Inside Trump's $2 Billion J6 Slush Fund

Brian and Glennis are back, this time remote (Glennis is sick, not with hantavirus or Ebola, thanks for asking). And the corruption story of the season just dropped. Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion claiming emotional damages over a leaked piece of his 2019 tax return. A federal judge called it bullshit, brought in legal experts who agreed it was bullshit, then settled by creating a $1.7 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" controlled by five allies of AG Todd Blanche, with no transparency requirements and the explicit purpose of paying out January 6 defendants. Glennis just paid her taxes. Brian explains why this is the most brazen self-dealing in modern American politics.

This week, Brian Derrick (Political Strategist and Founder of Oath) and Glennis Meagher (Political and New Media Strategist and Co-founder of Generator Collective) walk through the slush fund, what it means that taxpayer money is about to flow to people who assaulted police officers at the Capitol, and why Brian thinks the Trump children and several cabinet members are still on a path to prison even if Trump himself never is.

Then the corruption deep dive. New reporting that Trump made more than 3,600 individual stock trades in Q1, often on the same day he was visiting manufacturing plants, tweeting about specific companies, or calling into CNBC and Fox News to pump them. His personal net worth has more than doubled in a year. His inner circle is making prediction market trades minutes before Iran announcements move oil. The White House says he has nothing to do with any of it. Brian and Glennis go through the receipts.

The political board is also moving fast. Bill Cassidy, the fake moderate Louisiana Republican who voted for all of Trump's nominees and then pretended to be outraged, came in third in his own primary after Trump endorsed against him. He gave a speech that could turn him into a serious thorn in Trump's side on committee votes, nominees, and DHS funding for the rest of his term. Sitting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth flew to Kentucky on duty to campaign against Thomas Massey, the last Republican still pushing on the Epstein files. Trump's approval is now 37%, the lowest of his political career. The Democratic generic ballot is at +11, larger than the 2018 wave. Plus the most expensive House primary in U.S. history (in Kentucky, of all places, where ad buys are cheap), Georgia Supreme Court races that could flip the court by 2028, and a Pennsylvania primary where Shapiro, AOC, and Bernie Sanders all backed the same firefighter.

Then the Supreme Court reform conversation Kamala Harris just reopened. Glennis lays out her preference for 18 year term limits and two appointments per president. Brian walks through FDR's court packing threat and what it actually accomplished. And both of them dig into what Republicans just did in Utah and North Carolina, where they literally added seats and reheard cases to overturn rulings they didn't like. The case for Democrats getting comfortable with court reform is no longer theoretical.

Plus Three Mile Island is being turned into a data center. AOC is on a community tour about data center siting and the energy bills they leave behind. The Musk versus Altman trial wrapped in two hours. Taco Trump threatened Iran and chickened out by sundown. Telehealth abortion access survived at SCOTUS. And Alligator Alcatraz, the Florida Everglades tarp over a swamp internment camp that cost $1.5 billion, is closing.

The midterms are less than six months out and the receipts keep coming.

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Vibes Only is a weekly political podcast hosted by Brian Derrick (Political Strategist and Founder of Oath) and Glennis Meagher (Political and New Media Strategist and Co-founder of Generator Collective), two political operatives turned creators breaking down the news of the week for you in terms of politics, elections, and culture. Consider us your weekly pause from doomscrolling and consultant-speak, just some solid vibes (and receipts) every Thursday morning.

Transcript

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Hi, Brian. Hi Glennis. We're remote today. We are you're sick. I am sick. fortunately not sick with Andes virus or the new one. Ebola. It's New one every week. not great. It is not great. And we're gonna be virtual for a while because I'm hitting the road, Jack. Where you headed? conference season. May into June is the big conference season. And then I you know, I spend a lot of my time in Sweden. Because My husband lives there. I paid my taxes yesterday, Did you do it? I told you not to. I know. I got an extension. Don't worry. I'm not like breaking the law. And by the by, they take money regardless. So you kinda pay in advance to be like, I'm good for it. I got the final bill. And many people in in a form of protest are not paying their federal income tax this year. Yeah, a couple we know. people who are Well, I wanna talk about some big news Let's get into it. Let's get into it. I'm Brian. And I'm Glennis. welcome back to Vibes Only. So, Brian, we need to talk about this $1.7 billion slush fund that Trump just stole from the he stole $1.7 billion property theft of our tax money from the American people to do what?*unintelligible* I was like setting you up for it. Here's what happened. For those who missed it, Trump was suing the IRS for ten billion dollars for damages and emotional harm because an IRS worker leaked his 2019 2020 like portions of his tax return. Which, by the way, since FDR, I think every single president has voluntarily released their tax returns because it is in the American people's best interest to understand how The president interacts with our tax system and their wealth. Anyway, Trump doesn't do that. We know that. he sued for ten billion dollars, which again, someone who pays their taxes, I just gave them money yesterday. That is our money. the judge was like, this is bullshit, but I need to hire some legal experts to like confirm that it's bullshit so it doesn't just land on me as the judge. They all said it's bullshit, but they settled. And what did they do? They set up this 1.7 billion dollar slush fund that's called the Anti Weaponization Slush Fund. Not slush fund, I'm using that term loosely. But it's meant to pay out like J Sixers for emotional distress and harm. Yeah, it's Trump directly stealing two billion dollars from the American people that we know of. there certainly could be more money that he's emptied out from the Treasury into his personal accounts. We know that this is not the only lawsuit that he's filed against effectively himself, it's him using taxpayer money to settle lawsuits that he creates, all of it flowing to his own accounts and to his friends. it's really unprecedented in American politics. It's gonna be horrible for him in the midterms. People can see that it is blatantly the most corrupt administration in the history of the country. And this is exactly the kind of thing that Democrats are gonna talk about incessantly on the campaign trail because while you're paying fifty percent more for gas, while jobs are evaporating, while inflation is hitting a four year high, Trump is literally cashing in on all of it. Yeah, and it's not just Trump. this two billion dollar fund is gonna have five people that are appointed by the AG, Todd Blanche, who he has a fiduciary duty and a and a legal duty to the citizens of the United States of America, but he they're gonna choose five buddies of Trump to without any transparency. decide where this money goes. It's crazy. It's crazy to imagine people on January 6th who went to jail for yelling, Hang Mike Pence, the vice president of the United States America, are going to get a payout for that because to be clear, went to jail for killing cops. Period. Right? Like for for assaulting police officers, for bringing deadly weapons to the Capitol, for an organized and pre planned attack on the US Capitol, more than just saying that they wanted to hang the vice president. Yeah, It is criminal and I I want people to really feel like they're being robbed by the president. Like truly. I think that people know. I mean, you look at the New York Times poll that just came out, Trump's approval rating is the lowest that it's ever been in his entire time in office. people know. People can see directly that he's more than doubled his net worth in a year, which is not normal. I mean, we have to talk about the stock trading going on, but it's very brazen. There's no attempt to hide that. The Trump children are joining boards of defense contractors and investing in military contracts that Trump is then starting wars to pay out. their real estate deals all over the world are leveraging America's foreign service operation to apply pressure to countries to green light real estate deals and It's it's bribery. Like it's very transparent. And so while it's hard to track all of it at the same time and you need a full investigative team, I wish that the Democrats were doing a better job of cataloging in depth every one of the schemes that are that are ongoing. I think at the end of the day, people see the grift because it's in broad daylight. Yeah, lest we forget the Qatari jet that Trump is gonna have at his personal library. Which right, well we're gonna we're gonna take it back in 2029 A hundred percent. which I also just learned it's gonna cost over a billion dollars to fit it out to actually be like safe as Air Force One. So that even if the Qatari family, which by the way, I I I could be like, you know, Carrie with the homeland, you know, in the background of all the different post-it notes. But there's the whole stablecoin thing of the Qatari managed VC that put two billion dollars into the Trump family stable coin, which is how the Trump family has amassed, I think, over 50% of their net worth in the last two years. Um, so anyway, to your point, it's all smoking guns and it's very, very, very awful. It's awful. Yeah. And we do just have to take the opportunity to shit on Congress too, because Congress, specifically the House of Representatives, has a duty. It's not a privilege. It's not something that they get to do when they feel like it. It is their entire job to control the purse strings of the country. The buck stops with them on all spending and so Republicans have just totally handed over control, in unprecedented ways for Trump to illegally, unconstitutionally move money around and create these types of slush funds and pools of cash that have no oversight, as you mentioned. Other than whatever he and his friends wanna wanna spend it on. And so that's a meaningful long term damage done to the country that we if we're not able to collect taxes and collectively exert power on how they're spent, then the core function of the government kind of erodes in and of itself. Literally what's the point? It's like where's the tea? Let's throw it into the harbor. There's a bunch of Republicans in Congress who are co sponsors of a stock trading ban for members of Congress, but there's a second version of it that includes the president that no Republicans will sign on to because they're all so afraid of him. th I'm sure they'll s change their tune when a Democrat is in office, but we've watched Democrats basically make concessions on that point when they want to get legislation passed that they have to exempt the president from whatever it is that they're doing. What kind of democracy is this? I mean yeah. Why are we matching? Why are we always wearing the same fucking shirt? the other thing that I'll mention on that is that we just had a primary in Louisiana where Trump endorsed against an incumbent, Bill Cassidy, who was this fake moderate Republican senator who had voted for all these Trump nominees and then pretended to be outraged when they did crazy shit, when it was obviously a clown car to begin with. He now could pose serious problems for Trump because he lost his primary. He came in third, which is insane, for a sitting US senator who normally are guaranteed to win their primary for re-election in most cases. And he gave this whole speech about how America's not about one person. It's about the people and the constitution. And so I'm not gonna hold my breath, but he could actually be a huge thorn in Trump's side before his term is up. If he blocks nominees appointments, bills like the DHS funding, reconciliation, there are all these things that they need him to vote yes on, especially for unanimous consent type things, on committee. So there's A slight chance, let's say, a silver lining that one Republican might might agree with you. always the possibility that Jon Fetterman will vote with Republicans. Yeah. will be able to block stuff in committee that Federman's not on. Yeah. well speaking of Trump and his enemies, we're recording on a Tuesday today. We typically record on Wednesdays, and there are primaries aplenty today. One of which is the most expensive primary in the history of the United States of America coming in at over $34 million spent to date. Yeah. In a in a house primary. and it's crazy that it's in Kentucky, where voter contact is free. You know what I mean? Putting up points on T V, putting putting up just put putting up ads on T V in Kentucky compared to the East Coast, the West Coast, a major metropolitan area, like the media markets there couldn't be cheaper. I'd I'd have to go rank it, but my guess is that it's the state with the cheapest in in the top five cheapest media markets to to advertise in. for the audience, like the inside baseball of that is that a lot of this money is raised for ad buys so that they can for anyone who watches T V, especially local news, close to a primary or an elected, you know, every other ad is for a candidate. And that costs a lot of money. The campaigns that I have done on the East Coast, it c it can cost a million dollars a week to be up to be up on on TV in peak election season. It is wildly expensive. but it's not in fucking Kentucky and Kansas and Iowa and Nebraska and that kind of thing. It's just not. It's just not as as expensive. So thirty million dollars is a lot and it shows that Trump is just all in on retribution, even To the detriment of his other political agenda. Like it's his top priority. We saw this in Indiana when they went and spent tens of millions of dollars trying to take out these random Indiana state legislators because they didn't do the thing that Trump wanted them to do. And now it's Thomas Massey, who's been Epstein Files public crusader. And Trump doesn't like that. And doesn't like when he votes against him on things like Iran and calls out the bullshit of Trump starting new wars, bankrupting America, and protecting pedophiles. And Trump wants him gone. So all of Trump's allies have gone all in on trying to get him out. Yeah, Hegseth was there yesterday or the day before, campaigning. The sitting Secretary of Defense, on duty traveling to go campaign for a candidate is is not something that we've seen in modern political times. It's it's wild. While the country is at war. Don't you have literally anything else to be doing? You are in you're in control of almost what eight hundred billion dollars of our military budget and you're flying to Kentucky to go campaign for a candidate that supports Daddy Trump. It's it's just like so curious, isn't it, that one of the main Republicans speaking out against the Epstein files, Trump is going very hard against. Totally. There are other really important elections happening today as well. We're watching closely two races for Georgia Supreme Court, where if we win both, we've been doing really well in Georgia. Ossoff's on the ballot this year. It's a really important sort of benchmark for how a critical swing state is doing. If we win those seats, we could flip the Georgia Supreme Court in 2028 which is exciting. and very important as we think about moving some of the battleground states long term off of the battleground map and into safe blue territory. Like Democrats are not being ambitious enough. We need to talk about what it looks like to have a safely blue Georgia in eight years or in ten years from now. That's achievable. It requires having fair maps and access to the ballot and giving people fucking water while they're standing in lines. Better yet, eliminate four hour to eight hour lines at polling locations, right? All of those things require us to step by step chip away at the Republican voter suppression in in Georgia, which we can do by winning these seats today. Uh miracle rankin has been working on for the last what six, eight years? Long totally. Exactly. also important primaries happening in Pennsylvania. If people are like really in the weeds, you might have been tracking the Bob Brooks race where Shapiro and I think AOC and Bernie Sanders have all endorsed the same candidate in this crowded primary. It's pretty wild. this I think he's a firefighter. there are also races happening in Alabama, in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Idaho, Oregon, and Kentucky. Thank you. in Georgia, the other big one that's worth mentioning is the Republican US Senate primary, where a bunch of people are trying to be the one to take on Jon Ossoff and they have a really ugly primary going on there. So that's expected to go to a runoff in June, but we'll at least narrow it down. How are you feeling? I feel great for Ossoff. I think I think we've talked about this before. I think Ossoff is gonna clean up in Georgia. I think he's gonna overperform after the last few US Senate races in Georgia have been decided by less than a point. I think that this one is going to be like four points I think it's gonna set Ossoff to run for president. Yeah, you think he's he's gonna do it? I think if he can win Georgia by four or five, I think he can win the country as well. you heard it here first, people. I mean some of his recent speeches have been blowing up online. Yeah, I mean I'm not endorsing, I'm not locked in, but I do think that it makes sense. I like I like his politics and he's a unifier in an interesting way to me. Like he doesn't fit a center left or like leftist box. Yeah, a lot of folks in my space have been saying Ossoff AOC ticket is like their dream. Did you see AOC's been traveling to communities affected by data centers? Yes, she's also been on a media run. I'm an EP on Alana Glazers podcast and we had her on two weeks ago. she has, I mean, data centers is hot topic issue. What are what are your vibes on data centers, Brian? Yeah, my vibes it's a really clear opportunity for Democrats to fix the narrative about who it is that we are fighting for. I don't believe that a pure moratorium nationally is the solution. mainly because At the same time, I I believe that it is imperative that America is competing with China on AI, that somebody is going to be world dominant on the issue. I think we should be putting forth stronger solutions for how to do both at the same time, because it shouldn't have to be an either or. But I do think that Democrats can be solution oriented, but prioritizing people first on on data centers. Totally. I mean, it's pretty clear that the majority of data centers are going into lower income communities. there's a big fight in New Jersey happening right now. I think I disagree with you slightly on the moratorium. I do think maybe we could hit pause on some of these and figure out how many jobs are these actually creating and who are these data centers gonna impact most in terms of energy bills, et cetera. I think things are moving so quickly and it's just like hold the phone. but did you see that this is almost like hyperbolically evil? They're turning Three Mile Island into a data center. I did not see that. are they? It's yeah, Three Mile Island is being turned into a data center, But for those who don't know, Three Mile Island was, uh, infamously the the worst nuclear disaster in the United States of America. But you know what? Let's just compound it. Let's turn that bad boy into a data center. It's sort of the classic story of the last twenty years of our lives, which is tech jumps out first, is off to the races, there's no regulation, there's wide calls for some sort of regulatory framework, new body, something to keep pace. The issue becomes instantly polarized across partisan lines, which means that it immediately is gridlocked and nothing can come out of Congress to address it. And then tech runs away with the power in a vacuum Like they're able to just steamroll everything with their agenda. yeah, it's hard to see like, yeah, I'm sure Democrats and Republicans will come together in D C to to pass common sense regulation. we we don't even know Democrats' position on it. That's why I do think it's important that AOC is highlighting what's happening with data centers and is taking a position on AI. And I do think that we we need some sort of guardrails and regulations. We saw what happened with crypto and they're literally running away to the bank with the this like fake money that's enriching Donald Trump and his family and others who are in the know. AI is a ha really hot topic, especially I think in the left political space, uh, given that the the spectrum of do we use AI to AI is evil and I'll never touch it to like even like the folks that think AI is going to kill us all. Yeah, I am not swayed in general by positions that are only no or only brake pedal. because the world is changing so I'm totally down for a cautious approach or a radically anti-AI approach, but I think it also has to chart a path forward that isn't just throwing your hands up and pretending like AI doesn't exist. And that's what I'm not getting a lot of from the most AI averse crowd is like, okay, if we want to swear off AI overall, cool. tell me more, how do we compete with other countries that are not doing that? How does the workforce adapt when All sorts of other economies are gonna be totally transformed by it if if that's the case. Or in in the case of the data centers, if there's a moratorium, what's the plan to ensure that it's an American company that is the first to hit general artificial intelligence? I do find urgency in the competition of it all because I don't want Russia and China and whoever to have technological capabilities that the US doesn't. And I just need to hear like both, you know. Yeah, I agree. I mean, we're aligned I think that if America wants to scale our economy in a way that is going to bring us into the future, we have to be leaders in the world of AI. There's I I just think there's no denying that, but I don't think that we should do that at the expense of the American people and the American people being sold out. Which is how I feel it's happening right now. The last thing I'll touch on with with the AI is the Musk open AI Altman trial? It was loser on loser crime, like for sure, but there's no denying that they're two two of the richest men on planet Earth. And the whole ethos of this trial was that Elon Musk felt that he was, launching this AI company, non for profit AI company with Sam Altman and others for the good of the people because AI is this nefarious power that if in in the wrong hands could uh dot dot dot kill us all and take over the world. And Altman was like, yeah, yeah, agree. And got this like huge raise from Elon. I think it was like 23 million, is what he gave, which for Elon is a rounding error in one of his accounts. He doesn't even know it exists. then Altman and his other founders pivoted to a for-profit company because Microsoft started injecting billions of dollars into it. And Elon was like, This isn't what we're supposed to do with AI. the jury came back in two hours. They said, you know, you didn't file your lawsuit fast enough, statute of limitations, like we're dismissing this, whatever. I don't know if you read the Altman piece in The New Yorker by Ronan Farrow. Not great for Sam Altman. Like you don't want this guy in in charge. Like he says that he's like for the good of the people. He's for the good of Sam Altman. He's not even like an engineer. He's just a guy that had an idea. the more you read about the powers behind AI, the money behind the AI, you just know it's not in the interest of the American people. And I think that is gross. the interesting thing about the Musk trial to me is that Musk waited until he had a competitor and like financial skin in the game before. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's what made this interesting to Elon Musk was a money making opportunity and trying to take out his leading competitor in the in the space. I mean I agree generally Let's I feel like we should probably move on this week it also came out that Donald Trump in Q1 traded more than 3600 times and was buying individual stock in companies that he was promoting on Truth Social and using the office of the presidency to advance and amplify their credentials or agenda. The profit that he's making from these deals is insane. And oftentimes he's making trades on the exact same day that he's visiting a manufacturing plant, tweeting about the stock or earnings of a particular company. And so he's really like this incel Robin Hood basement dweller on his phone that's making trades and then using the largest bully pulpit in the country. To profit from the trades that he's making. It's it's really shocking and it has spread like wildfire online. It spread that he's doing this. we read it in one of our favorite newsletters, Popular Information. he also is straight up calling into Fox News and saying, This is a really hot company. Put your money into this company. Totally. it was on C N B C wait a second. Oh, the squawk box thing. That was crazy. He was like Like they don't even know what to do. It's indefensible. This is more than a 10X increase in how often Donald Trump is trading. And of course the White House is saying he has all of his investments managed by somebody else. It likes it's somebody else doing it. There's no connection, whatever. But is what do you mean there's no connection? He's going to visit these companies, doing like a presidential tour, and then calling Fox News. I'm not a spy, but like the president, I'm sure his investors are watching Fox News. Of course. a lot of the trades are marked as unsolicited, meaning it came from the client, meaning Trump initiated the trade himself, or someone I guess representing Trump called the investment company and was like, I want to do XYZ thing. Buy this, sell this, buy this, sell this. that alongside what we've witnessed with the prediction markets where Trump's inner circle are making these huge trades minutes before announcements come out about Iran on oil prices, um, or defense contracts. It's wild. It's wild. so brazen, such brazen corruption. You know what I wish? This is fucked up. I wish that Trump was younger so he could rot in a jail cell longer.'Cause the thing is, you know, you and I are really passionate about accountability and holding Trump administration officials accountable for their actions and their crimes against the American people. And Trump's old and he's got that hand bruise and he doesn't look well. personally I'm more interested in the rest of them. Uh I think that hopeful as I might be, as bullish as I want to be, I think it will be so hard to prosecute Trump with this Supreme Court. getting him actually into a jail cell is gonna really, really be difficult. But the people around him have far, far fewer protections. That's true. the trades are done deal. they can't be erased now. there's a documented trail of the trades that took place. There's a documented trail of the communications in in hopefully many, many of these cases that took place. And I think that the Trump children, some of the cabinet and the people around them will be going to prison as we put an actual fucking attorney general in charge. Sorry, Merrick Garland. Not that. Not that. But someone who's a pit bull and is gonna go be the most aggressive anti corruption prosecutor that the country has ever seen. I think we're gonna see some other people with the last name Trump going to jail. Yeah, yeah, lest we forget the Supreme Court basically said that Trump could in fact shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it because of presidential immunity. Good reminder, Brian. to that effect, I just want to highlight, to that effect, it applies to all presidents. And so when our Democratic candidate runs on an anti-corruption agenda in 2028 the latitude that they have to be aggressive in their power to clean up corruption is widespread. I would love for them to push the boundaries of like what could be considered criminal being done by someone else, but is inherently not criminal when it is done in the office of the presidency because the Supreme Court has said so. yeah, Trump is setting a incredible precedent currently of what a president is able to do. I have this like pit in my stomach over this one point seven billion dollar like fund for anti weaponization that Trump has created by suing the IRS. And I as someone who the the wound is is new because I've literally just paid my taxes last night. And it disgusts me that to your point, cop killers, J Sixers might get paid out for damages for having to go to jail for committing a federal crime. Those people are going back to jail as well. They have to spend the money quick, whatever it is they get, they have to really fucking live it up for the next two years because they're going back to they're going back to jail. Sorry. Like it there's there's no chance that that's not happening. Did you see that report of like how many J Six people like re-committed crimes, some of them like horrific? Yes. Crazy. you referenced earlier Trump's approval rating is at its lowest. I didn't realize it was 37% That is so that is embarrassing. and that has pushed the Democratic generic ballot up to ten to eleven points in some new polls. That is insane, much bigger than our 2018 generic ballot lead. The average I think is still closer to seven, but that's enough to flip thirty plus seats in the house, which is exciting. Um, A lot of this comes back to the composition of the Supreme Court. I would love to get your take on what our next president should do about the Supreme Court, which let's remind ourselves has been captured by the far right, hasn't ideologically drifted, hasn't Yeah. fallen into like disrepair by chance, it was methodically and systematically overtaken by Republicans stealing seats on the Supreme Court. with the help of Merrick Garland, I'll say. That we as Democrats did not act as aggressively as we should have getting democratically aligned justices onto the court. Totally. Totally. And it's always been more of a voting issue for Republicans than Democrats. They love the court. play a long game and Democrats are like, Two years, two years So so what are you thinking the next president should do about the Supreme Court? well there's a lot of discourse. Kamala Harris recently made some statements. about potentially packing the court. I have been someone who has always wanted, not always, since I was a little girl. I dreamed of Supreme Court reform. no. But I I do want us to have term limits on the Supreme Court. Like I'll start there. I think every president should have the option to appoint two Supreme Court justices. And there should be term limits. I think it's insane that it's a lifetime appointment. Think about how much changes in your lifetime and how much your mindset develops. Supreme Court justices are supposed to be the defenders of our constitution, but as we've discussed on this pod, like many times, all of them view the constitution differently. And some are originalists who think that the constitution should be directly interpreted as it was written, which we all know, to load a gun in seventeen seventy seven? whenever the Second Amendment came out, I don't know. It was a different mechanism to load a gun and to kill someone. So you're asking me if we should pack the court My preference is constitutional reform on how we appoint justices and there should be term limits. I think most people advocate for eighteen years 'cause that then allows for two new justices every president, every term. That to me is the ideal. Are we gonna get that 'cause of what it takes to get an amendment in the constitution? I don't know. Yeah. should we add seats and push in dems on the court? Yeah. Sh sure. You know what I mean? I'm like so desperate for us to do something that you know, and all the arguments are, Well, that will ruin our democracy and of course Republicans are very upset about it. No, we we can't do that. That well, our democracy is crumbling right now. Yeah, I feel like the balance of power has been put so far out of whack that action is needed to correct that. There has to be like some sort of pivot back. also I've been doing some reading around FDR and the New Deal and the Supreme Court like really tried to gut a lot of his agenda and he threatened to pack the court and that was enough that they basically backed off of everything and they brought more cases and then they started suddenly siding with the executive. Do I think that I think that's right. I think that this court is different and our times now are very different. But to me, it does signal the importance of us choosing a president who will be willing to go there, even if we don't end up adding additional seats. I think that having someone whose values aligned, that something has to be done and on this issue in particular is more populist than institutionalist feels mission critical to me for the next two generations to not be beholden to Mitch McConnell, who is like this relic from the 1940's 30's? 20's? When was Mitch McConnell born? The 30's. He probably wasn't even born to a human being. He probably just rolled out of some hole in the ground. I feel like Democrats will be on board with that. I think it's easier to get the population, the public, on board with changes to the Supreme Court's existing structure and rules than it is to get them on board with court packing. But I have to say, Republicans only have a problem with court packing when it is not in their favor to do so. They just packed the court in Utah when the Utah Supreme Court issued a decision. demanding fair maps which was going to give Democrats an additional seat in Utah, which reflects the will of the people in that state. Republicans were so incensed by the overturning of their gerrymander that they added new seats to their Supreme Court to bring the case again to get the map overruled for 2028. they just did the same thing in North Carolina with those maps as well. where they flip the Supreme Court and then reheard a case that had already been decided totally unprecedented to do so and then greenlit a gerrymander in North Carolina. So Republicans have no problem with Supreme Courts breaking the rules and stacking the cards as long as it's in their favor. And we have to be s sort of open to how do you fix a system to one re- balance the the power and to make it harder for Republicans to to tip the scales again. Yeah, and I just want to remind the audience, I think we talked quite a bit two seasons ago about the corruption in the court as well. Our uh frenemy Clarence Thomas and his free gifts and college tuition for his children, grandchildren. He belongs to this private club. Not even to get into the world of amicus briefs and what that looks like and all of these, you know, right wing foundations. like molding the deteriorating brain power of aging Supreme Court justices to create a worldview that is aligned with conservative, oftentimes evangelical and super conservative values. And we're seeing that in a lot of decisions. Yeah, and one of the primary arguments for lifetime appointments to the court is so that justices do not need to go back into the workforce because then they would be incentivized to make decisions during their time on the bench that would benefit their private life post. But in a world where Clarence Thomas is getting millions of dollars in gifts and tuition and cars and trips and PJ flights and all these things while on the bench, what sense does it make that he is some unbiased arbiter because of his job security? Like that's the opposite of what's happening. also yeah, right. That is just like not reflecting the truth of Washington DC either. many anymore. Literally that. I saw this crazy stat from the Brennan Center, which does like a lot of work around all of this, that the average term of a Supreme Court justice is like somewhere around twenty eight years, and some justices will serve over nine presidencies. Not right. It's not right. And also, like, I think we all remember where we were when RBG died, and it was just like sad and then sad for our democracy. Like if she had retired, we could have appointed a young Democratically aligned justice to the Supreme Court that could have served for the next thirty years. We'd be in a very different place. We skipped clickbait or double click. I just looked at the run-up show. you don't remember, Brian and I review news headlines and we tell you if they're worth caring about or if it's just mainstream media clickbaiting you for the metrics. First one up, a security guard was among three killed in a shooting at the San Diego Islamic Center. double click. It's political violence. it's a hate crime. And the mayor of San Diego has repeatedly used rhetoric, uh Islamophobic rhetoric. the mother of one of the shooters said that she knew that her son was in a mental health crisis and all of the weapons from the house were gone and her car was gone and she was calling the police and it's just like can we please get some commonsense gun reform? Like why do you have enough weapons in your house that your son has access to that he could commit a crime like this? They were young too, right? They were like seventeen, eighteen years old. Yeah. Horrific. Horrific. second headline. American tests positive for Ebola and the US is gonna start screening travelers at airports. I don't think you'll agree with me on this, but I think it's double click because I will die on this hill that the shutting down of USAID and the United States of America leaving the WHO directly will impact Americans, because there's not the response mechanisms in place for s for things like this. Yeah, I think highlighting how Trump has made us all less safe is really important and these are opportunities to remind everyone that you don't think about the C D C budget every day, you don't think about the cancer research budget that got cut every day, but your family members are more likely to die straight up as a result of Trump being in office. Yeah, and just more people are dying. Like this is a new strain of Ebola. We have all of the research on the Zaire strain. I don't recall did you live in New York when Ebola was here? Okay. Well it was like a big deal. This one guy had Ebola and the poor guy, we contract traced him. Everyone knew he was at the gutter in Brooklyn and he had dinner downtown in Lower East Side. And it's just like maybe I have a little PTSD from that. But The USAID would be able to send like a disaster response team in immediately to these impacted areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo and I think Uganda and we just don't have that. And to your point, Americans are less safe because of Trump. This one it's not L O L 'cause it's whatever, but Trump threatens Iran and then pulls back all in the same day. Taco Trump always chickens out. it's crazy to me that people react to anything that he says ever because constantly he takes it back twenty minutes later. It's insane. I heard reason he pulled back was because Middle East allies were like, Please don't do this not because the American people have a sixty four percent disapproval rate of your actions in Iran. it's like he does not care about the American people and their opinion. He said that two weeks ago. He doesn't care about the American people's financial situation and he definitely doesn't care that sixty percent disapprove of his Iran handling. Brian, we talked a lot about the Supreme Court today. I have a good vibe for everyone. Well, I have two good vibe goodbyes. Um the first one the first one is not a good vibe in perpetuity, but it's a good vi vibe per now. I don't know if you were following the fact that they were trying to ban telehealth companies from prescribing Mifepristone, which is how one receives a medicated abortion. And the Supreme Court said, No, no, no, you you can't do that. Not yet at least. So women across America who are in abortion deserts still can access basic health care, reproductive health care, and seek medical abortions when needed. That is good news. in this country, telehealth should be standard practice everywhere, regardless of what it's for. It should not be controversial. People live so far from doctors and especially from the type of care that people need the most. So that's like a no brainer. Yeah. And it's like so hard to get prescribed stuff. You have to see a doctor to not that I'm trying to get a bunch of meds, but anyway. And this is my second a bunch more. I love Doritos. Like I couldn't be MAHA simply because I love red forty specifically. did you see this? Alligator Alcatraz is closing. I did see that. Tell me more. a win. So vendors were notified last week the facility is closing and the detainees unfortunately will be moved to other facilities, but Alligator Alcatraz was notoriously like an inhumane, poor conditions, like pop up internment camp for It was a tarp over a swamp in one hundred plus degree heat with maybe a bottle of dirty water. Like it was it was preposterous. It was like out of a film. Yeah, it it was in in the Florida Everglades, notoriously like the dampest, most humid, hot section of Florida. it costs the Floridian and federal taxpayer one point five billion dollars. DeSantis is saying that Florida's gonna get a six hundred and eight million federal reimbursement. So our taxpayer dollars are gonna give that money to Florida, but it still hasn't been paid yet, so I don't know if that's gonna happen. it is a win for a lot of activists who have been fighting for this since day one for it to be shut down for its inhumane conditions. So we can check that off the list, but obviously a lot more work to be done as it regards to our immigration policies and the horrific actions of ICE and what we are doing to men, women and children in detention centers nationally. More telehealth, less concentration camps, I'll take it. That's a good vibe. Yeah, literally that. Thanks y'all. We'll be back here, same time, same place next week. Thanks so much for listening and please give us a follow. so more people can find this podcast. We'll see you to check the vibes right here next Thursday.