Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to Oka f Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: It's like the news coming out about Clarence Thomas, his
Speaker 1: criminal grifting ass just won't stop. And what's so infuriating
Speaker 1: about the latest round of just how corrupt this Supreme
Speaker 1: Court justice is, which is the fact that he has
Speaker 1: been refusing to disclose over the last what seventeen years
Speaker 1: or so, that he's been getting a salary from a
Speaker 1: firm that no longer exists, a real estate firm that
Speaker 1: was started in the nineteen eighties that closed in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, but somehow between two thousand and six
Speaker 1: and roughly now, Clarence Thomas has somehow been getting a
Speaker 1: income from there. Also latest discoveries that Harlan Crowe, Everyone's
Speaker 1: favorite villain, billionaire villain, bought Clarence Thomas's childhood home, that
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas's mother still lives in, that she doesn't pay
Speaker 1: any rent or mortgage too. Like if there was a
Speaker 1: hearing an investigation that needed to be opened, I feel like, hello, Floodgates,
Speaker 1: we are there. But because we know that Democrats don't
Speaker 1: want to be called bad names by Republicans, and they
Speaker 1: think that if they don't investigate things, then Republicans will
Speaker 1: play nice in the sandbox. The Republican Party has lit
Speaker 1: the sandbox on fire and filled it with gasoline. So
Speaker 1: I'm confused about why you feel that if you do
Speaker 1: move or you don't move, that somehow your friends from
Speaker 1: across the aisle are going to magically turn back into
Speaker 1: your friends again.
Speaker 2: They are not.
Speaker 1: They want you dead. They literally have said so in
Speaker 1: so many different ways. So let's just do what the
Speaker 1: people elected you to do, which is to make sure
Speaker 1: that our government and our judiciary isn't filled with corrupt,
Speaker 1: fucking grifters. There's an idea just throwing it out there,
Speaker 1: you know, when you see this level of corruption and
Speaker 1: you think about the millions of dollars that Republicans have spent,
Speaker 1: whether it was on Benghazi, whether it was on their
Speaker 1: trial to try and get rid of Bill Clinton, whether
Speaker 1: it was on like bullshit investigations into the Obama administration
Speaker 1: that all came.
Speaker 2: Up with zilch, right, zilch.
Speaker 1: And you look at the investigative report right now that's
Speaker 1: being done by the New York Times, and every single
Speaker 1: week is coming up with the new news about Clarence
Speaker 1: Thomas and his wife Jinny and how they have been grifting,
Speaker 1: And this wouldn't matter so much. It'd almost be comical
Speaker 1: if he were some po dunk judge right that only
Speaker 1: had state jurisdiction. No, he has jurisdiction over all of
Speaker 1: our fucking lives. So doesn't it matter whether or not
Speaker 1: he is corrupt, whether or not he's taking payoffs. My
Speaker 1: fucking god, I'm just wondering when, if ever we are
Speaker 1: actually going to clear the swamp out. You know, Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: remember back in twenty sixteen, is like, Oh, We're gonna
Speaker 1: drain the swamp. Yeah, you drained it, and you put
Speaker 1: it into all the fucking streets, every single main street.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I feel like we've been swimming and shit for the
Speaker 1: last seven years, and I'm like, can somebody take a
Speaker 1: hose to this shit?
Speaker 3: Ugh?
Speaker 1: Anyway, I'm just really outdone, you know, on top of
Speaker 1: the fact that the Senate Judiciary should fucking call an
Speaker 1: emergency hearing and haul his ass and haul Chief Justice
Speaker 1: John Roberts's ass in front of the committee, besides the
Speaker 1: fact that Merrick Garland should open up a fucking investigation
Speaker 1: into Clarence Thomas and his wife and should have been
Speaker 1: doing that, even if it was only around the fucking
Speaker 1: insurrection and not all of their grifting, fucking schemes that
Speaker 1: they've been up against. But my god, it would be
Speaker 1: lovely to believe that we live in a country of laws.
Speaker 1: I would love that. Coming up next, dear friends, on
Speaker 1: today's show, I'm always excited when I get to have
Speaker 1: one of my favorite people on joining to really delve
Speaker 1: into the legal woes that this country, our democracy are facing.
Speaker 1: So coming up next to my conversation with Dahlia Lithwick,
Speaker 1: who is a New York Times best selling author of
Speaker 1: the book Lady Justice, Women, The Law and the Battle
Speaker 1: to Save America, and she is also a senior editor
Speaker 1: at SLAT and an MSNBC contributor and the host of Amicus.
Speaker 1: That conversation is coming up next, folks. I am always
Speaker 1: very excited when I get to bring back to the
Speaker 1: show some of my friends, and Dahlia Lithwick is just
Speaker 1: that the author of Lady Justice, Women, The Law and
Speaker 1: the Battle to Save America. My fellow nerd Avenger, we
Speaker 1: do Mary Trump's show together, and my fellow comrade in
Speaker 1: crazy is what I will call it, Dahlia. I will
Speaker 1: start this off that we have had more mass shootings
Speaker 1: than we have had days in the year. We're now
Speaker 1: in April. We are facing a decision to pull FDA
Speaker 1: an FDA approved medication if a pristone that aids an
Speaker 1: abortion that was approved back twenty plus years ago by
Speaker 1: the FDA is safer than a lot of over the
Speaker 1: counter medications. As I've been hearing, we have learned, Dahlia,
Speaker 1: that Justice Clarence Thomas is a grifter and has been
Speaker 1: spending a lot of his time with a known billionaire
Speaker 1: and receiving lavish gifts somewhere of you know, five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars vacations. I'm also dying to know what a
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand dollars vacation looks like, because I said,
Speaker 1: where did he go?
Speaker 4: Mars?
Speaker 1: And you know, just the weaponizing of the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: I don't even know where to start. So what I
Speaker 1: will start with is how are you faring in this
Speaker 1: New America?
Speaker 3: So, first of all, Danielle, it's always for me, just
Speaker 3: like balm to the soul, no matter how bad it
Speaker 3: is to be in conversation with you. I just feel
Speaker 3: like I hear you in my ears so often, you
Speaker 3: know through the day that to get to actually like
Speaker 3: be with you is immensely better than being alone imagining
Speaker 3: what you could say.
Speaker 2: So thank you, you know.
Speaker 3: I think I want to start with one really heartening
Speaker 3: piece of news, which is people are pissed off, and
Speaker 3: to the extent that you and I have spent the
Speaker 3: last what two years saying where's the energy, where's the anger?
Speaker 3: Where are the people taking to the streets, Like holy hell, Danielle,
Speaker 3: Like they took to the streets in Tennessee, they took
Speaker 3: to the streets in Wisconsin, and God, a Supreme Court
Speaker 3: justice elected people stood in line for freaking hours to
Speaker 3: decide a Supreme court a state supreme court race. Young
Speaker 3: people who should not bear the burden of fixing our
Speaker 3: gun problem are taking it upon themselves to do that.
Speaker 3: And so I just want to lift up before we
Speaker 3: go down the like despair trail, to the extent that
Speaker 3: this past couple of weeks has suggested to me that
Speaker 3: people of color are awake, trans families are awake, young
Speaker 3: people you know in school who do not want to
Speaker 3: live to be massacred tomorrow are awake. I'm pretty heartened
Speaker 3: by the fact that the slumber that you and I
Speaker 3: have decried for a long time. Yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like it's abating.
Speaker 3: Now we can talk about and we probably have to
Speaker 3: talk about.
Speaker 2: The through line to every single day point you just.
Speaker 3: Gave, whether it's Clarence Thomas, whether it's you know, Gerrymander, supermajority,
Speaker 3: legislators that don't care, whether it's you know, the madness
Speaker 3: of the NRA, every one of those things is of
Speaker 3: a piece with what you do when you need to
Speaker 3: preserve power and you are in the face of a
Speaker 3: juggernaut of awake people. That's it's all the same story. Yep.
Speaker 3: It's the through line is there, and so we can
Speaker 3: talk about that. But I just think that the thing
Speaker 3: that you and I have wanted to see for so long,
Speaker 3: which is fury and rage and passion and people standing
Speaker 3: in the well of the Tennessee State House saying, oh,
Speaker 3: this is not democracy, let's like take a moment and
Speaker 3: say that's happening, right. Yeah, you know I will say
Speaker 3: that I tweeted you know that I'm no longer going
Speaker 3: to be so cavalier about my thoughts with regard are
Speaker 3: to Red States, because the actions that have been taken
Speaker 3: by young people people of color in Tennessee in direct
Speaker 3: response to the expulsion of Justin Jones and Justin Pearson
Speaker 3: and not the white representative that make up the Tennessee
Speaker 3: three really has struck a chord in me because, you know,
Speaker 3: we talk a lot because we're in this kind of
Speaker 3: space where it's trying to use our platform and voices to.
Speaker 1: Sound an alarm right that all is not well. And
Speaker 1: I think that the Republicans, and I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: did they overplay their hand like we continue to say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is going to be the tipping point, This is
Speaker 1: the tipping point, and maybe there isn't ever going to
Speaker 1: be just one. Maybe it is it is the domino
Speaker 1: that tips in. It's a series that you know, falls
Speaker 1: one right after the other. But what the Republican parties
Speaker 1: move in Tennessee. I think they thought that nobody was
Speaker 1: gonna give a damn. I really think that these people
Speaker 1: are so far gone in the pocket of the NRA
Speaker 1: and in these supermajorities that they're like, nobody's gonna care
Speaker 1: if we expel these young black guys like, it's Tennessee.
Speaker 1: It's the founding ground of the klu klux Klan. So
Speaker 1: is this for you?
Speaker 2: Is it a domino? Is it in an inflection point?
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 2: It's both?
Speaker 3: I think it's both, Danielle, I think it is. And
Speaker 3: the same can be said of Judge Cosmaric's laughable Mithipristo
Speaker 3: and order in Amarillo.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It is massively overplaying a hand. It is saying, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm looking around, I can tell that massive majorities of
Speaker 3: people want and depend on medication abortion, that I do
Speaker 3: not have the authority to do this and I don't care,
Speaker 3: which is exactly what we saw in the Tennessee State House. Right.
Speaker 3: Chriylyn Eiffel came on Amicus my podcast last week and
Speaker 3: she just made the point, and I think this is important.
Speaker 3: What we saw in Tennessee wasn't just a ridiculous power grab,
Speaker 3: but it was an insult to the idea of due
Speaker 3: process because none of the folks who were expelled were
Speaker 3: given notice, They were not given any indication of what
Speaker 3: their rights were. They were not told how they could
Speaker 3: correct these decorum violations. They were just booted, right, unheard of,
Speaker 3: unheard of in a state legislative body. But it was
Speaker 3: also a suppression of speech in the purest sense. Right.
Speaker 3: These are people whose microphones were literally turned off so
Speaker 3: they could turned off, yep, And so they come in
Speaker 3: with bullhorns because they have a right to be heard.
Speaker 3: And then that's seen as a decorum breach. And by
Speaker 3: the way, it's not a decorum breach to be a
Speaker 3: child molester in the Tennessee State House. It's not a
Speaker 3: decorum breach to urinate in someone's see like, all that's fine,
Speaker 3: but Okay, what Sherlyn's point was, and I think it's important,
Speaker 3: is that it is clear that we saw what happened
Speaker 3: in Tennessee, but what we didn't necessarily clock. And this
Speaker 3: is where you and I I think.
Speaker 2: Have work to do.
Speaker 3: Is that we are seeing Wisconsin legislature that plans to,
Speaker 3: you know, either impeach the newly seated you know, pro
Speaker 3: abortion justice or strip the state Supreme Court of its powers.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: We are seeing gerrymandered state legislatures around the country saying
Speaker 3: maybe we can take power away from Fannie Willis in
Speaker 3: Georgia so she can't prosecute Donald Trump. Right. We are
Speaker 3: seeing laser focus on making sure that elected officials cannot
Speaker 3: do the duties of their office and thus disenfranchising you know,
Speaker 3: one hundreds and thousands of people who voted for them.
Speaker 2: So that's the bad news.
Speaker 3: Right. We're focused, and I think you're right. Our eyes
Speaker 3: have been and our hearts have been on the floor
Speaker 3: of the Tennessee State House. But we ignore what's happening
Speaker 3: in North Carolina. We ignore what's happening in Georgia at
Speaker 3: our peril. So that's the first thing. I think. The
Speaker 3: other thing is that when I hold up the abortion decision,
Speaker 3: Clarence Thomas's ridiculous self justification that like somebody somewhere told
Speaker 3: him that it wasn't in violations of the disclosure rules,
Speaker 3: so he's fine, this face left nameless person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, this is a textualist, right.
Speaker 3: His whole life is dedicated to like the original meaning
Speaker 3: of the text, but he doesn't have to read it
Speaker 3: because some guys told him when it meant okay. But
Speaker 3: I think every one of those is a really chilling
Speaker 3: version of what you and I would call authoritarianism, autocracy,
Speaker 3: you know, creeping fascism, because it is people who know
Speaker 3: what they are doing. They've all been caught out and
Speaker 3: they don't care. And so what's scary to me is
Speaker 3: I think that there is a foot race happening, Danielle
Speaker 3: between it is clear like energized angry, particularly young, you know, women,
Speaker 3: people of color, voters who know what vote suppression looks like.
Speaker 3: It turns out they know exactly what it looks like.
Speaker 3: This isn't complicated, and a machinery, a jerrymandered machinery that
Speaker 3: goes all the way up to a gerrymandered Supreme Court
Speaker 3: supermajority that doesn't care. And that's I think, just the
Speaker 3: moment we're in. And so the tipping point, I think
Speaker 3: cuts both ways. We're either going to tilt back into
Speaker 3: democracy that functions as it should, or we're going to
Speaker 3: tilt into something that looks like Hungary. I think it's
Speaker 3: one or the other. And I think that we don't
Speaker 3: have much further to go on this collision course between
Speaker 3: these two fourths.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're right there.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that you painted the imagery because that's
Speaker 1: the fear that I have now a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: you know, and folks who listen to my show, not
Speaker 1: that I said this back in twenty sixteen. I said,
Speaker 1: the election of Donald Trump is white supremacy's last stand, right,
Speaker 1: But much in the same way that a person, you know,
Speaker 1: six months into the one hundred Year War was saying,
Speaker 1: I can't wait until this thing is over. I never said, oh,
Speaker 1: it was going to be in four years, is going
Speaker 1: to be in seven years. I just said what I said,
Speaker 1: which is that this is going to be white supremacies
Speaker 1: last stand. We are seeing this as you have laid
Speaker 1: out all of the other legislatures, all of the other
Speaker 1: moves that are being made to quell the voices right
Speaker 1: and the power of the people, which is what democracy
Speaker 1: is built on. When I think about this collision, course, though, Dahlia,
Speaker 1: I think about revolution. I think about other breaking points
Speaker 1: in our country's history where the people have said enough
Speaker 1: is enough. The reason why I look at Tennessee and
Speaker 1: I find that mustard seed of hope grow is because
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, to your point, they're awake, right, This
Speaker 1: is no longer about what's happening to those people over
Speaker 1: there that I may never know. To those trans folks,
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody trans. To those black folks, I
Speaker 1: don't know anybody black, you know, to those queer people,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. I don't know anybody that's had an abortion,
Speaker 1: So like they're the distance that people were able to
Speaker 1: have between themselves and the communities that were being targeted
Speaker 1: has now shrunk because they're coming for you and your voice,
Speaker 1: all of you.
Speaker 2: Does tennesse Se.
Speaker 1: Make us think then that hungry isn't a possibility, because
Speaker 1: what it is showing me is that what they want,
Speaker 1: what the right wants, Dahlia, I think is violence. I
Speaker 1: believe what they want is violence. I believe what they
Speaker 1: want is the ability to say, see, you see what
Speaker 1: they did. That's why we had to come out guns blazing.
Speaker 1: That their end goal is this bloodshed in America, that
Speaker 1: they can develop some type of righteous indignation around.
Speaker 2: Am I crazy?
Speaker 1: But no, That's what Donald Trump's presence in Waco signal to.
Speaker 3: Me, You're not crazy, a proof of concept. Greg Abbott
Speaker 3: wants to pardon somebody who said he would and did
Speaker 3: drive his car into a Black Lives Matter protest in
Speaker 3: Texas and he said, I'm right. He was threatening to
Speaker 3: kill lawful First Amendment protesters and without that case even
Speaker 3: coming to him, without knowing one fact about jury deliberations,
Speaker 3: we have Greg Abbott saying like, send me the pardon.
Speaker 3: I'm going to pardon him. Right, that's it, that's it.
Speaker 3: It's Kyle Rittenhouse, it's Donald Trump, you know, walking through
Speaker 3: a piece full of Black Lives Matter protests in Lafayette
Speaker 3: Square with this show of course. So yes, of course
Speaker 3: it's that. And I think the other example of that
Speaker 3: is the comparisons we heard from the speaker of the
Speaker 3: Tennessee State House.
Speaker 2: Saying that what.
Speaker 3: Justin Pearson and Justin Jones were doing was exactly the
Speaker 3: same as, if not worse than, what happened on January sixth,
Speaker 3: when armed insurrectionists loaded to kill killed people, and that
Speaker 3: it's the same thing to have two black men walk
Speaker 3: through the chamber in solidarity with gun reformed students who
Speaker 3: write and their parents.
Speaker 2: So you're exactly right.
Speaker 3: The seeds that are being sown are if we can
Speaker 3: portray these two things, as you know, it's like what
Speaker 3: about ISM's wet dream, right that waiful protests by minority
Speaker 3: groups who are saying we want to be heard because
Speaker 3: you have silenced every mechanism for us to be heard. Right,
Speaker 3: look at the laws they're passing in Florida that make
Speaker 3: it impossible even to go to the State House to protest, right,
Speaker 3: so then you try to find a space to be heard,
Speaker 3: and that is tantamount to armed insurrection. No it's not,
Speaker 3: but that's the language that's being used. And so, you know,
Speaker 3: here's the other thing that I'm going to quote my
Speaker 3: friend Daniel Moody, who says all the time, you know
Speaker 3: the other thing that worries me, I feel the way
Speaker 3: you do. I am so chuffed and heartened by what
Speaker 3: I saw in Tennessee. I am so I spent last
Speaker 3: week with a bunch of women in Ohio who are
Speaker 3: trying to get abortion, you know, up on the ballot
Speaker 3: by getting signatures. I mean, in my view, like watching
Speaker 3: people wake up is.
Speaker 2: Remarkable.
Speaker 3: But my friend Daniel Moody would be reminding me right now.
Speaker 3: She would be saying, where's the American Bar Association, Where
Speaker 3: is the academy? Where is is the organized leadership of
Speaker 3: the party?
Speaker 2: Why are they?
Speaker 3: And huge props to Kamala Harris for really getting voice
Speaker 3: to what happened in Tennessee. You know, I think that
Speaker 3: part of what scares me is you have this ground
Speaker 3: swell of fury around guns and abortion and the environment
Speaker 3: and book bands right now in this country, and we
Speaker 3: look up and where are the leaders and where is
Speaker 3: the messaging and where is the plan? And where is
Speaker 3: the like grown up saying, so, get on your school boards,
Speaker 3: get on your county you know, election boards. Where is
Speaker 3: the voice telling people here's where to channel that? And
Speaker 3: what my frustration is is I feel like this awakeness,
Speaker 3: which really could be at a tipping point, is not
Speaker 3: being directed or purposive or even acknowledged or seen beyond
Speaker 3: like having cable news shows watching. So I guess that's
Speaker 3: where like my heart hurts a little bit in this
Speaker 3: conversation is where is our leadership? Where are the institutions?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: What I would say now is that when we look
Speaker 1: back in history, the revolutions, the movements did not come
Speaker 1: from on high. They never do because those that are
Speaker 1: on high believe that there is still something within a
Speaker 1: broken system to work in repair. And I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: you because here you are a part of America's legal system,
Speaker 1: and I'll say, we're at a point where we have
Speaker 1: people that have been illegally sat on the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: In my humble opinion, I'm not a lawyer, you are,
Speaker 1: but I've been illegally sat and then you have now
Speaker 1: a grifter and his wife, right, grifting off of his
Speaker 1: position in Clarence thomasin and Jinny Thomas. Has the room
Speaker 1: of law been bent to the breaking point because without
Speaker 1: the function of rule of law, Dahlia, we are a
Speaker 1: Banana republic. I have faith in those young revolutionaries, right,
Speaker 1: I have faith that they're gonna keep pushing because they
Speaker 1: don't want to have the fear of going into school
Speaker 1: every day and possibly dying. They don't want to have
Speaker 1: the fear of being forced to carry babies that they
Speaker 1: don't want and can't care for.
Speaker 2: They don't want the.
Speaker 1: Fear of moving through a life where they're chewing the
Speaker 1: air or can't go outside because it's no longer safe
Speaker 1: because of climate change, like they are already seeing, and
Speaker 1: because they are young, don't have yet the voice to
Speaker 1: be able to vote, but then watching democracy die. So
Speaker 1: I'm not concerned about those revolutionaries because I believe that
Speaker 1: they are coming. I believe that they are awakening, one
Speaker 1: by one by one, unplugging from the matrix, if you will.
Speaker 1: I am, however, looking at all of these establishments, and
Speaker 1: I'm like the rest of us feel like we're under attack.
Speaker 1: What the fuck are you seeing?
Speaker 3: So I want to say one point of correction slash clarification,
Speaker 3: which is that Clarence Thomas and Jinny Thomas are not grifting.
Speaker 3: The crime to me isn't the grifting. The crime is
Speaker 3: that they are bought and sold. In other words, Okay,
Speaker 3: it's not just you know, Evranka Trump getting you know,
Speaker 3: patents to make shitting, getting heels and you know, using
Speaker 3: child labor.
Speaker 2: This is so much worse.
Speaker 3: This is Harlan Crowe apparently Nazi Insignia Ensusius.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, enthusiasts, horribly tail napkins. He has cocktail napkin.
Speaker 3: And a sculpture guard, because who among us does not
Speaker 3: have a sculpture garden dedicated to and assigned copy of Mind.
Speaker 2: Hand Mind Cume.
Speaker 3: But he is pouring millions of dollars into gifts and
Speaker 3: into helping prop up organizations that Ginny Thomas pays herself from,
Speaker 3: and he is pouring dark money into all these cases
Speaker 3: and causes. So I'm not bothered. I mean I'm bothered
Speaker 3: that Clarence Thomas takes you know, free super jets and
Speaker 3: yachts and cruises only in so far as you know,
Speaker 3: the load star of the Judicial Ethics Statute is the
Speaker 3: appearance of impropriety. He's supposed to care how things look.
Speaker 3: And I'm bothered, I mean, at least pretend to. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm bothered that he doesn't care. I mean, I'm enough
Speaker 3: of an institutionalist that I think that when a justice
Speaker 3: on the Supreme Court says I don't care what the
Speaker 3: American public thinks, that institution is dead.
Speaker 2: It's gone. So that bothers me.
Speaker 3: But but I want to pan back because I think,
Speaker 3: and this is why, you know, your very first sort
Speaker 3: of anime question is the right one. These things are
Speaker 3: all of a piece, because you know how we got supermajority,
Speaker 3: the jerrymandered state houses by a long string of five
Speaker 3: to four and then six to three decisions come on
Speaker 3: by the Supreme Court that is bought and sold by
Speaker 3: people like Harlan Crowe. Right, So, whether it's Citizens United
Speaker 3: opening the spigot to dark money, whether it's Shelby County
Speaker 3: functionally ending the Voting Rights Act, whether it's Bernovich functionally
Speaker 3: ending the rest of the Voting Rights Act, Rucho allowing
Speaker 3: jerry mandery, you can pick the case. All of the
Speaker 3: cases that destroy unions and organizing all of the cases
Speaker 3: that put the thumb on the scale for big business.
Speaker 3: So the grift for me isn't Clarence Thomas's grift. It's
Speaker 3: Harlan Crow's grift. It's him and people like him and
Speaker 3: all those people in that painting in a painting, sitting
Speaker 3: there with Leonard Leo, with Mark Poletta, with Clarence Thomas
Speaker 3: and Harlan Crow buying constitutional democracy out from under us
Speaker 3: and then commemorating it in art. And so the world
Speaker 3: we live in now, the world that ejected the justice
Speaker 3: from the Tennessee State House, that's the world that Clarence
Speaker 3: Thomas helped to build. And he did it with Harlan
Speaker 3: Crowe's money. And so I just want to be really
Speaker 3: clear that these stories are connected. It is not just
Speaker 3: the outrage. I don't give a damn a buck quid
Speaker 3: pro quote corruption from Clarence Thomas. I don't care what
Speaker 3: he grifted off. But I care so very deeply that.
Speaker 2: We are not focused on the.
Speaker 3: Part of the story that is how easy and cheap
Speaker 3: it was to buy a Supreme Court. And once you
Speaker 3: bought that Supreme Court, you could create state legislatures in
Speaker 3: fifty to fifty states that are seventy five to twenty
Speaker 3: five legislatures. That was a gift to Harlan Crowe and
Speaker 3: his ilk. That's the thing we should be crazy about
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say. I'll say this
Speaker 1: because other than the people pouring into the streets, other
Speaker 1: than the people saying that we have had enough, other
Speaker 1: than the people not going silently into the cold, dark
Speaker 1: night and just accepting their fate, because we have allowed
Speaker 1: a process by which a multi billionaire can buy and
Speaker 1: sell the Supreme Court like it's a piece on a
Speaker 1: fucking monopoly board.
Speaker 2: Right, it is.
Speaker 1: Going to be the will of the people that is
Speaker 1: going to be the decision maker between whether we are
Speaker 1: Hungry two point zero or America two point zero. And
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, the last question I have for you,
Speaker 1: Dahlia is shake your magic eight balls, shake your crystal
Speaker 1: ball from me? What's your money on?
Speaker 2: Oh boy?
Speaker 3: You know, whenever you're betting on the likelihood of being
Speaker 3: becoming hungry, are in a like dark, dark place. And
Speaker 3: you and I have gone to dark places, but maybe
Speaker 3: this is the darkest.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think.
Speaker 3: I think that the reason we are seeing what we
Speaker 3: saw in Tennessee. The reason we are seeing Ron DeSantis
Speaker 3: do what he is doing in Florida, the reason Greg
Speaker 3: Abbott wants to preemptively pardon the next Kyle Rittenhouse is because,
Speaker 3: as I said at the beginning, we are really on
Speaker 3: the line. In other words, they are so far out
Speaker 3: over their skis on abortion, they are so far out
Speaker 3: over their skis on vote suppression. They are so way
Speaker 3: misaligned with the public will, on book bands, on all
Speaker 3: of this like woke stuff that it turns out nobody
Speaker 3: cares about except Ron DeSantis. They miscalculated, They miscalculated how
Speaker 3: much I'm going to mix metaphors because I've just gone
Speaker 3: from skis, but you know how much landing strip they
Speaker 3: had to land the like Vashist plane.
Speaker 2: They don't have a lot. People hate this.
Speaker 3: The medication abortion decision, if it is allowed to stand,
Speaker 3: will cause a revolution in this country, without a doubt,
Speaker 3: because then it's no longer blue state's red states. It's
Speaker 3: no longer I don't know any woman who's had an abortion.
Speaker 3: It's that there is nowhere to go. And I think
Speaker 3: that we should be equal parts terrified and inspired by
Speaker 3: the fact that the GOP is well aware of this.
Speaker 3: They know that they've run out of road and that
Speaker 3: the lawlessness is everywhere. That's for a reason, right, the
Speaker 3: lawlessness is everywhere. And we have, by the way, a
Speaker 3: Supreme Court term that's going to end in the next
Speaker 3: couple of months that is going to again shake the landscape,
Speaker 3: including voting rates, including affirmative action, including you know, so
Speaker 3: many huge cases. They're all going to go the wrong way.
Speaker 3: And so I think that you are seeing this ram up, Danielle,
Speaker 3: of lawlessness just in your face, power grabs that don't
Speaker 3: even pretend to be democracy. That's what we saw in Tennessee.
Speaker 3: That's what the medication abortion decision is. And so then
Speaker 3: really the question is.
Speaker 2: Who wins this race? Right? Who wins it? Is it this.
Speaker 3: Angry, engaged, I think, affronted public that suddenly understands, oh,
Speaker 3: I have to be on my school board. Oh I
Speaker 3: have to see what's happening in local elections. I can't
Speaker 3: sit around and watch polsters predict what's going to happen
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four, because that's not the fight. The
Speaker 3: fight is now today, yesterday, And in response to an
Speaker 3: increasing sense of urgency, these terrifying crackdowns like shutting, like
Speaker 3: taking away funding from an entire public library system. Right,
Speaker 3: that's what it is. So I don't know what to
Speaker 3: predict except to say that famous Ernest Hemingway quote, you know,
Speaker 3: when they asked him, how does bankruptcy happen? And he
Speaker 3: said slowly and then quickly, like this is how it's.
Speaker 2: This has happened. We're at the quickly phase.
Speaker 3: I don't know which way it's going to go, but
Speaker 3: I know it's not gonna slow down.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmmm, which means that the rest of us need
Speaker 1: to speed up. My friend, Dahlia Lipwick, I hope that
Speaker 1: sometime we get to have a conversation, you know that
Speaker 1: is on the good side of something. We did a
Speaker 1: good mixed bag today because lifting up what is happening
Speaker 1: in Tennessee, the young people, the groundshaking that is happening there,
Speaker 1: I think is important and I think it's indicative of
Speaker 1: where we're going to go. Folks, if you have not
Speaker 1: gotten your hands on a copy of Lady Justice, Women,
Speaker 1: The Law and the Battle to Save America, do if
Speaker 1: you have not checked out all of Dahlia's writings at Slate,
Speaker 1: you should, and also take a listen to Amicus her
Speaker 1: own pod.
Speaker 4: Thank you, friend, I appreciate you so very much. Breathe,
Speaker 4: my friend, Breathe.
Speaker 2: That is it for me today.
Speaker 1: Dear friends on Woke af AS always, power to the
Speaker 1: people and to all the people. Power, get woke and
Speaker 1: stay woke as fuck.