Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack arms Strong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2: Arm Strong and Gatty Enough He Armstrong and Eddy.
Speaker 3: The White House is billing this as a routine annual
Speaker 3: dental and medical evaluation, though it's actually his third medical
Speaker 3: exam in the past year.
Speaker 2: All told, the President.
Speaker 3: Spent about three and a half hours at Walter Reed
Speaker 3: Medical Center today. White House officials telling us we should
Speaker 3: get a readout from the president's doctor within the next
Speaker 3: day or so, although, as you mentioned, Trump delivered his
Speaker 3: own report right after the visit, which he called a
Speaker 3: six month physical. He said, everything checked out perfectly.
Speaker 4: I don't worry that Trump's got dementia or some secret
Speaker 4: major health illness or whatever like that. But the idea
Speaker 4: that we would get the truth out of these is
Speaker 4: to me hilarious or even should or yes, or even
Speaker 4: should Yeah, let's announce to China and all our enemies
Speaker 4: and you ran or anything like that. He's really struggling
Speaker 4: right now mentally and physically, so now would be a
Speaker 4: good time to try to take advantage of him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not going to tell us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as so often happens, the very premise of the
Speaker 1: left is completely wrong. To continue briefly our discussion the
Speaker 1: last hour, and we don't have to dig into this
Speaker 1: in full right now, but I want to eventually. The
Speaker 1: new leader of Massachusetts Top Teachers Union is a member
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Socialists of America who says the US
Speaker 1: is fascist, borders are for colonizers, and Israel's genocidal. All right,
Speaker 1: it's the head of the teachers union thinks this country
Speaker 1: is fascist.
Speaker 4: Speaking of heads of teachers' unions, Randy Wingarden just came
Speaker 4: out with a statement that I agree with in part.
Speaker 4: It's hilariously falling short because of the parent backlag against
Speaker 4: rapid tech use in schools. Randy Weingarten is signed on
Speaker 4: to no screens for second graders or younger, and no
Speaker 4: AI chatbots for students in elementary schools.
Speaker 2: Why we all don't.
Speaker 4: Agree on a blanket ban of no screens in schools period,
Speaker 4: I do not know. It's insane to me, so the
Speaker 4: second graders and youngers younger. Of course, if you're in third, fourth,
Speaker 4: fifth grade, or a senior high school sitting there staring
Speaker 4: at your phone, it's perfectly okay.
Speaker 2: While they try to teach you. What the hell are
Speaker 2: we doing?
Speaker 1: Keep in mind that if you have a PhD in
Speaker 1: education or a master's, but especially you're really advanced degrees,
Speaker 1: the only thing that can possibly justify your high, high
Speaker 1: salary is if you innovate, and they're so obsessed with
Speaker 1: it that they'll abandon something like phonics that works perfectly.
Speaker 1: It's a miracle of effective teaching, but they've got to
Speaker 1: flush it to make their salary worth it. We've come
Speaker 1: up with a new innovative way. Well, the screens and
Speaker 1: the tech were that for a lot of your education PhDs.
Speaker 1: We're gonna usher in a new era of individualized blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. And they've invested zillions of dollars in this stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, getting them to say no, we're totally wrong.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's accomplishing the opposite of what we said.
Speaker 1: It's a disaster and a squandering of taxpayer money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good luck with that.
Speaker 4: If you want to some interesting stuff about the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court and it's positive news, stay tuned because Sarah isger
Speaker 4: in her new book, Last Branch Standing later this hour.
Speaker 1: And it will cut through a lot of the just
Speaker 1: utter crap that you hear about the Supreme Court these
Speaker 1: days too. A couple of stupid headlines we will get to.
Speaker 1: We can get to at least one. I'll let Jack
Speaker 1: choose which one after some serious news. Your choice is
Speaker 1: between a the race for California governor has become a.
Speaker 2: Battle over facial hair huh.
Speaker 1: Or new study suggests to have found why t Rex
Speaker 1: evolved to have smaller arms.
Speaker 2: Oh my, I think why the t Rex arms? Think?
Speaker 2: My son told me about that. The other day.
Speaker 4: I saw Katie Porter grew a handle bar mustache. So
Speaker 4: is that what that's all about?
Speaker 1: H Yes, it is, it is, and it's it's waxed,
Speaker 1: it's curled at the ends. It's surprisingly alluring.
Speaker 2: Yes, wider vibes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I made reference to this last hour. Phoenix built
Speaker 1: an empire of cubical jobs, and AI is tearing it down.
Speaker 1: The number of jobs lost and cubical jobs. They're talking
Speaker 1: like customer service, data entry, payroll processing, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I've done that, yeah, which, as the journal points out,
Speaker 1: created a vital ladder to the middle class, which helped
Speaker 1: replace factory work which we exported during the China's going
Speaker 1: to be our buddy if we just enriched them idiotic
Speaker 1: period of our lives. But offshoring has been chipping away
Speaker 1: at back office jobs for decades. But around sixteen and
Speaker 1: a half million Americans still work in that sort of job.
Speaker 1: But that's down a million and a half in the
Speaker 1: last five years or so, and the number of customer
Speaker 1: service representatives in Metro Phoenix alone has tumbled twenty six
Speaker 1: percent in the most recent four year span that the
Speaker 1: Department of Labor measured. Those jobs are going away in
Speaker 1: a big hurry to AI systems and some additional offshoring.
Speaker 4: So you lose those jobs, and then you got all
Speaker 4: that office space that will be empty, which is its
Speaker 4: own disruptor.
Speaker 2: Right right.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've been to Phoenix plenty, my dad
Speaker 1: lives in that area, but it hadn't dawned on me
Speaker 1: that many of those sprawling, you know, three four story
Speaker 1: office campuses, that's what was happening there. Phoenix, because it
Speaker 1: had relatively inexpensive labor and relatively inexpensive real estate, became
Speaker 1: like the nation center of that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But now it's getting hit hard.
Speaker 4: How about all those empty giant buildings where people were
Speaker 4: in there doing that entry of some sort that's something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, indoor pickleball courts clearly and as usual as
Speaker 1: you are the only commentator in America asking this question. Okay,
Speaker 1: all those jobs have been lost to AI, when does
Speaker 1: the universal high income kick it right?
Speaker 2: How those people get like back pay? Or when does
Speaker 2: this switch get flipped?
Speaker 4: What's the total amount of people that have lost jobs
Speaker 4: to AI? Is it over a million yet? Ten thousand here,
Speaker 4: twenty thousand there, thousand there. We've We've heard a lot
Speaker 4: of these. But at what point do you start compensating
Speaker 4: for this?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Nobody's said right meta.
Speaker 1: For instance, Mark Zuckerberg's outfit has laid off tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of people in recent months for AI driven reasons,
Speaker 1: and they make a a heiny load of money. So
Speaker 1: when is the redistribution going to start? Elon, I would
Speaker 1: like to know that. Totally different topic. Europe is starting
Speaker 1: to think Putin will expand the war beyond Ukraine.
Speaker 4: Wow, Russia, and he's losing the in Ukraine. Why would
Speaker 4: he expand it like as a distraction?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, he had a rally the country and I
Speaker 1: can't imagine how it would work. But Russia's been making
Speaker 1: increasingly belakost statements against the Baltic states, you're Latvia and
Speaker 1: Lithuania and Estonia. It has threatened to bomb decision making
Speaker 1: centers in Latvia after accusing the country of hosting Ukrainian
Speaker 1: drone operators, which the Latvian authorities deny. Air raid alarms
Speaker 1: were sounded in Lithuania last week, forcing the government into
Speaker 1: a bunker after suspected Russian drones approached its airspace from Belarus,
Speaker 1: and the Russian Ministry of Defense has published the addresses
Speaker 1: of companies allegedly working on drone production with Ukraine in
Speaker 1: eight different European countries, warning of quote unpredictable consequences and
Speaker 1: sharp escalation if military assistance to Kiev does not cease.
Speaker 4: If Russia went into Lithuania, Latvia, one of those countries.
Speaker 4: We're bogged down in Iran. We're not gonna like spend
Speaker 4: a lot of time. Hey, Europe, you're worried about to
Speaker 4: do something yourself. The whole Article five NATO thing, I
Speaker 4: think just gets ignored more.
Speaker 1: Or less, well, especially now under Trump. The other headline
Speaker 1: is that the Pentagon is cutting forces earmarked for Europe
Speaker 1: in the event of a crisis. We had a plan,
Speaker 1: we will immediately send x number of troops to Europe.
Speaker 1: The Pentagon is substantially scaling back to forces and plans
Speaker 1: to send to Europe in a crisis. A fresh step
Speaker 1: by the Trump administration to shrink its military support for NATO.
Speaker 1: A Defense Department official notified NATO allies of the plan
Speaker 1: cutbacks in a closed more door meeting last week in Brussels.
Speaker 1: Current and former officials who have been briefed on the
Speaker 1: meeting said the Trump administration aims to reduce by one
Speaker 1: third to one half the pool of various military capabilities
Speaker 1: it would devote to NATO in a conflict, including US
Speaker 1: commitments of strategic bombers and other long range strike forces,
Speaker 1: some naval assets, and air to air refueling tankers. And
Speaker 1: it comes ahead of that move comes ahead of the
Speaker 1: meeting of NATO leaders in Turkey in July, where Trump
Speaker 1: is expected to attend the meeting and press other allied
Speaker 1: leaders to shoulder more of the burden on Europe's defense,
Speaker 1: which has needed to happen for a very very long time.
Speaker 1: If a guy's going to take a look at both
Speaker 1: sides of this issue, Trump is not wrong on this.
Speaker 1: Things feel a little touchy to me right now to
Speaker 1: go to hardcore down that road.
Speaker 2: But people can differ.
Speaker 4: If you're willing to explain why t rexes have tiny arms.
Speaker 4: I've got a really entertaining hate text for us.
Speaker 2: Oh good, excellent.
Speaker 1: So a new study claims to have sawt the long
Speaker 1: standing mystery why t rexes have such disproportionately small arms,
Speaker 1: which have given people like me an excellent metaphor for
Speaker 1: somebody who never picks up the check or disappears when
Speaker 1: it's time for everybody to kick in. Oh they got
Speaker 1: t rex items. They can't quit reach the bill. Oh
Speaker 1: no they can't. They can't even get through the wallet.
Speaker 1: That's too bid. Yeah, I'll name names too, anyway. A
Speaker 1: Royal Society research paper published and may suggest that the
Speaker 1: t rex, which averaged more than forty feet long with
Speaker 1: arms stretching just three feet, naturally evolved smaller arms as
Speaker 1: this skull grew larger. They looked at eighty five dinosaur
Speaker 1: species and found a consistent correlation among five groups that
Speaker 1: I won't bother mentioning because I'll mispronounce half of them,
Speaker 1: each showing a pattern of larger skulls and shorter four
Speaker 1: limbs and over time that increased, you know, proportionally more
Speaker 1: and more as the dinosaurs evolve over a million in
Speaker 1: the years. The idea being, once your head and jaws
Speaker 1: got as big and powerful as they were, that's how
Speaker 1: you're gonna engage your prey. You're not gonna bother wrestling
Speaker 1: with them or trying to claw at them, right, You're
Speaker 1: just gonna awe chomp on them.
Speaker 4: Yeah. If you've ever seen a good t rex skeleton
Speaker 4: or a model or whatever, their heads are ginormous. My
Speaker 4: son who's super into dinosaurs and evolution and wants to
Speaker 4: study that for his life. I think it was shown
Speaker 4: me a video where they took chickens and they put
Speaker 4: some sort of a weighted tail on them that would
Speaker 4: be similar to a t rex, and they think that
Speaker 4: shows you what a t rex would have walked like.
Speaker 4: Since a t rex and a chicken are very similar,
Speaker 4: they just have a heavy innovative so that's kind of
Speaker 4: the way that would have walked.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that t rex was delicious one fry.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's our hate text.
Speaker 4: It's actually I think a voicemail, So maybe we'll have
Speaker 4: to get the audio because i'd kind of like to
Speaker 4: hear what this person sounds like because it came out
Speaker 4: through voice, but I've got the print version. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: just didn't want to waste my time on interrupting your ridiculous,
Speaker 4: absolutely ridiculous show. But I didn't want to leave a
Speaker 4: message and say I listened to talk radio ninety percent
Speaker 4: of the time in my car, and I just don't
Speaker 4: have any idea on earth. How you two knuckleheads got
Speaker 4: a radio show. It is absolutely just beyond me and
Speaker 4: some of the greatest radio hosts I've listened to over
Speaker 4: the years.
Speaker 2: How you two yo yo's ever got a radio show?
Speaker 4: So you must have contacts with an owner of a
Speaker 4: station or related to somebody, because you absolutely are the
Speaker 4: most nonsensical people ever I have ever heard on a
Speaker 4: radio show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Donald Trump is my uncle. H oh my god,
Speaker 2: oh jeez. Uh, there's so many options out there. I
Speaker 2: don't know why you wouldn't.
Speaker 5: Just I know.
Speaker 1: I've never understood people who take in entertainment that they
Speaker 1: don't like and then decide to explain to the musician
Speaker 1: or artist or a talk show host why I don't
Speaker 1: like you.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, dear paramount.
Speaker 4: I've been watching this series on Netflix every night, and
Speaker 4: I just hate it. Well, there's a million there's way
Speaker 4: too much romance and it's too much talking.
Speaker 2: I prefer more action pack sequences. What is the matter?
Speaker 1: I can't imagine how you even became a movie studio.
Speaker 2: You knuckleheads must know somebody. I wish we had that it.
Speaker 4: We got a lot more on the way, including Sarah
Speaker 4: isg're about the Supreme Court. Gonna be good stuff.
Speaker 2: Stay here.
Speaker 4: I've talked up AI quite a bit for like advice
Speaker 4: with various things, all kinds of things. Had a problem
Speaker 4: my son's truck wouldn't start the other day, like why
Speaker 4: is it not starting? I gave it the specifics on
Speaker 4: a you know, the year model and everything like that. Man,
Speaker 4: it nailed it narrowed down to such a specific things.
Speaker 4: It's incredible. But on like personal relationships like that as
Speaker 4: therapy and so, I don't know if you all know
Speaker 4: who Mark Andriesen is. He's a columnist with the Washington Post.
Speaker 4: I think anyway, he was on Joe Rogan for three
Speaker 4: hours the other day talking about the benefits of AI,
Speaker 4: and he was talking up the therapy thing for one.
Speaker 4: A couple of things caught my eye because there was
Speaker 4: some stuff bouncing around in our social media world and
Speaker 4: our Twitter feed about somebody claiming that the trouble with
Speaker 4: AI is it just it just tells you what you
Speaker 4: want to hear all the time. I've not had that experience,
Speaker 4: but you can make sure that you don't have that
Speaker 4: experience pretty easily. But anyway, let me hit you with
Speaker 4: a couple of things that Mark Andreesen said that AI
Speaker 4: can do for you already. You can send AI photos
Speaker 4: of almost anything medical now and get a real second
Speaker 4: opinion very quickly. Skin rashes, blood test results, a mole,
Speaker 4: pictures of your poop. The new models can read images,
Speaker 4: not just text, and it's a free twenty four to
Speaker 4: seven second opinion on basically anything that's very accurate.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So I can stop sending pictures of my poop to
Speaker 1: my friends and send it to AI instead.
Speaker 4: Or I have an excuse for why I have so
Speaker 4: many pictures of poop on my phone.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, that makes sense, trust me. Oh my,
Speaker 2: oh my, oh.
Speaker 4: You mentioned here that the the best AI coders in
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley are making fifty million dollars a year working
Speaker 4: for the various AI companies.
Speaker 2: They're so in demand. Each company wants to have the
Speaker 2: very best. Whooa wow.
Speaker 4: Uh, here's a guy who paid two hundred dollars to
Speaker 4: get his entire DNA decoded. This usually costs millions of
Speaker 4: dollars and takes years to do.
Speaker 2: Soon we'll all be getting this done. Uh. People take
Speaker 2: a picture of his DNA or how does that?
Speaker 4: Somebody put cameras around them for their home jiu jitsu gym,
Speaker 4: and now AI watches them and gives it's like having
Speaker 4: a world class coach. You could do it with golf, tennis,
Speaker 4: all kinds of different things.
Speaker 2: WHOA what I know, I don't know. It didn't it
Speaker 2: didn't get into that.
Speaker 4: But wow, I'll skip to this one just because we're
Speaker 4: about out of time, because I thought it was really interesting.
Speaker 4: The one type of therapy that's clinically proven to actually
Speaker 4: work in the world is cognitive behavioral therapy CBT. It's
Speaker 4: also something can fully do on its own, which means
Speaker 4: every person on earth is about to have access to
Speaker 4: a real therapist for any time they want. I've had
Speaker 4: that experience with like family stuff and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 4: But he suggests if you tell the AI to steal
Speaker 4: man the other side of this, like whatever it tells
Speaker 4: you to do to make your argument for the other side,
Speaker 4: you'll get a good presentation of both sides and you
Speaker 4: can go from there. And I have done that, and
Speaker 4: it's amazing. It's like watching two really smart people in
Speaker 4: a debate about your topic and you can you know,
Speaker 4: if you have any level of intelligence, I think, come
Speaker 4: away with it what you think is the best course,
Speaker 4: as opposed to it telling you everything you want to hear.
Speaker 1: A more nuanced and confident view of why you believe
Speaker 1: what you believe.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I asked a question about a weather phenomenon the other
Speaker 1: day and the answer was just fascinating.
Speaker 4: It was absolutely fabulous. I think by taking a college class.
Speaker 4: I think the first time I ever heard the term
Speaker 4: Steelman to straw Man was from Sarah Isger on one
Speaker 4: of her podcasts, and we're going to talk to her
Speaker 4: coming up next about her book she's got out about
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court. It's really good.
Speaker 1: She has such a gift for making this stuff understandable.
Speaker 2: Just terrific.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and a question I've been wanting to ask her
Speaker 4: for a very long time. Man, if you miss it,
Speaker 4: gets the podcast Armstrong and Getty on demand.
Speaker 5: Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 4: We've been wanting to get Sarah igor on for a
Speaker 4: long time. First became Wherever on the Dispatch and the
Speaker 4: podcast stuff there man. Anytime any big legal story breaks,
Speaker 4: I go to her twitter feed or wait for the
Speaker 4: podcast she does with David French Advisory Opinions to get
Speaker 4: it laid out. And couldn't be happier to have her today.
Speaker 1: Yep, we're both big fans of Sarah Isger, editor of
Speaker 1: Scotis Blog, hosted the legal podcast in Firesorry Opinions, Legal
Speaker 1: analyst for ABC News and author of a fabulous new book,
Speaker 1: Last Branch Standing, a potentially surprising, occasionally witty journey inside
Speaker 1: today's Supreme Court. A book so timely and important I
Speaker 1: believe it should be a compulsory read for every American.
Speaker 1: Not sure how that scores with the first time. Sarah, Welcome,
Speaker 1: How are you?
Speaker 5: I'm great? Thank you guys for having me.
Speaker 4: You bet you before we let you lay out the book.
Speaker 4: And here's the deal I'm gonna make with you. Even
Speaker 4: though we have no leverage. You're like the horror moves straight.
Speaker 4: We have no leverage over you, but I let you
Speaker 4: and I'll go out and buy a hard bound copy
Speaker 4: of your book today, even though I'm getting a promotional copy.
Speaker 4: If I can get you to do one of your screeds,
Speaker 4: and there's so many, I would like the screed might
Speaker 4: be prejudicial. Maybe I'll go with presentation or something like that.
Speaker 4: But and I could have you do why the whole
Speaker 4: crying fire in a crowded movie house is misrepresented?
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many of them. I for of
Speaker 2: you do that.
Speaker 4: I love her greatest hits. Why there are no parties anymore?
Speaker 4: And it's a waste of time. I want to have
Speaker 4: you lay out the pointlessness of issue polling after the book,
Speaker 4: because I want you to do that for our audience.
Speaker 2: I really do. Excellent, No problem, it's done.
Speaker 5: I mean, you don't have to go to me into
Speaker 5: doing a rant. I love a rant.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 1: All right, First things first, though, tell us about Last Standing.
Speaker 5: Well, part of the reason for this book is to
Speaker 5: convince Americans that, yes, they're hearing so much more about
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court and that it is actually our most
Speaker 5: functional branch of government. But it is never the last
Speaker 5: word in any of these fights that we're having on politics,
Speaker 5: on culture, war, anything else. It is always up to
Speaker 5: the American people. If you don't like something the Supreme
Speaker 5: Court decided, we can amend the Constitution. We used to
Speaker 5: do it pretty frequently in response to Supreme Court decisions,
Speaker 5: and most of the decisions from the Supreme Court are
Speaker 5: actually just up to Congress. If you don't like partisan jerrymandering,
Speaker 5: Congress can deal with that. Today, we just don't expect
Speaker 5: them to. We don't make them, and we continue to
Speaker 5: vote for people who have no interest in actually legislating,
Speaker 5: because legislation requires compromise, negotiation, actually working with someone who
Speaker 5: disagrees with you. And it said, we keep electing people
Speaker 5: who are really good at putting out Instagram res bills
Speaker 5: yelling about how the other side is the problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've listened to you so much.
Speaker 4: I actually know what your answers are going to be
Speaker 4: to all my questions, but I'll ask them anyway. What
Speaker 4: you have us talker? Well, I am, I'm a fanboy,
Speaker 4: wound boy. What changed? Why you know, if we used
Speaker 4: to amend the Constitution all the time.
Speaker 2: What changed?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean a few things. We can go back one
Speaker 5: hundred years to the progressive era, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 5: They really wanted to remake the United States government and
Speaker 5: move away from Congress again that messy, long negotiating process,
Speaker 5: and they wanted it all to be housed by experts
Speaker 5: and independent agencies. It would be shielded from political influence.
Speaker 5: So we've been doing that experiment for about one hundred years.
Speaker 5: And then during the second term of the Obama administration,
Speaker 5: when his immigration legislation failed in the House because Republicans
Speaker 5: wouldn't vote for it, he decided to do executive orders
Speaker 5: to implement legislation. Now, it didn't last long. Those executive
Speaker 5: orders were generally struck down by courts or President Trump
Speaker 5: came in and repealed them all his first day in office.
Speaker 5: But it taught Congress that they don't need to do
Speaker 5: legislation anymore because when their party has the White House,
Speaker 5: they can get everything that they want. And sure it's
Speaker 5: only for a couple of years, but they get the
Speaker 5: Rose Garden address. Their base is happy, and nobody remembers
Speaker 5: a few years later whose fault it is when it
Speaker 5: all disappears.
Speaker 4: So the whole I have a pen and a phone
Speaker 4: thing that took presidence, so essentially then tires.
Speaker 5: Under government by executive order.
Speaker 2: At this point, right.
Speaker 1: I was just going to say, so Congress is not
Speaker 1: legislating in the executive branch. Is is that most of
Speaker 1: the reason there's so much of a spotlight on the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court these days, or what else is happening.
Speaker 5: I think that's right, you know, because Congress is where
Speaker 5: we were supposed to work out these problems. Again, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm thinking of cases that are waiting at the Supreme
Speaker 5: Court right now, birthright citizenship, asylum at the southern border,
Speaker 5: or whether Mississippi can accept mail in ballots five days
Speaker 5: after the election. All of those are questions we're supposed
Speaker 5: to work out in Congress. But because none of us
Speaker 5: believe that will happen, we end up bringing lawsuits to
Speaker 5: court and asking the courts to work those out for us.
Speaker 5: And so then we focus a lot more on the courts.
Speaker 5: It becomes really important who these judges are, and they
Speaker 5: become part of our partisan disagreements instead of sort of
Speaker 5: the place of last resort to sort of, you know,
Speaker 5: be a referee.
Speaker 4: And we've seen the declining popularity numbers for the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court because of this, putting them in an impossible situation
Speaker 4: on a bunch of this stuff. A reply to this,
Speaker 4: this is an out of control right wing Trump court.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the data isn't great for people who argue that.
Speaker 5: So last term for six three cases, you know, where
Speaker 5: all of the Republican appointees vote one way and all
Speaker 5: of the Democratic appointees vote the other way, which is
Speaker 5: what you would expect if this were a you know,
Speaker 5: Republican Red team versus lou team court. That accounted for
Speaker 5: drum roll, nine percent of the cases. So if that's
Speaker 5: how you're predicting the outcome of Supreme Court cases, you're
Speaker 5: going to get it wrong more than ninety percent of
Speaker 5: the time. And even if you include the five four cases,
Speaker 5: it turns out exactly equal numbers had all of the
Speaker 5: liberals in descent versus having all the liberals in the
Speaker 5: majority and only conservatives in descent. Instead, you know, forty
Speaker 5: two percent of the cases are unanimous. That's the most
Speaker 5: likely outcome of any case of the Supreme Court. Very few,
Speaker 5: as I say, fall against partisan lines. The other things
Speaker 5: we'd expect at this were a you know, Trump Supreme Court, Well,
Speaker 5: first of all, I guess we'd expect Trump to actually
Speaker 5: win some cases. Right now, every major policy question that
Speaker 5: has come before the Supreme Court. He has lost Immigration,
Speaker 5: Alien Enemies Act nope. Federalizing the National Guard nopeteris nope,
Speaker 5: birthright citizenship. I will bet you a shiny nickel that
Speaker 5: one's a hard no. So he keeps losing. In fact,
Speaker 5: in his first term he lost more than any president
Speaker 5: in United States history. He's the first president to ever
Speaker 5: be below fifty percent. At the Supreme Court, we'd expect
Speaker 5: them to be overturning president, Nope, This court is overturning
Speaker 5: fewer precedents than any court in modern history. We'd expect
Speaker 5: them to be taking more cases. Nope, this court is
Speaker 5: taking fewer cases than any court in recent history. So,
Speaker 5: no matter what way you look at it, the data
Speaker 5: just isn't there. For the people who want to argue
Speaker 5: that this is a partisan court.
Speaker 1: Well, let's be honest about what animates virtually all of
Speaker 1: modern politics. You just raised zero dollars for the Democratic Party, Sarah,
Speaker 1: So thanks for wasting our time. You noted and I
Speaker 1: found this so interesting that Brett Kavanaugh was more likely
Speaker 1: to agree with Elena Kagan than Neil Gorsich.
Speaker 2: What's going on there?
Speaker 5: Yeah? So, I mean britchkavn on Neil Gorsich are basically twins.
Speaker 5: They went to high school together, they had the same
Speaker 5: history teacher. They clerked on the court together. They were
Speaker 5: circuit judges at the same time. They were appointed by
Speaker 5: this same president. They are federalist society lab creations with
Speaker 5: good hair and conservative judicial principles. But last term they
Speaker 5: only agree with each other fifty percent of the time.
Speaker 5: As you say, Justice Kavanaugh was more likely to agree
Speaker 5: with Justice Kagan than he was with Justice Gorsich because
Speaker 5: Justice Kavanaugh is a high institutionalist. He thinks of this
Speaker 5: as a team sport. He likes basketball and baseball. Justice Gorsicic,
Speaker 5: He's a soloist. He likes skiing and running solo sports.
Speaker 5: He is more like Justice Jackson, which is why you
Speaker 5: see them agreeing with each other's concurrences and why Justice
Speaker 5: Kavanaugh is the justice most likely to be in the majority.
Speaker 5: He is the swing justice as of now.
Speaker 4: Sarah Isger's book is called Last Branch Standing. In the
Speaker 4: first sentence in the promotional stuff, is here a myth
Speaker 4: busting glimpse into the inner workings of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: And you've already busted a few myths?
Speaker 2: What? How?
Speaker 4: How worried are you about the declining faith in the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court because of the untrue partisan things people have
Speaker 4: been saying on both sides now for several cycles.
Speaker 5: Well, let me give you the good news and the
Speaker 5: bad news. The good news is that the Supreme Court
Speaker 5: is still more popular than the President or Congress. So
Speaker 5: if we're just fighting among the three branches of government,
Speaker 5: definitely the Supreme Court is winning. The bad news is
Speaker 5: that our courts tend to be a lagging indicator of
Speaker 5: our politics. So another title for the book could have
Speaker 5: been last branch standing dot dot dot for now, because
Speaker 5: everything that we're doing now will eventually be reflected in
Speaker 5: the courts, and there are warning signs. Getting rid of
Speaker 5: the filibuster means that we now appoint judges who didn't
Speaker 5: get any votes from the other side of the aisle.
Speaker 2: That is not great.
Speaker 5: That is going to read more extreme judges who are outliers,
Speaker 5: and it's going to change the behavior of people who
Speaker 5: want to become judges to be more partisan, more outspoken,
Speaker 5: lock themselves into certain positions. We have forum shopping now
Speaker 5: that we didn't used to have. That's not great. You know,
Speaker 5: you could be the most fair judge in the world.
Speaker 5: But if everyone knows that one side picked you, it
Speaker 5: doesn't look that fair to anyone. So, you know, I
Speaker 5: think those are things we can pretty easily fix, but
Speaker 5: it's not great. And the more we pull the courts
Speaker 5: into our partisan politics, negative polarization. I mean, we have
Speaker 5: a really toxic political environment right now. We cannot have
Speaker 5: the courts reflect that.
Speaker 1: Let's go a little ABC one two three about the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court kind of basic stuff. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of folks, particularly on the left, think it's about choosing
Speaker 1: the right result, period, and a lot of us on
Speaker 1: the right would like to believe that the court does
Speaker 1: nothing but look at the Constitution and the law and precedent,
Speaker 1: and they may despise the result. But we've got to
Speaker 1: go with with this is that's oversimplified obviously, But is
Speaker 1: that characterization of the left and right, at least on
Speaker 1: the right track.
Speaker 5: You know, I think I think the conservative right wanted
Speaker 5: to think that about themselves, but it's pretty clear now
Speaker 5: that that's not true. Both sides only care about outcomes. Really.
Speaker 5: You see the right attack the Supreme Court every time
Speaker 5: they rule against Donald Trump, sometimes specific justices and very
Speaker 5: personal terms. You know, the attacks against Justice amy Cony
Speaker 5: Barrett got very gendery in my opinion, and I think
Speaker 5: that there's a natural human tendency to care about the outcome.
Speaker 5: I get it. But the Supreme Court's job is never
Speaker 5: to say, you know what the good policy is. It
Speaker 5: is to say who gets to decide? So you're mad
Speaker 5: that the book is in your local school library, the Supreme
Speaker 5: Court isn't going to tell you whether that's a good
Speaker 5: book or a bad book for kindergarteners to read. Their
Speaker 5: question is who get to decide whether that's a good
Speaker 5: book or a bad book? Is it the librarian, is
Speaker 5: it the parent coming into the library. Is it the
Speaker 5: you know, city mayor? Is it a state legislation? Is
Speaker 5: it the governor? Is it Congress? Those are the questions
Speaker 5: that the Supreme Court decides. They're never deciding which book
Speaker 5: it should be?
Speaker 1: Right, I meant the justice is more than the average
Speaker 1: commentator or voter. For instance, Justice Jackson strikes me as
Speaker 1: just wanting the result, no matter how she has to
Speaker 1: twist the law.
Speaker 5: Well, what's interesting because the legal left for a long
Speaker 5: time sort of had this idea of living constitutionalism. The
Speaker 5: constitution evolves as our culture evolves. And it is up
Speaker 5: to the nine justices on the Supreme Court to decide
Speaker 5: where it has evolved to President Lyndon Johnson famously once
Speaker 5: said it takes two thirds of Congress and three quarters
Speaker 5: of the States to amend the Constitution. Justice Douglas can
Speaker 5: do it in an afternoon. That was really where they were.
Speaker 5: That had basically disappeared from the legal left, and yet
Speaker 5: nothing has yet replaced it. And so I think you
Speaker 5: see Justice Jackson trying to come up with a new
Speaker 5: legal fullhilosophy for the legal left that yes, will produce
Speaker 5: liberal results, but they can be sort of intellectually, you know,
Speaker 5: built a new house, if you will, on the block
Speaker 5: of judicial philosophy. And look, like I said, nine percent
Speaker 5: of the cases were six three along ideological lines. So
Speaker 5: I also think it's unfair to say ideology plays no
Speaker 5: role in Supreme Court decisions nine percent of the time.
Speaker 5: It does. It's just that ninety one percent of the
Speaker 5: time something else is at work.
Speaker 4: So the book is last branch standing. Couldn't recommend it
Speaker 4: more highly. I've heard Sarah talk about it in a
Speaker 4: bunch of different podcasts, and I'm sure I will eventually
Speaker 4: read it. She explains this stuff in a way that
Speaker 4: idiots like me can understand it in an entertaining way.
Speaker 4: So you have worked on presidential campaigns. You worked for
Speaker 4: Carly Fiorina. We used to have her on regularly back
Speaker 4: in the day when she was running. But anyway, I know,
Speaker 4: with your background and a bunch of different areas, you
Speaker 4: don't think issue polling has much merit.
Speaker 2: Explain that.
Speaker 5: Oh, okay, deep breast, Sarah, don't go too far.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's too far.
Speaker 5: Here's the problem. When we do candidate polling, we can
Speaker 5: actually judge whether the poll is any good because we
Speaker 5: have an election day, right, there is a backstop to
Speaker 5: the polling. We never can do that with issue polling.
Speaker 5: We can never find out whether that poll was a
Speaker 5: good poll or a bad pole. There's no way to
Speaker 5: grade it. So that's a big problem, right. But there's
Speaker 5: another problem. When you ask people what candidates they intend
Speaker 5: to vote for, that's a very binary choice. They understand
Speaker 5: what an election is and that they're going to go
Speaker 5: in and check the box for one person or the other.
Speaker 5: And remember, those poles still aren't perfect when it comes
Speaker 5: to issue polling. Oftentimes, the question you're asking people is
Speaker 5: it the question they think they're answering. You know, do
Speaker 5: you think the straits of horror moves should be open
Speaker 5: or whatever? Well kind of depends what are the trade offs?
Speaker 5: Are you going to list all of the potential trade
Speaker 5: offs in that question? You've only got like thirty seconds
Speaker 5: to ask them a question and get them to answer it.
Speaker 5: And that's why you get so many different results with
Speaker 5: issue polling. It's also the case that sometimes people hear
Speaker 5: a question that can be about a very specific issue,
Speaker 5: but what they're answering, what they think they you really
Speaker 5: want to know is who do you support for president?
Speaker 5: So you know, do you like ex policy or why policy?
Speaker 5: The answer is do you like Donald Trump or Kamala Harris?
Speaker 5: And so you're rarely getting the answer that I think
Speaker 5: you want. If you're asking the same question, the exact
Speaker 5: same question over time, and that moves that is interesting
Speaker 5: to me, right, like not the raw number, but like,
Speaker 5: oh it is moved by seven points in the last month. Well,
Speaker 5: something that has changed if you're asking the exact same question.
Speaker 5: But that's rarely what we're doing.
Speaker 4: Do you regularly hear because in talk radio we do
Speaker 4: it all the time. Forty three percent of Americans, blah
Speaker 4: blah blah. Do you regularly slap your forehead with Oh
Speaker 4: my god, there's no way there's any accuracy there.
Speaker 5: I sort of turned into like a rain Man type
Speaker 5: figure where I start saying that that's not a real pull.
Speaker 5: That's not a real pull. Don't do it, that's not
Speaker 5: a real pull.
Speaker 2: Perfect.
Speaker 1: Sarah Isger's new book is Last Branch Standing. Can't wait
Speaker 1: to read it to Sarah. What a pleasure has been.
Speaker 1: I hope we can do it again soon.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, thanks guys, you all right, thank you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard her go on at lengthd
Speaker 4: about our issue polling except in extreme situations is almost useless,
Speaker 4: like it's close to your better off having never heard
Speaker 4: it than coming away with any information. I have follow
Speaker 4: up comments as well, Yeah, weld them more on the way,
Speaker 4: stay here.
Speaker 5: Arm strong and getty.
Speaker 4: My god, Sarah is amazing. I want to kiss her brain,
Speaker 4: says one Texter among many who enjoyed our interview with
Speaker 4: Sarah Isger that we just finished up. Please have Sarah
Speaker 4: on as often as you can. We we definitely will.
Speaker 4: She's a very busy person. She now her main job
Speaker 4: now that I know, she's so proud of as editor
Speaker 4: of Scotus Blog because she is a serious legal mind
Speaker 4: and I think one of her great talents in it.
Speaker 4: It's a rare talent is people who are super smart
Speaker 4: and knowledgeable about any topic, who can see the way
Speaker 4: other people think about it, not having your level of knowledge.
Speaker 4: That's what the UI thing is in tech user interface.
Speaker 4: It's the ability to know, Okay, somebody as sits down
Speaker 4: with this you know, laptop or gets in this car,
Speaker 4: what are they going to think? As opposed to someone
Speaker 4: like you who knows everything, and she can explain stuff
Speaker 4: so well to idiots like me.
Speaker 2: I really enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she senses where her audience is and delivers, you know,
Speaker 1: on that level, which is great. It's a Senda Furian skill,
Speaker 1: Tim is, you know, one of the best ever at it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The thing that strikes me that that bothers me so
Speaker 1: much about modern politics in the Supreme Court is that
Speaker 1: enthusiasm has always been part of politics. And I've got
Speaker 1: some great stories about that that we really don't have
Speaker 1: time for, but about how it was in the old
Speaker 1: timey days. But enthusiasm these days means rage most of
Speaker 1: the time. That the surest way to raise people's attention
Speaker 1: and money, is to convince them that there's a horrible
Speaker 1: injustice being done and they've got to be really, really angry.
Speaker 1: And the Supreme Court now with its outsized influence for
Speaker 1: the reason Sarah was describing, it's become a target of
Speaker 1: rage in a way that is not helpful. That's not
Speaker 1: supposed to be their vibe at all.
Speaker 4: Well, if presidents would quit thinking they can fix everything
Speaker 4: with an executive order, it would help. If you missed
Speaker 4: our interview with Rai Sarah, get the podcast.
Speaker 5: Please are strong and Getty