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 Gallup has found that China taps America's approval rating for the first time ever, as our leadership saw its approval rating drop eight percent two thirty one percent. We have such a great show for you today. Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss the escalation in Iran and how it affects life in America.
Then we'll talk to Peter s Canillos about his new book, Revenge for the Sixties, Samuel Alito, and the triumph of the conservative legal movement.
But first the news, Molly, every time mister Trump talks about Christianity, we all can send see with those of us who are lifelig aestheist, that he has no idea what he's talking about. He's never bothered for one second even learn how to fake this. But then as well, he skipped church on Easter. But what does he tweet on Easter? Praise be to Allah?
All right, So I woke up at seven point thirty and was like, I will pretend to sleep till eight o'clock. I get on my phone and I see Tuesday will be power plant Day and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one comma. In around there will be nothing like it. Explanation point. Explanation point. Open the fucking comma straight, you crazy fox, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch explanation point. Praise be to Allah period. President Donald J.
Trump at eight oh three on Easter. I swear to God, I thought it wasn't real, and so I went on true social to find it because I just couldn't believe it. Here's why I couldn't believe it because A it's very stupid. B he's clearly trying to like do the Holy war. Here's the here's the fundamental problem the Trump And we see this with Hegseth too, like they really want to be like you know, well, you know, Iran is this very religious country and they're controlled by these clerics who
are very zealous. Well, here's the thing. Our country also seems to be trying to pretend that they are a country like that. But the truth is, and I think this is an important point here is that, well, Donald Trump thinks he wants a holy war because somehow that will be I think he thinks that'll be funny or I don't know what he thinks, but like, no one wants this. The reason that no one wanted this war to begin with was because it's huge country where they have a lot of money and they have a lot
of people. And quite frankly, this has nothing to do with us, and the idea that somehow, you know, he's explored every which reason to go into this country, like he wants to free the protesters. Okay, the protesters, they're as mad at us as the clerics are. Okay, because we're bombing, you know, parts of the country that are or at least we're threatening to bomb desalization plans, power plans, parts of the country that technically it's a war crime
to bomb, you know, civilian serving apparatuses. But the other thing is like this a huge country, and destabilizing this country will destabilize the region. We've already destabilized this country. We've closed the Straits. Even though the oil and gas that comes through the Straits doesn't largely go to us, it has still made oil and gas more expensive in
the world. Because the world is all connected, and it's just like a crazy, crazy moment and the other thing is like when they were able to rescue the downed pilot, they did this thing where our military is obviously very skilled and they were able to get in there and get out of there without anyone getting lost, without anyone getting hard and people have been killed in this war. It's just in this incident they were able to get
in and out in a really skilled way. So instead of taking the win and backing out and even just let a run charge a toll for the strades who cares, just get out because this is devolving into a complete disaster. Instead of doing all that, our leadership just seems insane.
And there's no evidence that there is a negotiation going on except that Trump says there's negotiation, and like, we actually really need the Iranians to tell us if there isn't a negotiation, because you know, we can't trust our government and it is just a really fucked up moment
in an American life. And like I just want to say one other thing, which is I you know, somebody who's just like a normal person came over to me the other day and was like this seems really bad, and I was like, it is really bad, and we kept saying it was going to be really bad, and we knew it was going to be really bad. And like the last time of its president, he had like more than a million people died that didn't need to die because of the pandemic. Like, this guy is not
a guy who should be president. It's not like a Ronald Reagan where he's like a little domb or a George W. Bush where he's like not the best choice or a jab. It's like this guy is just really responsible and doesn't care that he's leading this enormous country. And so we are all just kind of at his whim and mercy right now, and it is just so jarring. And then we have a Congress that has absolutely no interest.
You know, the Republicans are evil and the Democrats are a little bit factless team, Like, we need people running a check on this guy.
So, speaking of things we need to check on, Trump has released his budget plan. Would you be shocked to hear this is just filled with some of the biggest bullshit you've ever seen, I am not.
The savings are achieved by reducing or eliminating woke, weaponized, and wasteful programs and returning state and local responsibilities to their respective government.
How much does woke cost?
Woke it all no doctrum. Actually, there's like an insane clip of him going around where he says, we can't pay for daycare. We don't pay for daycare. The States must pay for daycare. That's what he's talking about. What he wants to do is he basically doesn't want to pay for stuff. So this proposal includes a fifty two million dollar cut for the TSA okay why nobody knows, but a huge decrease for ICE and the military because you want a paramilitary but you don't want the actual
screening for people flying. And a golden dome because Donald Trump loves Israel. They have an iron dome. We need to have a golden dome. It's like an iron dome, but it's gold. It's so fucking stupid, And oh fyi, massive cuts to gut from an agency is and a lunar base camp for visiting the moon, and ten billion dollars into the President's Capital Steward Program in order to make DC safe, clean, and beautiful again, and also changes
to housing k through twelve food assistance programs. If you get anything from the federal government, you're not getting it anymore, but you will get Donald Trump spending a lot of your tax dollars in renovating the White House where he plans to live forever.
Great stuff.
So, as usual, what we've seen is Trump's revenge spree where he tries to extort people and payback people for what he feels have been done wrong to him.
Keeps being these trumped.
Up charges, which you know the irony of that word, and one of them was against Jerome Powell, and that has now been blocked by a judge.
The judges. Here's what happens. Donald Trump does crazy shit, the judges tell him he can't, and then he just tries to do it again. So here's a US judge. On Friday, I stood by the decision to cush Department of Justice subpoenas targeting FED Chair Jerome Palell. These are judge blocked wine specials. Here the government can appeal the decision, prolonging a standoffs that could delay the confirmation of Donald
Trump's new FED chair. Okay, I'm good with that. The US District Court for Washington, d C. Denied the government's motion to reconsider an earlier decision to throw out the Grand Jury subpoenas directed at Powell. Judge Boseburg, you'll remember, Trump was really mad at him, and so was Elon. The court's chief judge quashed the spritest last week on the grounds that the brog was aimed at pressuring Powell and two yielding to Trump or resigning. By the way,
anyone who has eyes can see this. In the aftermath of the decision, US Attorney for the District of Columbia and alcoholic Juanian Piro, otherwise known as Judge Box of Wine, said at a press conference that the investigation process had been arbitrarily undermined by an activist judge. You know what's
arbitrary everything that Judge box of Wine does. Powell disclosed in January that he was if the subpoena is seeking records related to these Central banks multi billion dollar building renovations. The government was examining whether Palell had committed fraud and lied to Congress. Here's what Palell didn't do, commit fraud or lie to Congress. Well, here's who did commit fraud Trump in a million different ways, probably Judge box of Wine.
You know who didn't this guy to Rome pal You know, this is just going to keep going up up to the Supreme Court, where Alito and Thomas will say that Donald Trump did nothing wrong, but probably the other justices will not go along with that.
Yeah.
So, speaking of not going along with it, nearly two dozen Democratic states.
Have hit Trump with the elections lawsuits. This is good news. After we saw this executive.
Order about mail and balloting and we were wondering how big the pushback would be. It's seeming pretty big.
Yeah, I mean, this is totally a whoy. You know, this is the thing. Donald Trump will do any sketchy stuff he can.
That's it.
Like, that's period paragraph. My man do sketchy stuff. That's it. You know, that's who he is.
Now.
Whether or not you let him do sketchy stuff, it's a real question. That's where it is. So twenty three different states and the District of Columbia taking Donald Trump to court. It is unconstitutional and he will lose. The President's latest attempt to interfere with the state's administrations of their elections is as unprecedented as it is unconstitutional. Under the Constitution, the president has no authority to restrict voter eligibility or mail in voting to lists of voters pre
authorized by the federal government. Here's the one good thing is that at least the courts are doing something because the Congress is not. Rick Wilson is the founder of Lincoln Project and the host of the Lincoln Project podcast.
Rick.
Hello, Molly, how are you on this fine day?
I'm good. So Donald Trump has gotten us into a war, which, yeah, I mean, does it when you start shooting down planes, that's when you have ground troops once you have, right, I mean, is that a fair definition? And explain to us what's going on now?
So, look, the the inevitable has now happened, and the Iranians have shot down an American F fifteen E Strike Eagle. Two crew members in the plane, very very effective, very good strike bomber aircraft, but they shot it down with a relatively cheap heat seeking missile.
From the ground.
One of the one of the crew has been recovered, the other is still missing. If the Iranians captured that person, they're about to have a global spectacle. They also managed to shoot down an A ten war yesterday damage Inn F thirty five, which is supposedly impossible shoot down a HH sixty helicopter. We don't have a ton of those and two drones. So we have now entered the phase of the war where it's not all one sided, and eventually you're gonna have put more there. They've put a
lot of search and rescue operations into Iran. Now that's a aerial and probably folks on the ground as well in terms of pj's pair of rescue jumpers.
Right, you have to at that point and.
Special operators to go and try to try to recover the other missing crew member.
This will accelerate, these things always do.
And so what's gonna happen is somebody who's been in there to send in there to retrieve the missing crew member from the F fifteen is going to get shot or captured or the anti firefight.
It just escalates.
And the problem is right now we see a line of C seventeen cargo planes flying from the US into the Middle East. We're ratching up and up and up. The fake semi Taco twenty minute speech on Thursday night did not make the markets feel better.
No, in fact, it made the markets feel worse.
Isn't real, That's right?
And BONDI Dow at fifty thousand moment.
You know, I think Molly, and I love to get what your thoughts on this is. It's like, have we reached the point where the taco trick only works if he actually tacos, you know, and he hasn't. He's still he's still going all in on this war. And I don't think, I don't think that the markets are going to recover until or unless they see him, the world's greatest negotiator, negotiate his way out of this box.
Well, I think the problem is when you have the straits closed ostensibly for American oil, which by the way, there wasn't so much American oil going to there anyway, So it just created a sort of situation with the fungibowl oil and gas where you just there was less.
Well that's closed. There's not anything Trump can do to increase the global supply of oil, which is what we just saw, right, And he took off sanctions on this Iranian oil, the Russian oil, which by the way, a is you know, diplomatically quite suspect, but also will not necessarily make oil cheaper. I mean, the thing is we're cruising into summer, which is oil and gas time, right, It's time for travel, It's time for airplanes.
It's time for and high high energy bills for our high energy useful.
Conditions global warming. Yeah, and so we're gonna have this very hot summer. We're gonna have very expensive gas and oil. And you know, I don't think that Trump. You know, just to think about like this in the historical reference for a minute. So this was what completely crashed Bush one. Right, it doesn't matter what you do if you make oil and gas more expensive the American people, it's that's it.
Like it's just you are gonna get.
You were gonna get, You're gonna get. Right, Jimmy Carter was in a period where expensive oil and gas coming out of four going into Carter, we had expensive oil and gas. Horrible for you, for your numbers. George W. Bush in the second term, expensive oiling gas, horrible for your numbers. Even Barack Obama took some damage from it.
For a little while.
We had we had a spike.
But with Trump, this was a decision that was made precipitously with nothing in the background to support it. And so now people are like directly connecting high price of the pump, Donald Trump's war on Iran.
That's it.
It's a it's a it's bound together. And look his numbers and we're seeing even more numbers over the weekend that have come out, especially on the price of gas. He is sixty sixty one percent disapproved his performance. And when it comes to the price of energy and gas, sixty one percent disapproval and that's forty five percent strong disapproval. That is a real five alarmed political fire for this, for the Republican Party and for Donald Trump.
Yeah, and I mean there are two things too that there are no as historical president for to have a president who runs on affordability, I'm going to make gas cheaper. I'm going to make eggs cheaper. I'm going to make fake and cheaper. Right, that was his message going into this. And also I'm going to end four and mores. And then what does he do priffs, you know, which make things more expensive for and more, which makes oil more expensive.
Like just to have someone who immediately does exactly the opposite of what they say they're going to do, I mean, like, I'm not sure there's a president for that historically.
No. Look, we have not seen a president.
Look I'll tell you, like presidents have very frequently big externalities that hurt them. Okay, right, And look, while Bush, while the war was unpopular, what really knocked Bush's numbers out of the box was Katrina. Okay, what the largest percentage decline was at the post Katrina? When you had
the financial crisis? Even though Barack Obama didn't directly cause it or wasn't there when it started, he was suffering through the worst of the financial crisis, a big externality, and it hurt his numbers, and that is in part what led to the political climate for the ten Yeah, so all these you know, every president faces some external thing.
Usually they don't cause it, right and that.
But the difference here between every other president and Trump is He's like, what can I do that's gonna absolutely completely train wreck my economy? And what can I do that's going to blow up my allies around the world? What can I do that's going to harm the global economy? And oh, by the way, what can I need to pretend that the that the global petro market isn't a global market. The reason gas is going up here, folks, is not because we buy gas from a run We don't.
The reason is it's a global market and you can't just hand wave away the fact that it's a global market. I heard yesterday that there's a some discussions inside of the White House now of trying to if you just want to watch the if you want to really to watch the economic system meltdown to impose new price controls on oil and gas in America.
Right right, which I was told communism. Yeah, I just getna say. I was like excited to watch that play out, and we were. But I do think, like, you know, what you see now is you see Donald Trump who sees bad poll numbers and is like, fucking, I'm just gonna start firing people, which is probably good for American democracy. Here follow my thinking here, So Trump two point out. The first year, you saw nothing out of that White House.
It was not leaky. It was so tight. Mike Walls accidentally as the editor in chief of the Economist of the Economists of the Atlantic to group chat and does not get fired. He gets moved to a sort of slightly different job, right, And we saw, really, you know, it was just tight, and Trump was getting away with it and people were making mistakes, but we weren't hearing sort of what really happened. Now and this second year, Trump has just given up. He's firing people, he's moving
them around. So we're seeing like a Pam Bondy now you know that story. There must be like fifteen people leaking with that story because we found out when they drove in the beast to the Supreme Court, we found out that she sat with him and then he moved. That he was there for an hour and a half. I mean just like literally every bit. You know that she had been begging to stay on till the summer, doug right, like we I mean, there was so much reporting.
I mean, he probably was leaking. She was definitely leaking, and everyone she ever met was also leaking. And that kind of transparency is actually probably much better for American democracy.
Mollie, you have had the first year of Trump two point zero a desire to not Trump didn't want to give the media a in by firing anybody, because he viewed firing people as letting the media win. And yet this is absolutely driven by the fact that the media was merciless about Pam Bondi's cover up of the Epstein files. That they kept calling the media too, but actually you were one hundred percent just getting there. Your You gotta have a hundred percent correct.
No, no, no, no, no.
But the horrific nature of her cover up of Epstein was so bad that even Fox couldn't ignore it, even a way in, and Newsmax and all the MAGA online garbage couldn't ignore it. And so we may have a moment right now where where the vulnerability of Trump's mental processes. He knows how bad Epstein is for him, and I think they made a giant mistake. Todd Blanche rolled out on Friday and said, We've really saw the Epstein files. It's over, it's done. Fuck you shut up.
Yeah, yeah, Black gonna say something.
That ain't gonna that ain. I was texting with a member of the committee. I remember the committee last night.
I said, you're gonna take this line down.
He goes, oh, no, my friend, we are not.
But it's also I mean. She also remembers she ran a foul of MAGA influencers who are Dominant's core constituency. She gave them those binders with the xeroxis of stuff you can find on the internet, and they were so embarrassed they posed for photos. Then they went home. They looked in the binders and they were like, what the actual fuck. And then those people committed the next seven months to getting her fired and like it's a cautionary tale for not being a complete moron.
Well listen, she she didn't. She also didn't understand. I wrote a piece about this called Knives Out for Bondi yesterday. Blanch was going to do this to her no matter what. Blanche is the guy who's much smarter than Pam Bondy. And I will tell people that Pam is Pam is not dumb, Like she's not a moron, but she's also right, yeah, right, she's not Christine nom but neither is she you know, some sort of mad you know, high level strategic thinker.
She's very obedient, she's very very good at being the at being the good girl, the good guy for the big boss. When she was in Florida, she was basically like, what does Jeb want? What does Rick Scott want? When when it's when it's Trump, it's what does Trump want? So but Blanche viewed her as a way to like take some of the air out of the Epstein balloon
so he could step in. And I had heard from somebody very adjacent to the White House that Blanche was the guy who was rallying other people to go to Trump and to go to Susie and say, come on, man, she's embarrassing you. She's hurting you. And and her big performance that she gave in front of the committee, the Dow fifty thousand.
Performance, that was great.
I was told that Blanche said to him that was embarrassing. That was over the top. She could have been more subtle, She could have handled it better. She could have really embarrassed them. That was the Amateur Hour or something awards to that effect. Not wrong, not wrong, but I but I.
I I.
Think that the the knives out thing in the Justice Department. You've also gotten now Alina Habba and Judge box of Wine, and and and Lee Zelden on the outside, all wanting that job. Blanche.
Blanche the arrogance has that job though, right, the.
Arrogance of Blanche, though, I think it's gonna be the the UPNS is coming, as they say, for a time, Blanche, because he's now as Thomas Massey said, thanks glad you took the job. You now have thirty days to comply because that's the law, right And and the other part of this is Bondie doesn't go away. Remember that he issued the subpoena to her by name, not to her by title. She's still gonna be.
Up two weeks.
Yeah, I'm curious about I'm I am very curious about Bondi though, because it does seem like I would be really surprised if Bondi comes out against Trump.
I mean, do you think there's a world where that happens that doesn't seem like the move to May It would.
Be the most hilarious face turn ever. Yeah, I don't see it in the short term, but I will tell you I know someone extremely close to Bondi who who are like a lifetime long friend of Pam Bondy, who is not Susie Wile, not Susie Wiles. But the shock and and and embarrassment right now is through the roof. And look, if you are Pam Bondy, you're gonna have one of two things. One is and this happened a
lot in the first administration. People will say to you, well, you've been fired, but you know you could still come back, you could still He forgives people, well, she's not coming back in the.
Next two years. That's it.
This is over for her.
And so she's got to be thinking on one level. You know, I don't want to cross the president. I don't want to get Todd Blanche to pursue me because they're believe me, there is a world where the DJ starts investigating Pam BONDI.
Oh yeah, if.
She does, If she if she plays ball, she's legally vulnerable and will never escape the families going after her, the congressional investigations that will last until she's dead.
I think she's legally vulnerable.
Yeah, gone, yeah, But if she does turn Pam BONDI has a chance again to do something nobody else does around Trump. She just pull the fucking whole curtain back and go I'm sorry, America. I bought into it. I was part of the most corrupt cover up and history. Here's what I know from the Epstein files. Here's what we're hiding. I think the chance of her doing.
That is like point oh oh, yeah, I was gonna say, it seems very slim.
Yeah, it would be very It would be very sort of Aaron Sorkin if she did. But you know, I have a little faith in the in the moral courage of body.
Yeah, I think that's a good move, but it is it is a really good question, right, the idea of what this sort of vulnerability here, And we saw this with CHRISTINEO, right, like Christineome is never coming back. You know, she has now gotten a fake job. The Shield of the America's right core.
They you know, whoever had those photos of the husband with the balloons in the shirt, those probably have been going around blackmailing people forever, right, I mean, there's no way that that's the first she learned of those photos.
Just us.
I think somebody and it was probably either Joe Pounder or a guy like Joe Pounder is a big opposition research guy in the Republican Party and they used Joe a lot. He's one of their go tos. I'm told it probably had those pictures for a year. And look, when you see a guy that deep into whatever fetish thing he's into, or whatever whatever closeted behavior he's into, I can't even characterize the whole thing. That's not something
that just sprang up five minutes ago. That's probably a paraphilia that he's had for a very long time.
I wonder about that, like, do you think that that why that got released?
Now?
Can you do you have any insight on that. Did she not do something someone wanted? I mean, because clearly that had been around for a long time.
I think part of this might be trying to put a giant final spike into her as a credible political figure and any any maga dimension. Look, you are now seeing the early early going of the twenty twenty eight Republican primary. Okay, you've got jd Vance with a new book about how Christian he is. You've got you know, Marco being the jack of all trades and liberator of Cuba. You've got you know, You've got all these guys in
Congress starting to play. And Corey Lewandowski before the Great Fall, was telling people she's going to do this immigration thing, that's what Republicans care about the most, that's going to put her in the front of the pack for twenty twenty eight.
To repress Trump.
That was just I think, go to prevent her from running.
I think it was just oppo to stop her, to end her, and maybe a little bit of opo to say we could tell more stories if you'd like.
Right to keep, and also to keep Corey in line.
Well, Corey, I think I think they've turned on Corey pretty pretty aggressively. We've saw stories last week coming out about how Corey is now under an internal.
Investigation at DHS.
They don't investigate anybody at DHS internally unless they aggressively want to fuck them over. They stopped all that stuff until until they decided that she and Corey had to go.
Clearly that two hundred and twenty million dollars for the videos, like that is sort of like a bridge too far. Do you think that that? Do you think like they will get charged with fraud? And do you because clearly like that, you know, like, do you think that was a sort of a decision that that's what's coming next?
I think they will get charged.
I think also there's a thing in a government called a key tam lawsuit, which is where whistle blower can bring a lawsuit about government fraud and collect a percentage of it.
Oh so fortunity.
Right, So, some some staff or O Minion at some point got an email or was on a on a call, or had a or and look, there's no way they spent two hundred and twenty million dollars without a essentially a cap table of who's going to make money off of the deal?
Right, Right?
And I promise you Corey has some side deal. Nobody else was Trump World makes a damn dime unless the family gets some big off.
Of it, right, So this could end tied back to Trump too though.
Right, or the Trump sons or God knows, or or or some other consultant around Maga world who would then launder it to the Trumps.
Right.
Who knows?
The byzantine nature of their corruption is why it's hard hard to figure it out.
And it's so funny. We've been doing this for I stumbled on a picture of us from twenty eighteen. I'm going to send it to you, when you were sending so young and our young, that it was almost over, and that we were that this was just this was I seem to remember many a piece written this is not.
Who we are, this is who the fuck we are.
We turned America into Florida, and I'm glad to be able to narrate it with you. Likewise, my friend, Will I see you next Sunday?
You sure will.
Peter S.
Canellos is an editor of Politico and the author of the Revenge of the Sixties, Samuel Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement. Welcome welcome, Peter.
Thank you so much, Mollie. So we're talking about.
Your book about justice. Alito, besides being the foil of all people who like good things, who like nice things, give us the importance of Alito.
I think that Alito is emblematic of the conservative legal movement. The book is called Revenge for the Sixties, and it tries to look at the social and cultural roots of the conservative legal movement, which now dominates the Supreme Court.
You know, this is how we got to this point in the American judiciary.
And the reason Alito is emblematic of it is that he came from the same social and cultural background as many of the leaders of the Federalist Society, the founders of the Federal Society, other leaders of the movement, and that is he was the product of immigrant parents and grandparents from the twentieth century, people who taught him that, you know, America was the great hope for freedom, that
this was the place where you make your fortune. He experienced prejudice, or the family experienced anti Italian prejudice, but felt like they overcame it.
He was educated in the Cold War public.
Schools and then he confronted at Princeton being in the last all male class, with women arriving the next year. Suddenly their dorm room discussions about sex and premarital sex, and people challenging.
His conservative Catholic views. There's anti war protests, there are exams being canceled, and he feels suddenly that he's at odds with his entire generation. And I think that's in some sense where the conservative legal movement came from. From that place, that sense of very high achieving, meritocratic people with this real believer in American exception, belief in American exceptionalism.
Who needed to create an alternative path to get ahead because they.
Felt they were at odds with their own generation.
Yeah. You know, it's so interesting because my father was a baby boomer who protests the war, went to Princeton, bristled against Princeton for a whole other sliver of reasons. And there's an op ed about which I think you wrote. Did you write that up there?
I wrote, yeah, yeah, about that.
There was another Supreme Court justice who went to Princeton and she had a very different experience there, so go, yeah.
Well that was Sonya Sotomayor.
And I think you look at this place in the nineteen seventies and late sixties, in the case of Alito, where Princeton was opening the doors to two separate communities.
One was public school kids who you.
Know, maybe first generation college students, who you know, came out of the immigration waves of the twentieth century. The other was women they never admitted women until nineteen sixty nine, and people of color, whom they were encouraging to come for the first time, making real efforts to bring people in. And what's interesting is both groups felt very alienated. Both of them felt very out of sorts with the sort of eating clubs which represents like the wealthy Princeton elites.
And yet over time Princeton evolved and Princeton became more the Sonya Soda Mayor University than the sam Alito University and Soda. My memories of her time at Princeton became more and more positive. It's like she says, her whole life's journey began when she the day she was accepted at Princeton. I mean this is Princeton is the source of all of her hope and energy.
Alito, when he.
Was being confirmed for the Supreme Court, said Princeton was the place where he saw some really privileged people doing some really irresponsible things. Talking about the anti war protests that your dad may have been involved in, and those are two radically different experiences. They come out of, you know, what it meant to be in the Ivy League schools in that era, And I think that's also very emblematic of the conservative legal movement. I mean, these are not
maga working class kids. These are like Ivy League kids, but they feel very culturally and socially alienated from their peers who believed in the liberation movements of the sixties and believed in the ideals of the sixties, and believed in the anti war protests.
It's funny because my father complains about Princeton were that it was very elite and that the people didn't care, and that they didn't care about what was happening. And he actually left Princeton to go to Sarah Lawrence because he thought they were horribly out of touch and the eating clubs and the legacy of conservative craziness.
That's a common perception. Your dad wasn't honed.
For sure, So Alito, you know, it's funny because it's like there's a lot of Catholicism on the Supreme Court on the conservative side. I don't think that's by accident. So I would love you to sort of thread this conservative legal movement to Catholicism.
I think that it comes from several different strands of Catholicism. I think that in sam Alito's mind, Catholicism is conflated with his Italian American immigrant experience. The church was the place where his grandparents were accepted. It was where they could find a sense of community in a foreign land.
It was part of their identity as Italians.
You know, the Catholic Church is literally part of the national fabric of Italy and has special a special place in the Italian government and constitution.
You know.
So he sees Catholicism as interwoven with the conservative beliefs that came out of his mid twentieth century childhood, you know, ward mobility, putting your nose to the grindstone, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. And he sees, you know, Catholicism as a way of like following the rules step by step, living a virtuous life according to the precepts of the
Catholic Church. During that same time, there was another strand, and people like Clarence Thomas might be more a part of this where a lot of people from very very different backgrounds, you know, some of them Jewish, some of them from mainline Protestant churches, some of them African became Catholic because they believed that Catholicism at the time was sort of hardcore. Protestant churches tended to be moving to the left, so did reform.
Judaism was on the rise.
You know, you had a lot of religion and liberalism combining, but the Catholics held firm. So it meant a lot in that era when people of the same age as Thomas and Alito converted to Catholicism, and a lot of that happened with some of the conservative kids at Princeton that I and my research went back and interviewed the one who was the leader of the Conservatives at Princeton, T Harding Jones, became a Catholic. He was a converted
to Catholicism. So did the Meyer family. Jean Meyer was the longtime director of the Federal Society and his father had converted to Catholicism that to them represented hardcore.
It was also William F.
Buckley was a big influence, and you know, his Catholicism was seen as part of what made him a conservative. I think people were impressed.
With that, yes, but also when it comes to abortion, Catholicism threatened to need all that otherwise sex of Christianity might not.
But did, especially in that era.
I mean, nowadays, when we think of the anti abortion movement, people will often think of evangelicals.
But in that era, evangelicals were neutral. They were neutral on Roe v.
Wade.
They didn't have a position. It was a very different time. And that's sort of what was meant by the Catholics being hardcore. You know that they were willing to say full stop no on abortion, you know, full stop no on premarital sex. Premarital sex was a big issue at Princeton in that time. You know, contraception was still an issue and is, you know today at issue. One of
the Lydio's most famous opinions, Hobby Lobby, dealt with contraception. Right, It's like so, and of course the big Supreme Court case they were all referencing was Griswold by Connecticut.
This was before Roe v. Wade, and that was a contraception case. Catholic Church on all.
These social issues, particularly relating to the bedroom where they were hardcore.
You know. Yeah, Alito continues to be on the court. He is not the longest serving member of the court, that's Thomas, but he has left a real stamp on the courts in a number of different ways. So I'd love you talk about recent cases either coming or that have been ruled recently where there are Lito cases. You know, you see the Alito signature on them.
The most obvious recent one was the Montgomery County, Maryland case where Montgomery County had a curriculum that included story books for children and books for classes that included gay characters.
Just gay characters are sort of part of the normal fabric of the story characters who happened to be gay, And very initially when they started this curriculum, they included like warnings to parents in case parents wanted to pull kids out of class or something, because they were worried about this, but then quickly changed because they felt that it created a stigma for kids who came from families with gay parents or other gay gay relatives in there,
that there was something weird about having some kids pulled out of class. So they felt this was not appropriate and they stopped doing it. Alito and the Supreme Court's conservative majority to say they had to reinstate the warnings to parents because it violated the freedom of religion, the
free exercise of religion of the conservative parents. Now it's very much Alito who will say conservative parents are being discriminated against, just as you know, some people might contend that same sex couples and families led by same sex couples are being discriminated against, and this is a common thread. He has activated the free exercise of religion clause in the Constitution to an extent far greater than other justices have seen.
He has really been the leader in that.
You see it in cases like Catholic charities in Philadelphia excluding gay parents.
You see it in his decisions even in a First Amendment case involving the harassment of soldiers by this Westborough church, this radical group or sort of a radical conservative group.
They were protested military funerals. He sees the average American of conservative values as being discriminate in the same way that other people would see racial minorities and LGBTQ community and foreign born people to be discriminated against. You know, he's pulling up the other side of the ledger right.
So he's trying to protect right wingers from discrimination. Keep going on that.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean he believes that this is part of free exercise of religion. I think that it's more conservative traditional values that he imputes to religion. Now, not in every case, like the hobby lobby case, which was the contraception case. It was a real, you know, very
conservative Christian family that owned the business. But I think that he feels like free exercise of religion should be every bit as active a clause of the Supreme Court and as a source for Supreme Court decision making as the.
Equal protection clause.
He would say, essentially, conservative traditional minded Americans deserve protection too.
So I think of him as just a partisan hack. Am I wrong, and tell me why.
I think that he has evolved over time.
I think that he is very driven by the principles that he developed in his childhood growing up just outside of Trenton, New Jersey, in the middle twentieth century, that heightened sense of Americanism. I mean, that's where the loyalty to Americans who follow the rules, the traditional values and things like that come from.
I think it also comes from.
Like the Cold War era schools and culture that was preaching the greatness of American freedom and things like that. May I have to mention your grandfather's novels that I read when I was a kid, too, who wrote about American.
History in a very positive way.
I think sam Alito was influenced by those messages, very very sharply. I think that in recent years many people have noticed that his personality has changed, that he's become more outspoken.
He was a shy person. Now he's an outspoken person.
He's become a grim and bitter negative in a lot of his questions. You know, his descents have become more angry and frustrated. Even though he's winning right the majority on most cases a lot, yet he seems like the angry man on the court.
That's not entirely uncommon for older justices. They just they sort of seem.
To throw caution to the win when they get older and become grumpier in their own way.
But I think that the charge that he is a partisan has some validity, especially when you look at the way that he responded to Joe Biden's executive decisions in areas like immigration and student loans, compared to the way he's responded to Trump's executive decisions in areas like USAID and immigration in other areas.
I want you to talk about where this goes. We're coming up on court season every year, like May and June. I you know, beginning of May, I start to get like that dread because you know they're going to radically remake the country. There's a lot of anxiety about the Voting Rights Act John Roberts's you know favorite Pinota. Do you see that is where this is going? Like and make it make sense with Alito?
Yeah, Well, I mean there are two different strands, and I think this is an ongoing thing. I mean we're going to see a lot this term. I mean, we have birthright citizenship just being argued.
Right, but birthwaite citizenship seems like the case they put on the dock to make people.
Find well, yes, I mean it seems easy, especially when you consider that the conservatives believe in the plain language of the amendment, and the plain language of the Amendment if you look to start with a playing language, like an originalist would say, does strongly suggest but then this is going to be a testinally of what you were saying about partisanship, especially for someone like Aledo. I mean,
this is a real question Alito. Is he a principled originalist or is he a conservative who wants a conservative outcome and wants to give maximum discretion to a president although it seems like a Republican president more than a democratic president.
I mean, we've seen this in like previous Supreme Court seasons, let's say, where they take a few cases that are so out of the mainstreams I guess, to show that they still do, theoretically at least believe in some norms.
Well, I know, I.
Think this is a real norm. I mean, birthright citizenship is going to matter to millions of people. This is a big, big deal, big big big Yeah.
But I don't think I think this is one of those cases they take to show that they still can decide cases in a normal way.
I think that it's going to be more serious than that, Especially is the next two years unfold because the conservative legal movement, Let's put it this way, the conservtive legal movement is the only four strong enough to reign in Trump.
I'll go that far to say that even if the Democrats take over the US House, you will have Donald Trump stretching his executive authority and what he will claim is the full extent of his powers, but which Democrats and many others will claim are way exceeding his powers, way exceeding his powers. It will fall to the conservative dominated Supreme Court to renin him in It's not just
the birthright citizens chipcase. How about the Federal Reserve case that hits on a very different level, but that's a very very important executive power case.
What about the tariff's case. So he lost on the tariffs, all those companies sued, but he's still doing the tariffs. Well, yes, but he's backing down in some ways, right, Yeah.
But it's putting the tariffs sort of a path to extinction a little bit because the law that he's operating under now has a time limit on it. That's why I would say that. But I think that the tariff's case was an important rebuke to Trump. And if you're one of these conservative justices who lives in this conservative ecosystem, who talks only to conservative media, who has become more insulated over time as many of them have breaking with
Trump on something where Donald Trump is furious. He's out there screaming at them. You know, he's condemning them. They're terrible people, They're awful and all that. Once you've broken with him, once it becomes easier to break with him again. So then you have birthright citizenship, and then you have the Federal Reserve.
But Alito did not break with Trump.
Alito did not break with Trump. So yes, we're talking about Alito here. I would say this.
Will be a test for leader.
Look if come June, I mean, I know the case is being argued this week, we'll see all the different contours play out. But if you know, if the decision comes down and it's you know, six to three or five to four, and let's say Roberts and Barrett join with the liberals to assert birthright citizenship or something like that, you know you will say, wow, you know, Sam Alito really is sticking with a Republican.
Side on these things. You know, he's.
Looking hard for reasons to defend Trump's executive order. On the other hand, as you were suggesting, if it was a more sleeping decision, if it was like a nine to nothing decision, that's a powerful reduke to Trump. And it also is you know, more than a meaningless fig leaf. You know, as you were saying, the kind of case they take just to try to you know, the exception that proves the rule that they're with Trump most of the time, but once in a while they'll split with him.
Trump isn't the kind of person who even tolerates people splitting with him once. So I think it would be a strong statement if they were nine to nothing on birthright citizenship.
Yeah, well, we will see, we will see. Thank you so much, Peter for coming on. This is totally fascinating.
Excellent revenge for the sixties.
Sam Alito on the triumph of the conservative legal movement at a bookstore near you. Thank you, no moment, slut Jesse Cannon.
So may another case of judges doing the good work for us. Here a judge has paused Trump's demand for student race data in seventeen states.
Why does Donald Trump want student race data?
I believe it's because DEI and Woke.
This administration's crusade against DEI is dangerous. Letitia James, New York's Attorney general, someone Donald Trump is also trying to prosecute for mortgage fraud. Student should not have to live in fear that their personal data would be handed over to the federal government, just as schools should not have to scramble to produce years of sensitive information to satisfy
an arbitrary and unlawful demand. Linda McMahon, the Education Secretary, said that has previously said the policy, which was ordered by President Trump in August, was a way to ensure that colleges were not considering race and admissions. I mean, this is so insane. They're just trying to bully colleges into not doing di It's so craven. And it's also like, what's the opposite of anti anti racism? Guess uh?
Is it woke?
It's racism?
Oh damn it.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.