even you know, stays Ober.
Yeah.
There are a lot of nominees, and I do think that if Democrats are smart, they will focus on In my mind, the single most worrying candidate is a cash Battel.
Yeah, I think that's fair. But luckily for us, we don't have to choose right exactly.
But you know, and the question is, Republicans can only afford to lose three votes. So can Murkowski, Collins, Langford or some group of the three be convinced that having Cash Battel is the head of the FBI will be as much a pain for you know, Republicans who are not as trumpest as a will be for the rest of us who just want to live our lives and not end up in jail for you know whatever.
I think one of them doesn't get through as a sort of sacrificial lamb, which will make it easier for the rest of them to get through.
Right, that's a big question.
Yeah, So the question is which one of those. I don't know if it's Cash Battel. I really don't, because so many Republicans get their quote unquote news from the same source as Patel does, right, And I think at
this point Republicans don't care about anything except the power play. Plus, of course we know that what's his name, Musk with his nearly half a trillion dollar fortune, and that should make all of us completely sick to our stomachs has threatened people with the primary challenges we know, like that's why Jody Ernz changed her mind about exeth she was reminded that she's up for reelection in twenty twenty six.
Another huge problem, which can't be solved anymore because we're out of time, is that Denver crabs squandered seventy eight days of an opportunity to let the American people know who these nominees Donald Trump shows are. They could have held hearings every single day to expose how unqualified and dangerous and conspiracy minded and traitorous these people are. But no, they did nothing. That to me is one of the
most unnerving things. It means that we do not know what democrats are going to do when these guys actually do have power.
Mary Trump, thank you, thank you, thank you.
What a pleasure.
Steve Bladdock is a CNN contributor and the author of the Shadow docet.
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Steven, Thanks thanks for having me.
I'm always so interested in what you're doing and what you're writing about and what you're thinking about, because you spend a lot of time writing about the law and the Supreme Court, and that is in some ways all we have left discussed.
Well, I mean, I don't know if it's all we have left, but certainly I think it is the institution that is in the best position in the short term to act as even a little bit of a speed break on a second Trump administration. You know, I don't think Molly will act as a speed break as often as you or I want it to. But I actually do think we will act as a speed break more than Trump wants it to, and so that will be the awkward equipoise we find ourselves in.
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Biden still has a few I'm not saying he's going to do this, but there are people behind the scenes and in front of the scenes. I'm thinking of New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who are trying to get Biden to do a few things before on his way out. And something you wrote about is sort of in that vein. Can you talk about it?
Sure? I mean, so, there are two sort of big, very different cases. They're actually kind of before the Supreme Court right now. One is the TikTok case, where the Court's can hear oral argument on a very expedited basis on Friday, January tenth. But there's also a case has gotten a lot less attention, at least outside of lawyer land,
which is about something called the Corporate Transparency Act. And this is a statute Congress enacted a couple of years ago that's basically designed to make it easier for the federal government to investigate and prosecute a whole slew of financial crimes, whether it's money laundering, tax fraud, finance, and terrorism by basically requiring every business in the United States to report to the Treasury Department who its real owners are. Because you might imagine this has pissed off many of
those businesses anyway. But so that law was blocked in December by a federal judge in Texas, and the Biden administration is basically asking the Supreme Court this week not just to unblock that law and to put it back into effect, but actually to take up on a broader basis the power of federal courts in general to do what the district court did in this case, to issue what's called a nationwide injunction. So that's where you know, a court blocks a policy nationwide as opposed to just
as applied to those plaintiffs. And you know, Molly, that's a pretty remarkable thing for the binding administration to do, especially on its way out the door.
So I need like more plain common language about what that would mean.
Let's start at the beginning. So the typical injunction is an order from a court that says, hey, defendant, stop doing whatever you were doing to the plaintiff to Molly, or start giving Molly something you weren't giving her right. And so the idea is that the injunction is a coercive court order that requires the defendant to comply by acting or not acting in a particular way against the
person who sued them. The so called nationwide injunction, it's a bit of a misnomer because it's not really about the geography. A nationwide injunction is a similarly coercive court order that says, hey, defendant, and usually it's either a state or the federal government, Hey defendant, stop doing this
period right, stop doing this as applied to everybody. And so I might sue the federal government for a nationwide injunction, and if I get one, it means they can't enforce the law, not just against me, but against anybody, and that's become a much bigger deal in recent years as these have proliferated. We saw them, for example, in a
bunch of challenges to first Trump administration immigration policies. I think a lot of folks became familiar with in the context of MIFA pristone, where there was, you know, a nationwide injunction by a district judge in Texas that would have effectively taken MIFA pristone off the shelves even in
states in which abortion is legal, and so Malli. The sort of what the Biden administration is basically doing is it saying, hey, Supreme Court, we the federal government don't like these very much, and so in addition to getting rid of the nationwide injunction in this particular case, we'd actually likely to get rid of all of them, you know, Molly.
On the one hand, it's understandable that any justice apartment, you know, a Trump Justice department, a Biden Justice department, you know, you name it, justice department is not going to like nationwide injunctions because the federal government is usually
on the wrong end of them. What I'm struck by is that the Biden administration's picking this fight at this moment where you know it's about to be not Biden administration policies that are being challenged in federal court, but Trump administration policies, and if they're actually successful, it will make it much harder to block any executive branch action. But in the short term, Trump actions on a nationwide as opposed to an individual basis.
So why are they doing it?
Then it's a good question. I can't answer it. My best guess is that that's actually, you know, the sort of the timing is a feature, not a bug that by asking now the request looks especially nonpartisan and looks institutional in ways that it might not have come across in the prior cases where the Justice Department has asked the court to reign in these kinds of orders. But I mean, if anything, that underscores exactly why I find
it surprising. If you're doing it entirely because you're trying to send a message that like, we want to hamsterring federal judges when Trump comes to office too, that seems like a very odd thing to have. The last, you know, big move of the Biden administration's Solicener General.
Pe something that will help Trump.
Will help Trump, and frankly, I think we'll make it much harder to litigate challenges to its politican So consider, for example, if you know Trump really does try to act against birthright citizenships, so you could have a lawsuit
buy individual citizens who are jeopardized by that policy. But unless you actually obtain some kind of universal relief or unless you've got you know, to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said, hey, yes, we're going to totally strike us all down until unless that happens, right, the policy would still apply to everybody else. And so it means, you know, it's going to be harder to challenge Trump
administration policies. It's going to take more litigation, it's going to put more pressure on the courts if they succeed. Now you know, the Supreme Court has not responded yet to this request by the Biden administration.
Oh so they may not even take it up.
They may not. I mean, so to sort of to be a little bit of a legal nerd for a second, something new and different for me. I know, the Biden administration has asked the Supreme Court to do two different things. So the first thing that's asking for is what we call a stay. They're asking the Supreme Court to freeze the District court order from December, the effect of which would be to put this law, the Corporate Transparency Act,
back into effect. That's like the small ask, and then the big ask is, you know, but also we want you to actually take this case up for full review, not on whether the Corporate Transparency Acts constitutional, but on whether the District Court had the power to issue the injunction at issued in the first place. So, you know, Molly, the Supreme Court could sort of say no to everything. The Court could grant the stay right and sort of give the Biden administration the small relief it wants and
not take up the bigger question. The Court could grant this day and tick up the bigger question, in which case we'd have full brief in an oral argument you know, later this term. All of those are possible, and I think it's you know, it's a good example of a sort of Supreme Court case that's not getting a lot of public attention, but that could be very important if the Biden administration gets what it wants.
One of the many ways in which I feel that we in the mainstream media have fucked up is by not sort of talking enough about the historical precedent with everything Trump has done and everything Trump does and how you can and set the table for this and you know, et cetera, et cetera. That said, so, I was about to say that the judge shopping happening in this country is new. It is very much not new, but it is very much in the news because of the Mark
Zuckerberg Facebook. He's moving Facebook from California to Texas where people are less. Hello, talk us through exactly what this is and what does mean, et cetera.
I mean, there's a lot going on with the developments at Meta. The California to Texas move is probably like the eighth most important piece of it. But this is sort of taking a page from Elon Musk's playbook. I mean, Musk relocated SpaceX first and then Twitter slash X to Texas for tax reasons, for political reasons, and for liability reasons, because I mean, this is sort of back into sort
of law school for a second. It is difficult to sue big corporations where they are not unless you are suing them for stuff they did where you're suing them, right, So if you're challenging big corporate decisions or you know, senior leadership decisions by corporation. Usually you have to sue them where they are, and that means either where they're incorporated, which is you know, technical legal mumbo jumbo, but it's
usually Delaware or where their headquarters is. And so moving from California to Texas means those lawsuits go into Texas instead of California. And that's you know, that's a matter of convenience, Molly. But it also those are very different, both state courts and federal courts, where you know, the California state courts are very left of center, the California federal courts are left of center, but not as much
as they used to be. And in Texas you've got you know, the most right ling in courts in the country, at both the state and federal level. So it is, it is, you know, it's sort of a transparent effort to basically find more sympathetic judges.
Yeah, and it seems to me, and again I am not a lawyer, i am but an outside observer, it strikes me that the government in Texas, the state government is way more aggressive at protecting its billionaires it's conservative billionaires. We've seen the governor and the attorney's General try to pander to its billionaires. Now, whether or not that is the optics of pandering or actual pandering, it does seem like there's more flexibility there.
I think it's important, Molly to sort of separate out what strikes me as the normal politics of big business and what strikes me as.
Shady good point. Good point, good point.
I think it is inevitable that states will try to attract particular types of large business concerns with exactly what their policy priorities are. You know, come to our state because we are pro this or we're anti that. We're a right to work state. Don't you want to be here? And so I guess I will just say I don't find that sort of inherently problematic. I think it's sort
of baked into our system of federalism. What I'm more cynical about is the courts, right that, like, it's inevitable that you're going to have states that have different laws, and that those different laws are going to be reasons why businesses either gravitate toward that state or away from that state. What I've got worried about is when the courts are part of that conversation, because at least when it comes to the federal laws, right, that should at
least in theory, be uniform throughout the country. Like the federal antitrust law should mean the same thing in California that it means in Texas. The constitutional rights should mean the same thing in California that they mean in Texas. And so I don't get nervous about state politics being
what state politics have always been. I get nervous about the state and federal courts in a state becoming such an obvious part of the political conversation because it just reinforces the perception not just that the courts of political institutions, but that the courts are partisan institutions that are part of why you're seeing these kinds of decisions by corporations like meta.
Yes, exactly.
And I think that's a really good point, and that is to use the courts as arms of corporate malfeasans ultimately, right, I mean that's the goal.
Yeah, or at least to use the courts if not corporate malthfeasans are at the very least sort of corporate unaccountability. Right, It's one thing to say, Oh, we're moving to Texas over California because of the taxes, to say we're moving
to Texas over California because of the courts. Yeah, yeah, And I think, you know, one of those is sort of a long running political conversation that I guess doesn't bother me as much as the latter one does, because you know, we should not be surprised the political actors make political decisions. I get nervous when those decisions are influenced by which judges are going to be supervising them.
M hmmm.
That's a really good point, and I think very much sort of what we should be thinking about right now.
I wonder if you.
Could sort of talk a little bit about where we are in this Supreme Court. You know, we're they're going to start hearing arguments where we are, and sort of what's.
On the docket and what's it going to look like.
Sure, I mean, so we're really probably a little bit right around the halfway point, I guess for the current term, the October twenty twenty four term. And one of the strange things about this term, Molly, is it's actually been a relatively quiet one so far. I mean, we have just had these back to back to back block uster terms with dozens of major, massively both politically and legally important rulings, and at least so far, this term is not that. I mean, you know, the Court has a
couple of very important cases that have already been argued. Skurmeti, which is the big case about you know, gender affirming medical care for adolescence that was argued back in December. You know, there's a big gun case about ghost guns, those argued back in October. But you know, Molly, this is at least not so far a term that's going to end with cases like Dobbs on abortion or the
affirmative action cases from two years ago. And I actually think what's really going to be the story come the spring is not any of these merits cases, but rather exactly what we were talking about earlier, which is Trump does something crazy, lower Court blocks him, and Trump runs back up to the Supreme Court for some kind of emergency relief, where you know, I think by the time we're done in June this term, that the real headlines of this term are going to be how the Court
is dealing with the most controversial Trump policies, most of which will get there if at all, this term right, not through the normal full nine yards of litigation, but on this sort of truncated, expedited emergency basis.
Yeah, I'm wondering you wrote this brilliant book about the shadow docket and sort of the kind of danger there. I mean, do you think we're going to see more stuff taken on the shadow docket? And can you talk about the shadow docket in Trump one point zero?
I mean, Trump one point zero is exactly I think the comparator here. So you know, the shadow docket just it's a descriptive term that's meant to cover everything that the Supreme Court does other than it's big fancy merit rulings the sixty or so you know, rulings the Court hands down every year after full briefing in argument. Turns out there are thousands of rulings the Court hands down not with full briefing in argument, and we just don't
care about most of them. So during during Trump one point zero, Trump's Justice Department really sort of took advantage of something called emergency relief. This is basically, hey, Supreme Court, this case is going to get to you eventually. But in the two or three years it takes to get there.
What should the status quo be. Should the status quobe be that the district court ruling that blocked this policy remains an effect or should the status quod be that the policy goes into effect while we appeal the ruling that says it's unlawful. And you know, Molly, what was striking about the first Trump administration. The Justice Department historically had been very shy about using the shadow docket that way.
I mean, across the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies, so two very different, two term presidencies, the Justice Department had gone to the court for that kind of relief a total of eight times in sixteen years. Even I can do that math, right. The Trump administration, in contrast, went forty one time in the first four years, right, so between twenty seventeen and twenty twenty one. And this
was on pretty big stuff. This was on the travel ban and the ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, and you know, the put in a citizenship question on the census and all kinds of other like really important stuff. And I think we're in for more of that. Whatever Trump does, whether it's birthright citizenship or crazy tariffs or Schedule F or other things that are going to be subject to legal challenge. You know, folks are going to
be strategic about where they bring in those lawsuits. They're going to find, you know, courts that they think are going to be most sympathetic to those claims. Those courts are probably going to agree with at least some of those challenges. And the question is going to be, like,
what does the Supreme Court do then? Will the Supreme Court have learned its lesson from Trump one point zero or is it just going to do exactly what it did the first time around, which was green light a bunch of these policies even though every federal court to consider them said they were unlawful. And that's you know when you ask sort of what's what's on the docket for this term? You know, none of that is yet, but man, I think it's coming.
Yeah.
There's a world in which the Supreme Court goes like John Roberts is like, yeah, I've actually totally done the court and I want to like roll back my yeah, okay.
The laughter says it all right.
I would love for the Supreme Court to have that kind of come to Jesus moment. But Molly, I do think, I mean, just to put this as quickly as possible, I do think that the middle of the court, so Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Brett Cavanaugh, justs Acony Barrett, is not worth the middle.
By the way. That's the middle, which in its should say a lot.
It speaks multitudes, but it's also just a descriptive fact, right that in the cases that are going to come out of Trump two point zero, how those three justices vote is going to be how the Court goes. And you know, they're going to endorse a lot more than they should, but they're not going to endorse everything Trump wants. I don't think that's going to because the court sort
of sees the light. I think it's just going to because in John Roberts and Brett Cavanaugh, Abcony Barrett, you have really fairly conventional, you know, Bush era movement conservatives, legal conservatives as opposed to the more populous, trumpy conservatives that we have today.
Right, all right, that's a really good point. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope you will come back any time.
Ali, Thanks for having me.
No more peckly Jesse Cannon, Mollie, you know, seeing that Merrick Garland is facing some pressure as he did for the last four years, and all I could think is, well, there's one nice thing.
Maybe we'll never have to hear about Merrick Garland getting pressure again in just a few weeks.
Yeah, talk about someone who was the wrong person for the job. Actually, I thought that Jensaki had a pretty good monologue about how Merrick Garland was probably not the right person for this job, and that does seem very likely. There were a lot of things he could have done, and he moved very slowly, and at every point he was unwilling to do the brave thing and instead did what was the cautious thing. And in a situation like
that leaves us with Donald Trump humming president again. This activist, the president of Social Security Works Pack said Merrick Garland has exactly one more chance to show any smattering of spine. He has two weeks to release Jack Smith's report. This is the last chance to do something right again. Aileen Cannon trying to have the eleventh Circuit roll in on it. This thing could go up to the Supreme Court. We know that we have a very maga Supreme Court so
we'll see if the Supreme Court allows it. Look, Merrick Garland has had lots of opportunities to circumvent trump Ism, to hold Trump accountable. He has taken none of them. So it's hard for me to imagine that he will somehow act differently, but I hope he does.
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