The Long Game feat. Elie Mystal

been a big week for women. So I want to talk about too, in particular, shout out to Asia Wilson, who is the Time Athlete of the Year.

do is penetrate, pierce, and then destroy your viability. Her opponents will want to make her look unviable, and unfortunately a lot of that you know, sort of bag mention is gonna come the Democratic side. They'll be on shows today and throughout. Given all the reasons why this is a full hearted run, but I want to applaud her.

I think it is a brave and courageous run, and I think she can do as well, if not better, hopefully much better than some of the more recent candidates who got close, either going after a cruise or corning.

that glass after some of us are in. And you know, I just think that it takes so much courage because you you know, what I tell folks is that you have you met anybody halfway pregnant it and that's what it is with you, and that that that not that you have in your stomach because you don't know where the barbs the next day are going, that anxiety, that angst. So I'm very, very proud of Jasmine Crockett for running.

If we want to have a conversation about her viability to win, that's another conversation, because I think that she's running uphill with a couple of mules on her back, a couple of bouters pulling her back in the other direction. And I think it's going to be very difficult for Jasmine Crockett to be the next United States Senator from the great state of Texas if anybody can do what she can. But I just don't know if anybody wearing a D on their lapel can win Texas right now

through no fault of her own. But we can get to that. I wanted to start it off though by lauding the fact that she's actually jumping out there and running, because that in itself as a testament to her strength.

turn purple and it has not yet happened. I mean, we saw this effort with Betel O'Rourke, who came really close, and it was a lot of excitement around his campaign, and I think there are a lot of competing interest in Texas, right you know. There, our brother Rollad Martin would want us to point out that Texas has numerically the highest number of eligible black voters in the state, and I don't know if that's going to be enough

to carry her across the line. I think one of the challenges those mules that you were talking about that she's carrying is the population that leans towards whiteness. So even though there's this huge Latino population. Within the Latino community, there are a lot of white presenting, white thinking Latinos who ascribe to a very conservative ideology and landscape, so it will be interesting. I definitely applaud her for jumping in the race, will certainly be watching it and covering

it extensively. I'm looking forward to fair, clear, clean, concise coverage of the race with proper context. I would love to see another black woman in the Senate representing the interests of the folks in the longhorned state, but I do think it is fair to acknowledge that it's an uphill battle. I also think this is going to be one of the Senate races that will morph into a

national race. We've seen Donald Trump laser focus on black women, particularly effective black women, and so I hope that people can get behind her because I also think Angela that there are a lot of times when we're saying, well, she can't win, and you know, well, you know it's a good effort, but we're gonna see like sometimes let's just get in there and say, hey, we plan to win. You know, when you're on that spade table and your partner looking at you like, well, no, I always say,

play to win. Play to win. Assume that you want to win as soon the universe is tilted in your favor. So I think we have to give that energy to her. But but what are your thoughts? Because I know she's a friend of the show, and you've worked on campaigns before and certainly navigated Capitol Hill.

What would you implore jazzmin to do different? And Andrew from your gubernatorial run in twenty eighteen, what would you implore Jazmin to do differently, and what would you implore the voters to do differently? Because I think that's the major.

they are subtraction and division. And I think that she's talented enough that by not limiting her electorate, she can grow. So that's one thing. The other thing is she has to create an entirely new electric That's something Barack Obama did when he ran in two thousand and eight to kind of shock the world. And creating that new elector it means that you have an entire new base of voters, which I believe she's going to do extremely well. She's

going to raise the money. I think that Texas has long been Food's goal for Democrats, and we waste a lot of money in Texas on different races that can go to other seats where you can possibly fare better. But I do think that that she's going to add a new energy, and I regardless of whether or not I think she can win, I think she will be a winner win this race is over. And I also think something about Jasmine Crockett running in this race that

people aren't necessarily giving her credit for. Right now, She's going to drag along a lot of other Democrats in Texas. She there is going to be a wave in Texas because Jasmine Crockett is running. I don't think she'll get beat like a drum per se, but I just find it to be extremely difficult. But I do think that her race still can be a success with other things

I think. I mean, I got over forty percent of the vote in South Carolina, which is a whole hell of a lot for Democrats now who don't break you know, over thirty five And I know Andrew was one megachurch away from being governor of Florida. What it was it thirty five thousand voters, So I mean, I do know, and Stacey Abrams came close the first time, so it's

not this isn't out of the realm if possible. But when we talk about these type of races, we have to understand the magnitude the difficulty and get her the benefit of knowing that she still can be a success because so many people are going to She's going to drag along with them with her.

so I'll perform the Democratic typical performance. She gets the resources that are equal because I think her natural instincts are going to the places that she knows she needs to be. She will need to camp out between the largest Black centers in the state and the largest Latino areas, and progressive whites tend to find you they're determined a

lot of times in that way. But those two groups trying to demystify where she needs to with the Latino community around what she does and doesn't know, believes or doesn't believe what the values they share in common, and then motivating black folks because what I know about us is we're extremely sophisticated voters and we do not throw

our votes away. In that sophistication has largely come from the fact that we've always had to do the math and the figuring out the psychology of how everybody else is going to vote, how everybody else is going to perform, before we then can decide whether or not we're putting our vote behind a losing cause to make a statement or negotiating space to share power.

a Trump acolyte. He's being primary by the Attorney General there Ken Paxton, another Trump acolyte, and joining the race is also Congressman Wesley Hunt. And these are all Trump sick of fans, so I'm not sure that she'll be competing for the same voters that they are. But I'm curious from you and Bacari, what do voters need to do differently?

and people are used to pressing the button statewide. And then the other one is Wesley Hunt, who doesn't stand a chance in hell. So I think that we're going to learn a lot about Jasmine Crockett, We're going to learn a lot about this about the electorate through this Democratic primary because Tara Leko is very formidable. You know, he is a messenger that a lot of people have gravitated towards. He's the type of person who goes out

and speaks to different groups. And one of the things that Jasmine Crockett has and I think we take for granted because we live in this media bubble, but this is an opportunity for her. Like on the Internet, Jasmine Crockett probably has one hundred percent name ID, but throughout Texas, her name I D probably doesn't crack one third right. And that is the type of growth and a runway that I think that she can. I mean, because me

and Angela were talking about this the other day. People don't even know and Tiffany, we talked about it several times. People don't even know her resume. I mean, they don't know how brilliant she is. They don't know that she went to law school. They don't know where she went to law school. You know, they don't know how she had to be this much better than everybody else to

get to where she is. So she literally has an opportunity to introduce herself to voters, Tiffany, to kind of get to your question, and she has to take advantage of that moment, an opportunity to introduce herself to those voters. And also it's not voters have to train themselves. And we're still learning how to do that because very few voters have ever had the opportunity to press a button for a black person in that seat, let alone a

black woman. And so you have to go through this process of actually training the electorate too, giving them kind of a permission skip to go and do that.

It is the responsibility of the voters. The amount of reliance that you take that you have to have and people some that you only shook hands with, if at all, is humbling. And so I would love Andrew for you to talk about that we that hour and you know how that we in our has to change in this moment in time. There are some things that are shifting for example, for the first time in three decades, I believe a Democrat one my mayoral race in Miami. So

the tide is changing. Has it changed enough? And what is needed for the voters Andrew to continue that tithe change?

Rather for every cycle there's a there is a swing back from one to the other and another swing, and in some cases the you know, the the swing is

more extreme than we would have ever thought. I think what voters have to do, and I you know, I actually I was real honest with people when I was running in Florida that this system can't change just because you send one person there, one man, they're one governor there, and that if you send me there and you're not back up, then you're sending me alone and you're stranding me, and so we can't get the kind of change that we want to see in this state if we all

aren't in this game. That means coming up and visiting legislators and talking to your city councils and wrestling resolutions out of them in support of our legislative reforms. But it required us all to do something, and I wanted to be honest about it, because we delude our voters into thinking that one man changes one thing through one

cycle and voila. And then that thing doesn't happen, and everybody's like, but you told us that you was going to do and it doesn't happen, and then that cycle continues to repeat itself, and it turns people off of politics, and we spend a whole generation's time trying to recruit them back.

is in your hands. It's hard to remember that democracy in and of itself people power, right, It is us realizing that power. And so that's the first thing that I would say to encourage, you know, Jasmine in this particular journey, which is to know like you signed up to do this because you know you're a formidable fighter.

get involved in all of that. So I think it's important for her to hold on to that hope in this moment as well. And that's something that's got to be shared by the voters.

she ran. She went to a sub precinct level, meaning that it's not just the precinct where you vote, but she actually went into those communities and met with those community leaders and had individuals go through and meet with those community leaders to make sure that the next election, the school board election, those individuals were trained to go to the polls to make sure that those city council races,

those individuals were trained to go to the polls. Andrew knows his state of Florida better than I, but I would guess that there was a lot of remnants of you know, Obama for America and the infrastructure that shit ain't cheap either, you're talking about tens of millions of dollars that are spent on infrastructure over a period of time. And so that's when we talk about it being uphill.

This isn't an indictment of Jasmine Crockett. This is more so an indictment of democratic infrastructure being prepared to catapulta candidacy like Jasmine Crockets and putting her into place where you have a puncher's chance to have success. And so I just wanted to be extremely clear that that those things have to be in place if you're not in a blue state like Massachusetts or New York. And then I wanted to pose a question to y'all because Angela

got me kind of fired up about it. But what y'all think about a King Jeffrey saying he won't going to endorse or stay out the race?

this country who are running our government in a shadowy way, you know, guiding you know the direction in which the administration takes on certain issues, you know, impacting all of this, and much of it is happening behind the veil, not

in public. These are private calls and shuttles that are being made between Donald Trump and it closest folks to build this cabal and the Congress that would be ashamed of not, as the Court says, jealously protecting it's its responsibilities to hold this president accountable.

over Warner Brothers. And it's seventy two billion and it's over one hundred year catalog of entertainment, big shows to you know, series because what they found in this streaming space is at over half the folks who are streaming are streaming old shows, not new things on television. They're going back to things that they grew up on potentially in streaming those, which I thought was very fascinating, and then I thought about my own habits and I sometimes

found myself doing that either way sort of. The Actors Guild, the arts community writ large are against this because they believe it's going to one concentrate really power on all sides of a negotiation to do just one of these companies fewer games in town, which tends to one layoff employees and drive up the costs. So for those of us who get subscriptions, you may be consolidating them, but in the total you end up paying, you end up paying more. So it sounds like a deal, but isn't

a deal at all. But the consolidation of media part we really all have to be paying attention to, because there's already too many closure relationships to take actions to then make that Cabald even smaller and thereby stronger I think Bear's consequences as well.

of a conservative. And so as this bidding war was happening, there were a lot of eyes paying attention to see who was going to buy this company, because as you all know, Warner Brothers include CNN, HBO, and when you think about the really big franchises that people watch Game of Thrones, think about all your favorite shows on HBO. The streaming giant will then have access to that. And so after this, after Netflix has acquired Warner Brothers, a

lot of people held their breast. What does this mean for CNN? So in this deal they did not they will not acquire CNN. CNN will now be a part of its own group that I believe. You guys correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that will still remain under the control of Zaslov. But yet, to your point, Andrew, what this means for entertainers, what this means for writers, directors? All these things remains to be seen. As we've seen,

streaming has completely changed the field. But certainly when it comes to our news outlets and who they feed into. Comcast owns, MSNBC, CNN, like I said, will remain under Warner Brothers. Fox, when you think about how incestuous that is so Fox, Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins, all of these things feed up, funnel up into the same conservative outlets. So this is I think the caller for the question. This is something that I would love to do a mini pod on.

affordability crisis. That's where our focus continue to be.

information moves fast, disinformation misinformation moves fast. He did say that she was strong and formidable in those type of things. I just wanted to know your thoughts on it, because I know that he has been drawing a lot of heat from all sides, particularly those of us who support him, are questioning some decisions, and I don't I don't, you know, I think Nancy Pelosi handles things differently. I don't. I

don't know. I just think that she handled things with a kind of, you know, a testicular fortitude that isn't necessarily displayed often or all the time by by Kim Jeffrey. So that was my that I'm not saying I'm critical it. I just wanted to hear your thoughts on the non endorsement. She's cool, though, you know.

it's everything's all speculative. Now this is a gamble, and so much is at stake, And do we really want to split our resources between this race and a Senate race? Why don't we just throw all of our money into one of those? I mean, just the games that are played. There's no real fealty to sessing out what's the best. Necessarily, there's this there's this negotiation we do amongst ourselves, negotiating away from ourselves. It's it's crazy Republicans don't negotiate against themselves.

They go all in.

more keen than in depth. But I do believe that there was times when Nancy Pelosi had caucus members run for something else and when they announced, she was I'm right there with them, you know, I'm missing I love him. She might not even like them that much, but she was always ten toes down for her caucus members. And I just think that people remember that because it's not that distant and are questioning it now. That's my only point.

a writer for Kamala Harris. She was calling for an open premier, open convention, sorry, not an open primary, open convention.

Crockett to run. They said that they started to include her name in polling to see if she would bite. And they try trying to exclaim credit for this, that they wanted the least viable candidate in this race against John cornn Er, whoever wins the Republican primary, and they're trying to say that they they're the reasons why, the reason why she decided to run. So Terrence Woodbury's response,

I think is worth noting. He says, Republicans recruiting Crockett because she is less electable is as silly as Dems recruiting Trump or Republicans recruiting Obama because they are less electable, because they both have something in common with Jasmin Crockett. One the ability to expand the elector with frustrated voters that otherwise think all politicians are the same. Two the ability to gain and keep media attention long enough to make the case to those frustrated voters that are ignoring

other politicians. Any generic Democrat Democrat can get to forty five percent in Texas, Jasmine is the only one that can break through to the eight million Texas voters that have tuned other politicians out and if she can get just ten percent of them to believe in her enough to vote, she is the next Senator from Texas. I thought that was a great point from Terrence. I love the way that he broke it down in numbers only like Upholster would. Terrence would very of course from hit strategies.

And of course at this point we're gonna pivot to somebody else that is an expert among us, and that is to our good friend Ellie Missole, a Supreme Court expert, the person we always turn to when it's way too much going down with the Supreme Court. There is a lot happening, three cases in particular we want to talk to Ellie about. So let's bring Ellie Mistyle to the show.

a bus. Right Trump is driving the bus, Mike Johnson is driving the bus. Hakeem Jeffries is like, hey, I'm three votes away from driving the bus. I really want to drive this bus. That is my that is my focus. Angela. You said he is very disciplined. Absolutely, I'll give them credit for that. The man knows. The man is disciplined, and what he thinks he's doing, and what he wants to do is drive the bus. He doesn't want to blow up the bus. He doesn't want to get off

the bus. He doesn't want to get us off the bus. He wants to drive the bus. And he's promising us, Oh, when I'm driving the bus will go to better places. We need to blow up the bus and takeem. Jeffries is not that guy. That's that's not shade, that is fact. He is not the guy who wants to be the leader of the opposition to fascism in this country. Cheron doesn't want it Durwan doesn't want it, the Newsom doesn't

want it, Shapiro doesn't want it. We don't have democrats right now who want to oppose fascism we want we have democrats who want to wait for their turn to be in charge of the wheels of power. They don't want to use a Game of Thrones analogy. They're just waiting for their turn on the wheel. They don't want to break it. And at some point a leader needs to emerge who is going to tell us how to break the wheel of fascism, how to break the wheel of the oligarts, because that is what the country is

crying out for right there. There are not people out there, are not people out here who just want to replace the figureheads at the top and find one that's a little bit more. And that's why Crockett has, you know, a lot of support right now. That's why Mundami won in New York. The people who are willing to tell us how to break the wheel are gonna be our

leaders of the future. And and and Jeffries is not that guy, which is not saying that I'm not gonna look, I'm gonna spend the next year of my life until we get to the twenty twenty six mid terms, telling everybody within earshot about how Hockeing Jeffries must be the next Speaker of the House, how the Democrats need to take control of the House, how that has to happen, and that we have to support Democrats and we I'm gonna do all the things, right. I'm not not gonna vote.

I'm not I'm not stephen A. Smith, right, like I'm rational, right, and and so I understand what needs to happen politically, but in terms of what this country needs to defeat the authoritarians and the fascists and the biggots and the racists and the misogynists that are running roughshod over our country on over our rights. Hakim Jeffries is not the leader of the opposition movement, and we need one.

that can survive. Generational control of the Supreme Court by six conservatives, Republican fascists in ropes, nothing happens, you don't get anything. And the Supreme Court this year, since they got back to work, actually even before they officially got back to work, this year has has proven my point. All they have done is rubber snamp the MAGA, administer the MAGA policies. And it starts. It started in September on the shadow docket when the Supreme Court in Brett

Kavanaugh reconstitutionalize racial profiling. Like I'm not sure that everybody fully grasps this, but like racial profiling is back and constitutional, and Brett Kavanagh says it is just common sense, and that is what And so Ice is now explicitly by the Supreme Court allowed to racially profile people as they arrest and detained in their ridiculous search for illegal immigrants. Right, Like,

that's just back on the table that was September. The Supreme Court has agreed finally, and I'm not surprised to hear the birthright citizenship case on the merits and so I think that's the logical place to start, because birthright citizenship is a fundamental right in this country, right, a right given to us after the Civil War by the Fourteenth Amendment. Right that says that you are a citizen of where you are born, not where your parents are born.

And the Supreme Court and the Conservatives want to take that away and return us to truly an antebellum, a pre Civil War state of affairs. And I say that because you have to understand why birthright citizenship is here in the first place, right, Like, yes, it was here to provide citizenship to newly freed Africans after the Civil War. Yes, great, but what was it really changed? What the Fourteenth Amendment did was create an entirely new concept in this country

called the American citizen. See before the Fourteenth Amendment, in the pre Civil War War days, citizenship did not flowed down from the federal government. It flowed up from the states. So whether you were a citizen of the United States America, there was no such thing. You were a citizen of Georgia, you were a citizen of Missouri, you were a citizen

of New York. That's how they did it, and that's why we had a war, because obviously Missouri was like, black people can't be citizens, and Illinois was like, actually, black people can't be citizens, and you can't have a country with those. You can't have a country where your citizenship changes depending on which side of the railroad track you live on. That's unworkable and led to the bloodiest

war in American history. The Fourteenth Amendment solved all that by saying, all right, we're not going to have every state doing what they want. One standard of citizenship, a federal standard citizenship, an American standard of citizenship. Right, So that's number one why it's here. The second reason why it's here, and you'll see Republicans always talk, well, you know, Western Europe doesn't do birthright citizenship no, they don't because

they're colonialists. Having citizenship be based on where your parents are from, specifically where your father is from, is a colonial idea because it allowed the French and the British and the Dutch and whatever to go all over the world rape and pillage other people's countries and when they produced offspring and other places of the world. Oh no, no, no, you weren't a citizen of Vietnam. No no, no, you were still French. No no, no, you're not a citizen of Ghana.

You're still English. Like that is why they did it that way. When you get to the New World, which is a country of immigrants, having citizenship tied to where your parents are from was unworkable because then you're all English citizens, then you're all Dutch citizens, then you're all right.

So the New World adopted an idea that your citizenship was tied to your both birth and that existed for white people before the Civil War, right like when people are saying saying, oh, it's how Western Europe does it, why don't we do that? White folks before the Civil War, their citizenship was based on the state that they were born in, not the state where their parents were born in right, you didn't have William Pennah, I'm not a

citizen of Pennsylvania. I'm actually a citizen of jolly old England. No, that's not how white people rolled, right. So the idea that your citizenship is tied to your parents is a colonial idea. The New World rejected that. And not just America, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and Brazil, El Saltley the name a country in the New World, almost all of them have birthright citizenship as opposed to Old World citizenship. And that leasing to my

third and final point. I'm talking to you about the law, about why the fourteenth Amendment is written the way it is. But there's also a level of disgusting moral apocrisy when a nation of colonizers, usurpers, and thieves purports to say that a person born in these lands is not a citizen of these lands, and actually it's based on where their parents are born. Right. We stole this country from people who wait for it. We're born here, we're born here.

We stole this country from people who were born here. And now we're gonna where the Republicans want to say, even if you're born here, you don't get to be a citizen in this nation that we've created on stolen land. There is a disgusting layer of moral hypocrisy underlying the entire project to end birthright citizenship. Of course, you didn't bring me on to tell you why birthright citizenship of supportant.

You brought me on to explain why the Supreme Court is about to take it away, and on that particular question.

was freed when Sherman came marching through the South. Most black people aren't that lucky. Most black people don't have that kind of record keeping in their family tree. So when the ice agent, when the government agent comes into the maternity ward and says, well, I don't think that you are that your baby is a citizenship is a citizen because I can't prove that you're a citizen, because I can't prove that your citizenship is not also derived

from birthright citizenship. How are you going to prove that it's not? How are you going to prove that you actually were brought over here on the second ship of Dutch settlers that had fourteen slaves to build the wall on Wall Street, Manhattan. How are you going to prove that you go back that far? I know that there are atos people out here just like this is great

for us. Prove it, prove it. And because you, the black person will be asked to prove it, while John Hinton Meister, the third with that German ass name, is never gonna be asked to prove that they are citizenship by dentt of their fathers. There's also an issue about when they if they try to change this, citizenship will be directed through who the father or the mother? Right, because they're all anchor babies or shit all that. So how how do you do what if you have one

parent who is a citizen and one who wasn't. Is that gonnaccount? And which parent? And do you have records of that parent?

birthright citizenship is that will probably devolve back into separate states. Right, so they'll say, Okay, you're not a citizen in the United States. So if you're a legal immigrant and immediately, Kathy Hokel Gafa Newsom, they'll pass a law saying, well, you're a citizen of California regard if you're born in California.

Like that. That is the next thing that that's the liberal response to all of this, and that brings us right back to where we were in eighteen fifty seven in the dread Scott decision, where you're going to have a class of people who are citizens in one state but aren't citizens in another state. You'll have a class of people who are who are citizens in California but then lose their citizenship when they travel to Texas, who lose their ability, their record, their record, the providence of

their records when they travel across state lines. And again, we have literally tried it this way before and it led to war. So I don't understand always people's apathy towards this particular issue, and I do think that part of it is racialized. They think it's only going to hurt a certain class of people and not all classes of people that white folks want to hurt, and that is just not true. But because of its unworkability, that's why I say I'm not sure that Trump wins this one.

This is one of the only cases up where I can't immediately say, oh, Trump has six votes, right, he might, and oral arguments haven't happened, and I will listen to those closely and have much better sense after these people start talking. But on spec I can't fully I can't necessarily count to six votes count to five votes for Trump on this issue. I'm not saying that he won't win. I'm just saying that of the cases, you know, there's a class of cases that I know he's gonna win,

and this is not one of them. I don't know that he's gonna win this one because blowing up the fourteenth Amendment, remember by executive fiat, Like he's trying to change the text and the meaning of the fourteenth Amendment, not through legislation, not through a constitutional amendment, just through some like podunked executive order. It's a lot for the Supreme Court to say Trump can change the Constitution by executive order. They might, they might say it, but they also,

like literally they just might not that might. This might be actually the bridge too far. And there's also the political balance here that I'm sure McCary thinks about a lot. You if you're if you make Trump lose here, you're gonna have a whole series of center right stories from mainstream media, from the New York Times in the Washington Post, from all those guys saying, ah, as we can clearly

see the Supreme Court is legitimate and reasonable. Right, the Supreme Court is taking a lot of heat right now and having this one decision, which is completely coogle for cocabus bonkers away from Trump will will trigger a bunch of mainstream and right wing media being like, ah this, ah, yes, the Supreme Court totally reasonable, toyal, legitimate, so we should so now we can clearly see that all the other things that they've done, like taking away voting rights, jerrymandering,

anti trans stuff, all of that is fine because clearly they're just following the law. They're not beholden to Trump. So, like, you also have political value for the Supreme Court and standing up to Trump on this issue, which is so is so beyond the pale of normal constitutional law. That's another reason why I think he could lose this, and then I'll have to come on all the shows explaining why the Supreme Court still sucks even though you had this one good.

a freaking idiot. But he wants what Roberts has and so sometimes Kavanaugh can be pulled on these political strings, I think even more so than than Barrett can can, who to the extent that she's ever moderated, it comes from a very doctrinal position, as supposed to Kavanaugh, who's just trying to get a good press hit. And then Roberts, I think for Cari, you're right that he will occasionally at least pretend to care about the legitimacy and stature

of the Supreme Court. So all of that can again, I can listen to oral arguments and in an hour, I can tell you, wait, no, I was wrong. But as I stand now, before they've heard arguments on the case, I don't know that he has five votes for this. I know he's got to I know he's got Thomas, and I know he's got Alida, but I don't know that he's got Roberts, Barrett and Kavanaugh. And then Gorsich can get really Gorsich can get really textual on these issues.

And there's also with Gorsish you also have to remember, you know, I sometimes jokingly call him the last Justice of the Mohicans, Neil Gorsich, those Native Americans. He is, he is Dale Day Lewis, he is out there. Any decision involving Native Americans is something where where Gorcious can be relied upon to vote with the liberals. It's it's

the one good thing in his portfolio. And you can make an argument that taking away birthright citizenship also significantly negatively impacts Native Americans, and if you hit that argument right, you'll get Gorsic too. So again, I could be I don't want to I hate. I never want to sound naive. I know exactly what this court is capable of. They're capable of giving Trump the win on birthright citizenship. I just don't know that they will.

Kavanaugh wants the next press hit. Or would it provide more transparency for the American people even though we can see the opinions and read the transcripts, there might be a little bit of a difference. So just curious your thoughts.

of the courts. Secret courts are bad, are big b bad for democracy, and so the courts should be the court proceeding should be televised, just because whether or not that would be a good thing for the court itself. Right now, I do think that if you had cameras in the courtroom, there would be more grand standing from the lawyers. I think there would be more grand standing from the justices. I don't particularly think that's I don't think that's particularly good.

but you can't play the video. And TV's a video medium, and so by not having cameras, it prevents a lot of otherwise what would happen television coverage of these unelected rulers of our country. So I think whatever the bad grandstanding issues are overcome by the need for more transparency and for people to be able to see and learn what their actual rulers are doing. So I'm one hundred percent in favor of cameras in the courtroom, even though I think it would probably be bad in terms of

like the quality of arguments. I don't think those concerns are are misplaced. I just think they're completely overtopped by both the democratic necessity of being able to see your leaders in action and the ability to cover those cases on television.

or the Harland Crow Anti Corruption Bill. But you need something where an independent body can hold these judges accountable when they clearly flout what should be ethics ruled. We don't have any ethics rules, so I almost can't even say they're can't clearly flout what doesn't exist. But you know, when they clearly flout the simple, the mere idea that they should be nonpartisan, impartial arbiters of the law. They don't even pretend to be that anymore, and they never

will until there's an ethics bill. Now, legal scholars will say that there's a separation of powers problem because the Court has defined powers and they're punished by another branch of government. Then that the offends. That makes Thomas Jefferson

cry or something. I don't really care, but if you want it to go down that roll road, I always point out that the Supreme Court's budget is controlled by Congress, and so again dictator for a day, I cut their budget until they agree to third party ethics oversight, right, like that is a congressional power. The Constitution says there should be a Supreme Court. Doesn't say where they should meet. Doesn't say that they get to have a fancy court house.

They can meet out on the lawn. They can hold their hearings out on the lawn, on the Washington Mall for all the Constitution cares. Right, doesn't say they get fancy clerks. Doesn't say they get security. That's something that Congress has provided these people. They are armed security forces, so they do not face the gun violence that they have inflected upon the rest of the nation. I would take it back. I would take it back. I would I would let Harlan Crowe to provide their security for

all I care. But if you're gonna get money from the federal government, goddamn a, your gunna follow some ethics rules. That is the hard ball I would play. And then Nick Dick Durbin emails my magazine yells at me for being too radical.

just words in the Constitution. I keep saying this, I don't have the knowledge of the Supreme Court that you do, or the law that all you eyes do. I keep saying, the courts will not hold. We keep talking about these infrastructures as though they're going to be around in five years, ten years fifteen years before we came on, Ellie and I were talking about our love for and or the series and or that that reads that I watch it like a documentary. Do you guys think the courts are

going to sustain ten years from now? Are we going to be talking about the Supreme Court and Congress controlling their budget? Do you think this infrastructure we're trying to navigate is indestructible given that we've already seen the norms of it erode. We're seeing it every single day erode. So how important is this the Supreme Court going to be? When Donald Trump is like, Oh, I don't like what

you said, so poof the Supreme Court doesn't matter. I don't like these rules you're putting in place, so poof Congress doesn't matter. I'm just curious child's thoughts.

centered around the courts. I mean, the three most consequential political events I've had since nineteen eighty four, since I was born, was replacing Thirdgod Marshal with Clarence Thomas, Conservative pressure on the right to remove Harriet Myers and replace her with Justice Alito, and the election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton and him being able to put three justices on the Supreme Court. So in my forty one years of living, I believe that the court the courts

have dictated societies machinations, not the other way around. So yeah, I don't think the courts will be at the whim of society. I think it's the other way around.

the long standing impact now of Citizens United. You know, the case with FEC or no McCutchen McCutchen versus the FEC where campaign contributions were no longer capped for individuals. So this is democracy is now a numbers game, and if you don't have money to play the game, then you're out. And so what they're getting ready to do in this case where JD Vance frankly should no longer have standing with this in a in a n S

r C case against the the FEC. Also, I think is an important note because I think it expands Citizen United and its intent and McCutcheon to a very very dangerous place where it is purely pay to play, and it sounds like they're gonna win on the merits on this case. So Ellie, I want to hear you on this, and I'd love to hear if there's time on the FDC as well.

to their own ends. That's why taking over the courts is always like step one in any fashion authoritarian takeover. Which is why I've been screaming about court expansion for the past ten years, because it is the courts or a leading indicator of fascism, not a lagging indicator of fascism. So that's to Tiffany's thirty thousand foot question, and we're seeing it on Angela's on the ground question about campaign

finance reform. What the Court is essentially doing, big picture wise, is making corruption legal, right, Like, that's how we have to think about it. They're making corruption in our political system legal. Two years ago, Brett Kavanaugh issued an opinion where he basically said that you couldn't charge people for corruption for taking legal bribes if they took the illegal bribe after they had already performed the service that they were bribed to do. At that point, it's just a gratuity.

That is me quoting capital. It's a gratuity for job well done. If you pay a politician after they've taken the vote that you wanted them to take, no mention of that you promised to pay them that money only if they voted the way that you want it. Right. That is, there was a case with Bob McDonald and Virginia. Like the Supreme Court is trying to make corruption in our political system legal, and that is really at the

heart of this NRS, this Republican National Committee case. What they're trying to do is remove the cap on spending. Right so, like, right now you have a limited amount of money that you can give to political candidates. They're trying to take that away. I'm just trying to say, is if you're a rich if you're a billionaire, if you're Elon Musk, you can pay these guys as much as you want. Right So, again, it's allowing more corruption to be in the system, and that the Supreme Court

is very interested in doing. Why because they're a leading indicator of fascism because they're a leading indicator of oligarchy, Like, this is how you make the oligarchs and the fascist legal by allowing them to spend as much money as they want to influence and quite frankly buy political candidates and political campaigns. And that's absolutely what they're doing and what we're saying right now, and it's bad. It's it's very bad.

on the hypocrisy level, rocks into their birthright citizenship thing. Right, So they're basically protecting the personhood of corporations but not protecting the personhood of actual fucking people, Like that's what they're that's what they're doing. And again, the hypocrisy is rife and and disgusting.

and that's what I want to see. That's why my dream is to be nominated for a Circuit Court appointment. I don't want the actual job. I think I would actually be probably a bad judge because I'm pretty freaking biased.

domestic violence here. So now South Carolina loss cover same sex couples. Very proud of that, Eli, but it's not the big dogs, but it was big enough for me. Right for your service, Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

So if you could really quickly just go into this, because I think this is a case that Trump is likely to win.

doesn't like them. Because everything is everybody starves with the pleasure of the president. According to this made up unitary executive theory, it is the end of the administrative state,

is the hollowing out of the state bureaucracy. And I know that when I say that defending the bureaucrats and the experts doesn't sound particularly sexy, But people need to understand that one of the some thrusts of constitutional liberal democracy, one of the reasons for the bourgeois revolts of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries was to take away the power of the absolute monarch to fire government ministers and functionaries at will.

That was actually one of the huge points of contentions between constitutional democracy and absolute monarchy. That you shouldn't be able to fire federal officials just because they don't do what you say. You shouldn't be able to fill the federal bureaucracy with your cronies and friends as opposed to experts and people represented by the elective branches, right Like,

That's actually part of what the revolutions are about. And so when the Supreme Court gives this power back to Trump to fire any federal official at his whim and will, what they're doing is truly giving him a monarchical power in the same way that Trump the United States gave him immunity from criminal protection, which is the power of

a king. This also is the power of the king that they are regiving to Donald Trump, and it's part of a long term conservative legal project to destroy the administrative state to destroy the regulatory state, and they are absolutely winning and they're absolutely going to win this. And so in my article in the Nation, I wrote, like people might not think that they see the importance of the bureaucracy now, but y'all will You will when you can't get a vaccine because Trump has fired everybody who

is able to provide you a vaccine. You will see it when there's uranium and mercury in your drinking water because Trump fired all the people at the EPA, because groundwater studies are too woke for the Trump administration. You will see. You will see it as AI turns into the terminator because it's completely unregulated by the federal government. All of these issues are actually issues of whether or not we're allowed to have a state bureaucracy run by

experts or a state bureaucracy run by cronies. And the Supreme Court and Donald Trump have decided to go all in on the crony system, and that is going to have significant consequences for how we live every day in this country. And he's going to win sixty three, He's gonna win six three, and that's it.

and Mary McLeod Beffoon, who founded the organization. I've been a member since I was twenty one years old, and so I just want people to make sure that we carry the legacy of our people who may not be household names to some people, who may be household names to others, but carry the legacy of our civil rights leaders into the work that we're doing today. So thank you Shavon and the NCNW for honoring me and my

sisters this past weekend and Karen Finney. They also honored Karen Finney as well, so congrats to her.

Go get your physicals. Man, y'all gotta go get your yearly physicals. I get really depressed around this time because one of us are going to have somebody who drops dead who need not be dead, around this holiday season. Go get your yearly physicals. If you haven't, you still got time. If you got the ACA, Obamacare is free, even go to urgent care. I like to get the Cadillac because I'm a little bit of a hypochondriac. So I make them test me for everything, eatbola, eat cola,

all the stuff. So I want you all to get get get your physicals, particularly black men, if you're over the age or whatever it is, let them let them get real intimate with you, touch you in all the places you don't necessarily want to be touched, but go get your physicals so we can live a little bit longer this holiday season.

But it also reminded me of I have like reiki sessions weekly that are virtual, and in my reiki session from last week, Danielle told me that this was a season for me to really engage in clearing out any negativity, so any old wounds that I may have, any old baggage, any you know, points of bitterness, any places where I needed to release someone or ask for forgiveness, to really deepen into that. And I was re listening to that session on Monday of this week, and I just want

y'all to know and hold me accountable to it. And I also invite you into the journey to do the same, to release any of.

than that, it's not me being the beat. It's just anxiety and I'll be spending and Tiff will be like, you gotta calm down, says, and she's right, and so to that, I want to be much more intentional about how you are encountering me and make sure that I clear the air. So for those of you who I don't have your phone numbers or emails, if I've done anything to offend you or cause you harm, please forgive me.

Charge it to my head and out my heart, and I ask that you and you join me on this journey at the end of the year for us to clear out any of that negativity so we can go into this next year with much more positivity.