Strict Scrutiny

Kate brings you a triptych of legal happenings this week. First, the latest news with friend of the pod Katie Phang, including a look at Todd Blanche’s Senate confirmation hearing, which certainly confirmed one thing: once you’re Trump’s personal lawyer, you’re forever Trump’s personal lawyer. Then, a conversation about making the courts an electoral issue and why we need fresh candidates for judicial seats with Run for Something’s Amanda Litman. Finally, ahead of a crucial August 4th ballot measure in Kansas, Kate speaks with Micah Kubic, Executive Director of the ACLU of Kansas, and Emily Wales, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, about how Republicans in Kansas are trying to change how justices are selected for the state supreme court in order to walk back abortion rights. Check out Katie’s YouTube channel & Substack and pre-order Amanda Litman’s book, When We’re in Charge, in paperback.
Favorite things:

Kate:Road trips, HUMBE

Amanda:This Is the Plan: How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy, Ben Wikler; Ungodly Rich, Katharine McGee; Down to Earth, Julia Turshen

Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE on November 6th in Washington, DC: Crookedcon.com

Buy Melissa’s book, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader

Buy Leah’s book, Lawless, now out in paperback
Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky

For a transcript of an episode of Strict Scrutiny please email transcripts@crooked.com

Kate is joined by returning guest and friend of the show, Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton, and one of the world’s leading scholars of democratic backsliding, autocracy, and the rule of law. They discuss how the Supreme Court has been “captured,” the ways Donald Trump is attempting to remake Washington, D.C., in his image, and what Hungary can teach us about autocracy and how to recover from it.
Favorite things:

Kate:Emil Bove Defended Trump in Court. Then Trump Made Him a Judge, Mattathias Schwartz (NYT); Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home, Stephen Starring Grant

Kim:Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Swan; Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID, Nicholas Enrich; The Dual State, Ernst Fraenkel; The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt; It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis; Borgen - Power & Glory (Netflix); Gok Wan's Easy Asian (Prime Video)

Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE on November 6th in Washington, DC: Crookedcon.com

Buy Melissa’s book, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader

Buy Leah’s book, Lawless, now out in paperback
Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky
For a transcript of an episode of Strict Scrutiny please email transcripts@crooked.com

Melissa, Kate, and Leah take a look back on this Supreme Court term as a whole. The hypocrisy, the racism, the sheer stupidity... it's all here!
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE on November 6th in Washington, DC: Crookedcon.com
Buy Melissa’s book, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader

Buy Leah’s book, Lawless, now out in paperback
Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky

For a transcript of an episode of Strict Scrutiny please email transcripts@crooked.com

In their second emergency episode in two days, Leah, Melissa, and Kate break down the Court’s final day of the term and folks, it’s a doozy. We’ve got America’s preeminent “father of daughters” Coach Brett Kavanaugh’s majority opinion allowing states to exclude trans women and girls from female sports teams, a massive blow to campaign finance law, and the survival of birthright citizenship by the skin of the 14th Amendment’s teeth. To top it all off, we got an Alito retirement fakeout courtesy of NPR.
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE on November 6th in Washington, DC: Crookedcon.com
Buy Melissa’s book, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader
Buy Leah’s book, Lawless, now out in paperback
Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky
For a transcript of an episode of Strict Scrutiny please email transcripts@crooked.com

In this emergency episode, Leah and Kate break down today’s incredibly consequential decisions in Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook, which followed the Project 2025 playbook to rewrite almost a century of precedent regarding presidential power. They also discuss how close the Court came to ruling that states can’t count absentee ballots that are cast by election day but received after election day in Watson v. RNC.
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE on November 6th in Washington, DC: Crookedcon.com
Buy Melissa’s book,The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader
Buy Leah’s book, Lawless, now out in paperback
Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky
For a transcript of an episode of Strict Scrutiny, please email transcripts@crooked.com.