Speaker 1: You and Me Both is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Hillary Clinton and this is You and Me Both.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about our nation's courts, and that's part
Speaker 1: of our ongoing look at the state of our democracy
Speaker 1: on this season of the podcast. On February, President Biden
Speaker 1: announced his pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Brier,
Speaker 1: who'd been appointed by my husband. Justice Brier leaves the
Speaker 1: Court at the end of this term in June. I
Speaker 1: was delighted that the President nominated Judge Katangi Brown Jackson.
Speaker 1: She's a highly respected jurist with impeccable credentials. Will learn
Speaker 1: more about her as the confirmation process begins, with hearing
Speaker 1: set for later in March. Before we get to all that, though,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to take a moment to celebrate
Speaker 1: the fact that Judge Jackson will be the first African
Speaker 1: American woman ever to serve on the highest court in
Speaker 1: our land. And I'll take every chance I can get
Speaker 1: to celebrate some good news coming from the Supreme Court, because,
Speaker 1: let's face it, lately, it's been in short supply. If
Speaker 1: any of us thought our judiciary would protect us from
Speaker 1: assault on our democracy, so much of which we've witnessed
Speaker 1: over the past five years. It's not a guarantee at
Speaker 1: all that our Supreme Court will stand up against the
Speaker 1: powerful forces attempting to undermine our democracy. Later, we'll hear
Speaker 1: from Sherylyn Eiffel, the outgoing president of the n double
Speaker 1: a CP Legal Defense and Educational Fund known as ldf
Speaker 1: Rylyn will share her views on President Biden's historic nomination
Speaker 1: and our nation's larger fight for civil and human rights.
Speaker 1: But first I'm speaking with Dahlia Lithwick. If anyone knows
Speaker 1: about the Supreme Court, it's Dahlia. She's been reporting on
Speaker 1: the Court for the online magazine Slate since she's also
Speaker 1: the host of Amicus, Slate's podcast about the law and
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. You may have seen her on Rachel
Speaker 1: Maddow or CNN or The Daily Show because she's a
Speaker 1: popular guest who is so good at cutting through all
Speaker 1: of the legal mumbo jumbo to explain what's actually going
Speaker 1: on at the Court and why it matters to everybody.
Speaker 1: And she's just finished writing a book that I think
Speaker 1: is terrific. It's called Lady Justice, Women, The Law and
Speaker 1: the Battle to Save America, and it's due out this fall. Hello, Well,
Speaker 1: this is thrilling. So let me first welcome you to
Speaker 1: the podcast, Dahlia. It's such a treat or me to
Speaker 1: have this chance to talk with you, someone who I
Speaker 1: really appreciate because of your in depth and very smart
Speaker 1: analysis of what's happening in the law, what's happening in
Speaker 1: the courts, particularly the Supreme Court. Let me start, though
Speaker 1: not at the beginning exactly, but to acquaint our listeners
Speaker 1: with your background. How did you end up covering the law?
Speaker 1: Have you always been interested in legal cases, court cases
Speaker 1: and the like. Well, so, first of all, Secretary Clinton,
Speaker 1: this is just a huge enormous honor and privilege, So
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. And I think that the short,
Speaker 1: and it's going to sound crituitous and pandery answer, is
Speaker 1: Children's Defense Fund, which you are familiar with. And I
Speaker 1: was of a cohort. I think in people who graduated
Speaker 1: in like between nineteen eighty nine and ninety two, all
Speaker 1: heard Marian right Edelman give their commencement speech, and all
Speaker 1: of us, like Lemmings, decided we wanted to do what
Speaker 1: she did. And so even though my undergraduate was entirely
Speaker 1: in literature, I didn't think of myself as a lawyer
Speaker 1: at all. I got it in my head that I
Speaker 1: needed to go to law school and become a children's
Speaker 1: advocacy lawyer. I was terrible at law school. I dropped
Speaker 1: out after my one l year. I wrote a fiery
Speaker 1: note to the dean saying, this is a soulless corporate place,
Speaker 1: and your monsters worked at Children's Defense Fund, at which
Speaker 1: point they said, please go back to law school. You're
Speaker 1: not used to us. So I had to beg my
Speaker 1: way back in first rule of lawyering, don't put it
Speaker 1: in writing to the dean. And so then I just
Speaker 1: really was enchanted with the possibility that law could change
Speaker 1: the world for people. And then when Slate magazine was
Speaker 1: being invented in Uh, I was lucky enough to cover
Speaker 1: first the Microsoft trial for them and then the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and so I think it was a little bit of
Speaker 1: a sideways thing, but I think it's always, as is
Speaker 1: the case for so many people. In hindsight, it makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense. I love that story because, of course it
Speaker 1: resonates with me on so many levels, being someone else
Speaker 1: who was immediately enamored of Mary and Wright Edelman when
Speaker 1: I met her in my first year of law school
Speaker 1: all those years ago, and had the great privilege of
Speaker 1: working for her at the Children's Defense Fund, and she
Speaker 1: had a way of really making the law seem like
Speaker 1: it was a tool for justice. So you and I
Speaker 1: have a lot of you know, common experiences, which may
Speaker 1: then lead us to have some common apprehensions and cotton
Speaker 1: views about what's happening in our world. And so let's
Speaker 1: look at the big picture. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: long term strategies of those who want to turn the
Speaker 1: clock back on the progress that has been made in
Speaker 1: civil rights and human rights and women's rights and reigning
Speaker 1: in unaccountable corporate power and so much else. Is this
Speaker 1: uh takeover of the courts, something that has been a
Speaker 1: goal for a very long time, aided and ambetted by
Speaker 1: those who don't like the changes that we've seen in
Speaker 1: our country in the last twenty years. And we see
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court as really in the center of these
Speaker 1: anti democratic battles. So let's get into that. This is
Speaker 1: an important session for the Supreme Court. In the next
Speaker 1: few months, we expect the Court to be ruling on
Speaker 1: everything from reproductive rights to environmental protections to gun safety measures.
Speaker 1: What are some of the biggest issues that you're following,
Speaker 1: and then we'll go into a couple of them specifically.
Speaker 1: I've been covering the Court for twenty years a little more,
Speaker 1: and this will, without a doubt be the most singularly
Speaker 1: important term of my career. It already is. We are
Speaker 1: one year and change into a six three Republican supermajority
Speaker 1: and the Court, which I naively thought going into the election,
Speaker 1: would pump the brakes a little. I thought, they don't
Speaker 1: want to reverse row in June going into elections, they
Speaker 1: don't want to open the floodgates to open carry concealed
Speaker 1: carry everywhere. Going into the election, those are wildly unpopular
Speaker 1: positions if you look at the polls. I was wrong.
Speaker 1: I thought break pumping was going to be the order
Speaker 1: of the day, in no small part because I thought
Speaker 1: Chief Justice John Roberts was in charge of the Court.
Speaker 1: He's not. This is a six three super majority in
Speaker 1: when which to the extent that he peels off and
Speaker 1: votes with the Liberals, he's still on the losing side.
Speaker 1: So we are looking at a world that is unrecognizable
Speaker 1: from the Court of even one year ago. And I'm
Speaker 1: not sure we've integrated that into how we think about
Speaker 1: the Court, and I'm not sure the what I would
Speaker 1: call Professor Leah Littman has called it the hashtag yolo
Speaker 1: you only live once wing of the Court, which is
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsich. They're doing
Speaker 1: the opposite of pumping the brakes. They are all in.
Speaker 1: They are all in for, as you noted, expanding gun rights.
Speaker 1: They're all in for, I think, doing away with reproductive freedom.
Speaker 1: And I think this may be the term we see
Speaker 1: that they are all in for dismantling the administrative state,
Speaker 1: pretty much kneecapping agencies that set the policies that we
Speaker 1: all live under, which guest impact environmental in a significant way.
Speaker 1: They are all in for a really radical project of
Speaker 1: expanding religious liberty and what that means. And every one
Speaker 1: of those issues is on the docket everyone. So I
Speaker 1: guess this is a long way of saying most of
Speaker 1: the terms that I've covered, we'd have a big affirmative
Speaker 1: action case. Maybe we'd have a big affirmative action case
Speaker 1: and an abortion case. But to have everything every hot
Speaker 1: button case is extraordinary. And so I guess maybe the
Speaker 1: flip of your question is what isn't the Court deciding
Speaker 1: this term? I think this is going to happen at
Speaker 1: record lightning speeds in an election year, and the Court's
Speaker 1: sense of its own immunity from any consequences in an
Speaker 1: election year is one of the things that is most
Speaker 1: terrifying and chilling to me right now. Well, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, as you rightly said, so many of
Speaker 1: the positions that they are promoting and intend to put
Speaker 1: into decisions, either by reversing past precedent like Roe v.
Speaker 1: Wade or expanding what I view as a questionable precedent,
Speaker 1: such as in gun rights under the Second Amendment and
Speaker 1: so much else, is an agenda that is very popular
Speaker 1: with the far right of the Republican Party in our country,
Speaker 1: and that is who they are serving. Remember, you know,
Speaker 1: some people say, is this the Roberts Court, Is this
Speaker 1: the Trump Court? I think it's the Federalist Society Court.
Speaker 1: And the Federalist Society has had a very clear agenda
Speaker 1: for as long as they've been around, and I have
Speaker 1: obviously followed them closely, to reverse and it's a reversal
Speaker 1: of advances that they view as undermining the kind of
Speaker 1: America that they want to see a return to a patriarchy,
Speaker 1: a return to keeping people who have opposing views in
Speaker 1: their place, and that's what we're now watching. So let's
Speaker 1: start with reproductive rights. This may be an unfair question, Dali,
Speaker 1: but where do you think the court will land. It's
Speaker 1: got two major cases, one coming out of Texas, which
Speaker 1: we've heard a lot about, one coming out of Mississippi,
Speaker 1: which we haven't heard as much about. What do you
Speaker 1: think is likely the outcome here? That Texas case, that's
Speaker 1: s B eight, which is the law that the Court
Speaker 1: allowed to go into effect at the beginning of September,
Speaker 1: which means ten of the people of childbearing age in
Speaker 1: this country have not been able to have an abortion
Speaker 1: in Texas. That is extraordinary. The Court simply allowed the
Speaker 1: state of Texas to nullify Roe v. Wade Um, and
Speaker 1: it was done through this tricky scheme, this enforcement mechanism,
Speaker 1: where they just put this eight week abortion and ban
Speaker 1: into effect. Usually, uh, if you want to stop an
Speaker 1: eight week or twelve week or fifteen week ban, there's
Speaker 1: somebody to sue, some state actor to sue. But in
Speaker 1: Texas they cleverly said no state actor is allowed to
Speaker 1: enforce this ban this band will be enforced by what
Speaker 1: I think you and I could only call vigilantes. Anybody
Speaker 1: can report the uber driver, the religious counselor the cousin
Speaker 1: who drives you to an appointment, and there's no state
Speaker 1: action and nobody to sue. So there was nobody for abortion.
Speaker 1: But let me just stop for a second. There is
Speaker 1: state action. The vigilante gets. Yes, the vigilante gets ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars as far as I understand that state money. Amazingly,
Speaker 1: this issue of who can be sued is the question,
Speaker 1: the only question that the Supreme Court weighed in on.
Speaker 1: They waited in on it. Uh, you may recall on
Speaker 1: the shadow docket, which means that they handed down a
Speaker 1: secret order in the middle of the night, unsigned, unreasoned,
Speaker 1: simply one paragraph saying Texas can go ahead and do this.
Speaker 1: That happened in September, partly in response to massive public blowback.
Speaker 1: And this goes to I think the court listens when
Speaker 1: the public is furious. They moved it to the merits docket.
Speaker 1: They actually heard these arguments, and then they came back
Speaker 1: with the same answer. This is perfectly fine. The only
Speaker 1: people who can be sued, the only state actors, as
Speaker 1: you say, who are implicated in this scheme are a
Speaker 1: handful of licensing officials. The providers can go ahead and
Speaker 1: sue them because they have the power to shut down clinics.
Speaker 1: That suit, by the way, has gone to the Fifth
Speaker 1: Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative federal
Speaker 1: appellate courts, and the Fifth Circuit has somehow sent that
Speaker 1: to the Texas Supreme Court for more findings. And I
Speaker 1: think it's just worth comparing, for one little second. When
Speaker 1: there were COVID restrictions last year that kept people, for instance,
Speaker 1: from praying, the court made decisions overnight. Here we have
Speaker 1: the opposite. This can take years as far as the
Speaker 1: court concerned. There's no urgency here. So that's Texas. And then,
Speaker 1: as you said, the second cases, Dobbs, this is a
Speaker 1: Mississippi fifteen week band. Again, it's explicitly unconstitutional viability, which
Speaker 1: is the benchmark that has been agreed upon by the
Speaker 1: courts for decades, UH is set at twenty four weeks.
Speaker 1: Mississippi simply stuck a arrow into the heart of that
Speaker 1: said we're going to go with the fifteen week band.
Speaker 1: Come go ahead and sue us. And that was argued
Speaker 1: this fall at the Supreme Court, and at that argument
Speaker 1: we don't have an answer. We may not get an
Speaker 1: answer in Dabbs. Until June it became manifestly clear that
Speaker 1: that six three supermajority is not just prepared to chip
Speaker 1: away at Roe v. Wade, which is what we used
Speaker 1: to say, They're prepared to overturn it out right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I think too, That's exactly what I think.
Speaker 1: I think it's gone, and I think in overturning it.
Speaker 1: The only hope that one can have is that they
Speaker 1: will somehow overturn it based on Dobbs and not SPA Texas,
Speaker 1: because this precedent for vigilante um is just so frightening
Speaker 1: for the rule of law, for anything that we believe
Speaker 1: represents order due process. But when Rowe is overturned or
Speaker 1: so totally viscerated that it basically doesn't exist anymore, what
Speaker 1: do you expect to see at the state level. Well,
Speaker 1: so this is also grim news. Twenty six states already
Speaker 1: are threatening to outlaw abortion altogether if Rowe is overturned.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit worried about what comes after that.
Speaker 1: And there's two pieces of that that are worth thinking
Speaker 1: through one is the precedent that gave us Roe v. Wade.
Speaker 1: When the Court ridicules that and and they have ridiculed
Speaker 1: the majority. What they don't, I think, fully appreciate is
Speaker 1: that it's not just abortion. It is, as you know,
Speaker 1: the right to contraception in Griswold between married people, and
Speaker 1: that bucket of privacy, family integrity, autonomy, bodily autonomy, all
Speaker 1: the stuff that gave us sodomy loss. That's exactly it's
Speaker 1: it's the whole structure that was built on substance d process,
Speaker 1: but also a right to privacy is the foundation for
Speaker 1: so much of what we have seen in the past
Speaker 1: thirty years develop, as you know, rights that women and
Speaker 1: men can claim. And it's hard to know how radical
Speaker 1: this Supreme Court is. I think a couple of members
Speaker 1: truly are radical. And I wouldn't put it past Thomas
Speaker 1: and Alito too, you know, go after gay marriage, go
Speaker 1: after reception. I wouldn't put it past them at all,
Speaker 1: because they're true believers. Now what I can't figure out
Speaker 1: is are they true believers for religious reasons? Are they
Speaker 1: true believers for you know, a broader right wing agenda
Speaker 1: that they believe is where the country should go back to.
Speaker 1: This is not clear to me, But the fact is
Speaker 1: they are true believers, yes, And I think in some
Speaker 1: sense we can talk about how wildly pro business anti
Speaker 1: worker this majority is. We can talk about religious liberty
Speaker 1: and abortion or opposition to lgbt Q rights. Uh, we
Speaker 1: can talk about voting. It almost doesn't matter, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's a business imperative or uh, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of hot button culture question. The fact is they're all
Speaker 1: in for all of them, and it may shift. And
Speaker 1: I think, you know, here's where I say the thing
Speaker 1: that always makes people's heart stop, which is Brett Kavanaugh
Speaker 1: is now the media justice on the court. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's terrifying. He is one of the most conservative jurists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's an opportunistic conservative. He he's somebody who you know,
Speaker 1: decided out of Yale law school and being a country
Speaker 1: club Republican that he was, you know, going to go
Speaker 1: whichever way the wind was blowing to try, you know,
Speaker 1: to become a federal judge, and the strongest wind was
Speaker 1: coming from the right. So there he is. But I
Speaker 1: don't want to run out of time before we get
Speaker 1: to another terrifying issue. I hope that our our listeners
Speaker 1: are not listening to this before they go to bed.
Speaker 1: That's all I can say. We're taking a quick break.
Speaker 1: Stay with us. Look, the issue of gun control is
Speaker 1: on the docket. Can you explain the case in front
Speaker 1: of the court right now? Because this is crazy, Dahlia.
Speaker 1: I thought the Heller decision, which is the decision that
Speaker 1: blew open the Second Amendment, turning it from a well
Speaker 1: regulated militia amendment to an individual right no matter where,
Speaker 1: who or how I thought that was so phony, but
Speaker 1: nevertheless it was decided and became president. Now they just
Speaker 1: can't find enough reasons to let people who are eager
Speaker 1: to get a hold of guns get them. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: this is another place where the Supreme Court took baby
Speaker 1: steps because they could afford to take baby steps. And
Speaker 1: once the Supreme Court in Heller, as you say, out
Speaker 1: of whole cloth, invented this individual right to bear arms
Speaker 1: in the home to protect yourself. And there is ample
Speaker 1: history that shows that that was just a completely wrongheaded,
Speaker 1: veristic readings results oriented at slutely. And then we waited,
Speaker 1: and we waited, and the court kept getting gun cases
Speaker 1: that wanted to expand that right and because Anthony Kennedy
Speaker 1: for so many years, as you know, was the swing vote,
Speaker 1: they could never get enough justices to agree that they
Speaker 1: should expand Heller. The minute, Amy Coney barrett Is stated
Speaker 1: on the court the court was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: we're all in. Let's do it. We've got the votes. Now.
Speaker 1: This is a seemingly trivial it's a New York licensing regulation,
Speaker 1: but it opens the floodgates if the Court were to
Speaker 1: say that this licensing regulation that says you essentially need
Speaker 1: to show some cause for being able to carry your
Speaker 1: gun out of your home. At oral argument, it was
Speaker 1: truly on skates on stilts performance of the love of guns.
Speaker 1: Trump's all the idea that we heard from the conservative
Speaker 1: wing of the court that somehow we are all hobby
Speaker 1: old when the state doesn't let us carry guns on
Speaker 1: the subway. Sam Alito wants, I just I mean, I
Speaker 1: find this, so what are they talking about? It goes
Speaker 1: to just to to finish the answer. It certainly appears
Speaker 1: after oral arguments that the Court is going to absolutely
Speaker 1: allow for massive amounts of carrying of arms everywhere, again
Speaker 1: wildly in violation of all polling numbers which say that
Speaker 1: nobody wants people to be able to carry everywhere and anywhere.
Speaker 1: We witness the results of that every single day in
Speaker 1: this country. But I think that it goes to something
Speaker 1: you said about vigilantism. I think that two things happened
Speaker 1: in that argument that were for me, god smacking and
Speaker 1: didn't get enough attention. One, as I suggested, was just
Speaker 1: as Alito feeling unbelievable empathy and compassion for the poor
Speaker 1: office worker in Manhattan who has to travel by subway
Speaker 1: at night and doesn't have a gun, and the idea
Speaker 1: that his life is better if he can shoot people
Speaker 1: on the subway, and the idea twinned with that that
Speaker 1: the licensing officials in New York are somehow part of
Speaker 1: a nefarious plot that the Deep States the deep state
Speaker 1: deep state, and that they willy nilly give guns to
Speaker 1: some people but not others. It's very reminiscent of how
Speaker 1: Justice Gorsuch was talking about the Governor of New York
Speaker 1: and her really nefarious plot to get people vaccinated. And
Speaker 1: so I think that there's a real thread here that
Speaker 1: if at the risk of making all the people who
Speaker 1: are listening at night need another melatonin, I think the
Speaker 1: thread to pull on is that they have evinced such
Speaker 1: mistrust of government itself that the cops can't keep you safe,
Speaker 1: that the governors of the states want to shut down
Speaker 1: your church services and COVID all of that, And so
Speaker 1: I think I just want folks to sort of try
Speaker 1: to pull these strands together because it sounds so wonky
Speaker 1: in ductrinal, but deep deeply embedded in this is a
Speaker 1: mistrust of state actors and a notion that we are
Speaker 1: all just out to protect ourselves. And I find that
Speaker 1: so absolutely terrifying. I find this all reminiscent of a
Speaker 1: kind of wild West dream that somehow, you know, we're
Speaker 1: going back to when men were men and women were
Speaker 1: their helpmates, and the strong guy with the gun protected everybody,
Speaker 1: and you know, the government was messing in your life.
Speaker 1: They were trying to, you know, take your land and
Speaker 1: give it to settlers instead of letting you keep your
Speaker 1: cattle on it. I mean, this is the mindset. Sadly,
Speaker 1: we are running out of time because I could literally
Speaker 1: talk to you for hours, as you could tell Dalia,
Speaker 1: But let me ask you this, what could just an
Speaker 1: everyday citizen do about any of this? I think there
Speaker 1: are two things and one of them seems fanciful, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to say it anyway. Um, after SP eight
Speaker 1: was allowed to go into law, and I would talk
Speaker 1: to women's groups, who, really, I think I couldn't believe
Speaker 1: how quickly the world had changed under their feet. One
Speaker 1: of the things that I started to tell them was
Speaker 1: my sort of Yellowstone Park theory of the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: which is essentially, when you go camping at some of
Speaker 1: the national parks, the rangers tell you that if you
Speaker 1: meet a bear, you have to be larger than you are,
Speaker 1: which violates all laws of time and space and physics.
Speaker 1: But what I think it means is you just have
Speaker 1: to just appear huge. And I do think that being
Speaker 1: larger than you are does have some effects on the Court.
Speaker 1: That one of the reasons the Court thinks it can
Speaker 1: get away with changing religious liberty roles on the shadow
Speaker 1: docket or taking away abortion for ten percent of the
Speaker 1: child bearing population on the shadow docket is because they
Speaker 1: think we don't care. And I think that bear theory,
Speaker 1: which is oh hell now, is why the Court agreed
Speaker 1: to hear s B eight on the Merits docket. I
Speaker 1: think they pull back sometimes, and I think that thirty
Speaker 1: eight percent approval rating that they started this term with
Speaker 1: the lowest since polling began. On the court, that matters,
Speaker 1: and I think that we have to be big. The
Speaker 1: other thing is, and this is I know, a whole
Speaker 1: other podcast, but it's just democracy reform. It's the incredibly
Speaker 1: boring work of filibuster reform. We have a malaportion Senate
Speaker 1: that doesn't represent millions of people. We have an electoral
Speaker 1: college you know better than anyone, doesn't represent millions of people.
Speaker 1: We have a system of democracy set up to take
Speaker 1: power away from majorities and give them to minorities. And
Speaker 1: and this is the part that is in my lane.
Speaker 1: We have a fring court that consistently blesses that the
Speaker 1: court itself is putting a thumb on the scale of
Speaker 1: minority rule, certain minority Let's be clear, seminority rule, We're
Speaker 1: not talking about people of minority races or ethnicities, or
Speaker 1: religions or points of view. We're talking about a hardcore
Speaker 1: right wing minority. Correction accepted, enthusiastically seconded. And I think
Speaker 1: we have on our side not organized around the courts.
Speaker 1: We're still kind of asleep. I mean, we're still not
Speaker 1: paying attention but let me end on a hopeful note, Dahlia,
Speaker 1: because I always try to circle back to that is
Speaker 1: there any good news in terms of legal decisions or
Speaker 1: actions that you can point to. So my book is
Speaker 1: in some sense an answer to the millions of women
Speaker 1: whose heart's just broke when with Bader against or died
Speaker 1: and who just felt, you know, who is our gladiator
Speaker 1: for women in the law, And they're right, but they're
Speaker 1: so wrong because there are so many women, thousands running
Speaker 1: around making democracy work. And I actually think women are
Speaker 1: spectacularly well suited for this legal work. As you know,
Speaker 1: there is something about this is going to hurt your heart,
Speaker 1: but the threat of lock her up that is really
Speaker 1: salient for women because we understand in a way that
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people don't, that we live
Speaker 1: on the knife edge that law gave us rights and
Speaker 1: law wants to, as you said, turned back the clock
Speaker 1: and turn us into channel. And so the women who
Speaker 1: have organized, whether it's Stacy Abrams, whether it's Fanita Gupta,
Speaker 1: Becca Heller at the Airport's the day after the travel ban,
Speaker 1: Robbie Kaplan and Karen Dunn fighting the Charlotte's film Nazis,
Speaker 1: I could go on. These women, I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: they rocked my world, and they don't give up, and
Speaker 1: so I guess I just end. It's interesting. My New
Speaker 1: Year's podcast on Amaricus was with Carlyn Eiffel, who is
Speaker 1: I'm sure for you too. I'm going to talk to
Speaker 1: her to a north Star, and she reminded me that
Speaker 1: if you are black or brown, or a woman, if
Speaker 1: you are poor, if you are disabled, this was always
Speaker 1: your America. There's a story we like to tell, but
Speaker 1: it was always standing in line to vote, it was
Speaker 1: always having your voter ide rejected. It was always having
Speaker 1: to travel to some clinic hundreds of miles away. And
Speaker 1: so now I guess we all live there, all of us, yes, right,
Speaker 1: and we have to, you know, not only support those
Speaker 1: on the front lines doing this work, as you rightly
Speaker 1: point out, but the many millions and millions of women
Speaker 1: whose voices names we may not know, but who deserve our,
Speaker 1: you know, support in every way we can politically and legally. Well, Dahlia,
Speaker 1: I cannot thank you enough for talking with me. Um.
Speaker 1: You and I are in vigorous agreement about what's going
Speaker 1: on in the world, and I think also in vigorous
Speaker 1: agreement that we can't give up, we can't walk away,
Speaker 1: no matter how tired we are. And maybe I could
Speaker 1: just say, I think for really a lot of us,
Speaker 1: we might not have gone to law school if we
Speaker 1: hadn't seen what you were doing. We might not be
Speaker 1: doing the work of protecting children if we hadn't seen
Speaker 1: what you were doing fighting about healthcare, seeing what you
Speaker 1: were doing, and I think we have to just recognize
Speaker 1: the amazing, awesome power all around us and just not
Speaker 1: give up. To read and hear more from Dahlia, go
Speaker 1: to slate dot com, where you'll find her frequent court
Speaker 1: reports and her podcast Amicus. We'll be back right after
Speaker 1: this quick break. Even before Dahlia name checked Marylyn Eifel
Speaker 1: at the end of our conversation, I knew I wanted
Speaker 1: to hear from her for this episode. For nearly a decade,
Speaker 1: Sherilyn served as the President and Director Council of the
Speaker 1: n double a CP Legal Defense and Educational Fund called LDF.
Speaker 1: Before that, she was a law professor for many years
Speaker 1: at the University of Maryland, and I have to say
Speaker 1: I envy the students who had the privilege of studying
Speaker 1: with her, because she can make a clear and compelling
Speaker 1: case for just about anything. Last year, Sherylyn was named
Speaker 1: one of Times one most Influential People of the Year,
Speaker 1: and around that time she announced she would be leaving
Speaker 1: her position at the LDF this spring. I am so
Speaker 1: delighted to welcome to the podcast Marylyn Eiffel. Hey, Marylyn, Hi,
Speaker 1: how are you. I'm excellent, I'm so happy to see you.
Speaker 1: Let me start with um one of the big piece
Speaker 1: of news. There's so much news happening it's hard to
Speaker 1: keep track of it all. But you know, obviously, with
Speaker 1: Justice Brier announcing he's retiring from the Supreme Court at
Speaker 1: the end of the term. On February, President Biden announced
Speaker 1: that he would nominate Judge Katangi Brown Jackson. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask, do you know her? What do you
Speaker 1: think of this pick? Well, thank you so much, first
Speaker 1: of all, Secretary Clinton for having me on the show.
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely thrilled. And yes, this has been a really
Speaker 1: interesting period. Obviously, President Biden had pledged that he would
Speaker 1: um nominate a black woman for an available seat on
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. And I have to say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a political watcher and a court watcher and had
Speaker 1: prepared myself for the announcement. Um, but I think, like
Speaker 1: particularly many other black women, I was just deeply moved
Speaker 1: in the moment of the announcement, you know, watching Judge
Speaker 1: Jackson and to see her standing before the first you know,
Speaker 1: black woman vice president, and uh, it was it was
Speaker 1: a powerful moment. I know her record, I don't know
Speaker 1: her personally. I feel very comfortable saying her her record
Speaker 1: is extremely moderate. Um So I have been endlessly amused
Speaker 1: by the claims that she has some radical left uh nominee.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, I'm a civil rights lawyer. I like
Speaker 1: my judges to the left. But she certainly obviously has
Speaker 1: all of the qualifications and is well experienced and prepared. Well,
Speaker 1: that's certainly is my perception from having read everything I
Speaker 1: could about her. And you know, let me point out
Speaker 1: that you are in a unique position to not on
Speaker 1: evaluate a Supreme Court nominee, but really the state of
Speaker 1: our justice system and in particular the Supreme Court. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd be curious who or how did you become so
Speaker 1: dedicated to defending our democracy to try and to make
Speaker 1: it work for everybody? Does that come from your upbringing,
Speaker 1: your family? And I have to mention your cousin was
Speaker 1: the wonderful Gwen Eiffel, who educated us, entertained and informed us.
Speaker 1: I had the privilege of being interviewed and meeting with
Speaker 1: her numerous times. Did something happen in the kind of
Speaker 1: extended Eiffel family that really equipped you to be a
Speaker 1: warrior for justice and democracy? Well, you know, um, Secretary Clinton.
Speaker 1: We we were raised I call service the family business.
Speaker 1: We were raised with a very intense kind of gaze
Speaker 1: on the world around us, and certainly were raised with
Speaker 1: a very political lens. We came from very a very
Speaker 1: humble background. Both of our dads their brothers, and we're brothers,
Speaker 1: and we're immigrants, and um, you know, I think they
Speaker 1: had some of the immigrants sense of um possibility in
Speaker 1: this country and and really love for the possibilities of
Speaker 1: this country. We grew up watching the news every night.
Speaker 1: There were three newspapers in my home, you know, at
Speaker 1: all times. And that was fun for us. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've I've watched every presidential convention since I was a
Speaker 1: quite a little girl at that time. But I remember,
Speaker 1: and we would be excited when it was coming. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like, oh my god, get the kids to con
Speaker 1: We loved it. And you know, my father kept a
Speaker 1: narration going at all times, particularly watching the news, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of critiquing what they were saying. Um. He was
Speaker 1: very into, you know, racial equality and issues of inequality.
Speaker 1: He worked as a social worker up in Harlem. Um.
Speaker 1: And so we just had that lens and I really
Speaker 1: wanted to have some role. I imagined, you know, that
Speaker 1: I could do something in in particularly in civil rights,
Speaker 1: because I've seen so many documentaries and it seemed such
Speaker 1: an exciting and noble work. Uh. And then you know,
Speaker 1: I will say like many young black girls, and certainly
Speaker 1: was true for me. Uh, the Watergate hearings were really
Speaker 1: really powerful. Now, I don't want you to think that
Speaker 1: some eight year old girl was like, oh, yeah, the
Speaker 1: water Gate here is I I know, you know, it
Speaker 1: was the only thing on TV. And know in those
Speaker 1: days you didn't have five channels. So UM. I remember
Speaker 1: I have many sisters, but my two sisters who were
Speaker 1: at home with us, um, and we would have been
Speaker 1: watching what we call the stories or the soaps. Uh
Speaker 1: in those days. I was too young for that too.
Speaker 1: But in any case, they weren't on because the water
Speaker 1: Gate here is were wall to wall on every channel,
Speaker 1: so there was nothing else to watch, so we ended
Speaker 1: up watching it and that was where I had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to see Barbara Jordan's and I've never really seen
Speaker 1: anyone quite like her, you know, a black woman with
Speaker 1: that measure of power in that kind of sphere where
Speaker 1: she was exercising it. And most important for me was
Speaker 1: the power of her voice and a certain moral authority
Speaker 1: that you just could not deny. And I loved it.
Speaker 1: And so that's been my commitment in my my entire life.
Speaker 1: And I'm endlessly committed to the possibilities of this country.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm in the unique position of many black
Speaker 1: people who see the deep flaws of this democracy, the deep,
Speaker 1: deep flaws, and yet who are committed to working to
Speaker 1: make it better. And I think the moment we're in now,
Speaker 1: Secretary Clinton, is a really powerful and important one. It's
Speaker 1: the time where I think so much that people like
Speaker 1: me have seen and been talking about for decades is
Speaker 1: being exposed to the larger public. The deep fishers of inequality,
Speaker 1: the ongoing embrace of white supremacy, all of these things
Speaker 1: didn't just spring from nowhere, and they didn't they weren't
Speaker 1: ushered in by former President in Trump. They have been there,
Speaker 1: and we have not tended to them and confronted them
Speaker 1: forthrightly and recognized how threatening they are to the integrity
Speaker 1: of our democracy. I could not agree more with you, Carolyn,
Speaker 1: and I just want to build off of your story.
Speaker 1: It's not enough to say you've been standing up for
Speaker 1: social justice. You've been standing up for civil rights and
Speaker 1: voting rights. You've been standing up for America. That's how
Speaker 1: I view your work. So talk to me and our
Speaker 1: our listeners about how as someone on the front lines,
Speaker 1: as a litigator, a law professor, as the head and
Speaker 1: director of the Double a CP Legal Defense Fund for
Speaker 1: the last now nearly I guess ten years, you see
Speaker 1: where we are when it comes to social justice and
Speaker 1: the courts, and in particular voting rights. I think Secretary Clint,
Speaker 1: you hit the nail on the head, which is one
Speaker 1: of the challenges we have face, which I think is
Speaker 1: kind of coming home to roost at this moment, is
Speaker 1: that the work that I've devoted my life too has
Speaker 1: largely been seen by the mainstream political realm and by
Speaker 1: certainly by the mainstream media as a kind of a
Speaker 1: side show. I don't. I don't mean that as a
Speaker 1: in a derogatory way, but but but not part of
Speaker 1: the center of conversations about American democracy, about American politics
Speaker 1: and so forth. It's kind of there's the black vote
Speaker 1: over here, there's this thing that maybe happens in the South,
Speaker 1: and it's been treated as something collateral to the central
Speaker 1: story about this country. Um. And this has been endlessly
Speaker 1: frustrating for me. One of the things I was determined
Speaker 1: to do when I took over the LEA the leadership
Speaker 1: of the Legal Defense Fund in two thousand and thirteen
Speaker 1: was to center the work of civil rights in the
Speaker 1: conversation about American democracy. And I remember I did the
Speaker 1: commencement address at my my alma mater and why you
Speaker 1: law School, and I said that civil rights work is
Speaker 1: democracy maintenance work. Do not let anyone tell you that
Speaker 1: this work is somehow off to the side. We are
Speaker 1: the ones who have the courage to look without rose
Speaker 1: colored glasses at the flaws in our democracy. And how
Speaker 1: do you how do you diagnose the health of your democracy?
Speaker 1: You look at how it works or doesn't work in
Speaker 1: the lives of those who are at the margins and
Speaker 1: those who are at the bottom. It doesn't matter whether
Speaker 1: democracy is working for people who have every advantage right it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it matters, but it doesn't tell you whether
Speaker 1: the democracy is healthy or not. You have to look
Speaker 1: in the difficult places. You have to look at how
Speaker 1: democracy works in the lives of the people that I represent,
Speaker 1: and that will tell you whether it's healthy or not,
Speaker 1: and will reveal to you what the flaws are. And
Speaker 1: to the extent you think that those flaws, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like your house. This is how the
Speaker 1: the analogy I've always used is about the foundations of
Speaker 1: your house. Obviously, if there are huge cracks in the foundation,
Speaker 1: it matters, and you may even see it and be
Speaker 1: alerted to it very quickly, and you will immediately bring
Speaker 1: in the emergency crews. But what about the small cracks
Speaker 1: that accumulate and produce fundamental structural failure. That's what we see.
Speaker 1: We're the early warning system. Still, voter suppression didn't just
Speaker 1: start happening a few years ago. I joined LDF as
Speaker 1: a young lawyer, as a voting rights litigator. So how
Speaker 1: is it I was able to never have a dearth
Speaker 1: of work, you know, fighting to protect the right of
Speaker 1: black people to vote in the South, doing cases in Texas,
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, in Louisiana and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: How is that possible? So it is the failure to
Speaker 1: recognize that this has been a deep flaw that now
Speaker 1: has encompassed the entire country. And as I have been saying,
Speaker 1: what America has to wake up and understand is that
Speaker 1: what is workshopped on those who are most marginalized ultimately
Speaker 1: will come for the entire republic. Exactly. That's such an
Speaker 1: important point, Sherlyn. I mean when you were talking about
Speaker 1: the foundation, the image that popped into my head is
Speaker 1: now we have literally people around the foundation of your
Speaker 1: house with sledgehammers. They are beating in every way they
Speaker 1: can imagine the foundation of our democracy. And I was
Speaker 1: in the Senate when we voted nine to nothing to
Speaker 1: reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. It was then signed into
Speaker 1: law by President George W. Bush. We had no idea
Speaker 1: when we did at on a bipartisan basis that the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court under John Roberts would decide forget the Congress,
Speaker 1: forget the evidence and the facts. We don't need some
Speaker 1: of this enforcement stuff anymore. Can you explain the impact
Speaker 1: that dismantling the underlying protections by the Supreme Court had
Speaker 1: on your work and the in effect green light it
Speaker 1: gave to state and local officials across the country. Well,
Speaker 1: I love that you said green light because, as I remember,
Speaker 1: just a day after the decision, I think it was
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State of Florida said we're free and
Speaker 1: clear now. And and two hours after the decision, the
Speaker 1: Texas story in general, you know, and and the Texas
Speaker 1: officials indicated their plan to pass a voter I D
Speaker 1: law that they had been unable to get pre cleared
Speaker 1: under section five several years earlier. And preclearance means that
Speaker 1: under the law that was asked if there had been
Speaker 1: a history of racial discrimination or ethnic or some other
Speaker 1: kind of discrimination, but principally language minority, last minority, and
Speaker 1: racial principally racial, that states had to say, okay, we
Speaker 1: want to do this, and the Justice Department could say,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that violates the law, right, yeah, And
Speaker 1: let's take that back to why we needed this structure, right. So,
Speaker 1: and remember the Voting Rights Act has many different components.
Speaker 1: The part we're talking about is the part under section five,
Speaker 1: and it is the reason why the Voting Rights Act
Speaker 1: has been described as the most um, consequential and successful
Speaker 1: civil rights statute of the big three civil rights statutes
Speaker 1: you know, passed in the in the nineteen sixties, because
Speaker 1: it is the only one that came up with a
Speaker 1: mechanism for getting at discrimination before it happened. Exactly. So,
Speaker 1: the jurisdictions that were covered by this formula, jurisdictions with
Speaker 1: this history of discrimination, if they wanted to make a
Speaker 1: voting change, would have to submit it to a federal
Speaker 1: authority in order to get that change pre cleared. And
Speaker 1: those federal authorities would do would be to evaluate and
Speaker 1: assess whether the planned and the proposed change had a
Speaker 1: negative effect on voting rights or the voting strength of
Speaker 1: the Black community, or the Latino community as it or
Speaker 1: Asian American communities as you would have it, And that
Speaker 1: evaluation would happen with input from the community. LDF and
Speaker 1: other organizations would weigh in. Then they would either preclear
Speaker 1: it Department of Justice, which is allowed it to go forward,
Speaker 1: or they might ask for additional information, or they might
Speaker 1: object to the change. So that was the infrastructure that
Speaker 1: had been in place since nineteen when John Roberts and
Speaker 1: the majority of the Supreme Court in two thousand and
Speaker 1: thirteen decided to uh strike down that preclearance formula, essentially
Speaker 1: on the theory that things had changed, that we should
Speaker 1: no longer be branding the South with this label, as
Speaker 1: though they were somehow more that the Southern states are
Speaker 1: more racist in some way than states in the North.
Speaker 1: In fact, that was kind of the question that John
Speaker 1: Roberts continuously asked, do you believe counts that the South
Speaker 1: is more racist than the North? Of course, the preclearance
Speaker 1: formula didn't just cover the South. It covered the Southern States,
Speaker 1: It covered, most of the day, all the states of
Speaker 1: the old Confederacy, but it also covered three boroughs of
Speaker 1: New York City, It covered counties in California and New
Speaker 1: Hampshire and other places as well. When they lifted that,
Speaker 1: it's important to know what that majority did. They not
Speaker 1: only supplanted their judgment for senators and the three House
Speaker 1: members that had reauthorized the Act in two thousand six,
Speaker 1: which is enough of a power grab to be alarming.
Speaker 1: And I say power grab quite literally because when you
Speaker 1: read the fourteenth and fifteenth Amendment, the enforcement clauses of
Speaker 1: those amendments give to Congress the power to ensure that
Speaker 1: the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarants guarantees equal
Speaker 1: protection of laws, and the fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
Speaker 1: which protects against a voting discrimination based on race, Congress
Speaker 1: is empowered to ensure their guarantees. So they supplanted not
Speaker 1: only the judgment of Senators and House members in two
Speaker 1: thousand six, but every Congress that reauthorized it, and the
Speaker 1: Congress in nineteen who recognized the importance of the preclearance formula.
Speaker 1: They said in the Senate report that accompanied the Act,
Speaker 1: they wanted to get at voting discrimination that was happening
Speaker 1: in the moment, but they also said it was designed
Speaker 1: to get at and I'm quoting now ingenious methods that
Speaker 1: might be adopted in the future, which means that the
Speaker 1: Congress understood that the efforts of white supremacists to suppress
Speaker 1: the votes of black people was not going to go away,
Speaker 1: that it was likely to do what racism always does,
Speaker 1: its shape shifts and it emerges differently. In nineteen voter
Speaker 1: I D wasn't the issue. Even the racist segregationists in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four hadn't thought of what Georgia has now
Speaker 1: thought of, which is that you can't provide water to
Speaker 1: someone standing online. These are the ingenious methods, however, that
Speaker 1: they anticipated would be created in the future, and they
Speaker 1: created an infrastructure in the statute to ensure that black
Speaker 1: voters were protected against what they suspected and knew would
Speaker 1: be the future methods of voter suppression. So that's what
Speaker 1: happened in and it is why after we saw this
Speaker 1: profusion of voter suppression laws happening not only throughout the
Speaker 1: South but also in places that had never been covered
Speaker 1: by Section five, said hey, hey, now we can do
Speaker 1: this too, right, because the preclearance structure actually sent a
Speaker 1: message to the entire country about what practices were discriminatory
Speaker 1: and what practices were not so removing. It actually ended
Speaker 1: up metastasizing voter suppression into something that now encompasses the
Speaker 1: whole country and can utilized in order to suppress the
Speaker 1: votes of racial minorities, elderly students, disabled people, any pockitive
Speaker 1: voters that you think maybe contrary to your ability to
Speaker 1: exercise power. And right now it is the Republicans who
Speaker 1: are at the state and local level using these tactics
Speaker 1: to enact restrictive laws that LDF is litigating in multiple
Speaker 1: courts in Florida and Georgia and Texas. But it is
Speaker 1: an uphill battle. So it's a very emboldened and in
Speaker 1: my view, reckless Supreme Court, and it is taking advantage
Speaker 1: of the political deadlock that has made Congress not able
Speaker 1: to correct this decision. And the Court knows it can
Speaker 1: take advantage of that because nothing's gonna happen. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Let's really unpack this, Sherilyn, because the people
Speaker 1: that were put on the court under Bush and Trump,
Speaker 1: We're very clear about their job. They were on a mission,
Speaker 1: weren't they, And their mission is to side with those partisan, ideological, religious, corporate,
Speaker 1: financial interests that have a very different view of our country.
Speaker 1: And I feel very strongly that it will sadly get
Speaker 1: worse despite the best efforts of the LDF and others
Speaker 1: who are standing in the breach. Well, I I can't
Speaker 1: co sign that because we continue to litigate before the court.
Speaker 1: You know, we've we've got certain petitions pending and cases
Speaker 1: on the docket for next year. But what I can
Speaker 1: say that I think it's important is that the court
Speaker 1: also has to function in a way that serves democracy.
Speaker 1: Core and critical, as you know around the world, to
Speaker 1: any truly functioning and healthy democracy is the rule of law,
Speaker 1: a functioning justice system. Um. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that it's most disturbing to me, and you know that
Speaker 1: I'm actually thinking about quite a bit as I leave
Speaker 1: l DF, is the ways in which we have to
Speaker 1: be honest about what are the flaws in our justice
Speaker 1: system and how important they are. Once again, these are
Speaker 1: the cracks that have to be examined and that have
Speaker 1: to be fixed. And the Supreme Court is not does
Speaker 1: not sit outside of our need to evaluate and review
Speaker 1: the strength of our democratic structures. They don't sit above
Speaker 1: and on top of our democracy. They are part of
Speaker 1: our democracy. It's one of the reasons Secretary Clinton why
Speaker 1: I joined President Biden's Supreme Court Commission, which was a
Speaker 1: difficult decision to take. I knew how the commission had
Speaker 1: been described and framed. Then, as I said, we litigate
Speaker 1: before the court, and people have, you know, concerns about
Speaker 1: whether the commission was designed to you know, address court
Speaker 1: packing and so forth. Ultimately I decided to do it,
Speaker 1: and I was the only person on the commission. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know who leads an organization that litigates before the Court.
Speaker 1: Most of the folks were, you know, academics of some kind.
Speaker 1: Because I wanted to make sure that our voice was heard.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be part of that conversation. And I
Speaker 1: say this because it's not just the Supreme Court, it's
Speaker 1: our profession in general, and those who are the leaders
Speaker 1: of our profession who actually often lack this lens of
Speaker 1: understanding the kind of litigation that we do at the
Speaker 1: Legal Defense Fund, the kind of people that we represent,
Speaker 1: and how these academic discussions about aspects of even Supreme
Speaker 1: Court practice actually affect real people. Uh So, I do
Speaker 1: think there's work to do, and it's and the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court has got to be part of that work. We
Speaker 1: have a right to ask questions about recusal practice on
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. We have a right to demand a
Speaker 1: deep financial disclosure. We have the right to ask these
Speaker 1: questions because the Supreme Court is a critical aspect of
Speaker 1: our democratic infrastructure, just as we have the right to
Speaker 1: ask that Congress members not trade stocks, or whatever are
Speaker 1: the ways in which we want to address it in
Speaker 1: the legislature, and whatever are the ways we want to
Speaker 1: address the executive and what kinds of ways in which
Speaker 1: we want to hold the president accountable. That's all part
Speaker 1: of the democratic infrastructure, and our job as citizens is
Speaker 1: to push and to demand that changes be made that
Speaker 1: strengthen those elements of our infrastructure. And anyone who thinks
Speaker 1: they are above it, whether it's President Trump, or whether
Speaker 1: it's the Supreme Court or whether it is the Senate,
Speaker 1: they're they're missing the concept. You know they are they
Speaker 1: were either appointed and confirmed or elected to serve democracy. Well,
Speaker 1: I could not agree more with you, And I think
Speaker 1: that's an incredibly powerful description about why every buddy should
Speaker 1: care about open debate and argument about what matters and
Speaker 1: how best to come together to make our democracy work.
Speaker 1: And I know you're writing a book now, Sherylyn, about
Speaker 1: how our nation's embrace of white supremacy has impacted our
Speaker 1: courts and of course beyond our courts, our country. And
Speaker 1: I want you to explain why you're writing this book
Speaker 1: at this time, and how, just as with your legal work,
Speaker 1: this is for everybody. This is not just for Black
Speaker 1: Americans or Brown Americans or Asian Americans. This is for everybody,
Speaker 1: and talking about white supremacy should not be seen as
Speaker 1: an attack on white people so much as a wake
Speaker 1: up call about what's at stake in this fight. We
Speaker 1: are engaged in to preserve our democracy for everybody. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let me see if I can really do this succinctly,
Speaker 1: because that's a whole show, you know you just described,
Speaker 1: and yes, and it's really really, really important for people
Speaker 1: to understand. There are so many allies in this work.
Speaker 1: You know, the head of the Legal Defense Fund for
Speaker 1: many years was Jack Greenberg. We have always had incredible
Speaker 1: allies in the white community, in the Latino community, the
Speaker 1: Asian American community, who have worked with us. And honestly,
Speaker 1: it is only when we all are working together that
Speaker 1: we're going to be able to strengthen this democracy. So
Speaker 1: I am not having a conversation again that is a
Speaker 1: niche conversation for one group of people. Let me give
Speaker 1: you an example. After the video was released of the
Speaker 1: murder of George Floyd, we saw the largest civil rights
Speaker 1: demonstrations this country has ever seen. People came out of
Speaker 1: their homes in the midst of a global pandemic because
Speaker 1: they were moved by what they saw. These were multi
Speaker 1: racial marches in all fift dates of people saying this
Speaker 1: cannot be the country that I am associated with. We
Speaker 1: cannot allow an officer of the state to kneel on
Speaker 1: this man's neck for nine minutes and feel himself so emboldened,
Speaker 1: feel so much that he will have impunity, that his
Speaker 1: hands are in his pocket and he's staring at the camera.
Speaker 1: It was a powerful moment, incredibly powerful. Was more than
Speaker 1: a moment, it was it was months of protest. We
Speaker 1: shouldn't lose sight of how powerful that was. I can
Speaker 1: tell you that those who are arrayed in opposition to
Speaker 1: justice and equality have not lost sight of it. What
Speaker 1: they saw that day is part of what undergirds the
Speaker 1: current movement that you're seeing around the country right now,
Speaker 1: Secretary Clinton. That they are framing as an anti critical
Speaker 1: race theory movement, but that when you read the statutes
Speaker 1: that are being enacted in state after state and introduced
Speaker 1: in state after state, they are outlawing the teaching of
Speaker 1: material that they say will cause discomfort. This is these
Speaker 1: are the actual words in the statute, guilt or anguish
Speaker 1: on account of race or sex. Why do I say
Speaker 1: this is a response because they saw the power of empathy,
Speaker 1: They saw the power of white people seeing something that
Speaker 1: is unconscionable. The same thing that white people who were
Speaker 1: watching judgment at Nuremberg on CBS in felt when there
Speaker 1: was breaking news and it was the images from the
Speaker 1: Edmund Pettis Bridge, that these moments in which what wakes
Speaker 1: up in all of us is our shared humanity, is
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous. And so what they don't want is to
Speaker 1: have their children learning about the truth of the history
Speaker 1: of racism and white supremacy, of the struggle for justice
Speaker 1: in this country, of what has happened in terms of
Speaker 1: gender inequality, of lgbt Q inequality, because they don't want
Speaker 1: in their children the awakening of that empathy. And I
Speaker 1: am sure, Secretary Clinton, that you and all of the
Speaker 1: listeners who are listening today can remember moments as young
Speaker 1: children when that empathy was woken up in us that
Speaker 1: have forever shaped us as human beings. I was speaking
Speaker 1: last night about being in the sixth grade and reading
Speaker 1: the diary of Anne Frank, in which I can tell
Speaker 1: you I felt guilt, I felt anguish, I felt discomfort,
Speaker 1: not because I had done anything, but as a human
Speaker 1: being seeing what could happen to other human beings and
Speaker 1: connecting with this girl who was the same age as me.
Speaker 1: So what they're trying to shut down is that feeling,
Speaker 1: because that's the power. And I would never bother to
Speaker 1: just write a book cataloging grievances. What I am writing
Speaker 1: about is how white supremacy is so sticky you can
Speaker 1: attach anything to it that undermines us. She could interfere
Speaker 1: and conducted disinformation campaign in the election because of the
Speaker 1: ongoing existence of racism and racial discrimination. They could exploit
Speaker 1: those divisions, as they did if you read the Muller Report,
Speaker 1: by targeting particular populations and voters to produce the result
Speaker 1: that they wanted. They were able to exploit it because
Speaker 1: of the existing weakness of racism and white supremacy in
Speaker 1: this country. And that's what we have to understand. I
Speaker 1: wrote a piece several years ago in the in the
Speaker 1: Washington Post in which I described racism as a national
Speaker 1: security vulnerability. Is it is absolutely that because it is
Speaker 1: such a part of us, it is such a part
Speaker 1: of this country's foundation, and it lies around so conveniently
Speaker 1: and can be picked up and attached to almost anything.
Speaker 1: The problem is that we have considered racism this issue
Speaker 1: of kind of personal worthiness or not, whether you are
Speaker 1: a good person, whether you have racism in your heart,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. That's not what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. I'm talking about the structural and ongoing reality
Speaker 1: of white supremacy and it's deployment by those who seek power,
Speaker 1: by those who are greedy, by those who want to
Speaker 1: divide us, And to help us understand that unless we
Speaker 1: are able to confront this with some courage, it will
Speaker 1: continue to be a national security vulnerability that others outside
Speaker 1: the country can use, but it will also exploit us internally,
Speaker 1: and we have to be courageous enough to confront it.
Speaker 1: Black people confronted every day. And I'm asking all of
Speaker 1: us who care. I'm not writing this book for Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming I'm talking to people who care about democracy
Speaker 1: and justice right to share with them this thing that
Speaker 1: people are so afraid to talk about, but that in
Speaker 1: fact has this inordinate and disproportionate power to ultimately destroy
Speaker 1: whoa Sherylynne hurry up and write the book. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean your description of the effort to literally deny, undermine,
Speaker 1: eliminate empathy really strikes a chord with me. I cannot
Speaker 1: thank you enough, and I just wish you the very
Speaker 1: best as you get onto the next chapter of your
Speaker 1: extraordinary life of service. Thank you, Marylyn, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: It was an honor. Keep an eye on shery Lynn.
Speaker 1: I know she's going to keep making an essential contribution
Speaker 1: to protecting, explaining, and strengthening our democracy. Now, before we go,
Speaker 1: I want to let you know we've got plans for
Speaker 1: a future episode where I answer questions again from listeners
Speaker 1: and look, whether it's about the courts or politics, or
Speaker 1: be writing a political thriller or comedy, I don't care.
Speaker 1: I'm excited for you to send us your questions right
Speaker 1: to You and Me Both pod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: And who knows, I might just read your question on
Speaker 1: the show You and Me Both is brought to you
Speaker 1: by I Heart Radio. We're produced by Julie Subran, Kathleen
Speaker 1: Russo and Rob Russo, with help from Huma Aberdeen, Oscar Flores,
Speaker 1: Lindsay Hoffman, Brianna Johnson, Nick Merrill, Laura Olan, Lona Vel Moro,
Speaker 1: and Benita Zaman. Our engineer is Zack McNeice and original
Speaker 1: music is by Forrest Gray. If you like You and
Speaker 1: Me Both, please tell someone else about it, and if
Speaker 1: you're not already a subscriber, what are you waiting for?
Speaker 1: You can subscribe to you and me both on the
Speaker 1: Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and I'll see you next week. M