WEBVTT - The Right-Wing Web of Climate Delay, with Lisa Graves 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:10.520 Welcome back to Drill. I'm Amy Westerveldt. In our last episode, 0:00:10.560 --> 0:00:15.480 we mentioned the appearance of the Republican Attorneys General Association 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:20.119 or RAGA in the big US youth climate case Juliana 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:23.480 versus United States. Today, I want to dig into that 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:27.080 organization a bit more and some other organizations that like 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:30.240 to party with it, with one of the foremost experts 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:32.440 on this topic, Lisa Graves. 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:35.360 My name is Lisa Graves, and I'm the executive director 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:39.320 of True North Research, which is a watchdog group that 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:44.960 focuses on corporate distortion of American democracy, and I previously 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:46.479 led the Center for Media Democracy. 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.000 I'm still the president of the board over there. 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:52.440 And I've previously been Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:55.160 Office of Legal Policy at the US Department of Justice, 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:59.320 and the Chief Counsel Denominations for the US Senate Judiciary Committee, 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:03.440 the Chief of the Article three Division of the US Courts, 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:06.360 the Admistry off the US Courts, and I was the 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:10.360 senior legislative strategist for the ACLU on national security issues. 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:14.360 So I am a researcher and a writer and someone 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:17.520 who has looked deeply into some of these front groups 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:21.160 or right wing groups that have been advancing pretty extreme 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:23.440 agenda in a lot of different ways, both federally and 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:24.319 in the States. 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:28.360 Lisa connects the dots on a right wing extremism and 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:31.560 climate better than pretty much anyone I've ever talked to, 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:34.319 So I'm really excited to bring you this interview today. 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:36.679 I talked to Lisa last year in the process of 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:40.040 working on the second season of the show This Land, 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:43.920 which I highly recommend you check out if you haven't already. 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:47.360 It follows a series of constitutional challenges to the Indian 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:52.720 Child Welfare Act, which has some surprising backers, and yeah, 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:55.160 there is an oil and gas connection at any rate. 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:57.720 Lisa has spent a lot of time looking at some 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:01.920 of the specific lawyers and right wing fi involved in that, 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:05.400 many of whom are the very same folks fighting against 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:09.080 climate action. That includes not just RAGA, but also the 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:13.400 various Coke funded organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:17.120 Cato Institute and the Goldwater Institute, as well as a 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:22.040 lesser known but equally powerful family foundation, the Bradley Foundation. 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:25.960 It's a lot to unpack, and Lisa blew my mind 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:29.160 in ways that I'm still thinking about a year later. 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:33.240 That conversation is coming up right after this quick break, 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:46.839 So I'm curious to hear a little bit about your 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:51.760 work on Goldwater in particular and what their big kind 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:55.200 of driving force has seemed to be in recent years. 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:59.160 I had done a significant report about the Goldwater Institute 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:04.160 in two thousand and thirty team to examine its activities, 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:09.280 its funding, its influence on Arizona law, how it was 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:13.160 able to use Arizona's weak laws on lobby disclosure to 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:16.120 have an enormous effect on the legislature that was not 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:20.240 entirely visible to ordinary people, in how it was advancing 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:26.680 Charles Cooke's agenda. Charles Cooke in many ways has used 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:30.160 ALEC to operationalize his ideas at the state level, and 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:35.320 Goldwater work to advance those ideas in the state legislature 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:38.640 to push those proposals in addition to expand with litigation 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:43.720 operations under Bullock, who's obviously now on the state Supreme Court. 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:47.640 That would be Clint Bullock. He's in Arizona Supreme Court 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:51.320 justice today, but he built his reputation for decades as 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:57.360 a public interest litigator for various conservative causes, particularly against 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:00.920 affirmative action and for school choice. 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:03.960 So I've looked at them and I think it's it's 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:07.480 interesting because there appears to be a confluence of interests. 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:11.440 Lisa said she saw this confluence of interest in the 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:15.000 Indian Child Welfare Act cases that Goldwater started to bring 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.600 beginning in twenty fifteen. Again, go and listen to this 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:22.360 land for that whole wild story. But to sum it up, 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:25.640 the primary argument being used in those cases is that 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:30.920 the definition of Indian is race based and therefore violates 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:35.920 the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That sort 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:39.320 of argument has been a key part of the quote 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:45.239 unquote reverse discrimination argument for conservative lawyers arguing against various 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:48.559 civil rights laws for decades, and Clint Bullock, an early 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.880 acolyte of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has been pushing 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:54.480 that argument for decades. 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:59.560 There is this component, obviously on the surface of the 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:05.360 cases is involving claims about protection or about race specific remedies, 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:10.359 and obviously Clarence Thomas, you know, has made assertions about 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:14.000 that in his opinions related to this area of the law. 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:17.000 But I think it's about more than race. I think 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:23.320 it's about possibly reshaping the law surrounding the relationship between 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:27.920 the United States and tribes and sort of using this 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:33.719 particular law as a way to perhaps change dramatically other 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:38.680 laws that may well be implicated, and the ones that 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:42.640 are most concerned to me of those other legal areas are, 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:45.599 you know, the relationship between the federal government and the 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:51.320 tribes and sovereignty issues involving oil and leasing and that 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:54.080 sort of thing. I just wonder, although I don't know, 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:58.159 but I wonder whether, given some of the players, there 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:01.960 is ultimately an oil, oil and gas angle here. 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:06.480 That's something that we've been looking at to The first 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:11.200 Attorney general to sign on was in Texas, and the 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:14.320 Texas AG's office has been very friendly to oil and 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:17.240 gas for a long time. And then you know the 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:22.000 fact that Gibson Doune is involved too, and the Koch 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:27.920 brothers kind of tangentially, it seems like there's this financial 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:31.080 motive from the oil and gas folks that dovetails with 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:34.240 some like weird racial ideology. 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:37.800 So you have this Attorney general in a state that is, 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.400 you know, particularly friendly and warm to coke and to 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:46.440 the other oil and refinery industries, and it has very 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:51.800 very few tribal holdings in the state. But Also it's 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:54.040 the case that you know, something has happened over the 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:56.840 last twenty years, and I had looked at this back 0:06:56.839 --> 0:06:59.240 when I was working on the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:02.360 terms of this the rise of RAGA, the Republican Attorney's 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:05.520 General Association, where we know that it's a pay to 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:10.080 play operation, we know that it has had enormously distorting 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:14.200 effect on US law. It provides a mechanism for corporations 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:18.840 to pass money through to help attorneys general in ways 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:22.560 that they would not be able to individually solicit for 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:26.120 their own campaigns given their role, their regulatory role over 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:29.760 those very industries. And that's been going on since RAGA 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:32.760 was created back more than twenty years ago now, and 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:36.080 it has accelerated under some of the attorneys general who 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:39.480 have led it, like Scott Crewe was who was, you know, 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:44.880 in my view, another corrupt individual, someone who was selaxed 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:48.000 on ethical rules to say the least, and who was 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:50.840 willing to do the bidding of the oil industry and 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:55.640 attacking climate legislation and climate rules, even the very modest 0:07:55.640 --> 0:08:00.520 cpp the Clean Power Plan rules to advance the of 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:03.960 the funders of RAGA. And I say that knowing that 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.520 Oklahoma obviously has you know, a huge amount of industry 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:11.600 involved or you know, has has long relationships with these 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:14.440 The oil industry even has an oil you know, a 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:16.680 replica I think of a of an oil well on 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.400 the Capitol grounds, and so I know that it's it's 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:23.800 a part of that state's history. But we do know 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:27.680 that RAGA is a pay to play operation these Republican 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:32.880 Attorneys General behave in general, they are operating most often 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:36.199 we've seen at the behest of the industries that they're 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:38.520 soliciting funds for to fund RAGA. 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:41.320 That's interesting Beyond RAGA. 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:44.120 Is funding the corporate funders of RAGA, we know that 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:48.240 it now is receiving a substantial amount of money from 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:51.760 one of the emerging big dark money operations, which is 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:55.839 Leonard Leo's operation, which was funded through a group that's 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:59.880 now defunct that has subsequently you know, basically been re 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:03.480 ran and are renamed as Leo has re launched his 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:07.280 operations after it was exposed by The Washington Post last year. 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:13.440 So RAGA now is not just a recipient of donations 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:17.920 from big oil and big huge corporations, but it's also 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:22.400 a major recipient of funds in which the source is 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:25.920 completely unknown to anyone other than the person raising the money, 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:29.720 Leonard Leo and his group of operatives. 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:34.400 That would be former head of the Federalist Society Leonard Leo. 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:38.960 The Federalist Society is credited with getting hundreds of conservative 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.880 judges appointed over the past couple of decades and picking 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:47.080 the Supreme Court choices of any Republican president in that 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:51.320 same timeframe. Leo left the Federalist Society and started a 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:57.520 new organization, CRC Advisors in twenty twenty. They have continued 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:00.800 that work. One of the first projects he andnnounced under 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:05.120 CRC was ten million dollars in funding for issue advocacy 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:10.920 campaigning around you guessed it judge ships in twenty twenty. 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:15.160 And they've particularly targeted states and state AG's offices to 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:20.240 advance Leonard's longer term agenda, which he described to the 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:24.040 Council of National Policy and a speech to CNP last year, 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:28.400 that America stands at the precipice of what he called 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:32.199 the revival of what he described as the quote structural constitution. 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:36.960 And he told the CNP audience that no one alive 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:39.400 in that room had seen the type of legal revolution 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:41.720 that America was about to see based on the appointments 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:45.880 to the Supreme Court and other courts to revive this 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:49.160 so called structural constitution to the law as it existed 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.800 pre New Deal. And you know, that affects a whole 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:57.160 host of laws. It affects civil rights laws, that it 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:01.600 will affect labor laws and labor rightsenvironmental regulation and more. 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:06.160 And it's an attempt in my view, to really limit 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.520 the ability of Congress to pass laws, to limit the 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:14.000 ability of agencies to regulate corporations, and to you know, 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:19.640 sort of change the whole modern structure of government, basically 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:22.520 in terms of the administrative agencies, but also the rights 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:26.840 of citizens and the relationships between the United States as 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:29.680 a as a government and other governments, which obviously would 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:34.280 include tribal governments tribes in that speech, but it's an 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:38.240 attempt by Leo and an assortment of lawyers who are 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:41.400 elite lawyers like Paul Clement and others who have been, 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:45.439 you know, advancing some of these ideas. 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:49.920 Paul Clement is another lawyer involved in the Indian Child 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:53.040 Welfare Act cases, but he's also been involved in a 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:57.760 variety of pipeline disputes, and he was the Solicitor General 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:01.120 of the United States under Bush. He's also a Supreme 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:05.600 Court regular, with more Supreme Court appearances under his belt 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:08.640 than any attorney currently practicing. 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:12.520 And now they have a Supreme Court that's increasingly receptive 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:17.040 to what I considered be an extreme, radical, reactionary agenda 0:12:17.559 --> 0:12:21.040 to change our rights and limit our powers and our 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:26.000 democracy through our representatives in ways that serve a very 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:28.959 elite agenda, the agenda of the people who fund Leonard 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:33.280 Leo and Leo's operations and fund the RAGA, the Republicantturney 0:12:33.320 --> 0:12:37.120 General's Association, and have been really attempting to work a 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.080 legal revolution through offices that we would otherwise consider to 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:43.080 be independent. It would be nice to have attorneys general 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:47.760 of states who were not so captive to advancing the 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:51.480 interest of Charles Cooke, But unfortunately we are in an 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:55.760 era in which those interests have been dominating these many 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:58.400 of these state ags, including the Attorney General Texas, who's 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:03.120 embroiled in other serious I mean, they've declared, you know, 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:05.920 this war on the so called administrative state. Obviously, there's 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:08.720 roots of that in Reagan and some of the lawyers 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:12.480 who were active then, who became judges and some of 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.400 the people who are in the judiciary, like Silverman, who 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:18.880 Paul Clement worked for, and who Amy Comingey Barrett clerked for. 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:22.520 People who are in the judiciary who have been, you know, 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:26.000 in my view, very partisan, very right wing, you know, 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:29.319 sort of politicians and rogues who are attempting to restructure 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:33.120 the modern American state through judicial rulings. And so Paul, 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:35.320 Paul and I overlapped a bit. When I was at 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:38.240 the Justice Department. I was a career deputy Assistant Attorney 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:40.200 General in the Office of Legal Policy. Although I didn't 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:42.640 work with him in the sg's office when he was 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:45.400 coming in to take over that operation, but I was 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:50.440 there for those first couple of months, and obviously, you know, 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:54.440 observed his litigation as a citizen, but also when I 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:56.840 was on the Senate Judiciary Committee to see his efforts 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.160 and the way he was trying to change, you know, 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:03.800 the laws. And then you know his work since the 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:07.080 end of that administration through the Obama administration in the 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:10.040 private sector and the types of cases he's been involved in, 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:12.560 including the attacks on the Affordable Care Act and this 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:16.640 advance of sort of the supremacy of freedom of religion 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:21.320 as a sword to strike down legislation and protections for 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:23.600 you know, people's health and equal protection. 0:14:23.960 --> 0:14:27.720 I'm curious what you think about his kind of driving 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:30.280 force as a person. What is his ideology? 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:32.960 Well, I mean he to my in my view, he's 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:36.920 he's one of the you know, doctrinaire ideologues on the right. 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:40.320 You know, he's part of sort of that movement, the 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:43.840 Federal Society movement. Although I think that gives it some 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:48.120 sort of populous veneer that's not real. It's an effort 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:53.240 to basically roll back most of the modern precedents. And 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:56.640 you know, the presidents that are Brown, Post and Post 0:14:56.680 --> 0:15:00.320 Brown that a lot of the sort of the Leo 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:06.360 contingent dislikes. They now, I guess, have refashioned themselves as 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:09.600 originalists in asserting that Amy Cony Bird is the most 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:13.880 recent real originalists, when in fact, the reality is is 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:17.520 that in my lifetime, if you look at the US 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.640 Supreme Court, there have only been four appointees by Democratic 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:25.360 presidents and sixteen appointees that by Republican presidents, and that 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:28.800 includes renquists twice because there's two different seats. But you know, 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:33.880 eighty percent of the Supreme Court has been appointed by Republicans, 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:37.480 and they just haven't been doctrinaire enough for these you know, 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:42.560 very elite reactionaries like Leonard Leo and Clement and others, 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:46.520 many of whom were named on Trump's list or shortlist 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:50.560 for the Supreme Court, as Clement was. So I don't 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:52.640 know him personally. I don't know what he's like personally. 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:55.880 My personal view is, you know, everyone has a mom 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:59.200 who loves them and friends who like them. It's beside 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:01.240 the point about whether or fair or whether they have 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:03.760 an agenda that actually would hurt the interests of most people. 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:04.520 You know. 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:07.800 I think that the lawyers who are part of RAGA, 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:12.240 the Attorney's General like Pruitt, who are advancing these sorts 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:18.160 of attacks on you know, really reasonable legislation, legislation that's 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:23.000 certainly within the power of Congress, like the CPP. These individuals, 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:25.760 they dress in suits and ties, but they represent a 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:27.360 pretty extreme ideology. 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:32.320 Lisa says that in recent years that extreme ideology always 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:35.440 seems to come back to carbon and whether or not 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:36.480 to regulate it. 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:42.040 One of my primary concerns about Leo's Structural Revolution is 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:46.320 that it will be an attempt to use this so 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:50.400 called structural constitution to take away the power of Congress 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:54.040 to regulate carbon. You know, they have a longer standing 0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:57.880 attack on the existence of the EPA. We've documented, I 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:01.320 helped document how on Charles Kocapo even the creation of 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:03.920 an energy Department in the United States. There shouldn't be 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:08.000 any federal energy department. Some of these Hope type groups 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:10.480 and LEO groups, you know, have a hostility to the 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:14.880 idea of there being these sorts of agencies, and they're 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:18.640 they're i think mounting a structural attack on them as 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:21.840 well as you know, ultimately a question of whether we're 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:23.840 going to even have some of these agencies. As you know, 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:27.160 there's been an attempt in a number of these presidential 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:30.320 campaigns for Republicans to claim these are the five or 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:34.080 four or three agencies they're going to eliminate, which you 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:38.640 know inevitably include energy, the Energy Department, and perhaps the EPA. 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:40.320 Yeah, that's super interesting. 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:47.160 Okay, So in terms of some of the other players, Bradley, 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:49.879 you know, has been a big funder of Goldwater for 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:52.359 a long time. Paul Clement's now on their board. 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:55.600 When I wrote the report on Goldwater in twenty thirteen, 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:59.680 they were in the process of basically expanding their litigation 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:02.880 and they were marketing and I think that these documents 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:04.960 are in the Bradley files, but they were you know, 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:11.159 at the time, basically trying to become the litigation force 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:13.680 for the State Policy Network groups across the country. 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:17.600 The State Policy Network is a group of organizations funded 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:22.359 by the Coke Network that takes pro corporate sample legislation 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:27.159 from the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC and works 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:31.160 to get it passed in state legislatures. Several years ago, 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:36.400 Goldwater launched its litigation center in Arizona under Clint Bullocks leadership, 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:39.800 with the idea of being the litigator for all of 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:41.680 these state policy initiatives. 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:44.000 They were trying to do that and then had that 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:46.280 be a you know, a fundraising basis for them, and 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:48.639 they would help coordinate with these other places. And obviously 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.439 Clint you know, had a long standing record as a 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:55.399 litigator you know, in attacking affirmative action and from my 0:18:55.480 --> 0:18:59.040 perspectives of rights laws, and so they had a team 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:01.240 that they put in place. It felt that they could 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:04.840 you know, market beyond Arizona. But their real objective is 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:08.800 structural litigation, Like they're not just taking pro bono cases 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:10.879 for the sake of taking promono cases. 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:13.880 Their objective is structural change. 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:20.760 Structural change meaning fundamentally changing the law or government and 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:22.960 how it works and what it's allowed to do. 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:26.800 I think, even though we may not know definitively the 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:32.480 objective of either Clint Bullock and his successors at Goldwater 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:36.800 or Paul Clement, one thing that is clear in their 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:39.760 pattern of the litigation that they've engaged in is that 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:44.280 they do it to advance structural change. They're using litigation 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:47.960 as part of a strategy for changing the law, Like 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:52.480 for example, with the Goldwater litigation on licensure, it's actually 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:55.960 a much broader attack on the idea that government should 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:59.800 be having licenses for people in a whole host of 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:05.080 areas where people would be demonstrably unsafe if these issues 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:07.760 weren't regulated from a health and safety standpoint. And we 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:10.320 can see that in the way some of these groups, 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:12.600 although I don't know that what Clement's position has been 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:15.720 on COVID, but what we've seen through the ALE groups 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:18.720 and the SPN groups has been this you know, push 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:22.119 for improvident reopening, this attack on you know, closed and 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:26.480 closing businesses to protect public health, in this pandemic. So 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:30.080 they're not actually that interested in public health, you know, 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:35.520 in money and the economy, and that is a persistent 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:40.960 driver of their agenda. Certainly is a driver of the 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:46.400 Goldwater Institute's litigation agenda overall. Is this notion that regulation 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:52.040 is somehow incompatible with what they describe as this pre market, 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:55.200 which is this sort of in their fantasy ideal world, 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:59.600 one in which we don't have these regulations and companies 0:20:59.640 --> 0:21:01.560 can do that they want and the rich can do 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:04.800 what they want. Bradley is interesting obviously, it's it's sort 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:07.479 of zombie money in the sense that there's no family 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:10.879 member left on that board and the super wealthy people, 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.359 uh like Pope Art Pope and uh Diane Hendricks, who 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:18.840 are major GOP donors, and you know Pope has long 0:21:18.880 --> 0:21:21.879 saning ties to you know, he's been on a FP's 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:24.439 board for a long long time or one of the 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:27.840 FP operations board. So you have these billionaires who are 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:31.280 basically directing the the hundreds of millions of dollars of 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:36.800 other you know, industrialists to advance uh these you know, 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:41.199 some of these pretty extreme, uh, extremely reactionary groups. But Cearle, 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:44.119 so the Bradley Brothers were super anti labor. You know, 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:47.200 they were you know, sort of in my view, bad 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:49.880 guys uh in a lot of ways. And now their 0:21:49.880 --> 0:21:53.600 money is continuing to do that bad That badness. Searle, 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:58.040 you know is the is that pharmaceutical fortune right? Uh? 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:00.159 That I think? I think? Uh. 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:02.080 I don't know that they made as much money on Ascertain, 0:22:02.119 --> 0:22:03.080 but ascertain was one of. 0:22:03.000 --> 0:22:05.120 Their products opiately. 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:10.240 But Searle, you know, Searle is deeply embedded in sort 0:22:10.240 --> 0:22:11.520 of that right wing infrastructure. 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:16.640 Searle is the Seerle Freedom Trust. It's president and CEO, 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:20.080 Kim Dennis, also heads up a giant pot of dark 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:23.280 money that the Kochs put together. After the twenty ten 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:28.520 Supreme Court case, Citizens United made anonymous political donations legal 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:29.760 for corporations. 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:32.800 At one point, I actually wondered whether they were operating 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:38.399 out of the American Enterprise Institute just qua AEI. But 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:42.320 they have an address obviously that's in Chicago or something 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:46.680 for Searle Freedom Press. But they're fully embedded in advancing 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:52.639 this pretty extreme, extremely reactionary set of legal goals to 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:55.360 you know, turn back the clock a century. 0:22:55.440 --> 0:22:59.560 In the words of Leonard Leo Yeah, it does. 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:03.399 It's like, yes, I mean that seems so clear that 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:07.680 it's like they really really do want to live in 0:23:08.480 --> 0:23:11.280 like the night, you know, yeah, pre new Deal. 0:23:11.520 --> 0:23:16.600 Basically we're of Robert Barren is their glory era, and 0:23:16.640 --> 0:23:19.040 so I mean, I think it does raise that question about, 0:23:19.200 --> 0:23:21.800 you know, a rise of the sort of a Lockner, 0:23:21.840 --> 0:23:23.560 a new Lockner twenty first century. 0:23:23.600 --> 0:23:28.720 Lockner Court Lockner was a really important early labor case. 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:32.240 It happened in nineteen oh five. It's called Lockner versus 0:23:32.280 --> 0:23:35.840 New York and basically what happened was that New York 0:23:35.960 --> 0:23:40.680 State had passed a law limiting the amount of hours 0:23:40.760 --> 0:23:44.040 that bakers could work every week. So it was capped 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:47.040 at sixty hours a week, and a guy named Lockner, 0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:50.720 who owned a bakery got caught allowing an employee to 0:23:50.880 --> 0:23:54.800 work additional hours. He was fined and actually thrown in 0:23:54.920 --> 0:23:58.960 jail over this, and so he sued and said that 0:23:59.000 --> 0:24:02.040 this law was totally unfair and ridiculous and that it 0:24:02.080 --> 0:24:06.800 was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court agreed, and that decision ushered 0:24:06.840 --> 0:24:10.800 in what's called the Lockner Era, which effectively rolled back 0:24:10.920 --> 0:24:14.720 a lot of the progressive reforms around both labor and 0:24:14.920 --> 0:24:19.439 various environmental issues, which you know, it was really only 0:24:19.680 --> 0:24:23.320 twenty thirty years after the very first regulations had even 0:24:23.359 --> 0:24:25.800 been passed on industry, so it was sort of the 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:29.240 first attempt to roll back regulation. Like a lot of 0:24:29.280 --> 0:24:32.600 other folks who've been watching the slow and steady corporate 0:24:32.720 --> 0:24:36.360 capture of the US judiciary over the years, Lisa Graves 0:24:36.400 --> 0:24:39.800 thinks the goal right now is to usher in another 0:24:40.240 --> 0:24:43.160 Lockner era, to take us back to the days when 0:24:43.280 --> 0:24:45.920 industry wasn't regulated at all. 0:24:46.640 --> 0:24:50.680 That's going to be inventing theories that they claim our structurally, 0:24:50.800 --> 0:24:55.440 you know, structural constitutionalism, to strike down our power as 0:24:55.480 --> 0:25:00.320 a people through our representatives to regulate these corporations time 0:25:00.359 --> 0:25:05.800 when regulating carbon corporations is vital to our survival as 0:25:05.840 --> 0:25:09.320 a you know, people, human beings on this planet. And 0:25:09.440 --> 0:25:12.320 so I know that there are a lot of regulations 0:25:12.320 --> 0:25:14.920