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SCOTUS may be between argument sessions, but the legal news isn’t slowing down. Kate, Melissa, and Leah cover the latest out of Minnesota before touching on the Department of Homeland Security’s troubling use of administrative subpoenas and Jodi Kantor’s reporting on the introduction of non-disclosure agreements to the Supreme Court. Then, some election news: the Tulsi Gabbard-supervised FBI raid on an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, Trump’s desire to “take over” elections, and an update on the challenge against California’s Proposition 50, Gavin Newsom’s counter to racial gerrymandering in Texas. Finally, Kristi Noem’s attempt to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Haitians gets shot down by the District Court for the District of Columbia, and a smörgåsbord of other legal bits and pieces.

Favorite things:

• Leah: What a “Melania” Cinematographer Hoped to Accomplish, Isaac Chotiner (New Yorker); Bad Bunny’s Grammys speech; Melissa’s upcoming book (link below); Margaritaville Resort Times Square
• Kate: The Secrets of the Whales (Disney Plus); Liam Ramos Was Just One of Hundreds of Children at This Detention Center. Release Them All., Elora Mukherjee (NYT); Ian McKellen on Colbert
• Melissa: Should You Buy a Newspaper or a Yacht? By Alexandra Petri, How Autocrats Meddle With Elections, Anne Applebaum (The Atlantic); This Guy Sucked; Nuremberg; Mona Lisa Smile; Mrs. America; Fleece Puppy Bag (Zara)

Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2026! 

• 3/6/26 – San Francisco
• 3/7/26 – Los Angeles

Learn more: http://crooked.com/events

Preorder Melissa’s book, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader

Buy Leah’s book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes

Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky

TRANSCRIPT

Melissa Murray [AD]

Show Intro Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court. It’s an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they’re going to have the last word. She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.

Melissa Murray Hello and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We’re your hosts, I’m Melissa Murray.

Leah Litman I’m Leah Litman.

Kate Shaw And I’m Kate Shaw. And with SCOTUS still in between argument sessions, we are going to take today to really stay focused on legal news. And oh boy, there is a lot of it. Some of it is from SCOTus, some from Article II, and then there is just a little bit of everything else. We will start with the news out of Minnesota and then cover some goings on in the executive branch, Congress and the lower federal courts.

Melissa Murray Step, some dispatches from Minnesota. So in a major tone shift and change of course, I’m joking, that’s a huge joke, Borders Arena Tom Homan announced that DHS has reduced the number of federal officers deployed to Minnesota from 3,000 to, wait for it, 2,300, which I guess as a start. But it would still be the largest deployment ever, and it still means that quotidian life in Minnesota is, in the words of the immortal Bruce Springsteen, underneath, quote, an occupier.

Kate Shaw Yeah. So last episode we talked about how the surge of federal immigration officers and just the casual brazen lawlessness on the ground was creating enormous problems in the federal courts in Minnesota. Given the hoards of people the federal government was arresting and detaining and trying to deport, some with pending claims for asylum or protection from removal, this created an enormous uptake in the number of cases that the federal were required to hear. Administration also adopted the brazen and baseless view that federal law required them to detain basically every person who had never been lawfully admitted to the country when they initially entered the country, although that has not been the practice previously.

Leah Litman And almost every single court who have considered that argument has rejected it. Specifically, more than 300 judges have ruled against the government on that issue, but the government is sticking to it and it’s partially what is generating this backlog of habeas petitions from people who are challenging their detention. And after we recorded, the Fifth Circuit, it’s always the Fifth circuit, released a decision in which it said, F those 300 judges, the practice in every executive branch for decades, law, and common We agree with the Trump administration that the law, apparently though no one ever realized or thought this before, requires them to detain EVERYONE who originally entered the border without being lawfully admitted, no matter how long ago. That the 5th circuit is allowing the administration to carry out this mandatory detention policy is going to do a few things. It gives the government an incentive to try to transfer people to the 5t circuit as they did with Liam Ramos and his father, where the government will be allowed to support that. And it’s going to create pressure on plaintiffs and courts outside the Fifth Circuit to file habeas petitions and review them before someone is shuttled off to the Fifth Circuit where they won’t be allowed to get even a bond hearing to ask for their release. Oh, and if you didn’t already think the Fifth circuit was a joke, well, let me tell you, they issued this decision which again disagreed with more than 300 judges on Friday when oral argument in the case was Wednesday. Yep, took them only two days. Now back to everything in the state of the world that existed when we recorded to explain the immigration backlog. Add to this the fact that DHS is telling officers that you don’t need a warrant to arrest someone or to enter their home and all of that unconstitutionality and lawlessness unsurprisingly generates additional legal claims challenging these additional tensions.

Melissa Murray And because there are some lawyers who are reluctant to work for a Justice Department that seems bent on injustice and lawlessness, there have been staffing shortages that allegedly have caused the executive branch to delay with compliance with court orders, to release detainees, and to otherwise adopt what has been a chaotic, slapdash approach to legal filings and legal challenges.

Kate Shaw Okay, so let’s break it down with some stats. Chris Geidner, who writes the newsletter Law Dork, said he has identified 253 federal habeas petitions filed just in the month of January, 2026, in the district of Minnesota, whereas only six had been filed in that same court in January of 2025, just one year ago. So this is the context for that chief judge Schilt’s scathing order that we discussed on the last episode. That was the order in which the chief judge suggested that ICE had violated almost a hundred court orders in a single month, and likely more, he was referring there to orders to release detainees who were being held unlawfully, which DHS was just not complying. Okay, so fast forward to last week when things really seemed to reach a boiling point. At a hearing focused on the executive’s possible non-compliance with court orders, Minnesota reporter Paul Bloom shared a highly unusual exchange between the judge and Julie Lee, a DHS lawyer who had been detailed as a Special Assistant United States Attorney. To the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota to help with the backlog of detainee cases. As bloom relayed, during this court appearance, Lee was refreshingly candid about the state of things in the office to which she had been detailed.

Leah Litman According to the transcript of the proceeding, Lee said, quote, I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep. The system sucks. This job sucks. I am trying with every breath I have to get you what I need, end quote. She’s definitely posting that on Glassdoor. So having said that, I think that that short excerpt might miss some of broader context for the entire hearing. There has been some responsive sympathy for the lawyer, which I’m not sure is the right or complete take that reflects all of what is happening here. So the government lawyers in this hearing generally described a chaotic system where they don’t really know who’s responsible for what, or what to respond to, or how to litigate these cases that she was thrown into. At one point after hearing a bit about what is going on, the judge said, quote, So is then each attorney within your office making up his or her own process?

Melissa Murray And the judge also had a pretty sharp take on the whole unitary executive notion, given the chaotic lack of coordination that Ms. Lee and the other government lawyers describe. The judge said, quote, I wholeheartedly embrace the notion of a unitary executive, as in DHS, ICE, the DOJ, all a part of the executive branch. And if there’s a problem in the restaurant, I don’t intend to go in the kitchen to try to figure out who makes the bread. And all of it is part of the executive branch. And so it is not an excuse to tell me you contacted ICE because ICE is also part of The Unitary Executive for Accountability Purposes. Correct, sir? Love this energy. All of that seems exactly right. That is the correct take of the unitary executive theory.

Leah Litman Right, it doesn’t allow them to get out of complying with some laws and be above the law in other respects. You cannot have it both ways anyways. As I kind of suggested, I didn’t really feel that bad for the attorney. I think at best she went into this willfully blind to what the government was doing or would be doing. And that really hit me after reading the entire hearing transcript, which is just nuts. If you have ever litigated or been near a courtroom, I have never seen or read a transcript. Remotely like this. And part of the reason why I don’t think this can just be collapsed or flattened into sympathy for the government lawyers who were in these offices before Operation Metro Surge and elected to stay during it is because that obscures the stakes and consequences for the people being harmed by this conduct. And anyway, so here is how one of the plaintiff lawyers, really petitioners’ lawyers, describe things, quote, detain first, find authority later. This is exactly their strategy, and we’ve seen this from all of our cases where there’s no warrant, there’s not probable cause. Most of my clients, they report that respondents upon detaining them have no idea who they are. They are pulled over for how they look or for where they are or for any number of things that don’t amount to probable cause under the U.S. Constitution.

Kate Shaw And this petitioner attorney went on to describe a declaration filed by one of her clients, which describes how, quote, he was without food, he was clean clothes, he was subject to physical danger, both through reckless driving of ICE agents transporting him from one location to another, watching people screaming in pain with medical neglect, being exposed to COVID, just the conditions of his confinement, eating food that he conflated with dog food, people are just being treated like less than human, and all this was happening while he had a court order for his release. And while all of this is happening, ICE agents are telling him to self-deport because he’s got no chance to get out of there other than to self deport myself and his immigration attorney who is here in the courtroom today. We’re not able to talk to him. So just pause for a second. This is someone with a court order directing release and officials are nevertheless telling him he has no chance of getting out except for through self deportation. Like it is stunning.

Melissa Murray Here are some other snippets from the judge. And there are some pretty choice words for what was happening. So the judge says, quote, what can the court expect going forward? Because this is obviously not workable, and it’s certainly not an example of complying with the court’s order unless you feel it is. And then I just got to say, when a judge says this is x unless you it’s not x, it’s a not a good place to be as a litigator, as a lawyer for the government. You just don’t want to be there. Here’s another snippet from the lawyer, Ms. Lee, who requested being held in contempt of court so she could sleep. She said, quote unquote, I share the same concern with you, Your Honor. I am not white, as you can see. And my family’s at risk, as any other people that might get picked up to. So I share with the same concerned. And I took that concern to heart. But again, fixing a system, a broken system, I don’t have a magic button to do it. I don’t have the power or the voice to do. I can only do it within the ability and the capacity that I have. That lawyer, Julie Lee, her detail as a special assistant US attorney to the US attorney’s office in Minnesota has ended. And I don’t know if she is also going to be relieved of her duties with DHS. I think that’s an open question.

Leah Litman Yeah. So that’s not the only chaos that the government has been affecting as part of this massive lawless immigration enforcement. So the government announced a policy change that, if allowed to go into effect, would make things even worse as far as denying people opportunities for review of their detention or removal and backlogging courts with those claims. Specifically, the administration announced that it plans to largely eliminate the Board of Immigration Appeals process. Is mandating the dismissal of all appeals, which cost $1,000, filed 30 days after this announced policy change, unless a majority of the Board of Immigration Appeals or BIA votes to hear the case. So the BIA, for those not familiar with the structure of federal immigration law, that’s the appellate tribunal within the agency, within the executive branch, that reviews decisions of an immigration judge about whether someone is removable or has a defense to removal. Or a reason why they shouldn’t be removed, even if they are removable.

Kate Shaw And eliminating this process or narrowly restricting it is another way of making it harder and harder to challenge individual immigration decisions, all while people are being detained in these horrifying conditions that we were alluding to a minute ago, and being told that they have no chance of getting out, all part of the administration’s push for mass deportations. The policy change also stated that in most cases, rather than having 30 days to file a notice of appeal to the BIA, people will now have only 10 days. So. Very very clear that they are getting increasingly desperate to increase their numbers detained and deported individuals Uh, and this is just kind of the latest tactic the white house press secretary gave some comments That we think really capture what the administration is up to here in service of that goal. Let’s roll that clip.

Clip To be clear, he does believe the state should oversea. The president believes in the United States Constitution. However, he believes that…

Melissa Murray Let’s be very precise about it. He believes in the Constitution. He just wishes it were shorter, like just Article II, Section I.

Leah Litman I loved it. It was just perfect. Sure, there’s a Constitution. However, yes, due process is a thing. However, very butt-actuallying and that, the whole due process thing doesn’t exhaust the constitutional provisions the administration is trampling on, again, in the course of its unhinged approach to immigration enforcement. We also learned this week about the government’s escalating practice of administrative subpoenas. So before Jeff Bezos put the latest dagger in the paper’s heart, more on this in a second. The Washington Post ran an article that describes how the administration is making use of a little-known mechanism that actually relates to a pending Supreme Court case to further limit pushback against it. So the story describes the federal government’s use of what are called administrative subpoenas. And those are a kind of subpoena that an agency can issue without the involvement or approval of a grand jury or a judge.

Kate Shaw The story in the post focuses on how this 67-year-old retiree sent an email to a public DHS address of a DHS attorney expressing this individual’s concern and disagreement with government policies and asking the administration to be merciful, only to have the administration turn around and issue an administrative subpoena to Google for a bunch of this person’s information. This man is a naturalized citizen. He was understandably terrified. But here’s the thing, he wasn’t even provided the subpoena, and Google gave him a week to file to quash the subpena, one he did not have access to. Okay, the story recounts how the Department of Homeland Security has issued subpoenas to Columbia University as part of its crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech and advocacy, to Harvard for employment records, to Instagram about users who posted about ICE raids, and seeking personal information for workers in the Minnesota health system when staff protested ICE doing enforcement activity in their hospitals. So a terrifying tool that the administration is apparently wantonly now using.

Melissa Murray And people seem to be complying with it. These big organizations seem to being going along with it, the article also notes that Google and Meta received a record number of administrative subpoenas last year in the first year of the Trump administration. And we should connect this to a case that we have talked about on this show, a case that’s pending before the court. That’s First Choice Women’s Resource Centers versus Platkin. That’s the case about a crisis pregnancy center that is trying to challenge an administrative subpoena, one that isn’t self-executing, in federal court. During the oral argument in that case, it appeared that the Democratic appointees were concerned about the potential abuses of administrative subpenas, and that they might vote with the Republican appointees to allow the administrative subpena that was at issue in that case to be challenged. We were a little wary of this, because as we discussed in our preview and recap. Allowing every administrative subpoena to be challenged would effectively clog up the federal courts. Perhaps the Democratic appointee suspected where all of this was going and what the federal government might do with a tool like the administrative subpena at its disposal.

Leah Litman I think the unfortunate reality is, even if that ended up being the resolution of Plattkin, that is, they said that administrative subpoena was challengeable, the reality is that many administrative subpenas, like the ones issued by the federal government that are described in that post article, are so difficult to find information on, it’s still going to be hard to challenge them. So a ruling for the Crisis Pregnancy Center in Plattken wouldn’t necessarily fix the problem. It would just allow some litigants to challenge administrative subunas that are issued by entities that, unlike the federal The government aren’t trying to do them surreptitiously. It’s also not clear that everyone targeted with an administrative subpoena could get a lawyer, much less be able to file a challenge in federal court. And the man who’s profiled in the post story had DHS officers show up at his house a few weeks after the subpoenas was issued. And they asked him about this email he had sent, which was just for the record. This is the email he sent, quote, don’t play Russian roulette with H’s life. Air on the side of caution. There’s a reason the US government, along with many other governments, don’t recognize the Taliban. Apply principles of common sense and decency,” end quote. In H’s case, there was a risk that he was going to be removed to Afghanistan. And that email launched administrative subpoena that sought information about this man’s online sessions going back months, every IP and physical address, alternate usernames, and more.

Kate Shaw It is just as perfect a distillation of the Trump administration as I could imagine that asking for the application of principles of common sense and decency gets your ass subpoenaed.

Leah Litman Well, just like telling officers to comply with the law gets you investigated for violating the law. It’s just, yeah. Absolutely.

Melissa Murray [AD]

Kate Shaw Speaking of attacks on basic constitutional principles here, the freedom of speech. Now let’s return to the topic of democracy literally dying in darkness. So this week, as our listeners probably already know, it was widely reported that the Washington Post, the venerable newspaper that broke the Watergate scandal and has been a national media institution, will undertake massive layoffs, something like 30 percent of its workforce. The cuts will especially impact both the foreign desks and the metro desk, which was the source for coverage of local news, which kind of both reinforced the paper’s shift toward national news.

Melissa Murray This is a big deal on many fronts. And I want to come back to the local news piece of it. We talked about this a bit on the podcast before. But local news has suffered a lot over the last decade with many local papers going under and many national papers, like the New York Times and the Washington Post, limiting their metro coverage. The void in local news coverage can obviously be filled by other outlets like radio and TV. But there has been a lot of consolidation in the local broadcasting markets with many local TV and radio stations being acquired by large corporations like Sinclair, for example, which has a very conservative bent and which means that a lot of the news then sort of skews to the right or even further to the, right further exacerbating the kind of media siloing that we are all living with. And so This new move on the part of the post to limit their foreign desk coverage obviously has real repercussions for how we think about global issues. And the local news retraction, I think, has real consequences for what it’s going to look like in our individual communities and how we digest and receive the news.

Leah Litman And just on the importance of local news, I think part of the reason why we have been getting such high quality information about what is happening in Minnesota is Minnesota has a very robust independent local media scene. There’s a Star Tribune as well as other outlets. And that is what this slashing of the Washington Post takes away from the District of Columbia. But even beyond the impact on the local news, it’s still a big deal. The Post has been one of the papers that have tried to hold government institutions accountable, at least in a bygone era. When the Post was purchased by Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, many wondered whether it could still maintain that legacy. And it seems like we have an answer now, and the answer is no. I do wonder if all of the money spent promoting the Melania documentary might have been redirected toward the Post operations, or at least some of them.

Melissa Murray Can I tell you something petty I did over the weekend? Yeah.

Kate Shaw You did not go see the documentary.

Melissa Murray I didn’t go and see the Melania documentary. Instead, I watched Becoming, the Netflix documentary about Michelle Obama 25 times. I love it. Excellent. Like first, I watched it with sound on and then I just kept hitting play over and over and now it’s number eight on Netflix. Tiny little acts of resistance. They add up. So they do. I love that. Anyway, in happier news about organizations that are holding truth to social to power, but still also some really bad news about what Article two is up to. The Wall Street Journal broke the absolutely. Bonkers, batshit, surreal story that four days before the second Trump inauguration, the quote unquote spy sheik, a United Arab Emirates royal and government official who serves as the country’s national security advisor, secretly purchased a 49% stake in the Trump family’s world liberty financial crypto company.

Kate Shaw Very American hustle, wasn’t it, that story? Okay, so this like $500 million purchase resulted in $187 million going to Trump family entities. So just to take stock, we have a foreign government official taking a major stake in the United States president’s personal family company on the eve of his retaking power. In addition, Steve Witkoff, who was subsequently named Trump’s envoy to the Middle East is a co-founder of World Liberty Financial and the journal reports that almost 31 million went to Wittkopf family entities.

Leah Litman This is just a staggering grift, but that’s not all. It seems like there was a pretty quick payoff from this investment. Guess what happened after the spy sheik affected that huge cash transfer to the Trumps. Months later, the United States agreed to give the UAE access to 500,000 of America’s most advanced AI chips each year. Those are hugely guarded, highly sought after scarce resource. And we know the grift and corruption have been nonstop. But this really seems like it is just on another level, both in scope and just obviousness. A business deal with the leader of a foreign country who also happens to be involved in national security, the amount of money, what’s being given in return. It makes the entire Qatari jet, a Malu jet situation look like chump change. Because it is. It is chumped change. It is at this point. And despite this reporting, it just seems like there is zero chance that anyone in the administration will be investigated over this because the alleged beneficiaries were Trump affiliated or were the last named Trump. And that one year in is the state of the law in the second Trump administration, namely that it doesn’t apply to people named Trump

Kate Shaw They’re not even making noises about an investigation. It is just like, no, you know, what are you gonna do? They’re like, this is business as usual. Completely, it is. But it’s really important not to get inured to this because it is so wildly inappropriate and illegal and we have to keep calling it out as such.

Melissa Murray Speaking of calling it out and staying on the media beat for a few more beats, as we have previously noted, in the last year, The Gray Lady, The New York Times, has expanded its coverage of one of our favorite institutions, the Supreme Court. We think this is a great development. And what’s even better about this great development is not that there are more eyes on the court, at that. These eyes have actually found the tea, and now they are spilling it. So last week, Jodie Cantor for the New York Times reported on some efforts to impose some laws and rules on the Supreme Court, specifically rules that impede public knowledge about the court and accessibility for.

Leah Litman The court and to the court. That does seem like, again, what law means in the second Trump administration.

Melissa Murray I mean.

Leah Litman But the story is that, apparently, in November 2024, so right after Donald Trump was re-elected, the Chief Justice, quote, summoned employees of the United States Supreme Court and requested they each sign a nondisclosure agreement promising to keep the court’s inner workings secret, end quote. Although the New York Times didn’t review the agreements, quote, people familiar with them said they appeared to be more forceful and understood them to threaten legal action if an employee revealed confidential information, end quote.” clerks and employees have been asked to sign, unclear whether any justices or their spouses might have been asked to do the same. Is the Chief Justice saying, do not take notes on a motherfucking criminal conspiracy? Is that? That seem a little Stringerbellish.

Kate Shaw This whole thing is just so sus. I mean, so NDAs in public service in general seem like something of a problem. To be clear, the Chief Justice has lectured law clerks since time immemorial, at least Roberts has and I think Rehnquist before him, I think it’s pretty customary for the chief and sometimes individual justices to try to impress on law clerics and staff the importance of confidentiality, at the least during the term of your clerkship. And that’s about protecting deliberations and votes in real time and before decisions. It is very different after the fact, sometimes many, many years after the facts. It’s also very Trumpian, right? This move to use NDAs. And the notion that you won John G. Roberts would take a look at the court and the country and the executive branch in the year of our Lord 2024 and say what this institution needs by way of reform is NDA for its staff. So a ridiculous misread of the situation and also highly unsuccessful because nondisclosure agreements…

Melissa Murray This is the best part.

Kate Shaw Intended to control leaks, promptly leaked. Less than two years after this implementation, the Times learned about this development through no less than five separate sources. You’d just love to see it.

Leah Litman We’d love to see it. It’s, again, this inability to understand and actually diagnose the problem, right? Like when he looked at the immunity case, the problem is the prospect of criminal accountability for former presidents. He looks at these leaks describing a court that is just broken and dysfunctional, and he says the problem the least, not the dysfunctional broken institution.

Kate Shaw Completely and also like the idea that you would enforce one of these NDAs. I mean, I would love nothing more than John Robert to try to take one of these former clerks to court to actually like open up the possibility of some actual public scrutiny.

Melissa Murray Well, I mean, this is the part of the article that I thought was really interesting, Kate, because I don’t think that is what he is going to do. Of course not. I mean like, so they talked about how Justice Scalia, when he was on the court, would tell clerks, you know, I will ruin your life. I will hunt you down. I will haunt you down and ruin your live. And they quoted or they paraphrased Justice Barrett saying a similar kind of thing, you know probably softer in some way, not quite as like, you know I’m going to kill you with my hands. But I think that’s really what this is like. The NDA is not meant to be toothy as a legal mechanism. It’s like, no, we’re really going to ruin your life. Yeah. It’s meant to a threat. Yeah, I mean, it’s Trumpian in every sense of the word.

Kate Shaw The fact of an NDA and the fact that like, right, many of the lawsuits that Trump has filed or threatened are not about plausible, winning legal claims. They’re about coercing, inducing behavior, yep, capitulation.

Leah Litman As we discuss in a forthcoming article in our very first co-written.

Kate Shaw Full-length article exactly yeah that’s true we did a book review but this did a book review And this is better, so keep an eye out.

Melissa Murray I mean, it’s true. Very true.

Melissa Murray [AD].

Melissa Murray Shifting gears to article two. Listeners, as you likely know, about two weeks ago, the FBI raided election offices in Fulton County, Georgia and seized voting records and data from the 2020 election. The Brennan Center has called this, quote, an extraordinary escalation in the administration’s campaign to discredit the 2020 elections results and lay the groundwork for interference in future elections. To be very clear. The seized materials included ballots, tabulator tapes from the scanners that are used to tally the votes, electronic ballot images that were created when the ballots were counted and then subsequently recounted, and all of the voter rolls. So hello, this is the alarm bell sounding. This is a big effing deal.

Kate Shaw It is a huge deal. So Fulton County, as people probably know, is the Georgia county that includes much of metro Atlanta, where there are a lot of Democratic voters. That’s a county that went for Biden in 2020. Donald Trump has not gotten over that fact. He from the time of the election and continuously since has insisted that something was awry in the county of Fulten. You might remember that Rudy Giuliani, remember him, how could we forget? Falsely claimed that election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss, had engaged in election fraud. They later sued Giuliani for defamation, winning $150 million almost in damages. He later reached a settlement with those two women in order to avoid further proceedings to settle the debt. But that is the backdrop.

Leah Litman So Fulton County was the site of some insane election denying, which may be why this FBI raid occurred. And you know the whole raid was literally cooked up in a meth lab of election denialism. And it seems that the president dispatched Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to Fulten County to oversee things. This was not an intelligence effort, obviously. It was billed as a law enforcement initiative. Not sure why Director Gabbord was there. Although in a letter to top Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Gabbard said Trump asked her to be there, quote, under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security, end quote. Also want to note, there is this whistleblower report about something going on with our intelligence community and Tulsi Gabbards, that Senator Ron Biden is raising alarm bells. Over. It hasn’t been processed or maybe even adequately disclosed to Congress, but there are signs that there could be this impending, looming, disaster, severe breach of national security protocols. And we just don’t know what’s going on. It’s just wild.

Kate Shaw And can I just say, so we know from the kind of subtext of that letter that something very, very serious was alleged by this whistleblower, but it’s been radio silence from the public’s perspective since then. And like, I understand this is sensitive. It’s highly classified information, presumably at issue. Like the Democratic senators who are onto this need to find a way to communicate with the public about it without revealing classified information. If they’re like, well, this is… We have to go through a process and it’ll be slow and we have to tread carefully because it’s classified information. Like that is customary inside the beltway thinking and I’m obviously not suggesting revealing classified information, but they have to find a way to talk around it to the public about what is going on and to keep the pressure on the administration because I am very worried about this story.

Melissa Murray FYI, if this had happened under Joe Biden, whoever was the director of national intelligence who did this would already have been forced. They would have called for that person’s head already. The fact that that person is now doing election enforcement in Fulton County is bonkers.

Kate Shaw Yes. It’s yeah. So alright, so that’s the kind of gabbered piece of this which is just like so atypical so Suspicious so concerning let’s zoom out for a minute and just try to contextualize things broadly sort of Fulton County and the election Landscape writ large so there are a lot of election related shenanigans going down There is the president’s interest in getting red states to engage in mid cycle Redistricting to redraw congressional maps in advance of the midterm elections to give him a better chance of retaining control of the House Of Representatives more on that in a minute As we’ve mentioned before, DOJ is also targeting blue states, seeking detailed voter data that includes dates of birth, partial social security numbers, and some observers speculate that this information will be used to target left-leaning voters, voters of color, using voter suppression tactics. There are secretaries of state raising concerns that the impact of this effort will go beyond the upcoming midterm elections and that the administration might be in the process of building a database it could use to disenfranchise voters in future elections.

Melissa Murray And the cherry on top of all of this is the president’s announcement last week that he would like the federal government to take over elections. Let me put this differently. He would like the federal Government rather than the states to control elections. Hello? Who is this? The Constitution? You would like a word? Well, Melissa, we have a Constitution, however. Well, however, well, listeners, I’d just like to point out that the Constitution vests in the states the authority to administer elections. Now, Congress can add rules for federal races, but Donald Trump apparently doesn’t read the Constitution, which is nuts, because everyone knows you read the constitution for the articles.

Leah Litman Well, specifically, you should now read Melissa Murray’s US Constitution guide for the contemporary reader for the annotations, where Melissa explains the many different provisions of the Constitution, gives you background, and whatnot, so that any time this guy says anything, you can butt actually them.

Melissa Murray But actually and, but actually, we should note that one of Trump’s earliest second-term actions was an executive order that tried to rewrite the voting rules nationwide. And unsurprisingly, federal judges have largely blocked it because, wait for it, it violates the Constitution.

Leah Litman Thank you for calling. However, anyways, last week, White House spokesperson Carolyn Leavitt tried to save the commander-in-chief from himself by clarifying that the president’s takeover remarks were apparently a reference to the SAVE Act. Pending legislation that would tighten proof of citizenship requirements, part of the act would require individuals to present a birth certificate or passport that matches their current name in order to establish their eligibility to vote. Some observers note that the new requirements would likely disenfranchise millions of married women who might not have a passport and who have taken their husband’s names, which would not be reflected on their original birth certificates.

Kate Shaw Despite Ms. Levitt’s very earnest spin efforts, the president in later remarks did not reference the SAVE Act. Instead, he doubled down on election denialism, claiming that democratically controlled places like Fulton County have, quote, horrible corruption on elections, and the federal government should not allow that. It does sound like he’s talking about something a little bit more than the SAFE Act. Though, to be clear, the SAV Act is odious legislation. It would be a nightmare.

Melissa Murray Hello, tradwives, they’re coming for you. They’re coming.

Leah Litman To tell them the patriarchy is never going to be cool with women. It doesn’t matter what you do.

Melissa Murray I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mase finally figured that out with regard to Mike Johnson. Like, come on, ladies.

Kate Shaw There’s more election-related news at this time about California redistricting. Okay, so on the topic of imminent elections, we have a new development in the mid-cycle redistricting showdown. So listeners, you probably remember, in response to the Texas effort to redistrict the Lone Star State to secure additional seats for the president, which lower courts initially actually blocked, but the Supreme Court then facilitated. So that’s happening in Texas. In response to all of that, California took action.

Melissa Murray And the Golden State decided to put before the voters in last November’s election, a single ballot initiative, Prop 50, which would allow California to conduct a single round of mid cycle redistricting. And surprise, surprise, the measure passed because nobody likes people just deciding mid cycle to redistrict their state to give the president an advantage. So Californians stepped in and that was their response. Obviously that response was immediately challenged by California Republicans on the ground that it was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Right. And so California responded by saying, no, it is not an un-constitutional, racial gerymander, it is a totally permissible partisan gerrymandered. So no big deal. And listeners, if all of that sounds familiar to you, it should. Because there are no new ideas, and these are basically the same arguments that were put forth against and in defense of the Texas redistricting plan. So again, I learned it from watching you Dad.

Leah Litman Yes, the it’s not racial gerrymandering, it’s partisan gerrymander argument, which is only possible because of the Supreme Court’s decisions declaring partisan garymandering non-justiciable was also trotted out in the California redistricting litigation as well as the Texas redistricting litigation. Now in Texas, a Trump appointed district court judge wrote a lengthy opinion concluding that despite the Republican party’s claims It was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, that is, Texas’s mid-cycle redistricting, in large part because of DOJ documents. Yep, our girl Hermite Dillon taking notes on a motherfucking criminal and civil conspiracy directing the Texas legislature to target majority minority districts. Again, Stringer Bell would like a word.

Kate Shaw Or the Supreme Court just swooping in and saving them from themselves because the Supreme court did weigh in. It granted Texas’s request to stay the lower court’s ruling. It credited the view that the states were just doing partisan gerrymandering, no big deal, if not an actual constitutional right on the part of state legislatures. Okay, so because of that background, in Texas, the Supreme courtroom acting lawlessly in a way that benefited the electoral prospects of the Republican party, people were actually quite nervous about how the court would respond to the California case. I don’t think it was beyond the realm of the possible that the court would allow the gerrymander in Texas, but strike it down in California. But surprise, surprise here, what’s sauce for the Texas goose is sauce for California gander. You get a partisan gerrymandered and you get a partition gerrymanter and everybody gets a partisan Gerrymandra. So at least in this case, both of the maps will stand. Republicans benefit in Texas and Democrats in California

Melissa Murray All right, so this all went down via a shadow docket order that was issued last week. The court rejected the GOP’s request to stay the lower court decision, upholding Proposition 50 and blessing, again, some more partisan gerrymandering. And importantly, there are no noted dissents. And all of that is obviously welcome news, but it also tells us something sobering. So I don’t mean to be a fly in the punch bowl, Listeners, but. This means that the second wave of Trump appointees to the lower courts may be even more extreme than friend of the pod Sam Alito. Judge Kenneth Lee of the Ninth Circuit actually dissented from the lower court decision upholding the new California maps when Justice Alito stayed silent. So I’m just going to leave that. Let it sit for a while.

Leah Litman Yeah. Um.

Melissa Murray Let it sit.

Leah Litman And even with respect to the Supreme Court itself, it is emphatically not an indication that the court is moderating or standing up to Trump despite a rush of stories attempting to pitch that narrative. Some asks are going to be a bridge too far even for this court. And as Kim Lane-Shepley reminded us when she was our first guest this year, even captured courts in autocratic regimes sometimes rule against the autocrat. Which helps shore up the court’s own credibility and the credibility of the autocrat. So don’t be fooled by this and steal yourself against the Supreme Court is standing up to Trump storylines when they rule against him in one or more of the upcoming or recently argued cases and rant. Yeah, but we’re gonna like return to that man. That’s where you should be using your butt action.

Melissa Murray I don’t know.

Leah Litman That’s true. However. Use it there. Use it liberally. However. However. It literally enabled him for the last year.

Kate Shaw Yeah, and are going to continue to do that exactly to pull that out whenever you can But this is actually a rare week because in addition to that Surprisingly good news on the shadow docket out of california. We also have other good news coming out of the federal courts So mark your calendars remember this week the district court for the district of columbia invalidated the revocation of temporary protected status for haiti Probably not the last word on this but very very good and important news from the district courts. So Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, is a designation that allows individuals to remain in the United States and to work here legally based on findings about conditions in their home country. This decision to block the revocation of TPS for Haiti is very significant for many reasons. For one, it was pretty clear that the administration was planning on doing major immigration surges targeted at Haitian nationals once TPS ended. You might recall that Haitians are the group of people that Trump and Vance defamed and smeared during the campaign, ginning up Disgusting and false claims about Haitian immigrants eating the dogs eating the cats in Springfield, Ohio, right? Sorry to remind you of that odious episode But that was among other reasons why people were so worried about TPS ending leading to immediate surges Focused on the Haitian community in particular in Spring field

Leah Litman And the judge in this case absolutely let the administration have it. The opinion begins by contrasting George Washington with Kristi Noem. As the judge noted, George Washington had this to say about immigration to the United States, quote, America is open to receive not only the opulent and respected stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions. In stark contrast, the district court noted Krispy Noem, Kristi Noem, sorry, had, quote a different take. The judge then included a screenshot of a Noem tweet that ended with, quote, we don’t want them, not one, in all caps. The district court’s opinion then concluded that the plaintiffs had established that it was substantially likely, quote, that Secretary Noem preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to non-white immigrants, end quote. And it used a bunch of her statements to substantiate that this was a predetermined conclusion driven by racism and xenophobia.

Melissa Murray Also had some really nice twist-the-knife moments where it just dragged the unitary executive for filth. So, for example, in rebutting the government’s argument that, quote, harms to Haitian TPS holders are speculative, if TPS had been revoked, the court screenshotted the Department of State’s travel warning for Haiti, which it noted was, at level four do not travel, in part because of kidnapping crime, terrorist activity and civil unrest. Again, remember, as Kate said, you get TPS if the conditions in your home country are such that you cannot be there. So you can’t have it both ways, people. The State Department can’t say Haiti is a level four threat and then you don’t have TPS.

Leah Litman I love that the lower courts are like, if the Supreme Court is going to insist on the unitary executive, we’re just going to do some things with it.

Melissa Murray There were some other choice passages. So the court says, quote, Secretary Noem complains of the strains unlawful immigrants place in our immigration enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawfully immigrants overnight. She complains the strains to our economy. Her answer, turn employed lawful immigrants who contribute billions in taxes into the legally unemployable. She complains of strains to our health care system. Her answer? Turn the insured into the uninsured. This approach is many things, and the public interest is not one of them.” End quote. Shorter judge. Girl-cray.She cray.

Kate Shaw Oh yeah. That passage was amazing and it ends with a banker, which is quote, there’s an old adage among lawyers. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you had the law on your site, pound law. If you neither, pound table. Secretary Noem, the record of date shows, does not have the facts on her side or at least has ignored them, does have the law in her side, or at least has ignore it. Having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, she pounds X-formerly known as Twitter.

Melissa Murray Pew, pew, like, wow, that was crazy.

Leah Litman It was and they’re.

Melissa Murray But refreshing.

Leah Litman Crazy, but refreshing. And there were even more developments in article two. So we need to do an update on the ex USA dick watch. So for long time listeners, I guess you might remember friend of the pod Ed Martin, the former USA dick that is the acting US attorney for the district of Columbia who was. So gray, not even Republican senators would confirm him to that position. Ed Martin, you know, was removed from that position and shuffled to different positions in DOJ, like serving as the pardon attorney where he recommended pardons for January 6 rioters. His motto, it is reported, was no MAGA left behind. He also headed the DOJ’s weaponization working group, the group that is frantically and feverishly weaponizing the DOG against Trump critics. Well, CNN reported that a DOJ review, quote, found that Ed Martin improperly handled grand jury materials that were part of an investigation targeting Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Oh, really? So it seems that our friend Ed Martin shared secret grand jury material in the Schiff case. He initially denied it, but as always, it turned out that he had taken notes on a motherfucking criminal conspiracy and emails surfaced suggesting that he has in fact shared the material. And that is why he was replaced by a box of wine.

Kate Shaw A.K.A. The actual U.S. Attorney in D.C. Say no names! Say no name! Okay, you just figure it out. Um, Franzia. General Franzia is all we’ll say.

Melissa Murray [AD]

Kate Shaw So moving on, next segment we’re calling, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Congress. As you know, some of us have asked, what is a congress and where can we get one? Well, it seems we got some signs of life in the last week, right? House and actually Senate Democrats both have come forward with some ideas. So this week, the minority party in both houses of Congress held together a shadow hearing on ICE enforcement that featured some of the people who have been the most impacted by ICE. And when we say impacted, we mean brutalized and abused. I guess not only by ICE, but also CBP, right? Two separate DHS components. Witnesses include Alia Rahman, a disabled US citizen who was on her way to a Minneapolis doctor’s appointment when she was dragged out of her car and brutalized by ICE. Also included Marmar Martinez, who is a Chicago teacher who was shot five times in Chicago. By ICE, they initially claimed because she had rammed their car with hers until evidence emerged making clear that that was entirely invented, like literally never happened. And there was also testimony from Luke Good, who’s the brother of Renee Good, who was of course killed in Minneapolis by ICE agent Jonathan Ross.

Melissa Murray Members of Congress have also called for DHS to rescind the leaked May 2025 memo authorizing ICE agents to liberally use administrative warrants to detain people. So that is a great development. And they have also indicated that they may be ready to shut the government down over funding this insane, murderous immigration enforcement regime, which would actually be a really massive step toward stepping up and standing up to this administration. And so all to say, Congress, we hardly knew ye. More of this, please. Keep calling attention to the human impact of these excesses because although it is harrowing and awful to witness and recount, it is super important for people to know what is going on and the human toll it is taking.

Kate Shaw And I don’t know, I only watched like parts of it, but it was incredibly powerful testimony from the witnesses. And this is something that even when you don’t have the gavel in Congress, you don’t control either chamber, you can hold these shadow hearings and do kind of public education about what is happening on the ground, how outrageous it is. So I really hope we see more of that. All right, next up, speaking of finding a spine, we have a legal academy update. So a few weeks ago, we discussed a very concerning turn in the University of Arkansas Law School’s Dean search. So the school had offered the position to Emily Suski, who was a professor at the University of South Carolina, and then the offer was rescinded, apparently because some people in Arkansas objected to the fact that Suski had signed on to an amicus brief supporting the rights of trans students in the trans athletes cases that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. Well, the Academy is not taking that latest incursion on academic freedom quietly. So dozens of law professors have come to the support of Emily Susky, who’s offered to become dean. Was revoked in what seems pretty clearly to have been an exclusively political decision.

Leah Litman And while the faculty who signed the letter, quote, disagree about many specific matters of law and policy Including in relation to this specific issue, we are united in our view that the selection of a law school dean should be guided by academic values and appropriate institutional processes, all of which appear to have been subverted here is what the letter says.

Melissa Murray So because there’s never too much Article II, Article II much, if you will, we have to go back to some other developments. I just want to make sure that you all are aware of the cursed timeline that we presently occupy. So the president of the United States was apparently on one a couple of nights ago. As we have noted before, former President Barack Obama lives rent-free in Donald Trump’s head. Which apparently led the sitting president to post on Truth Social a pretty vulgar meme video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. But you know what the real problem is here? It’s wokeness. It’s DEI. Yes, all of this. And by the by, this seems as good an opportunity as any to note that the Wall Street Journal reports that the EEOC is investigating allegations that Nike’s DEI objectives resulted in quote a pattern or practice of disparate treatment against white employees. This all comes just weeks after the president mused that civil rights resulted in white people being, quote, very badly treated. Who’s going to tell them about slavery? Anyway, it seems like as good a time as any to alert our listeners to another development. This is a trial that is going on right now in federal court in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where prisoners’ rights groups are challenging the Angola prison farm line. So this is a practice which requires prisoners to do backbreaking manual farm labor in absolutely oppressive weather conditions, all while fight prison officials supervise them on horseback. And yes, if that sounds a lot like slavery to you, I think that is the point. That is certainly the point the advocacy groups. Are making as they maintain that the farm line practices violate the eighth amendment as well as several federal statutes. So that trial started last week and it continues this week.

Leah Litman But going back to rent-free occupants of the president’s head. Hillary Clinton has agreed, along with her husband Bill, to appear before a congressional committee to testify pursuant to a congressional subpoena related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. The Clintons had earlier refused to appear before the House Oversight Committee on the view that they had already shared what they knew. They also offered to provide information through other avenues, but the Republicans in Congress really wanted them to come in, take an oath, and get their testimony on the record.

Kate Shaw And so the Clintons actually did agree, but with conditions, and the big condition was that they wanted a public and televised hearing. And Representative Comer, who chairs the Oversight Committee, seems unwilling to hold an open hearing. Hmm. Why?

Leah Litman I mean, who knows? But it seems that Secretary Clinton also had questions about the refusal to schedule a public hearing. Last Thursday, she posted on social media, quote, let’s stop the games. You love to talk about transparency. There’s nothing more transparent than a public hearing. Camera’s on, end quote. Oh shit, it’s on like Donkey Kong.

Melissa Murray There was also a separate email blast from Bill Clinton’s press office that asked the recipients of the email to call Comer’s office to demand answers as to why the interviews the committee is conducting as part of its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein are not happening in public settings. All of these are excellent questions. And I don’t know. I still remember the Benghazi testimony of Hillary Clinton. And I’m ready for some really excellent new memes.

Kate Shaw She really has sort of stamina and presence in those hearings.

Melissa Murray Her face has no chill for these things, and I’m here for it. Love it.

Kate Shaw Agreed. So let’s move on to some housekeeping. This spring, as you probably know if you listen to our show, we are expecting some huge decisions from SCOTUS, decisions about birthright citizenship, Trump’s effort to undermine the 14th Amendment, questions about the meaning of the Second Amendment, including whether it applies to individuals who use drugs and whether they can own guns. Whether asylum seekers have to enter the United States to apply for asylum under the Immigration and Nationality Act or they can apply from elsewhere, whether under federal law ballots have to be received by Election Day rather than just mailed on Election Day, as well as other cases we’ve talked about regarding whether the president can fire officials like the head of the Fed or a governor of the fed, the future of the Voting Rights Act, the future Trump’s tariffs. So big, big cases coming down the pike.

Leah Litman And as always, on Strict Scrutiny, we will be waiting in the wings with our constitutional law professor hats on to break them down, put the cases in context, and explain what these decisions will mean for the people they will affect the most. We’ll laugh, we will almost certainly cry, and we’re even taking our show on the road to California to laugh slash cry live in front of some of you.

Melissa Murray Going to be amazing. So this being an election year, the stakes for these rulings are going to be higher than ever, which is why we thought it was so important for us to come and see you on tour. So if you are in the Golden State, come out and hang with us at the LA show on March 7th at the Palace Theater. You can grab your tickets at cricket.com forward slash events. And most importantly, that is the way to inaugurate. What we know as bad decision season. So let’s make some bad decisions together while the court makes some bad decision without us. There’s will be even worse. For sure.

Leah Litman Speaking of good decisions, our favorite things. So I love Isaac Jotner interviews. The one with Dante Spanotti, the Melania cinematographer was truly in another stratosphere. I’m not gonna spoil it. I will just tell you, you have to read it. It just stunning, just stunning. Another favorite thing, Bad Bunny’s Grammy speech was moving and powerful.

Kate Shaw Speaking of a laughable cry, did anybody else actually shed tears when he started talking? I was just like, I started heave crying and my kids were like…are you ok?

Leah Litman As I’ve said, like-

Kate Shaw Iy was so moving.

Leah Litman On previous episodes, I’m just a raw nerve edge and so it is. Very easy.

Kate Shaw Easy to set me off, same.

Leah Litman Exactly. Exactly. Another favorite thing, I got to read a galley of Melissa’s forthcoming book, The U.S. Constitution, a comprehensive and annotated guide for the modern reader.

Kate Shaw Melissa, you need to send me a copy. Sorry, sorry, finish the spiel.

Leah Litman No, yeah. So it was a wonderful, quick, informative read. Highly, highly recommend it. So that was a lot of fun. Another favorite thing, my stay at the Margaritaville Resort Times Square. Melissa told me I had to include this in favorite things because no one could believe. A conference slash lecture at NYU, and when people asked where I would stay, I told them the Margaritaville Resort Times Square, and no one could believe that the law school would put me up there, but that was on the list of approved hotels they gave me, and so I picked it.

Kate Shaw Is there a rooftop bar? No one has ever picked the Margaritaville Resort Hotel. I think there’s a rooftop in that hotel that I heard is surprisingly good.

Leah Litman There is a rooftop.

Kate Shaw During COVID, Chris, my husband, went there a handful of times was like, this is like weirdly a low-key kind of great bar. So if you didn’t, if you don’t try it out, Leah, try it next time.

Melissa Murray Well, I mean, you know why it’s the Margaritaville Resort, because there used to be a Jimmy Buffett jukebox musical that played in that hotel’s theater for years, which I did see. I mean yeah, yeah, nothing more needs to be said.

Leah Litman Two thumbs up, two thumbs up for the Margaritaville Resort Times Square.

Melissa Murray I’m glad the hotel is doing more than the musical did.

We gotta get them on as a sponsor. My gosh. That’s call us guys.

Leah Litman While I’m in New York on the way out to New York. I got to meet a strict day who was sitting in the row ahead of me. But because I fail and I’m not as good as Melissa, I completely forgot to write down your name. I’m very sorry. One other favorite thing. So last week, we got the announcement of the much anticipated forthcoming book of one Samuel A. Alito. It will be out this fall. It is entitled So Ordered. An originalist view of the Constitution, the court, and our country. This actually isn’t my favorite thing. Don’t go pre-order the book. But of note is that it’s scheduled for release the week of the court’s first sitting of the new term in 2026, which makes me really wonder if he’s retiring because he plans to not be on the bench during that first week and instead promoting the book.”.

Kate Shaw Wow.

Leah Litman Curious

Melissa Murray Interesting. Curious, curiouser. Also, maybe he’s retiring before the midterms so they can get someone in there super duper fast in case they lose control of Congress.

Leah Litman Already have some notes on it, specifically the subtitle. Since when is Sam Alito an originalist? The guy literally mocked originalism during an oral argument asking, in the Brown versus Entertainment Merchants case, whether Justice Scalia would want to know what James Madison thought of video games. Additionally, why would an originalist have a view about our country aside from the constitution? I just, it’s a very confused and confusing subtitle. I don’t know why people aren’t wearing shoes with buckles. I would like a shoe with a buckle. I mean, maybe that’s it.

Kate Shaw We don’t know. These are good notes and questions. Um, wow. That’s interesting on the timing. I had not caught the pub date. That is intriguing.

Melissa Murray Stricties, you have the chance to do the funniest thing ever. Not buy the book. Two books coming out.

Leah Litman Not by that one. Buy Melissa’s.

Kate Shaw Do you think bookstores might package them like a little bundle?

Leah Litman Is yours going to be on a shelf with his?

Melissa Murray Point, counterpoint.

Kate Shaw Exactly. Wow.

Melissa Murray Oh, it would be awesome if we actually had to do like something together.

Kate Shaw Booked on some television program.

Melissa Murray Like Firing Line.

Kate Shaw Oh my God. Wow. The mind reels. All right. Well, we maybe have that to hope for slash dread. Um, let me move on to my recommendations, which are very, very different. Um. One for some reason, my youngest child and I have just watched this four part secrets of the whales documentary on Disney plus, which I thought was brand new, but it’s actually like five years old. It’s James Cameron directed Sigourney Weaver narrates it. These whales are the most fascinating thing. There’s like an orcas episode, there’s humpback They’re sperm whales, they’re sperm-whales. There’s belugas, they’re so smart, they are so sophisticated, their language is incredible. It was just like a delight.

Melissa Murray Put one of them on the court. Come on. Let’s do it.

Kate Shaw There’s maybe going to be a vacancy. Um, okay. So that’s one recommendation. Um. Laura Mukherjee who we’ve had on the show before had a wonderful, I mean, extremely, uh, just like enraging. And I thought very powerful op-ed in the times the title of which was Liam Ramos was just one of hundreds of children at this detention center, released them all. She’s talking about the Dilley detention facility in Texas where Liam was held until released and many, many other of her children clients are currently being detained. And it sounds like a literal hell hole where people are being detained in our country, in our names. And it’s just an outrage. And anyway, definitely recommended if people haven’t read it. Um, and last there was a very short clip that I saw. I didn’t actually see the whole interview, but sir Ian McKellen was on Colbert this week doing a monolog from the place or Thomas Moore, which then he ends by saying William Shakespeare, but it’s not actually a Shakespeare play, but Shakespeare probably had some role in the revisions of the In any event, it is an unbelievably relevant meditation on immigration and xenophobia and exclusion and small-minded leaders and it is, and you know, just a beautiful piece of writing and performance. Watch it if you haven’t.

Melissa Murray Listeners, if you don’t know, Sir Thomas Moore served Henry VIII, who literally beheaded women, was unbelievably excessive in literally every aspect of life. So draw your own conclusions about how this is relevant to our current moment. In my favorite things this week, I want to recommend Alexandra Petri, former guest on this podcast, and a former writer at The Washington Post. She has a great piece in The Atlantic called, Should You Buy a Newspaper or a Yacht? Advice for Jeff Bezos. And it’s definitely a must read. Makes you really think, if you got a lot of cash hanging around, do you want to buy a newspaper or maybe just buy a boat? Like, think about it. Also in the Atlantic, this week was Anne Applebaum’s how autocrats meddle with elections. And I thought that was not only relevant to what we talked about in today’s show, but just incredibly sobering for everything that is going on and how close and urgent the threat really is. In a lighter mode, I want to recommend the This Guy Sucked podcast with historian and certified hater, Claire Auben. She basically goes through history, finds like literally the most despicable people you could ever imagine, then has other people come on to talk about them. They basically talk about why these guys sucked so much. So there is an amazing episode on King George IV, that is the son of George III, the Mad King. Hilarious episode, he definitely sucked. There’s also an episode on Phyllis Schlafly. Who mentored Ed Martin when they were both at the Eagle Forum and raised Epsilonquator. Spoiler, I will later this season appear on an episode about Roger Tani, who walked so John Roberts could run. And my husband’s away this week, so I am doing a John Slattery film festival in my home. So I have seen Nuremberg, exactly, Nuremburg, which is amazing. I talked about this on Blue Sky, fantastic new movie with John Slattery, Rami Malek. And Russell Crowe. I also saw Mona Lisa’s smile. I forgot that he was in that, but he’s very good in that too. And he was also, I’m bringing it all together now, Mr. Phyllis Schlafly in Mrs. America.

Kate Shaw With Cate Blanchett as the Mrs. Phyllis Schlafly. Which was a great series.

Melissa Murray And then finally, I made a purchase this week. But I don’t think I’m going to keep this purchase for myself, because the purchase is so good. And when you find something that’s this great, you actually want to give it to someone who’s going to love it more than you will. And so when I found this purse that looks like Stevie Nicks, I knew I had to buy it for Leah. Stevie Nicks the dog. You’re not watching on YouTube. Stevie Nicks. This is why you have to watch on YouTube, This looks just like… Leah’s mini.

Kate Shaw Adorable dog. Yes.

Melissa Murray Yeah. And so I can’t keep this for myself. One, I can keep it because Cole is very upset and is trying to defile it in many ways. So I’m keeping it out of reach, and I’m going to give it to Leah when next I see her.

Leah Litman Stevie’s an attractive girl.

Melissa Murray I mean, obviously, in miniature and in real life.

Leah Litman Another reason to watch us on YouTube is, both Melissa and I are wearing t-shirts that I will be making and bringing to our California live shows for our VIPs. So if you want to sneak peek of some of the fun stuff at those California live shows, go ahead and take a look at YouTube.

Melissa Murray Finally, before we go, we have to shout out one of the unsung heroes on our team. For as long as we’ve been cutting social clips for YouTube and Instagram and the various talks, Joseph Dutra has been the mastermind behind our social media presence. And we just want to say thank you to him as he moves on to his next big opportunity and to welcome Eric, who is now going to be watching us, clipping us, and posting us to all of your favorite social media platforms.

Leah Litman Strict Scrutiny is a Crooked Media production, hosted and executive produced by me, Leah Litman, Melissa Murray, and Kate Shaw. Our senior producer and editor is Melody Rowell. Michael Goldsmith is our producer. Jordan Thomas is our intern. Our music is by Eddie Cooper. We get production support from Katie Long and Adriene Hill. Matt DeGroot is our head of production. And thanks to our video team, Ben Hethcoat and Johanna Case. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to Strict Scrutiny in your favorite podcast app and on YouTube, at Strict Scrutiny Podcast, so you never miss an episode. And if you want to help other people find the show, please rate and review us, it really helps.