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This Week: A superintendent in Massachusetts has put out a fascinating take on a revision to the ubiquitous Bloom's Taxonomy, the helpful tool which has defined orders of thinking for decades in education. In the age of AI, he claims, the hierarchical nature of Bloom's no longer reflects the more complex arc of thinking students will do in a world where humans think with AI. It's an interesting take, and solidly sidesteps all of the most perilous ramifications of the rush to bring AI into the classroom. Plus, the confederates in charge of the federal government made it official this week. The US Dept of Education will no longer use “disparate impact” as criteria for holding state, districts, or schools accountable for compliance with the Title XI of the Civil RIghts Act of 1964, effectively gutting the landmark legislation. Now, short of having a smoking gun, or video evidence of officials spewing epithets, it will be virtually impossible for plaintiffs to seek federal relief from systemically racist practices in America's schools. Manuel and Jeff discuss. All of the Above sends our condolences to the family, friends, and loved ones of noted Denver educator and co-host of the Too Dope Teachers and Mic podcast, Kevin Adams. Check out this beautiful profile of Kevin in NEA Today, and his first appearance with us on All of the Above back in 2020. Rest in peace and power Kevin!All of the Above was named #30 on the Best 100 Education Podcasts in the US by MillionPodcasts.com. Check us out, like, subscribe, and drop a rating :) MAXIMUM WOKENESS ALERT -- get your All of the Above swag, including your own “Teach the Truth” shirt! In this moment of relentless attacks on teaching truth in the classroom, we got you covered. https://all-of-the-above-store.creator-spring.com Watch, listen and subscribe to make sure you don't miss our latest content!Listen on Apple Podcast and Spotify Website: https://AOTAshow.com
Social media is everywhere today. Ever wonder how the role social media plays into the employer/employee relationship? In this episode, guests Aaron Holt and SaNni M-K Lemonidis, both experienced labor and employment attorneys, join host Matt Greer for a deep dive into the murky waters of who said what where and to whom. Can employers regulate what an employee says on a social media channel – say Facebook or X? It depends. The “manner and method” of our free speech outside of work still matters. It's about content and context. Harassment and discrimination matter still matter. Try the “water cooler principle,” if a comment was made on social media, ask if the same comment was made at work around the water cooler, would the boss feel obligated to act. If the answer is yes, then action is likely required. This is a fascinating field, nuanced and sometimes dependent on the size of a company and capacity for control as well, as the company's own use of social media in outreach and marketing. The laws, and EEOC guidance, haven't changed. But the environment we live and work in has. Basic principles still apply. For employees, be nice to each other. For employers, do your best to ensure no one is being harassed or bullied. If someone says there's a problem, employers can protect themselves by investigating complaints and developing and adhering to consistent policies. REFERENCES MENTIONED: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 NLRB v. Pier Sixty, Justia Law Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Okonowsky v. Garland, Justia Law Connick v. Myers, Justia Law The ABA Labor and Employment Law Section 2026 Annual Conference is scheduled for Nov. 4-7, 2026 in Washington, DC ABA Labor and Employment Law Section Subscribe to ABA Labor and Employment Law Podcast: https://play.megaphone.fm/jzfpgfsst3wnyevnhvs9cq
What Does the Confederacy's Legacy Mean for the Modern South and Christian America? Host Curtis Chang and New York Times columnist, and Good Faith podcast "founding friend," David French confront the enduring power of the Confederate myth. David reflects on growing up as a white Southerner in a culture shaped by Confederate symbols, revisionist history, racial injustice, and a deeply rooted shame-and-honor code. Curtis, a Chinese American immigrant, brings an outsider's perspective that challenges familiar assumptions about heritage, memory, and belonging. Together, they examine Confederate monuments, the theological defenses of slavery, the meaning of "heritage, not hate," and whether honest historical reckoning can lead to redemption and reconciliation. 02:51 - Curtis Congratulates David on the Birth of His Latest Grandchild 05:54 - Why Does the Confederacy Still Matter? 10:12 - The South's Distinct Cultural Cohesion 22:19 - "Heritage, Not Hate": A White Southern Perspective 29:52 - Race, Religion, and Revisionism in the South 42:13 - The Resurgence of Explicit Racism 47:20 - What to Do with Confederate Memorials 56:32 - Repenting of Southern Shame-Honor Culture 01:01:32 - Institutions Founded on Injustice Can Carry Spiritual Darkness Sign up for The After Party Informational Webinars Sign up for The Good List Mentioned in This Episode: Learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre Learn about The Great Migration Watch MLK50 Conference (video) More about General George H. Thomas More about the Southern Baptist Convention and slavery What is Kinism More about the South's resistance to Reconstruction Read the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Watch: Selma and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (video) Scriptures: Ephesians 6:12 (ESV) Colossians 2:15 (ESV) Luke 10:25–37 (ESV) Matthew 20:16 (ESV) Matthew 10:39 (ESV) More From David French: David French's New York Times pieces HERE Follow David French on Threads Follow Us: Good Faith on Instagram Good Faith on X (formerly Twitter) Good Faith on Facebook The Good Faith Podcast is a production of a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan organization that does not engage in any political campaign activity to support or oppose any candidate for public office. Any views and opinions expressed by any guests on this program are solely those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Good Faith.
Julia Azari, Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, has a new, award-winning[*] book centering on the connection between race and the American presidency, specifically in the reaction to presidents who made progress on the issue of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History focuses on four different periods in American political history and a number of different presidential administrations including: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump. Race and the American presidency are not usually topics that are looped together, and this is also part of the point that Azari is making in the book, since presidents often try to elide racial politics and policy issues. Race is also not usually connected to presidential impeachments, but this is yet another key point that Azari raises, connecting racial progress, the backlash responses, and the subsequent impeachments. In noting these connections, Azari threads examples over time where presidents directly confronted race in American politics, working towards more racial equality, and how these efforts also prompt a backlash response. The key case studies in Backlash Presidents are Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War in the 1860s, Lyndon Johnson's efforts in the 1960s in regard to the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, as well as anti-poverty legislation, and finally Barack Obama as the first Black president of the United States, which was both symbolic and structural. Backlash Presidents traces not only the progress made during these administrations, but also the responses that followed in the subsequent administrations. It is these next administrations, of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump, where each of these presidents were either impeached or were about to be impeached, and how this dynamic pulls together a variety of different threads to help us to understand presidential politics, institutional development, and American political history all in context of the question of race. Azari's research is connected to the idea of political time, but with the important addition of pulling out the problem of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents contributes to our thinking about not only the time and context of presidents and their administrations, but also to thinking about what it is that presidents do to politics itself. Part of this analysis also interrogates populism, positioning these movements within the context of racial backlash, while also building out the understanding of the president's position within his own party, especially during these fraught periods. In each of the key examples, Azari highlights the ways in which Johnson, Nixon, and Trump were outsiders to what was going on inside their parties—in each case the Republican Party at the time—and how these shifting partisan foundations opened up different kinds of vulnerabilities for these presidents. In each of the case studies, there is also the discussion of the role that the U.S. Congress plays, since they are the actors who move towards impeaching and trying the president. Members of the House of Representatives need to move beyond constraints in order to impeach a president, and in these instances, they have concluded that the president is not correct in some basic and meaningful way, that the president is not upholding his oath of office, and is also undermining the forward movement on race and racial equality. Backlash Presidents: From Transformation to Reactionary Leaders in American History is a deeply researched analysis, with important historical context and details to help flesh out the particular time period under consideration. The examination is further complicated and built out with important understandings of party politics in the United States, and how president fits into their political party, or may be seen as an outsider. Racial dynamics in the United States undergirds the entire theory, and helps us see the tensions within partisan politics, presidential politics, and American democracy. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social [*] The Presidents and Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association awarded Backlash Presidents the 2025 Richard E. Neustadt Best Book Award, given for the best book on executive politics published during the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Julia Azari, Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, has a new, award-winning[*] book centering on the connection between race and the American presidency, specifically in the reaction to presidents who made progress on the issue of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History focuses on four different periods in American political history and a number of different presidential administrations including: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump. Race and the American presidency are not usually topics that are looped together, and this is also part of the point that Azari is making in the book, since presidents often try to elide racial politics and policy issues. Race is also not usually connected to presidential impeachments, but this is yet another key point that Azari raises, connecting racial progress, the backlash responses, and the subsequent impeachments. In noting these connections, Azari threads examples over time where presidents directly confronted race in American politics, working towards more racial equality, and how these efforts also prompt a backlash response. The key case studies in Backlash Presidents are Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War in the 1860s, Lyndon Johnson's efforts in the 1960s in regard to the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, as well as anti-poverty legislation, and finally Barack Obama as the first Black president of the United States, which was both symbolic and structural. Backlash Presidents traces not only the progress made during these administrations, but also the responses that followed in the subsequent administrations. It is these next administrations, of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump, where each of these presidents were either impeached or were about to be impeached, and how this dynamic pulls together a variety of different threads to help us to understand presidential politics, institutional development, and American political history all in context of the question of race. Azari's research is connected to the idea of political time, but with the important addition of pulling out the problem of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents contributes to our thinking about not only the time and context of presidents and their administrations, but also to thinking about what it is that presidents do to politics itself. Part of this analysis also interrogates populism, positioning these movements within the context of racial backlash, while also building out the understanding of the president's position within his own party, especially during these fraught periods. In each of the key examples, Azari highlights the ways in which Johnson, Nixon, and Trump were outsiders to what was going on inside their parties—in each case the Republican Party at the time—and how these shifting partisan foundations opened up different kinds of vulnerabilities for these presidents. In each of the case studies, there is also the discussion of the role that the U.S. Congress plays, since they are the actors who move towards impeaching and trying the president. Members of the House of Representatives need to move beyond constraints in order to impeach a president, and in these instances, they have concluded that the president is not correct in some basic and meaningful way, that the president is not upholding his oath of office, and is also undermining the forward movement on race and racial equality. Backlash Presidents: From Transformation to Reactionary Leaders in American History is a deeply researched analysis, with important historical context and details to help flesh out the particular time period under consideration. The examination is further complicated and built out with important understandings of party politics in the United States, and how president fits into their political party, or may be seen as an outsider. Racial dynamics in the United States undergirds the entire theory, and helps us see the tensions within partisan politics, presidential politics, and American democracy. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social [*] The Presidents and Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association awarded Backlash Presidents the 2025 Richard E. Neustadt Best Book Award, given for the best book on executive politics published during the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
Julia Azari, Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, has a new, award-winning[*] book centering on the connection between race and the American presidency, specifically in the reaction to presidents who made progress on the issue of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History focuses on four different periods in American political history and a number of different presidential administrations including: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump. Race and the American presidency are not usually topics that are looped together, and this is also part of the point that Azari is making in the book, since presidents often try to elide racial politics and policy issues. Race is also not usually connected to presidential impeachments, but this is yet another key point that Azari raises, connecting racial progress, the backlash responses, and the subsequent impeachments. In noting these connections, Azari threads examples over time where presidents directly confronted race in American politics, working towards more racial equality, and how these efforts also prompt a backlash response. The key case studies in Backlash Presidents are Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War in the 1860s, Lyndon Johnson's efforts in the 1960s in regard to the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, as well as anti-poverty legislation, and finally Barack Obama as the first Black president of the United States, which was both symbolic and structural. Backlash Presidents traces not only the progress made during these administrations, but also the responses that followed in the subsequent administrations. It is these next administrations, of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump, where each of these presidents were either impeached or were about to be impeached, and how this dynamic pulls together a variety of different threads to help us to understand presidential politics, institutional development, and American political history all in context of the question of race. Azari's research is connected to the idea of political time, but with the important addition of pulling out the problem of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents contributes to our thinking about not only the time and context of presidents and their administrations, but also to thinking about what it is that presidents do to politics itself. Part of this analysis also interrogates populism, positioning these movements within the context of racial backlash, while also building out the understanding of the president's position within his own party, especially during these fraught periods. In each of the key examples, Azari highlights the ways in which Johnson, Nixon, and Trump were outsiders to what was going on inside their parties—in each case the Republican Party at the time—and how these shifting partisan foundations opened up different kinds of vulnerabilities for these presidents. In each of the case studies, there is also the discussion of the role that the U.S. Congress plays, since they are the actors who move towards impeaching and trying the president. Members of the House of Representatives need to move beyond constraints in order to impeach a president, and in these instances, they have concluded that the president is not correct in some basic and meaningful way, that the president is not upholding his oath of office, and is also undermining the forward movement on race and racial equality. Backlash Presidents: From Transformation to Reactionary Leaders in American History is a deeply researched analysis, with important historical context and details to help flesh out the particular time period under consideration. The examination is further complicated and built out with important understandings of party politics in the United States, and how president fits into their political party, or may be seen as an outsider. Racial dynamics in the United States undergirds the entire theory, and helps us see the tensions within partisan politics, presidential politics, and American democracy. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social [*] The Presidents and Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association awarded Backlash Presidents the 2025 Richard E. Neustadt Best Book Award, given for the best book on executive politics published during the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
Julia Azari, Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, has a new, award-winning[*] book centering on the connection between race and the American presidency, specifically in the reaction to presidents who made progress on the issue of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History focuses on four different periods in American political history and a number of different presidential administrations including: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump. Race and the American presidency are not usually topics that are looped together, and this is also part of the point that Azari is making in the book, since presidents often try to elide racial politics and policy issues. Race is also not usually connected to presidential impeachments, but this is yet another key point that Azari raises, connecting racial progress, the backlash responses, and the subsequent impeachments. In noting these connections, Azari threads examples over time where presidents directly confronted race in American politics, working towards more racial equality, and how these efforts also prompt a backlash response. The key case studies in Backlash Presidents are Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War in the 1860s, Lyndon Johnson's efforts in the 1960s in regard to the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, as well as anti-poverty legislation, and finally Barack Obama as the first Black president of the United States, which was both symbolic and structural. Backlash Presidents traces not only the progress made during these administrations, but also the responses that followed in the subsequent administrations. It is these next administrations, of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump, where each of these presidents were either impeached or were about to be impeached, and how this dynamic pulls together a variety of different threads to help us to understand presidential politics, institutional development, and American political history all in context of the question of race. Azari's research is connected to the idea of political time, but with the important addition of pulling out the problem of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents contributes to our thinking about not only the time and context of presidents and their administrations, but also to thinking about what it is that presidents do to politics itself. Part of this analysis also interrogates populism, positioning these movements within the context of racial backlash, while also building out the understanding of the president's position within his own party, especially during these fraught periods. In each of the key examples, Azari highlights the ways in which Johnson, Nixon, and Trump were outsiders to what was going on inside their parties—in each case the Republican Party at the time—and how these shifting partisan foundations opened up different kinds of vulnerabilities for these presidents. In each of the case studies, there is also the discussion of the role that the U.S. Congress plays, since they are the actors who move towards impeaching and trying the president. Members of the House of Representatives need to move beyond constraints in order to impeach a president, and in these instances, they have concluded that the president is not correct in some basic and meaningful way, that the president is not upholding his oath of office, and is also undermining the forward movement on race and racial equality. Backlash Presidents: From Transformation to Reactionary Leaders in American History is a deeply researched analysis, with important historical context and details to help flesh out the particular time period under consideration. The examination is further complicated and built out with important understandings of party politics in the United States, and how president fits into their political party, or may be seen as an outsider. Racial dynamics in the United States undergirds the entire theory, and helps us see the tensions within partisan politics, presidential politics, and American democracy. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social [*] The Presidents and Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association awarded Backlash Presidents the 2025 Richard E. Neustadt Best Book Award, given for the best book on executive politics published during the year.
Julia Azari, Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, has a new, award-winning[*] book centering on the connection between race and the American presidency, specifically in the reaction to presidents who made progress on the issue of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History focuses on four different periods in American political history and a number of different presidential administrations including: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump. Race and the American presidency are not usually topics that are looped together, and this is also part of the point that Azari is making in the book, since presidents often try to elide racial politics and policy issues. Race is also not usually connected to presidential impeachments, but this is yet another key point that Azari raises, connecting racial progress, the backlash responses, and the subsequent impeachments. In noting these connections, Azari threads examples over time where presidents directly confronted race in American politics, working towards more racial equality, and how these efforts also prompt a backlash response. The key case studies in Backlash Presidents are Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War in the 1860s, Lyndon Johnson's efforts in the 1960s in regard to the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, as well as anti-poverty legislation, and finally Barack Obama as the first Black president of the United States, which was both symbolic and structural. Backlash Presidents traces not only the progress made during these administrations, but also the responses that followed in the subsequent administrations. It is these next administrations, of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump, where each of these presidents were either impeached or were about to be impeached, and how this dynamic pulls together a variety of different threads to help us to understand presidential politics, institutional development, and American political history all in context of the question of race. Azari's research is connected to the idea of political time, but with the important addition of pulling out the problem of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents contributes to our thinking about not only the time and context of presidents and their administrations, but also to thinking about what it is that presidents do to politics itself. Part of this analysis also interrogates populism, positioning these movements within the context of racial backlash, while also building out the understanding of the president's position within his own party, especially during these fraught periods. In each of the key examples, Azari highlights the ways in which Johnson, Nixon, and Trump were outsiders to what was going on inside their parties—in each case the Republican Party at the time—and how these shifting partisan foundations opened up different kinds of vulnerabilities for these presidents. In each of the case studies, there is also the discussion of the role that the U.S. Congress plays, since they are the actors who move towards impeaching and trying the president. Members of the House of Representatives need to move beyond constraints in order to impeach a president, and in these instances, they have concluded that the president is not correct in some basic and meaningful way, that the president is not upholding his oath of office, and is also undermining the forward movement on race and racial equality. Backlash Presidents: From Transformation to Reactionary Leaders in American History is a deeply researched analysis, with important historical context and details to help flesh out the particular time period under consideration. The examination is further complicated and built out with important understandings of party politics in the United States, and how president fits into their political party, or may be seen as an outsider. Racial dynamics in the United States undergirds the entire theory, and helps us see the tensions within partisan politics, presidential politics, and American democracy. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social [*] The Presidents and Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association awarded Backlash Presidents the 2025 Richard E. Neustadt Best Book Award, given for the best book on executive politics published during the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Julia Azari, Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, has a new, award-winning[*] book centering on the connection between race and the American presidency, specifically in the reaction to presidents who made progress on the issue of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History focuses on four different periods in American political history and a number of different presidential administrations including: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump. Race and the American presidency are not usually topics that are looped together, and this is also part of the point that Azari is making in the book, since presidents often try to elide racial politics and policy issues. Race is also not usually connected to presidential impeachments, but this is yet another key point that Azari raises, connecting racial progress, the backlash responses, and the subsequent impeachments. In noting these connections, Azari threads examples over time where presidents directly confronted race in American politics, working towards more racial equality, and how these efforts also prompt a backlash response. The key case studies in Backlash Presidents are Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War in the 1860s, Lyndon Johnson's efforts in the 1960s in regard to the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, as well as anti-poverty legislation, and finally Barack Obama as the first Black president of the United States, which was both symbolic and structural. Backlash Presidents traces not only the progress made during these administrations, but also the responses that followed in the subsequent administrations. It is these next administrations, of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump, where each of these presidents were either impeached or were about to be impeached, and how this dynamic pulls together a variety of different threads to help us to understand presidential politics, institutional development, and American political history all in context of the question of race. Azari's research is connected to the idea of political time, but with the important addition of pulling out the problem of race in the United States. Backlash Presidents contributes to our thinking about not only the time and context of presidents and their administrations, but also to thinking about what it is that presidents do to politics itself. Part of this analysis also interrogates populism, positioning these movements within the context of racial backlash, while also building out the understanding of the president's position within his own party, especially during these fraught periods. In each of the key examples, Azari highlights the ways in which Johnson, Nixon, and Trump were outsiders to what was going on inside their parties—in each case the Republican Party at the time—and how these shifting partisan foundations opened up different kinds of vulnerabilities for these presidents. In each of the case studies, there is also the discussion of the role that the U.S. Congress plays, since they are the actors who move towards impeaching and trying the president. Members of the House of Representatives need to move beyond constraints in order to impeach a president, and in these instances, they have concluded that the president is not correct in some basic and meaningful way, that the president is not upholding his oath of office, and is also undermining the forward movement on race and racial equality. Backlash Presidents: From Transformation to Reactionary Leaders in American History is a deeply researched analysis, with important historical context and details to help flesh out the particular time period under consideration. The examination is further complicated and built out with important understandings of party politics in the United States, and how president fits into their political party, or may be seen as an outsider. Racial dynamics in the United States undergirds the entire theory, and helps us see the tensions within partisan politics, presidential politics, and American democracy. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social [*] The Presidents and Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association awarded Backlash Presidents the 2025 Richard E. Neustadt Best Book Award, given for the best book on executive politics published during the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
This Day in Legal History: The Dodd-Frank ActOn July 21, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the most sweeping overhaul of American financial regulation since the New Deal. It was a direct response to the 2008 financial crisis—the collapse that wiped out trillions in household wealth, toppled storied institutions like Lehman Brothers, and required massive taxpayer bailouts to keep the banking system from failing entirely.Dodd-Frank tried to attack the crisis's root causes on several fronts at once. It created the Financial Stability Oversight Council to watch for systemic risks—the danger that one firm's failure could cascade through the whole economy—and gave regulators new “resolution authority” to wind down failing giants in an orderly way, an attempt to end the problem of banks being “too big to fail.” It imposed the Volcker Rule, restricting banks from making certain speculative bets with depositors' money. It brought the shadowy derivatives market under federal oversight. And, in its most visible legacy, it created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—a new agency dedicated to policing mortgages, credit cards, and other consumer financial products, born largely from an idea championed by then-professor Elizabeth Warren.Dodd-Frank has been contested ever since—fought over in rulemaking, trimmed by later legislation, and litigated all the way to the Supreme Court, including a major case over the constitutionality of the CFPB's structure. But its core significance endures: it represents the country's considered legal judgment that concentrated financial power, left unchecked, poses a systemic danger, and that the answer is robust administrative regulation. It's a fitting anniversary to sit alongside today's news, because so much of what we cover comes back to the same enduring question—how the law should restrain private economic power without strangling the enterprise that power creates.A federal judge has temporarily paused Paramount Skydance's roughly $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, siding for now with a coalition of twelve state attorneys general who sued to stop it. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a fourteen-day temporary restraining order, finding the deal “likely” violates antitrust law. Here's the framework. Antitrust law exists to preserve competition, and one of its central tools is blocking mergers that would concentrate too much market power in a single company. The states, led by California, sued on July 13 arguing that combining these two entertainment giants would create a media behemoth with the power to raise prices across film and television and to squeeze rivals. A temporary restraining order is exactly what it sounds like—a short-term freeze to preserve the status quo while the court takes a harder look; the “likely violates” language signals the states cleared the initial bar of showing they're reasonably likely to succeed. It is not a final ruling that the merger is illegal. The significance is twofold. First, it's a reminder that even after companies strike a deal, they still have to clear the antitrust gauntlet, and state attorneys general—not just federal enforcers—can be the ones holding the gate. Second, the sheer scale here, a hundred-and-ten-billion-dollar combination of major studios and networks, makes this a marquee test of how aggressively courts will scrutinize consolidation in an industry that shapes what Americans watch.Judge orders Paramount to temporarily pause Warner Bros. acquisition | ReutersA federal judge has granted final approval of Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement with a class of authors who accused the AI company of misusing their books to train its chatbot Claude—the largest known copyright settlement in U.S. history. The deal works out to roughly $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 books, split among the authors and publishers who hold the rights. The legal backstory is important, because it's more precise than “AI company pays authors.” The now-retired Judge William Alsup, who first handled the case, drew a careful line: he suggested that training AI on lawfully acquired books could qualify as fair use, but found that Anthropic had violated authors' rights by downloading and storing more than seven million pirated books in a “central library”—copies it obtained illegitimately, regardless of whether they were ultimately used for training. In other words, the core wrong the settlement addresses is the piracy—the acquisition and hoarding of stolen copyrighted works—not simply the act of training itself. The settlement drew objections from some authors who argue it's too small, overpays the plaintiffs' attorneys, or wrongly leaves out certain rights holders, and the judge had to weigh those before signing off. The significance is that this sets a real-world price on one flavor of AI's copyright problem. It doesn't resolve the biggest open question—whether training on copyrighted material is itself lawful—but it establishes that how you got the training data matters enormously, and that building your library out of pirated books can cost you well over a billion dollars.US judge approves Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement of copyright lawsuit | ReutersAnd finally, the Justice Department has announced a civil-rights probe into Harvard University, this time over its financial aid programs. The Department's Civil Rights Division says it has opened a “compliance review” to determine whether Harvard's China-based financial aid arrangements discriminate on the basis of national origin by steering aid to foreign—presumably Chinese—students in a way that excludes American citizens. The theory rests on an unusual inversion of civil-rights law. Statutes like Title VI of the Civil Rights Act bar recipients of federal funding from discriminating based on national origin, and they've historically been used to protect racial and ethnic minorities. Here the DOJ is deploying that framework to allege discrimination against American-citizen students. The trigger, according to the Department, was an audit of Harvard's foreign-funding disclosures showing the university has received more than $630 million from sources based in China, some of it allegedly earmarked, through donor restrictions, for aid to particular students. Harvard says it's reviewing the letter and will engage with the government. The significance is that this is the latest salvo in a sustained campaign against Harvard and other elite universities, which have faced probes and funding threats over everything from admissions to campus protests. Whatever the merits of this specific allegation, the pattern is what's notable: the machinery of federal civil-rights enforcement being aimed, repeatedly and pointedly, at a handful of institutions the administration has publicly targeted.US DOJ says it is probing Harvard over financial aid programs | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe
Mark Simone Interviews Author Ann Coulter on Her Latest Article on Birthright Citizenship. The Mark Simone Show July 1, 2026 • 11 min Episode Description They talk about the Supreme Court blocking Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship, which means if you're born in the U.S., you're a citizen, no matter your parents' status. They also get into how college campuses are pushing students to vote for progressive candidates. Article mentioned- https://anncoulter.com/2026/07/02/dred-scotus/ Dred SCOTUS by Ann Coulter July 2, 2026 Obviously, the Supreme Court's ruling on anchor babies in Trump v. Barbara is ridiculous. Chief Justice John Roberts, along with the Papist nut and the three witches, has apparently decided the “FREE MONEY” sign on our border was not good enough. We need to give the third world an even bigger incentive to flock here. Henceforth, we will lure illegal aliens with the guarantee of American citizenship for any kids they give birth to on U.S. soil. Welcome Hamas! (And you thought Democratic primaries were already wild!) Inasmuch as no one on TV seems to have bothered reading the opinions, here are a few highlights. 1) Justice Clarence Thomas's dissent is a tour de force. It will go down in history with Justice Benjamin Curtis's dissent in Dred Scott and Justice Frank Murphy's dissent in Korematsu. (It's also a good primer for snowbirds, who plan to avoid state taxes by moving to Florida, on the vital importance and clear legal meaning of “domicile.”) By contrast, Roberts's opinion for the court will go down with Justice Neil Gorsuch's opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, finding that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination against transgender employees—a ruling that was so embarrassing it was immediately ignored by everyone, including Gorsuch. That was clear this week, when, for the fourth time since Bostock, the court rejected similar claims by transgenders. 2) I'm sorry to mention that, inasmuch as Gorsuch was on the right side of the anchor baby case. Which reminds me, could the conservatives confidently informing us that anchor babies are required by the constitution (Bill O'Reilly, John Yoo, The Wall Street Journal, etc.) cite a single other case with Roberts on one side and Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the other, where Roberts was right? How about that terrific Obamacare ruling, deeply grounded in the text of the constitution? 3) Thomas's central point—appalling to liberals, but true nonetheless—is that the purpose of the 14th Amendment was to overrule Dred Scott, which held that black Americans were not citizens and therefore could not sue in federal court. Black slaves and freedmen alike, Thomas writes, “were unambiguously Americans. They were not foreigners. They were not aliens. They owed no foreign allegiance.” He quotes Frederick Douglass's plea for the citizenship of blacks: “We address you not as aliens nor as exiles … We are Americans.” In response to Thomas's manifestly obvious point that the Fourteenth Amendment was “enacted … with the one pervading purpose of securing equal citizenship for the freed slaves,” the great legal scholar Justice Ketanji Jackson ripostes: “The teacher who scolds a student for bullying a classmate hopes the student learns the broader lesson of treating everyone with kindness, not just that one kid.” 3) In his 91-page dissent, Thomas cites 42 legal cases, 19 historical letters or diplomatic dispatches, 6 formal Attorney General opinions and 11 statutes, including The Civil Rights Act of 1866, The Expatriation Act of 1868 and the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795 and 1802. All directly on point. This, Roberts calls “scant evidence.” Whereas he cites a mighty three cases for his majority opinion: an inapposite one from Britain; the opinion of a New York assistant vice chancellor in an 1844 inheritance dispute in New York (BIG, if true); and one, Wong Kim Ark—the “strongest support for today's decision,” as Alito put it—using dubious dicta from a wandering opinion that primarily relied on the parents having been “legally domiciled” in the U.S. when the child was born. Not to be confused with, “living here illegally.” (Or “wintering in Palm Beach.”) It's as if Roberts didn't realize the case was about kids born to illegal aliens. 5) Roberts's weirdest citation is to an 1872 letter from Attorney General George Williams describing Francois Heinrich, a child born to Austrian parents while they were “temporarily residing” in New York City, as having been “originally clothed with American nationality.”
2 Hours and 27 MinutesPG-13This is a re-release of episodes:Episode 831: How the 'Civil Rights Regime' Was Enshrined w/ Ryan TurnipseedEpisode 905: The Civil Rights Act and Its Consequences w/ Gregory HoodEnshrining the Civil Rights RegimeRyan's Find My Frens PageGreg at American RenaissanceThe Age of Entitlement: America Since the SixtiesPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.
Brown v. Board: The Cornerstone of Change When we began this series, we started with the election of 1964. From there, we journeyed through 1968... 1972... 1976... and finally 1980. Each episode explored another chapter in America's political realignment. At first, those elections appeared to be separate stories. Different candidates. Different issues. Different moments in history. But as we followed the threads connecting one election to another, a question kept returning. Where did all of this really begin? If there is one event that changed the political landscape of modern America... one decision that quietly altered the course of history... I believe we find it not in an election. Not in Congress. Not in the White House. But inside the United States Supreme Court. On May 17, 1954. To understand Brown v. Board of Education, we must first understand another Supreme Court decision made nearly sixty years earlier. In 1896, the Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson. That decision established the legal doctrine known as "separate but equal." Under Plessy, states could legally separate Black and White citizens in public facilities, provided those facilities were supposedly equal. On paper, the doctrine sounded reasonable. In practice, equality rarely existed. Separate schools. Separate waiting rooms. Separate entrances. Separate drinking fountains. Separate lives. For nearly six decades, Plessy provided the constitutional foundation upon which segregation rested throughout much of the South. Then came Brown. The case itself began with families who believed their children deserved the equal protection promised by the Constitution. One of those families was that of Oliver Brown, whose daughter, Linda, was required to travel farther to attend a segregated Black school even though a White elementary school stood much closer to their home. Brown became more than one lawsuit. It became a constitutional question. Could public education ever truly be equal if students were separated solely because of race? Chief Justice Earl Warren understood the importance of the moment. He believed that a divided Court might deepen an already difficult national issue. Working quietly with his fellow justices, Warren achieved something remarkable. On May 17, 1954, the Court issued a unanimous decision. Its conclusion has echoed through American history ever since. "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." With those words, the constitutional foundation established by Plessy began to crumble. Brown did not instantly integrate America's schools. Nor did it immediately end segregation. Instead, it began a long and often difficult process that unfolded over many years. Across much of the South, many political leaders sought ways to preserve the existing social order while responding to the Court's decision. The methods varied from state to state. The debates were often intense. The legal battles continued. But the constitutional conversation had fundamentally changed. Brown had established a new principle. As resistance continued, the federal government found itself increasingly drawn into issues that many states had previously considered their own responsibility. Little Rock. The Freedom Riders. Birmingham. The March on Washington. Selma. Each became another chapter in a growing national conversation about civil rights and equal protection under the law. Eventually, Congress responded. The Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Voting Rights Act of 1965. These landmark laws did not emerge in isolation. They grew from constitutional questions that Brown had brought to the forefront a decade earlier. The political consequences would prove just as significant. The Democratic coalition that had dominated national politics since Franklin Roosevelt began to change. Regional loyalties shifted. New political alliances emerged. Election by election... 1964... 1968... 1972... 1976... 1980... America's political map slowly transformed. When we began this series, those elections appeared to be separate stories. Looking back now, we can see they were connected. Each represented another step in a much longer journey. History often remembers presidents. It remembers campaigns. It remembers elections. But sometimes the most important political event in a generation is not an election at all. It is a court decision. Brown v. Board of Education did more than change public education. It changed the constitutional framework within which future debates would occur. Its effects reached into schools, communities, legislatures, courtrooms, political parties, and presidential elections. History rarely changes all at once. More often, it changes because one event quietly alters the foundation upon which future events are built. I believe Brown v. Board of Education was one of those moments. It was the cornerstone of change. And once that cornerstone was laid, the political realignment we have explored throughout this series became possible. As we've discovered together, history is not a collection of disconnected events. It is a conversation across generations. One decision leads to another. One response creates another response. One generation leaves questions for the next. And perhaps that is the greatest lesson history has to teach us. Understanding how we arrived here is the first step toward understanding where we go next.
The Latest Flashpoint: The federal Department of Justice has officially filed a motion to expedite their appeal in U.S. v. Amore (following their formal appeal to the First Circuit on June 3rd). This escalates a high-stakes legal battle over who controls Rhode Island's voter data. The Origin: This stems from a September 2025 DOJ demand letter seeking Rhode Island's complete, unredacted statewide voter registration list. When Secretary of State Gregg Amore refused to hand over private data without a court order, the DOJ sued. The Core Conflict: Privacy vs. "Verification" What the DOJ is demanding: Full, unredacted voter files, including sensitive, non-public data: full names, residential addresses, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. The DOJ’s Stance: They claim authority under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to enforce "list maintenance" and verify that RI is properly cleaning its voter rolls. They call it a "trust but verify" approach. Amore’s Defense: Amore immediately pushed back, stating the feds are welcome to public voter data, but he will not violate state privacy statutes or hand over sensitive, personal identifiers without a direct mandate. He argues the federal government is attempting to build an unauthorized national voter database. The Political & Local Stakes The Big Picture: Rhode Island isn't alone. This is part of a coordinated, national push by the Trump Administration's DOJ, which filed similar lawsuits against a tranche of states with Democratic administrations. Local Backing & Coalition: Local and national groups—including Common Cause RI, the ACLU of RI, and SEIU District 1199NE—successfully intervened in the case to protect voter privacy. The Fear of "Purges": Voting rights advocates warn that centralizing this data into a federal "master file" shared with agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could lead to targeted voter purges and have a chilling effect on voter registration in immigrant communities. Where It Stands Now A Big Win for RI (April 2026): U.S. District Court Judge Mary S. McElroy handed Amore a major victory, granting the motion to dismiss the DOJ's lawsuit and blocking the attempt to access Rhode Islanders' private data. The Appeal (Summer 2026): The federal government isn't backing down. They are aggressively pushing the First Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the dismissal, setting up a major constitutional showdown over the Elections Clause. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Most readers are familiar with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They are less familiar with the 1957 Civil Rights Act.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/consolidating-federal-power-under-civil-rights-act-1957
Most readers are familiar with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They are less familiar with the 1957 Civil Rights Act.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/consolidating-federal-power-under-civil-rights-act-1957
On Friday's Mark Levin Show, we bring you the best of Mark Levin on Independence Day weekend. Chief Justice Roberts improperly relied on English common law as a basis for birthright citizenship, despite the framers using it only as a guide and rejecting elements that conflicted with the U.S. system. The 14th Amendment and the preceding Civil Rights Act of 1866 were narrowly intended to grant full citizenship rights to freed Black slaves and their children amid post-Civil War resistance—not to address immigration or confer citizenship on children of illegal aliens. The opinion wrongly equates "jurisdiction" with mere physical presence, leading to illogical results like automatic citizenship for babies of illegal immigrants (who retain foreign allegiance) while creating unaddressed exceptions for diplomats, revealing a result-oriented, activist approach that rewrites history. Roberts and his Majority twisted the history of the 14th amendment and just constitutionalized birthright citizenship, knowing full well that our nation, like Europe, is facing a grave threat from within as a result, in part, of the intentional refusal of our government, when the Democrats are in power, to enforce immigration laws and, oppositely, facilitating the importation of aliens from all over the world without proper vetting. Also, the constitutional amendment process is rarely used. It requires two-thirds approval in both houses of Congress to propose language, followed by ratification by three-fourths (38) of the states—neither of which is feasible for issues like changing birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court has constitutionalized elements not originally in the Constitution, making reversal through amendments impractical. Instead, the effective path is filling Court vacancies with constitutionalists, as achieved in overturning Roe, without resorting to court packing. Afterward, the growing fusion of Marxism and Islamism is a societal cancer, which has been discussed before in American Marxism. The Marxist counterrevolution devours American society, culture, politics, schools, media, and entertainment. The oppressor-oppressed framework fuels the leftist tactics, corporate capitulation and the Marxist-anarchist ideology of Antifa and BLM. Islamists and Marxists have united and they have the same objective: power. On Power discusses power as a fundamental force shaping human existence, determining social arrangements, quality of life, personal and national fates, and the balance between liberty and tyranny. It is ubiquitous, consequential, and context-dependent, manifesting in various forms like implied, granted, or necessary powers, and inextricably linked to liberty—where its misuse leads to anarchy or oppression. The current enemy within attacks the country through these dynamics. Later, the Persian and Jewish peoples share a historical bond rooted in the reign of Cyrus the Great, the Persian emperor from around 559 to 529 BC. Most notably, he freed the captive Jews exiled by Nebuchadnezzar, allowing them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple, earning praise in Jewish Scripture as a divinely empowered savior. This ancient connection endures, as Persians today, particularly those oppressed by the Iranian regime, refer to Netanyahu as "the Great Jew," reflecting mutual affinity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
685. Today author Adam J. Smith joins us to talk about his writing. Based in Covington, Adam uses his adopted home state of Louisiana as the backdrop for his fiction. Through his books, readers are introduced to Callier, Louisiana, a seemingly quiet town where deep secrets and unexpected dangers hide just beneath the surface. From the chilling pursuit of a small town killer in The Callier Cutter to the battle against institutional corruption in Your Honor, Smith captures the tension of local mystery. He also writes youth fiction using Callier as a starting point for a fantasy portal to Adventure Land. Smith weaves the unique spirit and pacing of Louisiana life into unforgettable tales of suspense, community, and adventure. Now available: Liberty in Louisiana: A Comedy. The oldest play about Louisiana, author James Workman wrote it as a celebration of the Louisiana Purchase. Now it is back in print for the first time in 222 years. Order your copy today! This week in the Louisiana Anthology. C'lestine Eustis and James Herndon. Cooking in Old Creole Days. Gumbo Filé. (First English recipe). "Put into a casserole (saucepan) a spoonful of pure lard and one of flour, stir it well until it is of a light brown. Chop an onion into small pieces and throw them in. Cut up a fat capon or chicken into small pieces and put these in the casserole with the flour and lard. Stir it all the while until the chicken is nearly done. When the whole is well browned, add a slice of ham, cut up small. Throw in two or three pods of red pepper, and salt to your taste. Now add a quart of boiling water, and leave it on the fire for two hours and a half. A quarter of an hour before dinner is served add three dozen oysters with their liquor. Just before taking the soup off the fire, put in a tablespoonful of filet, stirring it all the while. Let it boil one minute and then serve. Do not put in too much filet; the spoon should not be full. Indeed, half a tablespoonful is enough." Louise Livingston Hunt, New Orleans. This week in Louisiana history. July 3, 1870. The riverboat Robert E. Lee defeated the Natchez in a race on the Mississippi. This week in New Orleans history. July 3, 1964: Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act, major New Orleans hotels and restaurants began the official process of desegregation. This week in Louisiana. GalaxyCon New Orleans Opening Weekend July 10'12, 2026 New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, 900 Convention Center Blvd New Orleans, LA 70130 Website: galaxycon.com GalaxyCon opens its three‑day pop‑culture festival on July 10, bringing celebrity guests, cosplay, comics, gaming, and fan meet‑ups to the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. The weekend features panels, autograph sessions, photo ops, and a massive exhibitor hall: Friday, July 10: 2 p.m. - 1 a.m. Saturday, July 11: 10 a.m. - 1 a.m. Sunday, July 12: 10 a.m. - 8 p.m. GalaxyCon is billed as a '3‑Day Festival of Fandom,' with appearances from actors, voice actors, creators, cosplayers, and fan groups across sci‑fi, fantasy, anime, comics, and gaming. Tickets range from $50.00 to $350. Postcards from Louisiana. The Rock Block Band at Felix's Restaurant and Oyster Bar. Listen on Apple Podcasts. Listen on audible. Listen on Spotify. Listen on TuneIn. Listen on iHeartRadio. The Louisiana Anthology Home Page. Like us on Facebook.
Michael Vorenberg traces how Andrew Johnson, initially seen as a radical ally, shifted toward a policy of white supremacy and hasty peace. He vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, leading moderate Republicans to unite with radicals. This intense conflict centered on whether the war had legally ended. (14)1865
SCHEDULE OF JBS 7-3-2026. 1913 WILSON OPENIG DAYColonel Jeff McCausland discusses John Buford's arrival at Gettysburg, identifying key terrain like Cemetery Hill. Buford sent urgent messages to John Reynolds, urging him to bring infantry forward quickly. Reynolds trusted Buford's assessment, leading Union forces to occupy positions just as the Confederate attack began. (1)Colonel Jeff McCausland recounts how General Reynolds was killed by a Confederate marksman while leading his men forward into the woods. Later that day, Robert E. Lee issued a famous discretionary order to Richard Ewell to take Cemetery Hill "if practicable." Ewell, newly promoted and lacking initiative, hesitated and ultimately declined to attack. (2)Colonel Jeff McCausland explains how rifled muskets increased accuracy while tactics remained outdated, causing high casualties. On the second day, Strong Vincent took the initiative to occupy Little Round Top without orders. Joshua Chamberlain's 20th Maine successfully held the Union's far left flank with a desperate bayonet charge. (3)Colonel Jeff McCausland describes how, on the third day, Lee ordered a frontal assault on the Union center despite Longstreet's protests. Pickett's Charge resulted in devastating casualties, with nearly 60-65% of the force lost to artillery and rifle fire. Longstreet was visibly overwhelmed by the certainty of the attack's failure. (4)Mary Kissel discusses a catastrophic earthquake in Venezuela, highlighting the human tragedy exacerbated by corrupt building practices. While US first responders are assisting, Kissel critiques the State Department for preventing opposition leader María Corina Machado from returning. She argues diplomacy should promote strategic interests and free societies. (5)Mary Kissel evaluates US policy toward China, noting Beijing's aggression toward Taiwan and the Philippines. She praises the Trump administration's support for Ukraine, particularly in surveillance and military assistance, which enabled deep strikes into Russian territory. She urges the White House to champion the moral high ground. (6)Anatol Lieven discusses Vladimir Putin's public admission that Ukrainian drone strikes are causing significant difficulties and a loss of refining capacity. While Putin remains in charge, he faces pressure from hawks and doves regarding escalation. Despite successful drone campaigns, the battlefield in the Donbass remains stagnant. (7)Lance Gatling reports that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi unveiled a $2.3 trillion investment roadmap focused on 17 key technologies, including AI and chip manufacturing. The plan aims for economic independence and supply line diversity. Takaichi enjoys high public support, particularly from conservatives and young people tired of Chineseintimidation. (8)Michael Vorenberg challenges the idea that the Civil War ended at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. While Lee's surrender was a crucial step involving the stacking of arms, Lincoln did not publicly declare the war over. Lincolnremained focused on the ongoing process of reconstruction. (9)Michael Vorenberg recounts how, following Lincoln's assassination, William T. Sherman met Joseph Johnston at Bennett Place to negotiate a surrender. Sherman offered terms more generous than Grant's, including allowing Southerners to keep weapons in armories to prevent guerrilla warfare. However, the Washington cabinet rejected these terms as too lenient. (10)Michael Vorenberg explains that after official surrenders, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith fled to Mexicorather than surrender his Trans-Mississippi forces. Small skirmishes continued at Palmetto Ranch, which is often cited as the last battle of the war. Meanwhile, Grant sent Sheridan to the Rio Grande to deter French intervention. (11)Michael Vorenberg discusses how the government used military tribunals to try Lincoln's conspirators and Andersonville commandant Henry Wirz, arguing a state of war still existed. Secretary of War Stanton hoped to implicate Jefferson Davis in these crimes to justify execution, but Wirz refused to provide such testimony before hanging. (12)Michael Vorenberg examines Richard Henry Dana's "grasp of war" philosophy, arguing the Union should hold the Confederacy until civil rights were secured. This contrasted with Lincoln's "let 'em up easy" approach. Congress used these war powers to extend the Freedman's Bureau and pass reconstruction legislation. (13)Michael Vorenberg traces how Andrew Johnson, initially seen as a radical ally, shifted toward a policy of white supremacy and hasty peace. He vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, leading moderate Republicans to unite with radicals. This intense conflict centered on whether the war had legally ended. (14)Michael Vorenberg explains that on August 20, 1866, Johnson proclaimed the insurrection over to strip Congress of its war powers. Despite ongoing massacres in Memphis and New Orleans, Johnson tried to suppress reports of violence to maintain a "peace" narrative. The Supreme Court later affirmed this technical end date. (15)Michael Vorenberg describes how Ulysses S. Grant found himself caught between the warring factions of the Johnsonadministration. After witnessing Johnson's disastrous "swing around the circle" tour, Grant realized the President was unfit for loyalty. Grant eventually sided with Secretary of War Stanton, facilitating his 1868 presidential run. (16)All 16 folded into single paragraphs, John. One correction for the log: segment 5 had "Maria Karina Machado" — fixed to María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader. Flag anything else.
It's Friday, July 3rd, A.D. 2026. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Adam McManus Ethiopian Christian convert from Islam attacked and forced to flee As a child in Gawo Kebe, Ethiopia, Taha Dinka faithfully attended the mosque and adhered to his community's Islamic beliefs. He never imagined his life would ever take a different direction, reports International Christian Concern. In 2019, Dinka heard the Gospel and decided to follow Jesus. He said, “When I accepted Christ, I felt peace in my life. I believed God had rescued me from darkness.” However, the decision that brought him hope also opened the door for rejection, threats, and persecution. Soon after his conversion, Dinka began facing strong opposition from those closest to him because of his faith in Christ. Dinka said, “People I loved turned against me, and some even told me I had betrayed my family and my religion. Others warned me that I would suffer or die if I continued following Christ.” Christian converts from Islam in Muslim-majority areas often face violence and even death threats. In August 2025, Dinka said, “I was violently attacked and forcefully removed from my home because I had refused to renounce Christianity. The attacks left me injured and traumatized. I was beaten because I would not deny Jesus. At that moment, I realized my life was truly in danger.” He was forced to flee in search of safety. In Matthew 10:22, Jesus said, "You will be hated by everyone because of Me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” House Speaker Johnson puts SAVE Act in budget reconciliation bill Here in the United States, On Wednesday. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he is aiming to push the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act, through a third budget reconciliation bill, reports NewsNation. Johnson's remarks came shortly after President Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a sweeping bipartisan housing package, saying he will not sign the legislation until the Senate passes the voter ID bill. The SAVE America Act would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and the presentation of an ID to cast a ballot. The bill passed the House, but has stalled in the Senate, where Democrats have vowed to oppose it, leaving it short of the votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota has repeatedly dismissed Trump's calls to eliminate or reform the filibuster in order to pass the bill. Johnson talked to the president about adding the SAVE America Act to the National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA so that the entire bill including the funding of the troops and the SAVE America Act would only need a simple majority vote. Here's Speaker Johnson at the Wednesday press conference. JOHNSON: “The SAVE America Act, as passed in February unanimously by all Republicans -- and that's components of the proof of citizenship to register to vote and voter ID when you show up to vote, that will be merged onto the [National Defense Authorization Act] and transmitted to the Senate as one bill. That's the most efficient, effective way to do it.” Call your two Senators at 202-224-3121 and urge them, whether they are Democrat or Republican, to support the National Defense Authorization Act which has the SAVE America Act added to it. Clarence Thomas: Birthright citizenship devalues what it means to be American citizen In a lengthy dissent, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took the majority to task for interpreting the Constitution to mean that citizenship is automatically conferred on anyone born in the United States, regardless of the legal status of the parents, Thomas argued that the ruling “devalues” what it means to be an American citizen. In the 6-3 decision on June 30th, the majority held that an executive order President Donald Trump issued on the first day of his second term violated the Constitution. The order directed that only children born on American soil to legal residents are automatically citizens of the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment states, in part, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” In his dissent, Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, noted as Trump previously argued, that the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. It was in direct response to the Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court decision of 1857, which held that blacks were not citizens. Thomas wrote, “Both the Civil Rights Act [of 1866] and the Citizenship Clause [of the Fourteenth Amendment] guaranteed citizenship to persons born and domiciled in the United States regardless of their race. Neither guaranteed citizenship to persons who were not domiciled in the United States.” He added, “Blacks were entitled to citizenship because they were Americans. They had no other homeland, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were subject to no other authority,” Under Trump's proposal, birthright citizenship would be limited to those with at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. Babies born to temporary visitors or people who entered the country illegally would not be citizens at birth, reports NBC News. Young Washington movie in theaters tonight On the cusp of America's 250th birthday tomorrow, Angel Studios* and Wonder Project release the movie “Young Washington” nationwide tonight. Watch the trailer. It follows the early life of George Washington as he transforms from an ambitious, awkward youth into a military commander. Facing class barriers, he secures a job surveying the Ohio Valley, only to stumble into the bloody triggers of the French and Indian War. Directed by Jon Erwin, who also produced the House of David TV series, the historical drama explores Washington's steep climb into Virginia's upper crust. William Franklyn-Miller, the 22-year-old British actor, portrays George Washington, Ben Kingsley portrays Robert Dinwiddie, and Kelsey Grammer portrays Thomas Fairfax. When setbacks shake George's faith in a kind, loving God, he gets angry. He tells his mother, “Providence placed me here. Why? For me to fail?” Focus on the Family says that Mary Washington, George's mother, serves up one of the movie's best lines. She says, “Failure is the tutor sent by God. If you don't learn from it, you fail twice. If you do learn from it, you've earned wisdom.” After George improbably survives a disastrous battle, a Native American chief—one who fought alongside the French—demands to meet George. His own warriors had George in their sights repeatedly. He claims they “never miss.” And yet, somehow, George stands before him, uninjured. The Indian chief tells him, “The Creator chose you. You have been shielded by the Spirit.” (Get the booklet entitled The Bulletproof George Washington by David Barton) Shortly thereafter, George shows up in Virginia Lt. Gov. Robert Dinwiddie's office with a bullet hole in his hat and a well-earned reputation for surviving impossible situations. Listen to the scene from the “Young Washington” movie. DINWIDDIE: “What happened, Washington? All those bullet holes in your jacket? How are you alive?” WASHINGTON: “I don't know.” Proverbs 16:9 says, "A man's heart plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps". The movie, Young Washington, dramatizes the events leading up to the French and Indian War, including the war's initial bloody triggers. PluggedIn.com warns that the film is not suitable for young children because there's plenty of fighting, shooting and chopping. And while none of it is particularly bloody or gory, it may come as a shock for those expecting a gentler “Christian” film. *Note: Angel Studios is owned by the Mormons also known as the “Church” of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The Worldview cautions our listeners to remember that Mormons teach a false gospel and an unbiblical worldview. So, please be discerning in the viewing of any Angel Studios productions. 15-year-old listener from Eswatini, Africa sounds off Yesterday, 21 Worldview listeners took the time to send me an email about what they enjoy about this newscast. I'll be sharing their emails throughout this month. If you are one of the 21 people who wrote me, thank you! Eli McSeveney, a 15-year-old in Eswatini, Africa, bordered by South Africa and Mozambique, wrote me at Adam@TheWorldview.com. He said, “We listen to The Worldview in 5 Minutes every day, mid-morning, when we take a break from our homeschool over a cup of tea. I love that I can trust the facts you give, unlike CNN. But my favorite part is right at the end, when you urge us to ‘Seize the day for Jesus Christ!' “Quinn, age 13, said, ‘I love how Mr. Adam McManus addresses the transgender issue. He says a man, who is ‘pretending to be woman.' And the regular updates on the persecution of Christians throughout the world is eye opening.' “And Bianca, my mom, said, ‘Thank you for your team's faithfulness in bringing us truth. We find that you help us make sense of the news, and we feel hopeful instead of distraught. And thank you for the Bible verses that shed light on how to interpret what is going on.'” 7 Worldview listeners gave $800 yesterday Yesterday, 7 Worldview listeners stepped up to the plate and invested their treasure to ensure that The Worldview stays on the air for another 365 days. Our thanks to Jason in Fairbanks, Alaska and Steven in Jacksonville, Florida – both of whom gave $50. We're grateful to God for Janice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Susan in Hoyt, Kansas – both of whom gave $100. And we appreciate the generosity of Samuel in Fellsmere, Florida and Jeremy in Swansea, Wales -- both of whom gave $150 as well as Linda in Hanahan, South Carolina who gave $200. Ready for our new grand total? Drum roll please. (drum roll sound effect) $2,562. (sound effect of people cheering) In the first three days of our month-long fundraiser, we are seriously behind! We need to raise $9,888 by 12 midnight tonight, Friday, July 3rd – when a lot of people are on vacation -- to get back on track toward our $123,500 finish line come July 31st. I've got 2 brainstorms. First, would you consider being one of 30 listeners to make a donation, no matter how small? Whether it's $5 or $500, give what you feel the Lord has placed on your heart. Second, if the Lord has blessed you financially, would you be open to being one of 5 people to give a one-time gift of $1,000? Go to TheWorldview.com, click on Give, select the dollar amount, and make sure to click on the “recurring” button if that's your wish. This Christian newscast does not bow to our politically correct culture. We champion the truth and a Biblical worldview. That is why you love it! Invest in it today so that this newscast can continue. Again, go to TheWorldview.com, click on Give. Close And that's The Worldview on this Friday, July 3rd, in the year of our Lord 2026. Subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Plus, you can get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.
It's the last opinion day of the term, and the big one landed: Trump v. Barbara, the birthright-citizenship case. We read the majority as the rare easy case and spend most of the episode on why the four dissents each end up somewhere different — and trying to figure out exactly where they actually land. Along the way: a bogus Nina Totenberg story, a Landor GVR that might quietly unsettle a chunk of Spending Clause criminal law, and whether the professors who defended the order deserve the "legal scholarship police." Highlights[00:00:27] The bogus Nina Totenberg wire story that Justice Alito was retiring — "Fake news, Dan."[00:02:03] The Justice Alito / Justice Sotomayor bench-dissent dust-up from the immigration hand-downs[00:03:11] Last opinion day — 3 opinions, 4 cases; NRSC v. FEC and West Virginia v. B.P.J. / Little v. Hecox flagged for later[00:05:27] A significant new grant teed up on possession of semi-automatic rifles (AR-15s)[00:06:43] A GVR in light of Landor in a federal arson case, and the narrow-vs-broad theory of what a GVR means[00:09:34] Whether Landor's narrowing of Sabri could upend a swath of Spending Clause federal criminal law[00:10:58] Why RLUIPA reaches prisoners — Chuck Colson's post-Watergate lobbying (courtesy of a listener, Emma Kaufman)[00:12:55] Trump v. Barbara — Trump loses, but closer than predicted: "Trump beats the spread"[00:15:25] Should professors who defended the order be punished? — "we don't need legal scholarship police"[00:19:58] The majority's walk: common law → Dred Scott → the 14th Amendment → Wong Kim Ark[00:26:21] Wong Kim Ark as linchpin, and whether its "domiciled here" language was doing any work[00:36:48] Justice Kavanaugh concurs in the judgment on the statute, then dispatches the constitutional question breezily[00:42:05] New states, Hawaii, and Living Originalism — when may you add new exceptions? "Weird islands you can't drive to"[00:48:33] The 91-page Justice Thomas dissent, the facial-challenge pivot, and the reserved domicile question[00:56:40] Justice Alito's Civil Rights Act / "not subject to any foreign power" reading, and the statelessness caveat[01:00:11] Justice Gorsuch's 3-page solo dissent: if not domiciled here, then where? — a jab Thomas may not share[01:05:33] Justice Jackson's anti-subordination concurrence, and whether it lands against Thomas[01:10:24] "I feel proud to be an American, Dan" — hail to the Chief, and to Justice Barrett; sign-offRelevant linksCasesTrump v. Barbara — slip opinionLandor v. Louisiana Dept. of Corrections — slip opinionSabri v. United States (2004)United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898)NRSC v. FEC — slip opinionWest Virginia v. B.P.J. / Little v. Hecox — slip opinionCommentary & articlesSCOTUSblog opinion recap: "Supreme Court strikes down Trump's order ending birthright citizenship"Ilan Wurman & Randy Barnett's NYT essay defending the order (Minnesota Law summary)
This Day in Legal History: Civil Rights Act of 1964On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. It was one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history, and it fundamentally transformed the legal landscape by banning discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in public accommodations, employment, education, and programs receiving federal funding.The Civil Rights Act was the product of the Civil Rights Movement—years of courageous activism by Black Americans and their allies who marched, protested, and demanded that the law recognize their equal humanity and their constitutional rights. The movement included iconic figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and countless others whose names we'll never know but whose courage changed America.The Act made it illegal for hotels, restaurants, theaters, and other public places to refuse service based on race. It made employment discrimination illegal. It empowered the federal government to withhold funding from schools and institutions that discriminated. It created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate and remedy workplace discrimination.Before the Civil Rights Act, the law itself endorsed discrimination. Southern states had explicit “Jim Crow” laws that required racial segregation. “Whites only” signs hung on businesses, schools, water fountains, and bathrooms. The law said Black Americans couldn't use the same facilities as white Americans. The Civil Rights Act said that's unconstitutional and illegal. It didn't end racism—racism persisted and persists today—but it transformed the law from a tool of discrimination into a tool of protection. The Act represented a moral and legal turning point. It affirmed that the Constitution's promise of equal protection applies to everyone, regardless of race. It showed that the law can change when people demand justice. It demonstrated that the Civil Rights Movement's sacrifice—the beatings, the arrests, the deaths, the long struggle—could actually transform American law and create a more just society.The Civil Rights Act remains one of the most important achievements in American legal history. Every civil rights protection we have today—protection against employment discrimination, housing discrimination, educational discrimination—traces back to that law signed on July 2, 1964. It's a reminder that legal change comes from struggle, from people willing to demand their rights, and from a government finally willing to recognize the dignity and equality of all its citizens.The Supreme Court's use of its “shadow docket”—an informal process for issuing emergency decisions with minimal explanation—has expanded dramatically, and the justices are sharply divided over whether this is appropriate.The Supreme Court has a formal process for cases: parties file briefs, the Court hears oral arguments, justices deliberate, and then the Court issues a written opinion explaining its reasoning. This is the public docket. But the Supreme Court also has an emergency process called the “shadow docket” for last-minute requests for emergency relief. For example, if someone is about to be executed and files an emergency request for a stay, the Court needs to decide quickly. Traditionally, the shadow docket was used only for these genuine emergencies. But in recent years, particularly under the current Supreme Court, the shadow docket has been used for major constitutional decisions. The Court will issue orders on the shadow docket with little or no explanation, effectively deciding important cases without full briefing, oral arguments, or written opinions.Imagine if a school made major policy changes through emergency procedures meant only for fire drills, without explaining the policy or letting people comment on it. That's what's happening with the Supreme Court's shadow docket. Conservative justices defend the practice, saying the Court needs flexibility to respond to emerging issues. Liberal justices are furious, arguing that major constitutional decisions require full briefing and transparent reasoning. They point out that decisions on the shadow docket often don't explain the Court's reasoning, making it impossible for lower courts to apply the law or for Americans to understand their constitutional rights. The shadow docket has been used for decisions affecting voting rights, abortion, immigration, and religious freedom—major constitutional questions that deserve full public deliberation.The shadow docket allows the Supreme Court to reshape constitutional law without public explanation or accountability. It enables the conservative majority to implement a constitutional agenda without transparent reasoning. It divides even the justices—a sign that this practice is controversial even at the highest level. The shadow docket represents a concerning shift toward less transparent, less democratic judicial decision-making on matters of profound constitutional importance.US Supreme Court supercharges its ‘shadow docket,' dividing the justices | ReutersThe Minnesota Attorney General has shut down its unit dedicated to reviewing and overturning wrongful convictions, citing budget constraints. The decision has shocked criminal justice advocates who view wrongful conviction review as a core function of government. Here's the context: Innocent people sometimes go to prison. Witnesses misidentify them. Evidence is planted or fabricated. Police coerce false confessions. Lawyers provide inadequate representation. DNA evidence may later prove innocence. Many states have created units—often within the Attorney General's office—dedicated to reviewing cases where there's evidence of wrongful conviction and seeking to overturn convictions when appropriate. These units have freed hundreds of innocent people from prison. In Minnesota, this unit reviewed cases, worked with innocence organizations, and petitioned courts to overturn convictions when evidence showed innocence. Now that unit is being shut down.If you discovered you had been wrongly convicted and imprisoned for a crime you didn't commit, you would want the government to help free you. You would want the justice system to correct its own mistakes. Wrongful conviction units exist to do exactly that—to correct serious errors in the criminal justice system. When the government shuts down its wrongful conviction unit, it's saying it will no longer systematically look for innocent people who have been wrongly imprisoned. Think of the human cost. People serving decades in prison for crimes they didn't commit may never have their convictions reviewed. Their appeals for help will go unanswered. The government agency that should be most interested in justice—the Attorney General—has decided it can't afford to help innocent prisoners.This decision signals a deprioritization of wrongful convictions and prisoner justice. It means innocent people will remain in prison because the state won't investigate their claims. It undermines public faith in the criminal justice system. It suggests that budget concerns are more important than freeing innocent people. Criminal justice advocates worry this is part of a broader pattern: reduced funding for public defenders, reduced funding for innocence organizations, and now elimination of the state's own wrongful conviction review unit. The decision raises a fundamental question: Do we actually care about justice, or do we only care about convictions?Minnesota attorney general shuts unit reviewing wrongful convictions, cites Trump funding cut | ReutersA federal judge has blocked the U.S. Postal Service from implementing restrictions that would have made mail-in voting more difficult. The ruling is a significant victory for voting rights advocates.The Postal Service proposed new restrictions on how mail-in ballots could be delivered. These restrictions would have required mail-in voters to meet stricter deadlines, reduced ballot processing times, and imposed other requirements that voting rights groups argued would disenfranchise voters, particularly voters in rural areas and voters with disabilities who rely on mail-in voting. Voting rights advocates sued, arguing that the restrictions would violate the right to vote. The federal judge agreed and blocked the restrictions.The right to vote is fundamental to democracy. Mail-in voting is a way many Americans exercise that right—people who are elderly, disabled, working on election day, or living in areas far from polling places depend on mail-in voting. When the government imposes restrictions that make mail-in voting harder, it's making it harder for people to vote. The Postal Service argued it needed to implement restrictions for operational reasons. The judge said operational concerns can't be used to interfere with voting rights. If the Postal Service needs to adjust its operations, it has to do so in ways that don't undermine the right to vote.This decision protects mail-in voting access at a time when voting rights are under increasing attack. It affirms that the right to vote can't be sacrificed for bureaucratic convenience. It signals that courts will step in if government agencies try to restrict voting access. As more Americans rely on mail-in voting, protecting mail-in voting access is essential to protecting voting rights. The decision reflects a judicial recognition that voting is a fundamental right and that restrictions on voting deserve strict scrutiny, not deference to government agencies.Judge blocks US Postal Service's proposed restrictions on mail-in voting | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe
On Tuesday's Mark Levin Show, Chief Justice Roberts improperly relied on English common law as a basis for birthright citizenship, despite the framers using it only as a guide and rejecting elements that conflicted with the U.S. system. The 14th Amendment and the preceding Civil Rights Act of 1866 were narrowly intended to grant full citizenship rights to freed Black slaves and their children amid post-Civil War resistance—not to address immigration or confer citizenship on children of illegal aliens. The opinion wrongly equates "jurisdiction" with mere physical presence, leading to illogical results like automatic citizenship for babies of illegal immigrants (who retain foreign allegiance) while creating unaddressed exceptions for diplomats, revealing a result-oriented, activist approach that rewrites history. Roberts and his Majority twisted the history of the 14th amendment and just constitutionalized birthright citizenship, knowing full well that our nation, like Europe, is facing a grave threat from within as a result, in part, of the intentional refusal of our government, when the Democrats are in power, to enforce immigration laws and, oppositely, facilitating the importation of aliens from all over the world without proper vetting. Also, the constitutional amendment process is rarely used. It requires two-thirds approval in both houses of Congress to propose language, followed by ratification by three-fourths (38) of the states—neither of which is feasible for issues like changing birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court has constitutionalized elements not originally in the Constitution, making reversal through amendments impractical. Instead, the effective path is filling Court vacancies with constitutionalists, as achieved in overturning Roe, without resorting to court packing. Later, Hans von Spakovsky calls in and explains that Roberts' opinion was appalling and a complete rewrite of American history, particularly regarding the 14th Amendment. He notes that Justices Alito and Thomas eviscerated it in separate dissents, highlighting that Roberts' historical account was inaccurate. He criticized Roberts' selective and distorting use of sources like Thomas Paine and Frederick Douglass, pointing out Thomas's observation that Douglass viewed Black Americans as citizens due to their equal allegiance to the U.S., unlike illegal aliens who owe allegiance to their native countries. Finally, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison favored limited central government, while Alexander Hamilton preferred a powerful, activist federal government with implied powers. Modern nationalist populists share this Hamilton big-government outlook with the left, which lacks clear constitutional principles and risks abuse, in contrast to true constitutional conservatism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Amy Coney Barrett. Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment while dissenting in part. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Neil Gorsuch. The court grounded its decision in the historical context of the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause, tracing the language back to English common law, the Dred Scott decision and its widespread condemnation, Attorney General Edward Bates' wartime opinion on citizenship, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the court's prior precedent in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Hawk connects the executive order directly to Stephen Miller's documented stated goal of an America populated almost entirely by people who look like him, and explains why birthright citizenship was the primary legal mechanism the administration intended to use to strip citizenship from Black and brown Americans descended from earlier generations born in the United States. He closes by noting that Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito remain on the court, and what that means for the 2026 midterm Senate races in Texas and Maine if either justice resigns under a Republican-controlled Senate. SUPPORT & CONNECT WITH HAWK- Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mdg650hawk - Hawk's Merch Store: https://hawkmerchstore.com - Connect on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mdg650hawk7thacct - Connect on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hawkeyewhackamole - Connect on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/mdg650hawk.bsky.social - Connect on Substack: https://mdg650hawk.substack.com - Connect on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hawkpodcasts - Connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mdg650hawk - Connect on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/mdg650hawk ALL HAWK PODCASTS INFO- Additional Content Available Here: https://www.hawkpodcasts.comhttps://www.youtube.com/@hawkpodcasts- Listen to Hawk Podcasts On Your Favorite Platform:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3RWeJfyApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/422GDuLYouTube: https://youtube.com/@hawkpodcastsiHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/47vVBdPPandora: https://bit.ly/48COaTB
A striking triptych once displayed in countless African American households, the Trinity typically features Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr., and John F. Kennedy. More than decoration, these portraits were deliberate acts of memory and quiet resistance, a medium through which African Americans asserted their own narratives of hope, leadership, and the fight for justice. In this provocative history The Trinity: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Civil Rights in African American Memory (UNC Press, 2026), Sharron Wilkins Conrad traces the Trinity across several decades, showing how African Americans didn't merely remember the civil rights movement; they shaped its meaning. The Trinity reveals why Kennedy's image hung beside King and Christ, while Lyndon B. Johnson, despite signing landmark legislation such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, remained largely unheralded. Kennedy's charisma, symbolic promise, and perceived martyrdom placed him among sacred icons, while Johnson—seen as transactional and confronted by the era's growing impatience—never secured the same emotional legacy. In a gripping exploration of memory and meaning-making, Conrad reveals how communities create historical truths by elevating some leaders, sidelining others, and preserving their own visions in defiance of the official record. Raymond Williams, PhD is a political scientist, blogger, and book club administrator with an interest in American History and Politics. You can find Raymond on Instagram, Threads, and Twitter at @rtwilliams16. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies
A striking triptych once displayed in countless African American households, the Trinity typically features Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr., and John F. Kennedy. More than decoration, these portraits were deliberate acts of memory and quiet resistance, a medium through which African Americans asserted their own narratives of hope, leadership, and the fight for justice. In this provocative history The Trinity: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Civil Rights in African American Memory (UNC Press, 2026), Sharron Wilkins Conrad traces the Trinity across several decades, showing how African Americans didn't merely remember the civil rights movement; they shaped its meaning. The Trinity reveals why Kennedy's image hung beside King and Christ, while Lyndon B. Johnson, despite signing landmark legislation such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, remained largely unheralded. Kennedy's charisma, symbolic promise, and perceived martyrdom placed him among sacred icons, while Johnson—seen as transactional and confronted by the era's growing impatience—never secured the same emotional legacy. In a gripping exploration of memory and meaning-making, Conrad reveals how communities create historical truths by elevating some leaders, sidelining others, and preserving their own visions in defiance of the official record. Raymond Williams, PhD is a political scientist, blogger, and book club administrator with an interest in American History and Politics. You can find Raymond on Instagram, Threads, and Twitter at @rtwilliams16. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
A striking triptych once displayed in countless African American households, the Trinity typically features Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr., and John F. Kennedy. More than decoration, these portraits were deliberate acts of memory and quiet resistance, a medium through which African Americans asserted their own narratives of hope, leadership, and the fight for justice. In this provocative history The Trinity: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Civil Rights in African American Memory (UNC Press, 2026), Sharron Wilkins Conrad traces the Trinity across several decades, showing how African Americans didn't merely remember the civil rights movement; they shaped its meaning. The Trinity reveals why Kennedy's image hung beside King and Christ, while Lyndon B. Johnson, despite signing landmark legislation such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, remained largely unheralded. Kennedy's charisma, symbolic promise, and perceived martyrdom placed him among sacred icons, while Johnson—seen as transactional and confronted by the era's growing impatience—never secured the same emotional legacy. In a gripping exploration of memory and meaning-making, Conrad reveals how communities create historical truths by elevating some leaders, sidelining others, and preserving their own visions in defiance of the official record. Raymond Williams, PhD is a political scientist, blogger, and book club administrator with an interest in American History and Politics. You can find Raymond on Instagram, Threads, and Twitter at @rtwilliams16. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
A striking triptych once displayed in countless African American households, the Trinity typically features Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr., and John F. Kennedy. More than decoration, these portraits were deliberate acts of memory and quiet resistance, a medium through which African Americans asserted their own narratives of hope, leadership, and the fight for justice. In this provocative history The Trinity: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Civil Rights in African American Memory (UNC Press, 2026), Sharron Wilkins Conrad traces the Trinity across several decades, showing how African Americans didn't merely remember the civil rights movement; they shaped its meaning. The Trinity reveals why Kennedy's image hung beside King and Christ, while Lyndon B. Johnson, despite signing landmark legislation such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, remained largely unheralded. Kennedy's charisma, symbolic promise, and perceived martyrdom placed him among sacred icons, while Johnson—seen as transactional and confronted by the era's growing impatience—never secured the same emotional legacy. In a gripping exploration of memory and meaning-making, Conrad reveals how communities create historical truths by elevating some leaders, sidelining others, and preserving their own visions in defiance of the official record. Raymond Williams, PhD is a political scientist, blogger, and book club administrator with an interest in American History and Politics. You can find Raymond on Instagram, Threads, and Twitter at @rtwilliams16.
A striking triptych once displayed in countless African American households, the Trinity typically features Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr., and John F. Kennedy. More than decoration, these portraits were deliberate acts of memory and quiet resistance, a medium through which African Americans asserted their own narratives of hope, leadership, and the fight for justice. In this provocative history The Trinity: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Civil Rights in African American Memory (UNC Press, 2026), Sharron Wilkins Conrad traces the Trinity across several decades, showing how African Americans didn't merely remember the civil rights movement; they shaped its meaning. The Trinity reveals why Kennedy's image hung beside King and Christ, while Lyndon B. Johnson, despite signing landmark legislation such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, remained largely unheralded. Kennedy's charisma, symbolic promise, and perceived martyrdom placed him among sacred icons, while Johnson—seen as transactional and confronted by the era's growing impatience—never secured the same emotional legacy. In a gripping exploration of memory and meaning-making, Conrad reveals how communities create historical truths by elevating some leaders, sidelining others, and preserving their own visions in defiance of the official record. Raymond Williams, PhD is a political scientist, blogger, and book club administrator with an interest in American History and Politics. You can find Raymond on Instagram, Threads, and Twitter at @rtwilliams16. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What if the very institutions designed to educate and empower were also places where harm could quietly thriveIn this powerful and eye-opening episode, I sit down with Julie Cruse—writer, inventor, instructional designer, and author of The Burn List: A Memoir of Abuse from Home to Higher Education. Julie has been recognized by Dance Magazine as a “pioneer of computational choreography,” and her work spans over two decades across Ivy League, public, and community colleges. With more than 30 grants and honors, including a National Science Foundation fellowship, her accomplishments are remarkable—but her story is also deeply sobering.Julie courageously shares her journey from an abusive childhood into a prolonged experience of academic exploitation. Across seven universities, she faced grooming, harassment, and retaliation from faculty—experiences that ultimately forced her out of her PhD program and academic career.What Is Academic Abuse?Academic abuse is often hidden in plain sight. It can include:Grooming and manipulation by those in positions of authorityHarassment and coercionRetaliation when boundaries are set or complaints are madeDespite protections like Title IX and Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), these issues persist—making awareness and advocacy more important than ever.Key Takeaways from This Episode✨ Why some students are more vulnerable Julie explains how factors like isolation, power imbalance, and a desire to succeed can make students easier targets.✨ How to protect yourself Practical, empowering advice including:Set clear boundariesAvoid being alone with faculty in private settingsKeep detailed records of interactions (dates, times, events)✨ What to do if harassment occurs There is often a required process and hierarchy of reporting. Understanding the steps ahead of time can help you navigate the system more effectively.✨ Why this conversation matters Silence allows abuse to continue. Open conversations help validate survivors, create accountability, and drive change.A Safe Place to Be HeardJulie has created a survivor-led platform at Academic Abuse where individuals can:Share their stories in a safe, supportive environmentAccess resources for healingResearch documented cases of abuse at specific universitiesIf you or someone you know has experienced discrimination or abuse in higher education, this platform offers both validation and support.Connect with JulieWebsite: Julie Cruse official website https://www.juliecruse.com/Advocacy Platform: Academic Abuse https://www.academicabuse.com/ Final ThoughtsThis episode is a courageous step toward shining light on a difficult but critical issue. By speaking openly about academic abuse, we can better protect students, support survivors, and work toward meaningful change in higher education.If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might benefit.And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review Linda's Corner to help spread more hope, healing, and awareness.Listen, Share, and SupportIf this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who may need hope today.Be sure to subscribe, leave a rating and review, and help us spread more healing and inspiration to the world.Free Resource for HealingIf you're ready to release stress, calm your mind, and begin healing from within, visit:
2 Hours and 27 MinutesPG-13This is a re-release of episodes:Episode 831: How the 'Civil Rights Regime' Was Enshrined w/ Ryan TurnipseedEpisode 905: The Civil Rights Act and Its Consequences w/ Gregory HoodEnshrining the Civil Rights RegimeRyan's Find My Frens PageGreg at American RenaissanceThe Age of Entitlement: America Since the SixtiesPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.
Story of the Week (DR):SuperBroIpoDystopia: Some key facts: MMa record-breaking $135 per share with$1.8T valuationTo make that math make sense, analysts estimate the company needs to grow its sales by 50% every single year for the next decadeSpaceX lost $4.9B last yearWall Street is Being Treated Like Order-Takers: Musk pre-set the IPO price strictly at $135 and dictating exactly which investors got allocations. This forced major investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to act as glorified order-takers without even knowing their exact compensation beforehandSaudi Aramco $1.7T; Alibaba: $237B; Facebook $118BNasdaq aggressively pushed through "fast-entry" rule changes specifically to allow mega-caps like SpaceX to bypass the traditional year of seasoning and enter the Nasdaq-100 in just 15 trading days. This forces passive index funds to buy in blindly to avoid tracking errorsMeme stocker bros: $100B in share orders30% of $75B offering is earmarked for individual retail investors. This effectively shifts late-stage, hyper-inflated valuation risk away from institutions and onto the public.BlackRock $5BInstitutional investors admitted that when they bought into SpaceX privately, they were given high-level revenue figures but were denied a copy of the actual balance sheet—an unprecedented lack of transparency for a company raising tens of billionsUniversity of Washington more than 10% of its $17B in assetsUNC about 10%SpaceX will make $75B in proceedsSaudi Aramco $26B; Alibaba $22BElon Musk's Absolute Voting Tyranny (80% of voting power)personal net worth has officially skyrocketed past $1.1TSpaceX's foundational scale was built on the back of the American public, securing over $20 billion in U.S. federal government contracts to fund its rocket developmentAntonio Gracias: personally lent Musk $1M to keep him afloat; his PE firm Valor gave $76MThat $1M lifeline and early institutional backing from 2008 have compounded into what analysts are calling the most lucrative return on a personal favor in business history.The Second-Largest Shareholder: Through various Valor entities, Gracias controls roughly 7.3% of SpaceX's Class A stock (more than 500 million shares)Gracias's stake is officially worth anywhere from $91B to over $140BThis single corporate listing instantly catapults Gracias into the ranks of the world's 50 richest people.The big party: combined valuation of $3.6TAnthropic ($965B) filed confidentially on June 1OpenAI ($1T) filed confidentially on June 8"We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it's a complicated set of tradeoffs, and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best."What does it all amount to? 4 horrible objectives:Funding a Sci-Fi Passion Project with Public CashBecoming the Pentagon's Irreplaceable War MachineForget the folksy narrative that Starlink is just for connecting rural schools or isolated communities: SpaceX is systematically turning itself into the ultimate military contractorProject Starshield: Those satellites are the foundation for a highly classified, militarized version of the network designed for government surveillance, secure communications, and real-time battlefield tracking.Too Big to Regulate: By launching the vast majority of the world's payloads and controlling the dominant orbital communications network, SpaceX is making the U.S. military entirely dependent on its hardware. The ultimate point is to become so deeply embedded in national defense that the government can never afford to regulate, penalize, or dismantle Musk's empireAn Orbital Real Estate Land GrabBuilding a Borderless, Lawless EmpireSpaceX is attempting to build a tech infrastructure that exists entirely outside the jurisdiction of EarthUltimately, SpaceX isn't trying to save humanity from a dying Earth; it's trying to ensure that whoever controls Earth's future has to pay rent to Elon MuskIran threatens Elon Musk's companies in Middle East: Iranian state mediaAll of Elon Musk's companies in the Middle East are military targets for Iran as it retaliates against the U.S., Iranian state media outlet Fars reported.The targets include a regional Starlink ground station, according to Fars.Sen. Warren calls on SEC to delay SpaceX IPO, flagging concerns about valuation and governanceThe letter to the heads of the Nasdaq, S&P Dow Jones Indices, FTSE Russell and Morningstar Indexes sent on Thursday asked the companies whether they had made or considered rule changes based on lobbying from Elon Musk, other SpaceX officials or officials from OpenAI or Anthropic, and asked for any communications between the companies and the indexesLSEG, which owns the FTSE Russell, and Nasdaq declined to comment. Morningstar did not respond to a request from CNBC for comment.S&P Dow Jones Indices didn't comment on the letter, but the company noted it had decided not to change its rules regarding indexes: “S&P DJI determined that exceptions to these requirements should not be granted solely based on market capitalization,” it said in a statement to CNBC. “The decision not to adopt the proposed exceptions preserves core index principles by maintaining consistent application of these key requirements.”Democrats ask Goldman Sachs CEO why he's keeping lawyer who said she'd resign over ties to EpsteinGoldman Sachs CEO David Solomon is facing new scrutiny from congressional Democrats over his reported effort to retain the bank's top lawyer months after she said she would resign over revelations about her ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey EpsteinIn a letter sent Wednesday:U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs CommitteeRepresentative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services on the House Oversight Committee“Ruemmler ‘educated (Epstein) on how the law differentiates between underage victims of sex crimes and adult prostitutes…'”In February, Ruemmler announced her resignation from Goldman Sachs, effective June 30, 2026: “At the time, you stated that you “reluctantly” accepted Ruemmler's resignation. While Goldman Sachs has declined to comment on this matter, new reporting suggests that you ‘pressed' her to reconsider her resignation and instead move to a new position within the firm.”Teardown of Trump Phone Reveals Incredibly Embarrassing SecretA recent teardown by repair company iFixit confirmed that the T1 is an almost entirely unmodified HTC U24 Pro, a two-year-old and mid-tier Android phone, with a cheap coat of gold colorationTrump is selling an entirely Chinese smartphone, despite waging an economic war against the country.Apart from minuscule changes to the speaker grille and a lengthened flex cable, iFixit concluded that “everything is the same, except the pattern of holes in the case.”Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):DR: Google and Meta denied new trial in youth social media addiction caseMM: In the United States, Solar Energy is Outpacing Coal for the First Time EverAssholiest of the Week - SPEED ROUND (MM):BP's useless, reactionary board of directors: BP drops net zero division in wake of boardroom turmoil; BP's new CEO Meg O'Neill rips up the energy giant's playbook—and the ‘green' era with it - 10Ryanair blowhard CEO Michael O'Leary: Ryanair investigated over charging parents to sit with children - 5EV killing GM and Mary Barra: GM is pivoting its battery expertise toward powering AI data centers and the grid - 10Every company that fired employees and replaced them with AI: Unfortunate Company Accidentally Blows Half a Billion Dollars on Claude in One Month; AI sticker shock hits corporate America - 10Everything out of Alex Karp's fat mouth: Palantir CEO Alex Karp says executives who brag about their AI cuts might as well ‘sign up for the Bernie Sanders manifesto'; Palantir CEO says AI companies 'don't understand how unlikeable they are'; - 10Sorry Liz, this is investors job: Sen. Warren calls on SEC to delay SpaceX IPO, flagging concerns about valuation and governance - 0Every investor in SpaceX IPO: Franklin Templeton to participate in SpaceX IPO, CEO Johnson tells CNBC; SpaceX IPO demand is approaching four times oversubscribed, source says; Wall Street's undignified SpaceX mania; SpaceX's president hints at a Tesla merger: 'That might make Elon's life a little easier' - 10Billionaires: Billionaires' Billions Are Increasing Faster Than Ever - 10Beef (not Ebola): Elon Musk Faces Backlash as a Horrific Texas Screwworm Outbreak Follows Brutal DOGE Budget Cuts - 10Mark: Meta Furious Over Bombshell Smart Glasses Revelation“Last week, Wired reported that Meta discreetly moved to infuse facial recognition tech into its popular smart glasses, as evidenced by a piece of code discovered in the Meta AI app by the magazine's journalists.” - 10Headliniest of the WeekDR: UBS CEO [Sergio] Ermotti hopes to step down before 2030MM: You Can Now Get a Religious Exemption From Using AI at Work“The funniest possible outcome of the AI mandate era is about to be HR departments discovering that ‘sincerely held religious belief' under Title VII has a much lower bar than they assumed, and Pope Leo handed every Catholic employee a written excuse,” tweeted San Francisco-based startup founder Corey Quinn. (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination and retaliation based on race, color, national origin, religion, and sex.)MM: Furious Judge Cancels Entire Trial After Finding Out Lawyers on Both Sides Used AIWho Won the Week?DR: HTC U24 Pro, a two-year-old and mid-tier Android phone. Or maybe it was the cheap gold paint?MM: Everyone religious - what CAN'T you opt out of using a religious exemption? PredictionsDR: Attacking dictator-run companies (i.e., Iran/Tesla) starts to enter the realm of normalcyMM: Atheists adopt a religion to opt out of tech bro oligarchies
This Day in Legal History: Wallace Stands in the Schoolhouse DoorOn this day in 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace physically stood in the doorway of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to block the registration of Vivian Malone and James Hood, the two Black students whose enrollment had been ordered by a federal district court. Wallace's “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” was the culmination of a long campaign of state defiance of federal desegregation orders that ran from Brown v. Board in 1954 through Cooper v. Aaron in 1958 — the case in which a unanimous Supreme Court told the Little Rock school district, and by extension every state actor, that federal constitutional rulings are the supreme law of the land and that state officials may not nullify them.President Kennedy responded to Wallace's stand by issuing Executive Order 11111, which federalized the Alabama National Guard, and ordering Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach down to Tuscaloosa to confront the governor. Wallace gave a long speech invoking states' rights and Tenth Amendment sovereignty, then stepped aside, and Malone and Hood walked in and registered. That night, Kennedy went on national television and delivered the civil rights address that put the Civil Rights Act of 1964 onto the national agenda. The legal and political throughline matters: the schoolhouse door, the executive order federalizing the Guard, the televised address, and the omnibus civil rights legislation that followed were a single coordinated federal response to massive resistance, and the institutional habit they built — the willingness of the federal political branches to back federal court orders with whatever force is necessary — is the substrate on which the modern enforcement of civil rights law sits. Whether that habit holds up under contemporary pressure is one of the live constitutional questions of our moment.The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” saga we have been following all week reached at least a partial resolution on Wednesday when Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia declined to extend her temporary restraining order against the program into a preliminary injunction. The reason, in essence, is that the Justice Department has now formally represented to the court, in writing and through acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, that the $1.8 billion fund is “not going forward.” Brinkema took DOJ at its word for present purposes and dissolved the TRO, which under standard mootness doctrine is the right call when a defendant credibly commits to abandoning the challenged program. But she also did something practical: she warned the government in plain terms not to “play possum with this court,” language that gives the plaintiffs a built-in mechanism to come back fast if the fund quietly re-emerges under a different name.The substantive theory the plaintiffs were pressing — that the fund is an unappropriated expenditure of public money, that the underlying Trump-IRS settlement was a litigation in which the United States was never really adverse to the President in his personal capacity, and that the program's payout criteria are based on political characterizations of past prosecutions rather than any neutral standard — is now preserved for another day rather than litigated to judgment. The practical lesson is the durability of voluntary-cessation doctrine: a government defendant who is willing to abandon a program in court usually wins on mootness, but the cost is real, because future revivals get scrutinized against the prior representation. Watch the Federal Register and the DOJ component-level budget submissions for the next six months — if there is a successor program coming, those are where the first signal appears.Judge declines to halt “anti-weaponization fund” since Blanche says it's dead, but warns DOJ not to “play possum” | CBS NewsA coalition of environmental and tribal-nation plaintiffs filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday seeking to block a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-approved land exchange that would transfer 715 acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge to SpaceX, in return for 683 acres of privately owned land elsewhere. The plaintiffs are the Center for Biological Diversity, Save RGV, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, and the South Texas Environmental Justice Network.The legal theory of the case is unusually multi-statute: the complaint alleges violations of the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997, the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act, with the central administrative-law argument being that the Fish and Wildlife Service's environmental analysis failed to grapple seriously with impacts on endangered ocelots, aplomado falcons, and a long list of migratory species whose habitat the refuge was designed to protect when Congress created it in 1979. The plaintiffs describe this as one of the largest national-wildlife-refuge land exchanges outside Alaska, and the suit asks for vacatur of the exchange decision rather than damages — the standard APA remedy.The political and infrastructural backdrop is hard to miss: SpaceX's Starbase facility at Boca Chica has been expanding into the Lower Rio Grande Valley for years now, and the exchange would consolidate the company's footprint on land previously held for the protection of one of the last remaining ocelot ranges in the country. The merits of the case will turn on the rigor of the FWS environmental analysis. Expect a request for a preliminary injunction within weeks.Lawsuit challenges Trump administration's land swap with SpaceX in Texas | The Washington PostA Los Angeles County jury on Wednesday added $22 million in punitive damages to the $176 million compensatory verdict already entered against socialite and former philanthropist Rebecca Grossman and former Major League Baseball pitcher Scott Erickson, bringing the total civil award to the Iskander family to roughly $198 million.The underlying facts of the case are stark: in September 2020, Grossman and Erickson left a Westlake Village restaurant after drinking and street-raced separate Mercedes SUVs through a residential neighborhood, with Grossman striking and killing two young brothers, Mark and Jacob Iskander, then 11 and 8, as they crossed a marked crosswalk with their parents.Grossman was convicted of two counts of murder in 2024 and is serving 15 years to life. The civil case the family brought is the wrongful-death companion, and the punitive damages award the jury added on Wednesday is the part that does the most policy work: the jury split the punitive award $21 million against Grossman, $1.17 million against Erickson, which under California's reprehensibility-and-net-worth framework reflects both the much greater direct culpability of Grossman as the driver and the substantial disparity in their respective financial positions.The case is notable beyond the parties involved because of how clean it is on the standard punitive-damages analysis the Supreme Court laid out in BMW v. Gore and State Farm v. Campbell: high reprehensibility, a relatively modest single-digit ratio of punitive-to-compensatory damages, and an underlying compensatory award that itself was supported by the gravity of the loss. Watch for an appeal that focuses on the compensatory rather than the punitive number — that is where the appellate leverage actually is.Jury Ups Philanthropist, Ex-Pitcher Crash Verdict To $198M | Law360 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe
This Day in Legal History: Kennedy Signs the Equal Pay ActOn this day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, the first federal statute aimed directly at sex-based wage discrimination. The law took the form of an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which meant that it slid into an existing enforcement framework run by the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor — a deliberate choice that bypassed the need to build new institutional machinery and harnessed thirty years of FLSA caselaw and habits of compliance. The legal hook is the Act's “equal pay for equal work” command: employers may not pay employees of one sex less than employees of the opposite sex for jobs requiring “equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.”Four affirmative defenses are written into the text — a seniority system, a merit system, a system measuring earnings by quantity or quality of production, or “any other factor other than sex” — and that fourth catch-all has done more work in litigation than the other three combined, shaping how courts evaluate market-based, education-based, and prior-salary-based pay differentials decades later. The wage gap at the moment Kennedy signed was about 59 cents on the dollar; six decades on, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics's standard measure, it sits closer to 84 cents. That tells you something about how a clean, structurally well-designed statute can still leave a lot of the work undone, because the gap is and always was about more than identical pairs of jobs at the same employer.The Equal Pay Act is not the whole story of American workplace-equality law; Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and a long line of state-law analogues do much of the modern enforcement work. But June 10, 1963 is the day Congress, with the President's signature, said for the first time that paying a woman less than a man for the same work was unlawful, full stop. Everything that has followed in this corner of the law has been built on top of that sentence.The Federal Circuit on Monday affirmed a Delaware district court judgment invalidating four Purdue Pharma patents covering an abuse-deterrent, low-toxicity version of the opioid OxyContin, in a decision the patent bar has been waiting on for months. The case is Purdue Pharma L.P. v. Epic Pharma LLC. The patents covered Purdue's reformulation of OxyContin to make the pills crush-resistant and to reduce a manufacturing impurity, and the asserted innovation grew, the company said, out of its discovery of the source of a particular toxic impurity that had previously eluded chemists at competing labs. Purdue's argument on appeal was, in essence, that the discovery of the impurity's source was itself nonobvious, and that the resulting patents inherited that nonobviousness. The Federal Circuit said no.The panel held that the relevant obviousness inquiry asks whether the claimed reformulation — not the discovery that motivated it — would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention, and that once the prior art is taken into account, the answer is yes. The practical consequence of the ruling is large. It opens the door wider for generic abuse-deterrent OxyContin alternatives and clarifies a doctrinal point pharmaceutical companies have been pressing on for years: a hard-won research insight does not, on its own, automatically save a patent from obviousness if the resulting product was within the prior art's reach. Purdue's options now are a rehearing petition at the Federal Circuit, a cert petition at the Supreme Court (which the company has already pursued in a related case last spring), or quiet acceptance. Expect a cert petition. Expect the cert petition to be denied. Watch the generic-drug filings that follow.Fed. Circ. Panel Backs Invalidation Of OxyContin PatentThe plaintiffs in the Eastern District of Virginia lawsuit over the Trump administration's $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” — a story we covered earlier htis week— went back to Judge Leonie Brinkema on Tuesday and asked for permission to conduct limited discovery into whether the Justice Department's recent representation that it would stop work on the fund is a real commitment or a litigation convenience.The plaintiffs' problem is straightforward: acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has filed papers saying the program is “not going forward,” but President Trump publicly described the fund last week as a “great idea” that many Republicans support, and the executive order that created the fund has not been formally rescinded. From a litigation-strategy standpoint, the plaintiffs do not want to walk away from a live case on the strength of a DOJ filing, accept dismissal as moot, and then find out three months later that the fund has been quietly resurrected under a different name.Judge Brinkema has a hearing scheduled for Friday, June 12, on whether to extend the temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction. The Tuesday filing teed up the broader mootness fight that will dominate Friday's hearing: when does a federal agency's promise to stop doing something actually deprive a court of jurisdiction to enjoin the underlying program, and what discovery, if any, is a plaintiff entitled to before that determination is made. The doctrine here — voluntary cessation, capable of repetition yet evading review, and the heavy burden the Supreme Court has placed on the party claiming mootness — favors the plaintiffs procedurally. Whether Brinkema agrees on Friday is the question to watch.‘Anti-weaponization' fund challengers question its demise – Roll CallSCOTUSblog's John Elwood walked through a useful relist roundup on Tuesday, and the four cases sitting in the relist pile are worth flagging because each of them touches a different load-bearing wall in federal practice. The first is a prolonged-detention challenge to immigration custody under Section 1226(c). The ACLU is asking the Court to clarify that very long mandatory-detention periods trigger procedural due process review under the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test, picking up on the Second Circuit's willingness to do so. The second is Newberry v. Texas, a case where Texas itself has confessed error — a rare procedural posture in which the State agrees the defendant should win — and the question is what the Court does when the parties on both sides ask for the same remedy. The third is Kian v. Florida, a Sixth Amendment challenge to the use of six-person juries in serious felony cases, on the theory that the historical understanding of “jury” in the founding era assumed twelve and that the Court's mid-twentieth-century cases approving six-person juries were wrong on the originalist analysis. The fourth is Maxwell v. Thomas, a federal habeas case asking whether the First Step Act‘s halfway-house and home-confinement provisions are properly enforceable through 28 U.S.C. § 2241 habeas petitions, an issue with a real circuit split. None of these have been granted yet — they are relists, which means at least one Justice is interested but the Court has not yet decided whether to hear them — but the mix is the part to watch: it tells you what the Justices are circling without committing to. Expect at least one of these to be granted before the term ends.A random assortment of relists: prolonged detention, confessions of error, small juries, and new rules on habeas | SCOTUSblog This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe
Pastor Dale Partridge boldly confronts one of liberalism's greatest sacred cows — the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He demonstrates how it has not brought racial peace, but has instead made racial tension far worse, and makes the compelling case for why this law must be repealed so that Americans can once again enjoy their fundamental right to freedom of association.
Christ Is King: America After Trump — November 12–14, 2026 in Dallas, Texas. Tickets are limited. Register now to secure your seat!https://newchristianright.com/conference/Get The Silent Jihad At: https://newchristianright.com/jihad
May 22, 2026In a graduation speech at the University of Michigan in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson laid out his vision for “the Great Society,” It was a forward looking vision of a country that used its post-World War II prosperity to look toward greater things, and to advance civil rights and end poverty, Congress would pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, and the Food Stamp Act, Democrats were able to pass 84 new laws to put the Great Society into place, Congress took on voting rights, access to education, health insurance, and the rights of consumers, It enacted laws protecting the environment and supporting the arts, In his speech at the University of Michigan, Johnson charged the graduates to lead America toward a new age, reminding them that Americans have the power to shape the civilization that we want.Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribeYou can also find me:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe
Episode 291-Drop Your Socks and Grab Your Glocks Also Available OnSearchable Podcast Transcript Gun Lawyer — Episode Transcript Page – 1 – of 14 Gun Lawyer — Episode 291 Transcript SUMMARY KEYWORDS Gun rights, Second Amendment, gerrymandering, New Jersey, federal law, AK-47, AR-15, gun laws, Supreme Court, carry permit, gun dealers, political power, racial discrimination, gun ownership, legal battles. SPEAKERS Speaker 1, Teddy Nappen, Speaker 3, Evan Nappen Speaker 1 00:11 Lawyer, Evan Nappen 00:18 I’m Evan Nappen. Teddy Nappen 00:20 And I’m Teddy Nappen. Evan Nappen 00:22 And welcome to Gun Lawyer. So, Teddy, what’s on your mind today? Teddy Nappen 00:27 Well, I never realized the guy that wrote the Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks, was related to Mel Brooks. I thought it was a common name. Evan Nappen 00:38 What? How is he related to Mel Brooks? Teddy Nappen 00:40 It’s his son, so. Evan Nappen 00:42 Oh, my G-d! Is he gonna make a movie, you know, Young Zombie or something? Teddy Nappen 00:44 Yeah, no, Young Zombie. Evan Nappen 00:46 Or a zombie movie with lots of farts? Page – 2 – of 14 Teddy Nappen 00:52 No. Evan Nappen 00:53 Blazing Zombies, Blazing Zombies. Teddy Nappen 00:55 Yeah! Blazing Zombies, that’s it, kind of like what was it, Abraham Lincoln and the Vampire Abraham Lincoln. Evan Nappen 01:02 Right. I think Blazing Zombies would probably be very popular. Teddy Nappen 01:06 Yeah, I know, right. Let’s see them try to reboot Blazing Saddles. Good luck with that. Evan Nappen 01:12 Well, they could do Blazing. Yeah, but if they did Blazing Zombies, they would never be able to say certain words that they used in Blazing Saddles. Teddy Nappen 01:23 Yeah, like calling the zombies a bunch of leg draggers. Evan Nappen 01:26 Ha, ha, ha, ha. Actually, we’re kind of dealing with a zombie apocalypse with the Democrat party lately. I think they are a bunch of, you know. They don’t have brains. They just try to eat brains. Teddy Nappen 01:48 Yeah. And unfortunately, they keep coming up with new ideas to screw us out of our rights. Evan Nappen 01:55 Right! That’s it. That’s what they do. They send the horde out to eat our rights. They do the horde, and they just try to get everybody on board to sacrifice for their pure unadulterated political power. Like trying to get college athletes to boycott their entire athletic career, over, for example, they’re flipping out over the ending of racial gerrymandering. I mean, it’s kind of unbelievable when you watch them talk about this being, you know, Jim Crow II, when all that is being done is ending racial discrimination, with setting up voting districts. Somehow ending racial discrimination is Jim Crow. Only a Democrat with zombie brains could ever make that argument with a straight face. Teddy Nappen 02:59 Well, it’s also very funny because, if you cut to all of New England, where the breakdown is roughly like 40 to 50% Republican, and there’s no representation for that. And so, they, and it’s all the states are heavily, heavily gerrymandered, like zero representation for Republicans, but oh, that’s fine. It’s only Page – 3 – of 14 when the Republicans say, you know what? You’ve established the rules of engagement, and we will oblige. That’s just how the game is played. Evan Nappen 03:29 Now, you would think that the Democrats would have expert knowledge on Jim Crow, because they’re the ones that started it. The original Jim Crow laws were done by Democrats after the Civil War. And, of course, who opposed the Civil Rights Act? The Democrats. They were the originals. And then for them to get up now and claim how much they want to oppose what they are perceiving as Jim Crow laws are kind of rich. And, of course, it isn’t. It is the actual elimination of the racial discrimination that is in place by way of their gerrymandering, and this is very important to our gun rights, Teddy. Very important to our gun rights. As voting is turned around, so that it actually reflects the voters, as opposed to these bizarre jurisdictions engineered for Democrats just to maintain power, we will see more and more advances in the fight for our gun rights. It is the other side there that constantly is trying to take away our Second Amendment rights. Teddy Nappen 04:52 What always makes me laugh, though, is they always try to say the party switched. They always make that argument. By the way, it’s a completely disproven argument. Like, okay, what time period? Was it under Senator (Robert) Byrd, who was a, what was it? The Grand Wizard? Evan Nappen 05:07 The Grand Wizard of the KKK. Teddy Nappen 05:10 Which, by the way, he was a mentor to Joe Biden throughout his political career. But no one talks about that. Or when Joe Biden, what did Joe Biden say on the stage? Evan Nappen 05:21 Oh, don’t even. Teddy Nappen 05:21 Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. Evan Nappen 05:25 party, Evan Nappen 05:25 The party hasn’t switched. They’re just trying to build a bigger fence with a plantation. They are the ones trying to run a plantation, and that’s what gerrymandering, prior to this Calais Supreme Court case, that’s what it was really about. How does the Democrat maintain their plantations of voter districts, to maintain their power? Page – 4 – of 14 Teddy Nappen 05:50 Yeah, exactly. They put up the creation that Johnson, what was it? We’re going to get these guys voting Democrat for the rest of their lives. They created the giant welfare state. Evan Nappen 06:01 Yeah. And by the way, he didn’t even call them “these guys”. Teddy Nappen 06:05 I know I was trying to, I was paraphrasing. Evan Nappen 06:11 Describing them. Yeah, just their hypocrisy definitely knows no bounds, and this time period now is somewhat encouraging, because a lot of everything that they’ve built on, including taking our gun rights, it’s collapsing all around them. It’s very encouraging to see that. You just saw the primaries go here. Trump with what 34 zero or whatever on his picks, and that helps get us further with the expansion of our Second Amendment rights. This is all a part. Because part of MAGA is the rebirth of the power of the Second Amendment, that is a part of MAGA, guys. You’ve got to know that, and you can see it. We are now in a completely different world than in the Biden era. I mean, Biden was essentially engaging in a clamp down, a clamp down on our rights in every way that he could abuse federal power to do so. And we’re seeing incredible changes in the other direction now. Teddy Nappen 07:29 I’ll give you the highlight of that. We dealt with this, where it was weaponization. They were going after dealers for the most minuscule things with a zero tolerance. And now that’s been eliminated, and it has been helping. Of course, New Jersey picks up the mantle from their new AG. Now they’re going after FFL dealers and demanding records detailing the sales of Glocks, which I could have sworn they already knew about the sales, because every time you purchase. Evan Nappen 08:01 Yeah, this is what is such crap about these subpoenas to all the dealers to turn over their records of the last decade for every Glock sold. New Jersey has a pistol purchase permit system, which is a form of register. So, the State Police already have the computerized registered database of every purchase of a Glock since the computerization of the pistol permit system, which completely covers the decade that they’re requesting. In other words, the only reason for this subpoena is essentially, in my opinion, to harass dealers because the information itself is already at their fingertips. Now, the bigger legal question is, is that something legally they’re allowed to access because New Jersey has Administrative Code provisions that mandate confidentiality on all gun records of purchase acquisition. All that kind of stuff is protected by that confidentiality. So, maybe they themselves thought that trying to just get dealer records, maybe could do an end run over their own Administrative Code, preventing the release of this information. Although there is a provision in the Code that says for law enforcement purposes it can be accessed. But this is a lawsuit, not law enforcement purposes. So, it really is interesting the approach they’re taking. If they’re righteous in the law, in being able to access this data, then they can access it through the database in the appropriate legal manner, if they are qualified. And if not, why are they subpoenaing dealers to turn over information that is already in the possession of the State of New Page – 5 – of 14 Jersey? And these application forms, et cetera, are protected by way of their own Administrative Code provisions, setting out confidentiality. Teddy Nappen 10:20 So, Teddy Nappen 10:21 Yeah, I will say what’s really messed up is I love the AG’s response. So, this was actually from 2A News Team. They asked these questions and the AG responded. Oh no, no. These requests are not seeking information about individual purchasers or any person’s identifying information about their purchases. However, the subpoena says that exact wording. Evan Nappen 10:50 Right. Teddy Nappen 10:51 Documents show sufficient sale or transfer of Glock handguns from you to New Jersey customers. Literally, it’s the first line in the subpoena. Evan Nappen 11:03 Right. And the thing about Glocks. Look, if you own a Glock, you know you better hold on to it. This is the new tactic of the anti-Second Amendment rights movement. To try to ban and restrict Glocks because of a claim that they can be relatively easily converted to fully automatic using what’s called a Glock switch. But mere possession of a Glock switch under federal law is considered a machine gun in and of itself, and these switches are banned in New Jersey as well. The component is already illegal. So, trying to link Glocks to them so that they can further take away one of the most popular self-defense handguns in the world. This is their gambit. This is their gambit now to try to do that. Teddy Nappen 12:10 So, it was also interesting, is pull it was from the article. Out of the 15 FFLs that they subpoenaed, they were roughly, there was 15 of those FFLs were out of the total authorized Glock dealers. So, I’m trying to think the strategy of it. If they’re trying, if these were just the 15, were kind of like where they went after those two gun dealers and forced them to basically have to essentially declare and register every purchase or gun-related material. Are they just going for the small fish to then go after the whole? Kind of like a staff? Teddy Nappen 12:46 Out of curiosity. Could there be a constitutional challenge because there’s a federal firearms license? Could you either make the Supremacy Clause argument or just going with the idea of there shouldn’t be a state license, too? Evan Nappen 12:46 Okay. At a minimum, it’s designed to harass gun dealers. I mean, New Jersey is dedicated to that principle, given the excesses that they go to regarding being a New Jersey retail firearm dealer. I mean Page – 6 – of 14 having an FFL, that’s a federal firearm license. New Jersey also requires for a dealer to have a New Jersey retail dealer firearms license, and the retail dealer firearms license is what is managed by the state of New Jersey. And that’s where you see an incredibly excessive and additional amount of requirements, far beyond what federal law requires, designed to be a legal discouragement to being a dealer. Also, it’s been used in the past as a pretext to raid individuals that had FFLs but did not have a NJ retail dealer license. I’ve had cases on this where individuals that had a federal firearms license for Curio and Relic, collector licenses, the state alleged they were federal firearm licensees and acting as dealers, which they were not. They are collectors. And because they alleged they had a federal license, they needed a New Jersey firearm retail dealer license. They proceeded to conduct raids on the individuals that held Curio and Relic licenses. So, this is one of the risks out there. They were able to purge and merge the federal list to the state list of New Jersey retailers. Evan Nappen 14:31 Well, the problem is that the federal firearm law is expressly not preemptive. It’s designed to be the absolute minimum gun control harassment that exists throughout the entire country. And then states are invited to, you know, this was the philosophy, invited to go wild. So, you have the baseline of the federal law, which has many constitutional questions about it itself, expressly not being preemptive, and the states are left to their own devices to create whatever stricter and stricter and more harassing and more discouraging gun laws that they want to pass. And as long as those laws are somehow upheld constitutionally, they can keep on going. There is no cap. There’s no cap placed on the attack on our rights. It should exist, but doesn’t, except in a few very narrow areas where there is express preemption. Evan Nappen 16:22 One of those places where there is express preemption is Title 18 926 A for interstate transport of your guns. You can transport your guns cased, unloaded, locked, not readily accessible, etc., so that you can go through bad states in your travels. There’s areas of preemption, specifically for carry, like LEOSA, Law Enforcement Officer Safety Act, where retired and active law enforcement can carry, regardless of the state law that might otherwise try to prevent them from doing so. There’s actually preemption for carry. It was the original carry preemption, which a lot of people don’t know was for armored car security. Armored car personnel was actually the first federal carry preemption. And then today we’re pushing to try to get national reciprocity, which is in effect national preemption, mandating that every state recognize every other state’s carry rights to that particular resident in whatever state that resident might be in. But generally across 99% of all the federal gun laws, it is expressly not preemptive. So, this is where the problems come in, because there is no cap on the damage that states can do. Teddy Nappen 17:55 So, it would require an, it would basically either require an act of Congress to amend it to include the preemption. Evan Nappen 18:02 Yes, literally, what would be great is if we finally get a cap. Now, in theory, the cap on bad gun laws is this little thing we call the Second Amendment, and the Second Amendment’s cap was fairly broad. The Page – 7 – of 14 cap, as I recall, it said shall not be infringed. Okay? Shall not be infringed. So, any infringement is arguably a violation of the Second Amendment. Therefore no state or federal government, because we now have it incorporated to the states through the McDonald case, through the 14th Amendment, like many of our other constitutional rights. No state or federal law should infringe on our gun rights. Yet we’re knee deep in battles over various gun laws that are utterly passed with contempt of the Second Amendment, and then we have to go through these fights over it. Teddy Nappen 19:09 Yeah, and it’s definitely. I noticed that whenever it comes to New Jersey, I mean, I know people always talk about state powers, how they, you know, always leave it to the states. However, there are some things that there’s just so much abuse by the states that what they do, I mean, just right now, what they are doing right now is disgusting. Where they’re just harassing these dealers, going after them, wasting the taxpayers dollars. And it’s the level of where, all right, the federal government needs to step in, and I can see everyone’s like, “Oh, don’t allow the feds to get in, but here is the truth. They abuse it so much that there’s just no, there’s no value. Evan Nappen 19:54 Well, frankly, if we simply made the federal law, as it stands right now, as the preemptive. Just passed a law saying federal law preempts state law. Then every state gun law would become mooted out. Done. Invalid. Because only the federal law would apply. And currently under federal law there are no prohibitions on carry. There’s no addressing that in a negative way. Now, they might say, because the federal law doesn’t address it at all, then the states could still try to regulate carry. But then we still have the constitutional Second Amendment with the Bruen decision and such regarding carry. Then if we look at how the impact would be beyond that, well, everything else that these states try to pass, particularly on sale, possession, or on any of that, it would all be preemptively null and void by way of a federal law that they first engineered to just be a minimum to suddenly become the maximum. And that would concentrate our efforts only to having essentially federal fights, which would be pretty good, because instead of the pro-gun movement, those that defend our gun rights, and instead of having them fighting in every jurisdiction, everywhere, every state or county or town that passes some anti-Second Amendment gun rights law that we have to go in and challenge, we would have a preemptive federal law. So, every battle would simply be taking place, for the most part, at the federal law level of preemption, and it would basically gut that entire expenditure of the battle that we constantly have to foot the bill and pay for. It would be an interesting thing to conceptualize, to finally have a federal full preemption. I think it’s workable. Teddy Nappen 22:18 Yeah, and look, I never thought we’d ever see, like, the tax stamp removed for suppressors, and having a chance for it to be removed from the NFA, so anything is possible. We just need to get the right people in, and the right amount of votes. Evan Nappen 22:30 Yeah, it might, it might actually be, but then you’ll have even pro-Second Amendment folks, say, oh, states rights, states’ rights, you know. And they become so focused on so-called states’ rights that we still are losing our rights, because, as you say, Teddy, there’s an abuse by the states of our rights, and Page – 8 – of 14 this could end that abuse. So, when you have an abuse of state power, then the federal government really should come in to stop the abuse by the states. Teddy Nappen 22:53 I think it was in New York, and this might have been years ago. Do you remember they posted the map of who owned firearms? Evan Nappen 23:15 Yeah, it was New York, yeah, right. And then the public record, and then you could, it was searchable when you could find the gun owners. Teddy Nappen 23:25 Of course, a lot of them got robbed and harassed, and everything in that, which is just like, all right, fine. And you know what? When is it going to be enough for states’ powers? When they say everyone wears a yellow armband? It’s a picture of an AR, like states power, states rights. It’s such BS for allowing the abuse that comes down from New Jersey. Where you have the gulag that is the symbol of oppression of a totalitarian regime, and it just pisses me off so much when I hear that argument. I hear the people that make perfect the enemy of good, every time. How long did it take us to lose our rights to these people? Decades. And that’s what it’s going to take to get them back. It’s just disgusting. Evan Nappen 24:12 It is. But we’re in the fight, and we have to keep this fight on. Politically, the big picture is critical in our ability to win and get these changes. As much as all this is aggravating, if you step back, man, I can step back and look from having been practicing gun law for over 40 years. I can look and say we have come a long way. We’ve come a long way. The fact that we can finally have a carry permit in New Jersey is astounding. It’s astounding that we got to that, because that was something that seemed like an impossibility, and yet it got achieved. You can see amazing other advances. Evan Nappen 25:07 Hopefully, shortly, we will see the Supreme Court take a hardware case. We need them to take a hardware case. What I’m talking about is so-called assault firearms or assault weapons, magazines, where there is hardware that’s been banned. Where the constitutionality of the ability to ban hardware finally gets established out of the Supreme Court to end it, to stop it. That’s something that we’ve got to get to, and I think we’re going to see that soon. It is coming. There are so many cases, and they’ve been going up the chain. I think we’re going to see it. I don’t know if it’ll be, you know, this session. We’re getting close, and that’s what we saw, the prediction by even the U.S. Attorney General. The U.S. Attorney General saying they believe that ARs and others, Supreme Court will eventually pronounce they are legal. Teddy Nappen 26:16 I know there’s like, I know there’s rumors, everyone, about the different justices retiring. Imagine if Justice Thomas’s retirement, his last decision that he does, is he legalized and ends the assault firearm bans across the country. Page – 9 – of 14 Evan Nappen 26:31 Oh, that’d be just wonderful. I’d like to see St. Thomas. Teddy Nappen 26:36 Yeah. You know they did the commemorative, like Heller, like revolver, I remember that they. Evan Nappen 26:43 Which I have, I have a commemorative Heller Smith & Wesson .38. Not only was it commemorative and put out by Smith when the Heller decision came down, so it’s actually a Smith & Wesson bonafide commemorative, but I have that, I think I showed it to you, Teddy, it’s signed personally by Dick Heller, who’s a friend. So, I have a signed commemorative of the Heller decision, signed by Dick Heller himself. Teddy Nappen 27:10 Well, the next one I want it to be just, it’ll say the name of the case, and it’s just the Clarence Thomas smile that you see. The GIF area Thomas commemorative AR. Evan Nappen 27:23 And then, of course, the Left would complain that it’s racist because it’s a black rifle. No. You can’t be racist against Thomas, right? I mean, they always talk. Teddy Nappen 27:37 No, no, they say you can, because they say that he’s not black enough. If you know his entire history, the like, his, you could not, you could not live as a like a black American, like his entire thing, like inner city kid, like I think he was a single, like single mom, they like raised, like literally did the like live the entire black experience like it would be a lifetime movie. It would be amazing. Evan Nappen 28:05 He is an amazing man with actually the embodiment of the American dream, in effect. Coming from an absolutely underprivileged, you know, situation where he rose to be one of the greatest Supreme, one of the greatest, for sure, Supreme Court justices. His amazing story about an amazing man. Just great. And they don’t, because just like with gerrymandering, where there are plenty of Republican minority reps out there, it’s not racism at all. It’s the Democrat power grab, and because Judge Thomas is conservative, they refuse to acknowledge the benefit of having such a great man. Teddy Nappen 29:03 Yeah. And he is what Joe Biden would describe as articulate, bright, and clean. Evan Nappen 29:09 Oh G-d. Teddy Nappen 29:13 I love how Biden said that to Obama. I know. Page – 10 – of 14 Evan Nappen 29:16 I mean. He would constantly say these things. And yet they will extrapolate 10 times out to try to paint Trump as racist when Biden was. He bona fide said stuff that was absolutely insane with racism. Stereotypical racism. Teddy Nappen 29:44 Yeah. Evan Nappen 29:45 Yeah, really. I mean, just come on. Insulting and amazing. Well, and let me tell you, Teddy, about our good friends at WeShoot. WeShoot is an indoor range. You and I have shot there, and you love WeShoot, don’t you, Teddy? Teddy Nappen 30:04 I had a great time. Evan Nappen 30:05 We always do, every time. We got our certifications there for our carries, and you can do the same. They’ve got a great pro shop, great trainers, great facility, and it’s really conveniently right off the Parkway in Lakewood, New Jersey. Lakewood, New Jersey. You want to check out the WeShoot website at weshootusa.com. And you should make sure you get on their email list, because WeShoot sends out a lot of great stuff via email. All their great deals and specials and cool events they’re doing and all kinds of fun things. WeShoot is extremely dynamic, and they are always doing something. WeShoot is just super fun. So, if you’re looking for a great range to belong to, a great place to shoot, a great place to hone your skills, get your training, you cannot do any better than WeShoot in Lakewood. Check out weshootusa.com. Evan Nappen 31:18 Let me also mention my book, New Jersey Gun Law. It’s the bible of New Jersey gun law. It is a book used by, well, everybody. If you want to understand New Jersey gun law, you need my book, which is not surprisingly titled New Jersey Gun Law. You can get your copy at EvanNappen.com, EvanNappen.com. When you get the book, you’ll see it is very large. It is over 500 pages. It’s 120 topics, all question and answer. And the greatest thing about my book is that the book itself can be used as a weapon. It’s that big. I’m not advising you to do that, but should you need to, yes, that is a book you don’t want to get hit in the head with. So, check out New Jersey Gun Law at EvanNappen.com. Teddy, I bet you have something else up your sleeve to tell us. Teddy Nappen 32:18 Well, one of the things that did come up, and I just thought, what the heck? This is in the feed of the New York Times. Where are all the AK 47s? Like, where have all the AK 47s gone? I know. Evan Nappen 32:19 I don’t know. Where have they gone? Page – 11 – of 14 Teddy Nappen 32:21 I know. It was a very interesting article, but it was also very strange. Just reading through, I don’t know if you ever heard of Jim Fuller? Evan Nappen 32:47 The Fuller Brush Man? Teddy Nappen 32:49 Apparently, he’s a gunsmith. He makes custom AKs. I’m not too familiar on that, but he was going into details of, like, and they were talking about the collapse of the AK market. Evan Nappen 33:01 Well, there is a downturn, but prices aren’t collapsing. Teddy Nappen 33:06 Yeah, I mean, how much are you going for? Evan Nappen 33:08 One of the Russian AKs going. You know the problem is, what led to the big boom, of course, was when we were importing AKs. We could have them from China and Russia. Although we were getting really cheap ammo, and there was so much of the surplus ammo, the 762 by 39 that it became extremely popular, because you could so reasonably shoot. Then it became so overwhelmingly possible that even American-made guns, like the Ruger Mini 30, for example, were being made in 762 by 39. Then you also had the influx of very reasonable SKSs. I mean, I remember when SKSs were under $100, for an SKS, and then you know the reasonable AKs and all that coming in with cheap ammo. Man, it was great. Then they started to ban the import, the ban of Chinese, ban of Russian, and the cheap ammo dried up. The guns that were coming in, the imports like those were dried up. Teddy Nappen 33:56 Apparently, it was in 1989 under Bush, because the shooter used the Chinese AK. Evan Nappen 34:32 Please remember, it was Bush. It was Bush, the Republican, the neocon, and this is one of the things that you got to always remember. Even though they may have the “R” there, they’re not necessarily a friend of the Second Amendment. Teddy Nappen 34:47 Yeah. And then the article tries to highlight more of like 2014 where the annexation of Crimea, the U.S. put sanctions on Russia. So, there goes all the Russian AKs. Evan Nappen 34:57 Well, not just Russian AKs. I mean, we were getting a lot of great guns, really cool guns from Russia, you know. We’re getting SKSs – originals, beautiful guns. I mean, phenomenal. Russian SKSs are probably the best SKS ever made, machined, gorgeous. Mosin-Nagant rifles, right? They were very Page – 12 – of 14 reasonable, and you know, you want to do the enemy at the gates, man. You got your gun and super strong, tough rifles. You know, a lot of great stuff could come in, and now we don’t see it anymore. And prices have skyrocketed. I mean, if you look at SKS prices today, holy crap. You’d be lucky to find a Chinese SKS that you used to be able to buy for less than $100, one in great shape today for 600 bucks, you know? I mean, easily 600, some even more. I’ve seen Russian SKSs pushing $2,000 a piece at the gun show. I mean, the prices are just unbelievable, because the market has a limitation now to the quantity that’s out there. And by the way, there’s probably only a 10th of the amount of Russian SKSs compared to Chinese SKSs. Even with that, the prices are way up there, and one of the reasons is that the SKSs, for example, are excellent functioning rifles. They’re handy. They function great and are very popular. Evan Nappen 36:36 With AKs, you know, there was that whole growth of it, and we were able to have all that great, cheap ammo. Once you got into an introductory, reasonable AK, then you wanted to up your game with other AKs, and all that. But what’s happened is, with the close out of that, we’ve become more, much, much more AR focused. The AR-15 platform, and everything about it. That’s all, a lot of it is U.S. made, and kind of America’s rifle. I would have to say today that America’s rifle, without a doubt, is the AR-15. Teddy Nappen 37:17 I would also say there’s also just the customization, and I think modularity. Evan Nappen 37:23 Its modularity seems to appeal to a lot of gun folks, because you can add and change and put all kinds of whistles and bells. Teddy Nappen 37:32 That also goes to the tone of American culture versus like the Eastern Bloc of the AK 47. We’re very individualistic, where we will make it so it is something that works for us, versus, you know, the AK 47 is designed, it is designed in that shape or form. You can do some small mods, but generally speaking, you pick up an AK 47 it’s, you know, hold it up to another one, like that’s the level of it. Evan Nappen 37:58 That’s an interesting point, Teddy, about how in those countries they don’t. It’s hard to find a Bubba AK in countries where they make the AKs, isn’t it? They don’t Bubbafi much, do they? But we love to modify, change, and customize, and that’s actually a lot of the fun of it. Let’s face it, it’s fun. It’s fun to add the accessories to fit your needs, make it look cooler, make it function better, make it more appropriate for whatever your needs may be. But then again, the anti-gun rights crowd will suddenly take any given feature and demonize certain features. So, if they are intrinsically evil, that if for some reason you have a telescoping stock on your AR or any other semi-auto, because your stock moves one or two inches back and forth, somehow that is such a huge impact on crime. Teddy Nappen 39:09 Or has a barrel shroud, which they can’t define. Page – 13 – of 14 Evan Nappen 39:12 Oh yeah, well, they try to. Remember. Teddy Nappen 39:15 The shoulder thingy that goes up, you know, the seat belt. Evan Nappen 39:18 The shoulder thingy that goes up is a barrel shroud. Isn’t that interesting? These are the experts that are voting for these laws. They have no clue what they’re even voting for, nor do they care. As long as it’s going against gun owners, they’re for it. They don’t care what it is. Teddy Nappen 39:39 Yeah, and I will say, just from the article, like, they try to, of course, they try to say, oh, Trump’s tariffs is what killed the AK market. There’s like also going from Russia, Ukraine, which they tried to say, you, oh, Poland is one of the key suppliers of Ukraine. No, the United States is one of the key suppliers of military to Ukraine. We’ve, you know, what is it, 40 billion, 80 billion, like crazy amounts, like they’re just still in that. And then again, tariffs are non-inflationary. We’ve known that, we’ve proven it. And I love how they try to say, well, we could get more AKs if we removed tariffs on Poland. Evan Nappen 40:21 Well, you know, it’s pretty bad when the Left media is trying to lure removal of tariffs by saying we could get more AKs in the country. That’s a pretty interesting stretch for them. Teddy Nappen 40:34 I know why they’re doing it. They’re trying to turn gun owners. They’re trying their best to turn gun owners into the debt, which is a ridiculous concept. They’ve demonized them, called them racist, call them everything under the sun. So, good luck trying to convince a gun owner to be considered a Democrat. If they are voting Democrat, you’re voting for your own destruction. I’m sorry. Evan Nappen 40:54 And speaking of destruction of gun owners, that is what GOFUs are. GOFU is our Gun Owner Fuck Ups. Every show we like to highlight the GOFU of the week, and this week’s GOFU is something that is constantly coming my way in the practice of law. And some of you listeners may say, yeah, it’s obvious, but I still have to say it because I keep getting case after case after case. It’s real simple, folks. You need to know your state’s gun laws. Most people understand that they need to know their state’s gun laws, but it doesn’t end there. If you travel out of state, you need to know the state’s gun laws that you’re traveling to. I constantly get cases of individuals that come from other states and end up being criminally charged in New Jersey because New Jersey’s gun laws are nothing like the gun laws of the state they were traveling from. The reverse is true, my friends. The reverse is true. Evan Nappen 42:13 You may have a New Jersey carry permit, but you need to know, if you don’t know, that no other state in America is recognized by New Jersey. No other state’s gun license is recognized by New Jersey. New Jersey has no reciprocity per se. When you travel, there are states where you can carry, because Page – 14 – of 14 despite New Jersey not recognizing their carry license, they’re willing to recognize any lawfully issued state carry. Many of the states, over 70% of the land mass in America, is constitutional carry, where as long as you’re law-abiding, you can carry even without a permit. But you still have to know, because I get calls from New Jersey folks that are getting jammed up in other states, making the mistake that others frequently make coming into New Jersey. Evan Nappen 43:24 So, the GOFU is real simple. Know the gun laws. Know the gun laws of the jurisdiction that you are residing in, and know the gun laws of the jurisdiction that you may be traveling in. It’s critical! I see it every day as a classic of virtually all GOFUs. This is Evan Nappen and Teddy Nappen reminding you that gun laws don’t protect honest citizens from criminals. They protect criminals from honest citizens. Speaker 3 44:05 Gun Lawyer is a CounterThink Media production. The music used in this broadcast was managed by Cosmo Music, New York, New York. Reach us by emailing Evan@gun.lawyer. The information and opinions in this broadcast do not constitute legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney in your state. Downloadable PDF TranscriptGun Lawyer S5 E291_Transcript About The HostEvan Nappen, Esq.Known as “America's Gun Lawyer,” Evan Nappen is above all a tireless defender of justice. Author of eight bestselling books and countless articles on firearms, knives, and weapons history and the law, a certified Firearms Instructor, and avid weapons collector and historian with a vast collection that spans almost five decades — it's no wonder he's become the trusted, go-to expert for local, industry and national media outlets. Regularly called on by radio, television and online news media for his commentary and expertise on breaking news Evan has appeared countless shows including Fox News – Judge Jeanine, CNN – Lou Dobbs, Court TV, Real Talk on WOR, It's Your Call with Lyn Doyle, Tom Gresham's Gun Talk, and Cam & Company/NRA News. As a creative arts consultant, he also lends his weapons law and historical expertise to an elite, discerning cadre of movie and television producers and directors, and novelists. He also provides expert testimony and consultations for defense attorneys across America. Email Evan Your Comments and Questions talkback@gun.lawyer Join Evan's InnerCircleHere's your chance to join an elite group of the Savviest gun and knife owners in America. Membership is totally FREE and Strictly CONFIDENTIAL. Just enter your email to start receiving insider news, tips, and other valuable membership benefits. 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Christopher and Eric kick off their Pride Month celebration with a series of special Pride Pairings in which documentarians and dramatists alike illuminate the personal lives of two of gay culture's most towering figures. In this episode, we begin a two-part exploration of one of the civil rights movement's greatest – and previously unsung — heroes, Bayard Rustin, whose indefatigable nature and awe inspiring commitment to non-violence set the stage for one of the defining events of the entire civil rights era, the March on Washington. The documentary BROTHER OUTSIDER: THE LIFE OF BAYARD RUSTIN takes us inside his once secret relationships with other men, his mistreatment at the hands of some of his fellow civil rights activists and the causes to which he gave his heart after the Civil Rights Act became law due in no small part to his tireless efforts. It's a nice preparation for next week's serving of RUSTIN, the starry Netflix biopic based on his life and directed by George C. Wolfe.
May 16, 2026May 17th is the anniversary of the Brown v Board of Education decision declaring racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional, Three years later, President Eisenhower proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson wrestled the Act through Congress, But efforts to expand voter registration for Black Americans were stymied, even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, On March 7. 1965 after the shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson, marchers set out from Selma AL to the state capital at Montgomery to draw attention to the struggle, they were stopped by the government. The march was started again, and this time 25,000 people completed their trip, The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed on August 6, 1965, Yet the basic rights protected by the Act were gutted on April 29, 2026 by the Supreme Court, Thousands, including 18 members of Congress, traveled to Selma and Montgomery today, to call for action to protect voting rights, Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told an audience that those trying to gerrymander their way into controlling Congress have awakened a sleeping giant, as people come together knowing what it means to the country to protect the vote.Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribeYou can also find me:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe
We're back with another episode of “Here's the Scoop: Supreme Court Edition.” This month, NBC News senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett is speaking with legal experts and lawyers to discuss the cases being argued this term — and the legal precedents that underpin them. Our second episode is about the transgender student athletes who are challenging laws in West Virginia and Idaho that prevent them from competing on girls' teams in school sports. The courts of appeals in each district have sided with the student athletes, but Supreme Court watchers agree that the justices are likely to uphold the bans. Former ACLU national legal director David Cole argued Bostock vs. Clayton County (2020), in which a 6-3 majority of justices established transgender people as a protected class under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination. Host Laura Jarrett talks to Cole about his client Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job after she came out as transgender. He explains how he won over conservative justices on the high court, and why the stakes are different for the transgender athletes in these cases. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
We're back with another episode of “Here's the Scoop: Supreme Court Edition.” This month, NBC News senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett is speaking with legal experts and lawyers to discuss the cases being argued this term — and the legal precedents that underpin them. Our second episode is about the transgender student athletes who are challenging laws in West Virginia and Idaho that prevent them from competing on girls' teams in school sports. The courts of appeals in each district have sided with the student athletes, but Supreme Court watchers agree that the justices are likely to uphold the bans. Former ACLU national legal director David Cole argued Bostock vs. Clayton County (2020), in which a 6-3 majority of justices established transgender people as a protected class under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination. Host Laura Jarrett talks to Cole about his client Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job after she came out as transgender. He explains how he won over conservative justices on the high court, and why the stakes are different for the transgender athletes in these cases. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
2 Hours and 27 MinutesPG-13This is a re-release of episodes:Episode 831: How the 'Civil Rights Regime' Was Enshrined w/ Ryan TurnipseedEpisode 905: The Civil Rights Act and Its Consequences w/ Gregory HoodEnshrining the Civil Rights RegimeRyan's Find My Frens PageGreg at American RenaissanceThe Age of Entitlement: America Since the SixtiesPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.
The EEOC is suing the New York Times, alleging the paper violated the Civil Rights Act by passing over a white male employee for a promotion because of his race and sex - employment attorney James Fett weighs in. President Trump's endorsed candidates scored major wins in Indiana, defeating several Republican state senators who opposed his redistricting push. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick faced closed-door questioning on Capitol Hill over newly released Epstein files that appear to contradict his past claims about when he last had contact with Jeffrey Epstein. Ted Turner, the billionaire media pioneer who founded CNN and helped reshape cable television, has died at 87 after a years-long battle with Lewy body dementia. Pure Talk: Dial #250 and say keyword MEGYN KELLY to switch to Pure Talk and get unlimited data for just $34.99 a month! Done with Debt: https://www.DoneWithDebt.com & tell them Megyn Kelly sent you! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, passed in 1964 and 1965 respectively, marked the beginning of multi-racial democracy in the United States. But in the decades since, those achievements have been steadily contested. Just days ago, The U.S. Supreme Court dealt yet another blow to the Voting Rights Act with a decision regarding the Louisiana congressional map. Many experts say the Voting Rights Act is facing an existential moment where it stands to be narrowed, marginalized, and legislated out of relevancy, or even existence. Ari Berman is the voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones and the author of a number of books on the history of the subject, most recently Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts
In the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais, two of the nation's leading election law scholars dissect a ruling that could soon reverberate through elections at every level of government. Nathaniel Persily joins Pam Karlan for a discussion about the Callais decision—what it means for racial representation, partisan gerrymandering, and anti-discrimination law. Karlan and Persily are longtime collaborators, including as co-authors of The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process. Their conversation traces the Voting Rights Act's evolution from the landmark Thornburg v. Gingles decision to the Court's latest narrowing of Section 2, and examines how the ruling could affect congressional maps in 2026, minority representation at every level of government, and the broader future of disparate impact protections. As Persily explains, the Court has moved from treating partisan gerrymandering as constitutionally suspect to a place where it is now “a legitimate state practice, a legitimate interest that's almost being celebrated.” Links: Nate Persily >>> Stanford Law School Page Connect: Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast Website Stanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn Page Rich Ford >>> Twitter/X Pam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School Page Stanford Law School >>> Twitter/X Stanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/X [00:00:30] Introduction: The Voting Rights Act Under Siege [00:02:18] Section 2's Original Promise: Results Over Intent [00:11:06] Louisiana v. Cali: Dismantling the Gingles Framework [00:23:17] From Unconstitutional to Celebrated: The Partisan Gerrymandering Evolution [00:28:14] Future Implications: Elections and Civil Rights Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Do you know all five rights in the First Amendment? Most Americans don't — and that's exactly the problem. In this eye-opening episode, Donny sits down with Ben Sheehan, host of Civics Made Easy on PBS, bestselling author of What Does the Constitution Actually Say?, and Substack writer at Politics Made Easy, for an urgent, accessible civics lesson every American needs right now. Ben breaks down the Bill of Rights amendment by amendment, explains the difference between originalism and textualism on the Supreme Court, and reveals exactly how the Trump administration may be violating the Constitution — from the Emoluments Clause to executive overreach on voting rights and mail-in ballots. In this episode, you'll learn: The five rights in the First Amendment (and why most Americans can't name them) What each of the 10 Bill of Rights amendments actually protects How originalism vs. textualism shapes Supreme Court rulings today Which constitutional clauses Trump may be violating — and why Congress isn't stopping it How ICE, executive orders, and election interference could impact the 2026 midterms Why the Constitution has no explicit right to vote — and why that matters How No Child Left Behind gutted civics education in American schools Why a more informed public in the 1960s led to the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and four constitutional amendments in one decade What Ben would add to the Constitution today Whether you're a political junkie, a first-time voter, a student, or just a concerned citizen trying to understand American democracy, constitutional law, and the future of free elections — this conversation will educate, inform, and maybe even inspire you to get more civically engaged.
2 Hours and 27 MinutesPG-13This is a re-release of episodes:Episode 831: How the 'Civil Rights Regime' Was Enshrined w/ Ryan TurnipseedEpisode 905: The Civil Rights Act and Its Consequences w/ Gregory HoodEnshrining the Civil Rights RegimeRyan's Find My Frens PageGreg at American RenaissanceThe Age of Entitlement: America Since the SixtiesPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.
The idea that white people — and white men in particular — face discrimination has become something of an obsession on the American right. It's a view that my guest this week shares. Jeremy Carl was nominated to a State Department post by the Trump administration, which sparked a lot of controversy. Carl is the author of “The Unprotected Class,” in which he makes the case that white Americans are in danger of becoming “second-class citizens.” I wanted to know what he thinks constitutes anti-white discrimination and whether focusing on it inevitably leads to white nationalism. After we taped this interview, Carl withdrew his nomination, acknowledging that he lacked enough support to be confirmed. 0:00 - Intro 01:59 - Jeremy Carl's trajectory and State Department Nomination 05:24 - The Civil Rights Act and rise of anti-white Discrimination 12:20 - The impact of immigration on white Americans 24:53 - The "radicalization" of D.E.I. 37:37 - Carl's provocative language and controversial tweets 51:06 - “White culture” vs. “civic nationalism” 01:01:00 - The fours pillars of “Americanness” (A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.) Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times with Ross Douthat. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.