Podcast appearances and mentions of David Cole

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded its latest Term. And over the past few weeks, the Trump administration has continued to duke it out with its adversaries in the federal courts.To tackle these topics, as well as their intersection—in terms of how well the courts, including but not limited to the Supreme Court, are handling Trump-related cases—I interviewed Professor Pamela Karlan, a longtime faculty member at Stanford Law School. She's perfectly situated to address these subjects, for at least three reasons.First, Professor Karlan is a leading scholar of constitutional law. Second, she's a former SCOTUS clerk and seasoned advocate at One First Street, with ten arguments to her name. Third, she has high-level experience at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), having served (twice) as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ.I've had some wonderful guests to discuss the role of the courts today, including Judges Vince Chhabria (N.D. Cal.) and Ana Reyes (D.D.C.)—but as sitting judges, they couldn't discuss certain subjects, and they had to be somewhat circumspect. Professor Karlan, in contrast, isn't afraid to “go there”—and whether or not you agree with her opinions, I think you'll share my appreciation for her insight and candor.Show Notes:* Pamela S. Karlan bio, Stanford Law School* Pamela S. Karlan bio, Wikipedia* The McCorkle Lecture (Professor Pamela Karlan), UVA Law SchoolPrefer reading to listening? For paid subscribers, a transcript of the entire episode appears below.Sponsored by:NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment at nexfirm dot com.Three quick notes about this transcript. First, it has been cleaned up from the audio in ways that don't alter substance—e.g., by deleting verbal filler or adding a word here or there to clarify meaning. Second, my interviewee has not reviewed this transcript, and any transcription errors are mine. Third, because of length constraints, this newsletter may be truncated in email; to view the entire post, simply click on “View entire message” in your email app.David Lat: Welcome to the Original Jurisdiction podcast. I'm your host, David Lat, author of a Substack newsletter about law and the legal profession also named Original Jurisdiction, which you can read and subscribe to at davidlat dot Substack dot com. You're listening to the seventy-seventh episode of this podcast, recorded on Friday, June 27.Thanks to this podcast's sponsor, NexFirm. NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment at nexfirm dot com. Want to know who the guest will be for the next Original Jurisdiction podcast? Follow NexFirm on LinkedIn for a preview.With the 2024-2025 Supreme Court Term behind us, now is a good time to talk about both constitutional law and the proper role of the judiciary in American society. I expect they will remain significant as subjects because the tug of war between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary continues—and shows no signs of abating.To tackle these topics, I welcomed to the podcast Professor Pamela Karlan, the Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and Co-Director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School. Pam is not only a leading legal scholar, but she also has significant experience in practice. She's argued 10 cases before the Supreme Court, which puts her in a very small club, and she has worked in government at high levels, serving as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama administration. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Professor Pam Karlan.Professor Karlan, thank you so much for joining me.Pamela Karlan: Thanks for having me.DL: So let's start at the beginning. Tell us about your background and upbringing. I believe we share something in common—you were born in New York City?PK: I was born in New York City. My family had lived in New York since they arrived in the country about a century before.DL: What borough?PK: Originally Manhattan, then Brooklyn, then back to Manhattan. As my mother said, when I moved to Brooklyn when I was clerking, “Brooklyn to Brooklyn, in three generations.”DL: Brooklyn is very, very hip right now.PK: It wasn't hip when we got there.DL: And did you grow up in Manhattan or Brooklyn?PK: When I was little, we lived in Manhattan. Then right before I started elementary school, right after my brother was born, our apartment wasn't big enough anymore. So we moved to Stamford, Connecticut, and I grew up in Connecticut.DL: What led you to go to law school? I see you stayed in the state; you went to Yale. What did you have in mind for your post-law-school career?PK: I went to law school because during the summer between 10th and 11th grade, I read Richard Kluger's book, Simple Justice, which is the story of the litigation that leads up to Brown v. Board of Education. And I decided I wanted to go to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and be a school desegregation lawyer, and that's what led me to go to law school.DL: You obtained a master's degree in history as well as a law degree. Did you also have teaching in mind as well?PK: No, I thought getting the master's degree was my last chance to do something I had loved doing as an undergrad. It didn't occur to me until I was late in my law-school days that I might at some point want to be a law professor. That's different than a lot of folks who go to law school now; they go to law school wanting to be law professors.During Admitted Students' Weekend, some students say to me, “I want to be a law professor—should I come here to law school?” I feel like saying to them, “You haven't done a day of law school yet. You have no idea whether you're good at law. You have no idea whether you'd enjoy doing legal teaching.”It just amazes me that people come to law school now planning to be a law professor, in a way that I don't think very many people did when I was going to law school. In my day, people discovered when they were in law school that they loved it, and they wanted to do more of what they loved doing; I don't think people came to law school for the most part planning to be law professors.DL: The track is so different now—and that's a whole other conversation—but people are getting master's and Ph.D. degrees, and people are doing fellowship after fellowship. It's not like, oh, you practice for three, five, or seven years, and then you become a professor. It seems to be almost like this other track nowadays.PK: When I went on the teaching market, I was distinctive in that I had not only my student law-journal note, but I actually had an article that Ricky Revesz and I had worked on that was coming out. And it was not normal for people to have that back then. Now people go onto the teaching market with six or seven publications—and no practice experience really to speak of, for a lot of them.DL: You mentioned talking to admitted students. You went to YLS, but you've now been teaching for a long time at Stanford Law School. They're very similar in a lot of ways. They're intellectual. They're intimate, especially compared to some of the other top law schools. What would you say if I'm an admitted student choosing between those two institutions? What would cause me to pick one versus the other—besides the superior weather of Palo Alto?PK: Well, some of it is geography; it's not just the weather. Some folks are very East-Coast-centered, and other folks are very West-Coast-centered. That makes a difference.It's a little hard to say what the differences are, because the last time I spent a long time at Yale Law School was in 2012 (I visited there a bunch of times over the years), but I think the faculty here at Stanford is less focused and concentrated on the students who want to be law professors than is the case at Yale. When I was at Yale, the idea was if you were smart, you went and became a law professor. It was almost like a kind of external manifestation of an inner state of grace; it was a sign that you were a smart person, if you wanted to be a law professor. And if you didn't, well, you could be a donor later on. Here at Stanford, the faculty as a whole is less concentrated on producing law professors. We produce a fair number of them, but it's not the be-all and end-all of the law school in some ways. Heather Gerken, who's the dean at Yale, has changed that somewhat, but not entirely. So that's one big difference.One of the most distinctive things about Stanford, because we're on the quarter system, is that our clinics are full-time clinics, taught by full-time faculty members at the law school. And that's distinctive. I think Yale calls more things clinics than we do, and a lot of them are part-time or taught by folks who aren't in the building all the time. So that's a big difference between the schools.They just have very different feels. I would encourage any student who gets into both of them to go and visit both of them, talk to the students, and see where you think you're going to be most comfortably stretched. Either school could be the right school for somebody.DL: I totally agree with you. Sometimes people think there's some kind of platonic answer to, “Where should I go to law school?” And it depends on so many individual circumstances.PK: There really isn't one answer. I think when I was deciding between law schools as a student, I got waitlisted at Stanford and I got into Yale. I had gone to Yale as an undergrad, so I wasn't going to go anywhere else if I got in there. I was from Connecticut and loved living in Connecticut, so that was an easy choice for me. But it's a hard choice for a lot of folks.And I do think that one of the worst things in the world is U.S. News and World Report, even though we're generally a beneficiary of it. It used to be that the R-squared between where somebody went to law school and what a ranking was was minimal. I knew lots of people who decided, in the old days, that they were going to go to Columbia rather than Yale or Harvard, rather than Stanford or Penn, rather than Chicago, because they liked the city better or there was somebody who did something they really wanted to do there.And then the R-squared, once U.S. News came out, of where people went and what the rankings were, became huge. And as you probably know, there were some scandals with law schools that would just waitlist people rather than admit them, to keep their yield up, because they thought the person would go to a higher-ranked law school. There were years and years where a huge part of the Stanford entering class had been waitlisted at Penn. And that's bad for people, because there are people who should go to Penn rather than come here. There are people who should go to NYU rather than going to Harvard. And a lot of those people don't do it because they're so fixated on U.S. News rankings.DL: I totally agree with you. But I suspect that a lot of people think that there are certain opportunities that are going to be open to them only if they go here or only if they go there.Speaking of which, after graduating from YLS, you clerked for Justice Blackmun on the Supreme Court, and statistically it's certainly true that certain schools seem to improve your odds of clerking for the Court. What was that experience like overall? People often describe it as a dream job. We're recording this on the last day of the Supreme Court Term; some hugely consequential historic cases are coming down. As a law clerk, you get a front row seat to all of that, to all of that history being made. Did you love that experience?PK: I loved the experience. I loved it in part because I worked for a wonderful justice who was just a lovely man, a real mensch. I had three great co-clerks. It was the first time, actually, that any justice had ever hired three women—and so that was distinctive for me, because I had been in classes in law school where there were fewer than three women. I was in one class in law school where I was the only woman. So that was neat.It was a great Term. It was the last year of the Burger Court, and we had just a heap of incredibly interesting cases. It's amazing how many cases I teach in law school that were decided that year—the summary-judgment trilogy, Thornburg v. Gingles, Bowers v. Hardwick. It was just a really great time to be there. And as a liberal, we won a lot of the cases. We didn't win them all, but we won a lot of them.It was incredibly intense. At that point, the Supreme Court still had this odd IT system that required eight hours of diagnostics every night. So the system was up from 8 a.m. to midnight—it stayed online longer if there was a death case—but otherwise it went down at midnight. In the Blackmun chambers, we showed up at 8 a.m. for breakfast with the Justice, and we left at midnight, five days a week. Then on the weekends, we were there from 9 to 9. And they were deciding 150 cases, not 60 cases, a year. So there was a lot more work to do, in that sense. But it was a great year. I've remained friends with my co-clerks, and I've remained friends with clerks from other chambers. It was a wonderful experience.DL: And you've actually written about it. I would refer people to some of the articles that they can look up, on your CV and elsewhere, where you've talked about, say, having breakfast with the Justice.PK: And we had a Passover Seder with the Justice as well, which was a lot of fun.DL: Oh wow, who hosted that? Did he?PK: Actually, the clerks hosted it. Originally he had said, “Oh, why don't we have it at the Court?” But then he came back to us and said, “Well, I think the Chief Justice”—Chief Justice Burger—“might not like that.” But he lent us tables and chairs, which were dropped off at one of the clerk's houses. And it was actually the day of the Gramm-Rudman argument, which was an argument about the budget. So we had to keep running back and forth from the Court to the house of Danny Richman, the clerk who hosted it, who was a Thurgood Marshall clerk. We had to keep running back and forth from the Court to Danny Richman's house, to baste the turkey and make stuff, back and forth. And then we had a real full Seder, and we invited all of the Jewish clerks at the Court and the Justice's messenger, who was Jewish, and the Justice and Mrs. Blackmun, and it was a lot of fun.DL: Wow, that's wonderful. So where did you go after your clerkship?PK: I went to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where I was an assistant counsel, and I worked on voting-rights and employment-discrimination cases.DL: And that was something that you had thought about for a long time—you mentioned you had read about its work in high school.PK: Yes, and it was a great place to work. We were working on great cases, and at that point we were really pushing the envelope on some of the stuff that we were doing—which was great and inspiring, and my colleagues were wonderful.And unlike a lot of Supreme Court practices now, where there's a kind of “King Bee” usually, and that person gets to argue everything, the Legal Defense Fund was very different. The first argument I did at the Court was in a case that I had worked on the amended complaint for, while at the Legal Defense Fund—and they let me essentially keep working on the case and argue it at the Supreme Court, even though by the time the case got to the Supreme Court, I was teaching at UVA. So they didn't have this policy of stripping away from younger lawyers the ability to argue their cases the whole way through the system.DL: So how many years out from law school were you by the time you had your first argument before the Court? I know that, today at least, there's this two-year bar on arguing before the Court after having clerked there.PK: Six or seven years out—because I think I argued in ‘91.DL: Now, you mentioned that by then you were teaching at UVA. You had a dream job working at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. What led you to go to UVA?PK: There were two things, really, that did it. One was I had also discovered when I was in law school that I loved law school, and I was better at law school than I had been at anything I had done before law school. And the second was I really hated dealing with opposing counsel. I tell my students now, “You should take negotiation. If there's only one class you could take in law school, take negotiation.” Because it's a skill; it's not a habit of mind, but I felt like it was a habit of mind. And I found the discovery process and filing motions to compel and dealing with the other side's intransigence just really unpleasant.What I really loved was writing briefs. I loved writing briefs, and I could keep doing that for the Legal Defense Fund while at UVA, and I've done a bunch of that over the years for LDF and for other organizations. I could keep doing that and I could live in a small town, which I really wanted to do. I love New York, and now I could live in a city—I've spent a couple of years, off and on, living in cities since then, and I like it—but I didn't like it at that point. I really wanted to be out in the country somewhere. And so UVA was the perfect mix. I kept working on cases, writing amicus briefs for LDF and for other organizations. I could teach, which I loved. I could live in a college town, which I really enjoyed. So it was the best blend of things.DL: And I know, from your having actually delivered a lecture at UVA, that it really did seem to have a special place in your heart. UVA Law School—they really do have a wonderful environment there (as does Stanford), and Charlottesville is a very charming place.PK: Yes, especially when I was there. UVA has a real gift for developing its junior faculty. It was a place where the senior faculty were constantly reading our work, constantly talking to us. Everyone was in the building, which makes a huge difference.The second case I had go to the Supreme Court actually came out of a class where a student asked a question, and I ended up representing the student, and we took the case all the way to the Supreme Court. But I wasn't admitted in the Western District of Virginia, and that's where we had to file a case. And so I turned to my next-door neighbor, George Rutherglen, and said to George, “Would you be the lead counsel in this?” And he said, “Sure.” And we ended up representing a bunch of UVA students, challenging the way the Republican Party did its nomination process. And we ended up, by the student's third year in law school, at the Supreme Court.So UVA was a great place. I had amazing colleagues. The legendary Bill Stuntz was then there; Mike Klarman was there. Dan Ortiz, who's still there, was there. So was John Harrison. It was a fantastic group of people to have as your colleagues.DL: Was it difficult for you, then, to leave UVA and move to Stanford?PK: Oh yes. When I went in to tell Bob Scott, who was then the dean, that I was leaving, I just burst into tears. I think the reason I left UVA was I was at a point in my career where I'd done a bunch of visits at other schools, and I thought that I could either leave then or I would be making a decision to stay there for the rest of my career. And I just felt like I wanted to make a change. And in retrospect, I would've been just as happy if I'd stayed at UVA. In my professional life, I would've been just as happy. I don't know in my personal life, because I wouldn't have met my partner, I don't think, if I'd been at UVA. But it's a marvelous place; everything about it is just absolutely superb.DL: Are you the managing partner of a boutique or midsize firm? If so, you know that your most important job is attracting and retaining top talent. It's not easy, especially if your benefits don't match up well with those of Biglaw firms or if your HR process feels “small time.” NexFirm has created an onboarding and benefits experience that rivals an Am Law 100 firm, so you can compete for the best talent at a price your firm can afford. Want to learn more? Contact NexFirm at 212-292-1002 or email betterbenefits at nexfirm dot com.So I do want to give you a chance to say nice things about your current place. I assume you have no regrets about moving to Stanford Law, even if you would've been just as happy at UVA?PK: I'm incredibly happy here. I've got great colleagues. I've got great students. The ability to do the clinic the way we do it, which is as a full-time clinic, wouldn't be true anywhere else in the country, and that makes a huge difference to that part of my work. I've gotten to teach around the curriculum. I've taught four of the six first-year courses, which is a great opportunityAnd as you said earlier, the weather is unbelievable. People downplay that, because especially for people who are Northeastern Ivy League types, there's a certain Calvinism about that, which is that you have to suffer in order to be truly working hard. People out here sometimes think we don't work hard because we are not visibly suffering. But it's actually the opposite, in a way. I'm looking out my window right now, and it's a gorgeous day. And if I were in the east and it were 75 degrees and sunny, I would find it hard to work because I'd think it's usually going to be hot and humid, or if it's in the winter, it's going to be cold and rainy. I love Yale, but the eight years I spent there, my nose ran the entire time I was there. And here I look out and I think, “It's beautiful, but you know what? It's going to be beautiful tomorrow. So I should sit here and finish grading my exams, or I should sit here and edit this article, or I should sit here and work on the Restatement—because it's going to be just as beautiful tomorrow.” And the ability to walk outside, to clear your head, makes a huge difference. People don't understand just how huge a difference that is, but it's huge.DL: That's so true. If you had me pick a color to associate with my time at YLS, I would say gray. It just felt like everything was always gray, the sky was always gray—not blue or sunny or what have you.But I know you've spent some time outside of Northern California, because you have done some stints at the Justice Department. Tell us about that, the times you went there—why did you go there? What type of work were you doing? And how did it relate to or complement your scholarly work?PK: At the beginning of the Obama administration, I had applied for a job in the Civil Rights Division as a deputy assistant attorney general (DAAG), and I didn't get it. And I thought, “Well, that's passed me by.” And a couple of years later, when they were looking for a new principal deputy solicitor general, in the summer of 2013, the civil-rights groups pushed me for that job. I got an interview with Eric Holder, and it was on June 11th, 2013, which just fortuitously happens to be the 50th anniversary of the day that Vivian Malone desegregated the University of Alabama—and Vivian Malone is the older sister of Sharon Malone, who is married to Eric Holder.So I went in for the interview and I said, “This must be an especially special day for you because of the 50th anniversary.” And we talked about that a little bit, and then we talked about other things. And I came out of the interview, and a couple of weeks later, Don Verrilli, who was the solicitor general, called me up and said, “Look, you're not going to get a job as the principal deputy”—which ultimately went to Ian Gershengorn, a phenomenal lawyer—“but Eric Holder really enjoyed talking to you, so we're going to look for something else for you to do here at the Department of Justice.”And a couple of weeks after that, Eric Holder called me and offered me the DAAG position in the Civil Rights Division and said, “We'd really like you to especially concentrate on our voting-rights litigation.” It was very important litigation, in part because the Supreme Court had recently struck down the pre-clearance regime under Section 5 [of the Voting Rights Act]. So the Justice Department was now bringing a bunch of lawsuits against things they could have blocked if Section 5 had been in effect, most notably the Texas voter ID law, which was a quite draconian voter ID law, and this omnibus bill in North Carolina that involved all sorts of cutbacks to opportunities to vote: a cutback on early voting, a cutback on same-day registration, a cutback on 16- and 17-year-olds pre-registering, and the like.So I went to the Department of Justice and worked with the Voting Section on those cases, but I also ended up working on things like getting the Justice Department to change its position on whether Title VII covered transgender individuals. And then I also got to work on the implementation of [United States v.] Windsor—which I had worked on, representing Edie Windsor, before I went to DOJ, because the Court had just decided Windsor [which held Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional]. So I had an opportunity to work on how to implement Windsor across the federal government. So that was the stuff I got to work on the first time I was at DOJ, and I also obviously worked on tons of other stuff, and it was phenomenal. I loved doing it.I did it for about 20 months, and then I came back to Stanford. It affected my teaching; I understood a lot of stuff quite differently having worked on it. It gave me some ideas on things I wanted to write about. And it just refreshed me in some ways. It's different than working in the clinic. I love working in the clinic, but you're working with students. You're working only with very, very junior lawyers. I sometimes think of the clinic as being a sort of Groundhog Day of first-year associates, and so I'm sort of senior partner and paralegal at a large law firm. At DOJ, you're working with subject-matter experts. The people in the Voting Section, collectively, had hundreds of years of experience with voting. The people in the Appellate Section had hundreds of years of experience with appellate litigation. And so it's just a very different feel.So I did that, and then I came back to Stanford. I was here, and in the fall of 2020, I was asked if I wanted to be one of the people on the Justice Department review team if Joe Biden won the election. These are sometimes referred to as the transition teams or the landing teams or the like. And I said, “I'd be delighted to do that.” They had me as one of the point people reviewing the Civil Rights Division. And I think it might've even been the Wednesday or Thursday before Inauguration Day 2021, I got a call from the liaison person on the transition team saying, “How would you like to go back to DOJ and be the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division?” That would mean essentially running the Division until we got a confirmed head, which took about five months. And I thought that this would be an amazing opportunity to go back to the DOJ and work with people I love, right at the beginning of an administration.And the beginning of an administration is really different than coming in midway through the second term of an administration. You're trying to come up with priorities, and I viewed my job really as helping the career people to do their best work. There were a huge number of career people who had gone through the first Trump administration, and they were raring to go. They had all sorts of ideas on stuff they wanted to do, and it was my job to facilitate that and make that possible for them. And that's why it's so tragic this time around that almost all of those people have left. The current administration first tried to transfer them all into Sanctuary Cities [the Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group] or ask them to do things that they couldn't in good conscience do, and so they've retired or taken buyouts or just left.DL: It's remarkable, just the loss of expertise and experience at the Justice Department over these past few months.PK: Thousands of years of experience gone. And these are people, you've got to realize, who had been through the Nixon administration, the Reagan administration, both Bush administrations, and the first Trump administration, and they hadn't had any problem. That's what's so stunning: this is not just the normal shift in priorities, and they have gone out of their way to make it so hellacious for people that they will leave. And that's not something that either Democratic or Republican administrations have ever done before this.DL: And we will get to a lot of, shall we say, current events. Finishing up on just the discussion of your career, you had the opportunity to work in the executive branch—what about judicial service? You've been floated over the years as a possible Supreme Court nominee. I don't know if you ever looked into serving on the Ninth Circuit or were considered for that. What about judicial service?PK: So I've never been in a position, and part of this was a lesson I learned right at the beginning of my LDF career, when Lani Guinier, who was my boss at LDF, was nominated for the position of AAG [assistant attorney general] in the Civil Rights Division and got shot down. I knew from that time forward that if I did the things I really wanted to do, my chances of confirmation were not going to be very high. People at LDF used to joke that they would get me nominated so that I would take all the bullets, and then they'd sneak everybody else through. So I never really thought that I would have a shot at a judicial position, and that didn't bother me particularly. As you know, I gave the commencement speech many years ago at Stanford, and I said, “Would I want to be on the Supreme Court? You bet—but not enough to have trimmed my sails for an entire lifetime.”And I think that's right. Peter Baker did this story in The New York Times called something like, “Favorites of Left Don't Make Obama's Court List.” And in the story, Tommy Goldstein, who's a dear friend of mine, said, “If they wanted to talk about somebody who was a flaming liberal, they'd be talking about Pam Karlan, but nobody's talking about Pam Karlan.” And then I got this call from a friend of mine who said, “Yeah, but at least people are talking about how nobody's talking about you. Nobody's even talking about how nobody's talking about me.” And I was flattered, but not fooled.DL: That's funny; I read that piece in preparing for this interview. So let's say someone were to ask you, someone mid-career, “Hey, I've been pretty safe in the early years of my career, but now I'm at this juncture where I could do things that will possibly foreclose my judicial ambitions—should I just try to keep a lid on it, in the hope of making it?” It sounds like you would tell them to let their flag fly.PK: Here's the thing: your chances of getting to be on the Supreme Court, if that's what you're talking about, your chances are so low that the question is how much do you want to give up to go from a 0.001% chance to a 0.002% chance? Yes, you are doubling your chances, but your chances are not good. And there are some people who I think are capable of doing that, perhaps because they fit the zeitgeist enough that it's not a huge sacrifice for them. So it's not that I despise everybody who goes to the Supreme Court because they must obviously have all been super-careerists; I think lots of them weren't super-careerists in that way.Although it does worry me that six members of the Court now clerked at the Supreme Court—because when you are a law clerk, it gives you this feeling about the Court that maybe you don't want everybody who's on the Court to have, a feeling that this is the be-all and end-all of life and that getting a clerkship is a manifestation of an inner state of grace, so becoming a justice is equally a manifestation of an inner state of grace in which you are smarter than everybody else, wiser than everybody else, and everybody should kowtow to you in all sorts of ways. And I worry that people who are imprinted like ducklings on the Supreme Court when they're 25 or 26 or 27 might not be the best kind of portfolio of justices at the back end. The Court that decided Brown v. Board of Education—none of them, I think, had clerked at the Supreme Court, or maybe one of them had. They'd all done things with their lives other than try to get back to the Supreme Court. So I worry about that a little bit.DL: Speaking of the Court, let's turn to the Court, because it just finished its Term as we are recording this. As we started recording, they were still handing down the final decisions of the day.PK: Yes, the “R” numbers hadn't come up on the Supreme Court website when I signed off to come talk to you.DL: Exactly. So earlier this month, not today, but earlier this month, the Court handed down its decision in United States v. Skrmetti, reviewing Tennessee's ban on the use of hormones and puberty blockers for transgender youth. Were you surprised by the Court's ruling in Skrmetti?PK: No. I was not surprised.DL: So one of your most famous cases, which you litigated successfully five years ago or so, was Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the Court held that Title VII does apply to protect transgender individuals—and Bostock figures significantly in the Skrmetti opinions. Why were you surprised by Skrmetti given that you had won this victory in Bostock, which you could argue, in terms of just the logic of it, does carry over somewhat?PK: Well, I want to be very precise: I didn't actually litigate Bostock. There were three cases that were put together….DL: Oh yes—you handled Zarda.PK: I represented Don Zarda, who was a gay man, so I did not argue the transgender part of the case at all. Fortuitously enough, David Cole argued that part of the case, and David Cole was actually the first person I had dinner with as a freshman at Yale College, when I started college, because he was the roommate of somebody I debated against in high school. So David and I went to law school together, went to college together, and had classes together. We've been friends now for almost 50 years, which is scary—I think for 48 years we've been friends—and he argued that part of the case.So here's what surprised me about what the Supreme Court did in Skrmetti. Given where the Court wanted to come out, the more intellectually honest way to get there would've been to say, “Yes, of course this is because of sex; there is sex discrimination going on here. But even applying intermediate scrutiny, we think that Tennessee's law should survive intermediate scrutiny.” That would've been an intellectually honest way to get to where the Court got.Instead, they did this weird sort of, “Well, the word ‘sex' isn't in the Fourteenth Amendment, but it's in Title VII.” But that makes no sense at all, because for none of the sex-discrimination cases that the Court has decided under the Fourteenth Amendment did the word “sex” appear in the Fourteenth Amendment. It's not like the word “sex” was in there and then all of a sudden it took a powder and left. So I thought that was a really disingenuous way of getting to where the Court wanted to go. But I was not surprised after the oral argument that the Court was going to get to where it got on the bottom line.DL: I'm curious, though, rewinding to Bostock and Zarda, were you surprised by how the Court came out in those cases? Because it was still a deeply conservative Court back then.PK: No, I was not surprised. I was not surprised, both because I thought we had so much the better of the argument and because at the oral argument, it seemed pretty clear that we had at least six justices, and those were the six justices we had at the end of the day. The thing that was interesting to me about Bostock was I thought also that we were likely to win for the following weird legal-realist reason, which is that this was a case that would allow the justices who claimed to be textualists to show that they were principled textualists, by doing something that they might not have voted for if they were in Congress or the like.And also, while the impact was really large in one sense, the impact was not really large in another sense: most American workers are protected by Title VII, but most American employers do not discriminate, and didn't discriminate even before this, on the basis of sexual orientation or on the basis of gender identity. For example, in Zarda's case, the employer denied that they had fired Mr. Zarda because he was gay; they said, “We fired him for other reasons.”Very few employers had a formal policy that said, “We discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.” And although most American workers are protected by Title VII, most American employers are not covered by Title VII—and that's because small employers, employers with fewer than 15 full-time employees, are not covered at all. And religious employers have all sorts of exemptions and the like, so for the people who had the biggest objection to hiring or promoting or retaining gay or transgender employees, this case wasn't going to change what happened to them at all. So the impact was really important for workers, but not deeply intrusive on employers generally. So I thought those two things, taken together, meant that we had a pretty good argument.I actually thought our textual argument was not our best argument, but it was the one that they were most likely to buy. So it was really interesting: we made a bunch of different arguments in the brief, and then as soon as I got up to argue, the first question out of the box was Justice Ginsburg saying, “Well, in 1964, homosexuality was illegal in most of the country—how could this be?” And that's when I realized, “Okay, she's just telling me to talk about the text, don't talk about anything else.”So I just talked about the text the whole time. But as you may remember from the argument, there was this weird moment, which came after I answered her question and one other one, there was this kind of silence from the justices. And I just said, “Well, if you don't have any more questions, I'll reserve the remainder of my time.” And it went well; it went well as an argument.DL: On the flip side, speaking of things that are not going so well, let's turn to current events. Zooming up to a higher level of generality than Skrmetti, you are a leading scholar of constitutional law, so here's the question. I know you've already been interviewed about it by media outlets, but let me ask you again, in light of just the latest, latest, latest news: are we in a constitutional crisis in the United States?PK: I think we're in a period of great constitutional danger. I don't know what a “constitutional crisis” is. Some people think the constitutional crisis is that we have an executive branch that doesn't believe in the Constitution, right? So you have Donald Trump asked, in an interview, “Do you have to comply with the Constitution?” He says, “I don't know.” Or he says, “I have an Article II that gives me the power to do whatever I want”—which is not what Article II says. If you want to be a textualist, it does not say the president can do whatever he wants. So you have an executive branch that really does not have a commitment to the Constitution as it has been understood up until now—that is, limited government, separation of powers, respect for individual rights. With this administration, none of that's there. And I don't know whether Emil Bove did say, “F**k the courts,” or not, but they're certainly acting as if that's their attitude.So yes, in that sense, we're in a period of constitutional danger. And then on top of that, I think we have a Supreme Court that is acting almost as if this is a normal administration with normal stuff, a Court that doesn't seem to recognize what district judges appointed by every president since George H.W. Bush or maybe even Reagan have recognized, which is, “This is not normal.” What the administration is trying to do is not normal, and it has to be stopped. So that worries me, that the Supreme Court is acting as if it needs to keep its powder dry—and for what, I'm not clear.If they think that by giving in and giving in, and prevaricating and putting things off... today, I thought the example of this was in the birthright citizenship/universal injunction case. One of the groups of plaintiffs that's up there is a bunch of states, around 23 states, and the Supreme Court in Justice Barrett's opinion says, “Well, maybe the states have standing, maybe they don't. And maybe if they have standing, you can enjoin this all in those states. We leave this all for remind.”They've sat on this for months. It's ridiculous that the Supreme Court doesn't “man up,” essentially, and decide these things. It really worries me quite a bit that the Supreme Court just seems completely blind to the fact that in 2024, they gave Donald Trump complete criminal immunity from any prosecution, so who's going to hold him accountable? Not criminally accountable, not accountable in damages—and now the Supreme Court seems not particularly interested in holding him accountable either.DL: Let me play devil's advocate. Here's my theory on why the Court does seem to be holding its fire: they're afraid of a worse outcome, which is, essentially, “The emperor has no clothes.”Say they draw this line in the sand for Trump, and then Trump just crosses it. And as we all know from that famous quote from The Federalist Papers, the Court has neither force nor will, but only judgment. That's worse, isn't it? If suddenly it's exposed that the Court doesn't have any army, any way to stop Trump? And then the courts have no power.PK: I actually think it's the opposite, which is, I think if the Court said to Donald Trump, “You must do X,” and then he defies it, you would have people in the streets. You would have real deep resistance—not just the “No Kings,” one-day march, but deep resistance. And there are scholars who've done comparative law who say, “When 3 percent of the people in a country go to the streets, you get real change.” And I think the Supreme Court is mistaking that.I taught a reading group for our first-years here. We have reading groups where you meet four times during the fall for dinner, and you read stuff that makes you think. And my reading group was called “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty,” and it started with the Albert Hirschman book with that title.DL: Great book.PK: It's a great book. And I gave them some excerpt from that, and I gave them an essay by Hannah Arendt called “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” which she wrote in 1964. And one of the things she says there is she talks about people who stayed in the German regime, on the theory that they would prevent at least worse things from happening. And I'm going to paraphrase slightly, but what she says is, “People who think that what they're doing is getting the lesser evil quickly forget that what they're choosing is evil.” And if the Supreme Court decides, “We're not going to tell Donald Trump ‘no,' because if we tell him no and he goes ahead, we will be exposed,” what they have basically done is said to Donald Trump, “Do whatever you want; we're not going to stop you.” And that will lose the Supreme Court more credibility over time than Donald Trump defying them once and facing some serious backlash for doing it.DL: So let me ask you one final question before we go to my little speed round. That 3 percent statistic is fascinating, by the way, but it resonates for me. My family's originally from the Philippines, and you probably had the 3 percent out there in the streets to oust Marcos in 1986.But let me ask you this. We now live in a nation where Donald Trump won not just the Electoral College, but the popular vote. We do see a lot of ugly things out there, whether in social media or incidents of violence or what have you. You still have enough faith in the American people that if the Supreme Court drew that line, and Donald Trump crossed it, and maybe this happened a couple of times, even—you still have faith that there will be that 3 percent or what have you in the streets?PK: I have hope, which is not quite the same thing as faith, obviously, but I have hope that some Republicans in Congress would grow a spine at that point, and people would say, “This is not right.” Have they always done that? No. We've had bad things happen in the past, and people have not done anything about it. But I think that the alternative of just saying, “Well, since we might not be able to stop him, we shouldn't do anything about it,” while he guts the federal government, sends masked people onto the streets, tries to take the military into domestic law enforcement—I think we have to do something.And this is what's so enraging in some ways: the district court judges in this country are doing their job. They are enjoining stuff. They're not enjoining everything, because not everything can be enjoined, and not everything is illegal; there's a lot of bad stuff Donald Trump is doing that he's totally entitled to do. But the district courts are doing their job, and they're doing their job while people are sending pizza boxes to their houses and sending them threats, and the president is tweeting about them or whatever you call the posts on Truth Social. They're doing their job—and the Supreme Court needs to do its job too. It needs to stand up for district judges. If it's not willing to stand up for the rest of us, you'd think they'd at least stand up for their entire judicial branch.DL: Turning to my speed round, my first question is, what do you like the least about the law? And this can either be the practice of law or law as a more abstract system of ordering human affairs.PK: What I liked least about it was having to deal with opposing counsel in discovery. That drove me to appellate litigation.DL: Exactly—where your request for an extension is almost always agreed to by the other side.PK: Yes, and where the record is the record.DL: Yes, exactly. My second question, is what would you be if you were not a lawyer and/or law professor?PK: Oh, they asked me this question for a thing here at Stanford, and it was like, if I couldn't be a lawyer, I'd... And I just said, “I'd sit in my room and cry.”DL: Okay!PK: I don't know—this is what my talent is!DL: You don't want to write a novel or something?PK: No. What I would really like to do is I would like to bike the Freedom Trail, which is a trail that starts in Montgomery, Alabama, and goes to the Canadian border, following the Underground Railroad. I've always wanted to bike that. But I guess that's not a career. I bike slowly enough that it could be a career, at this point—but earlier on, probably not.DL: My third question is, how much sleep do you get each night?PK: I now get around six hours of sleep each night, but it's complicated by the following, which is when I worked at the Department of Justice the second time, it was during Covid, so I actually worked remotely from California. And what that required me to do was essentially to wake up every morning at 4 a.m., 7 a.m. on the East Coast, so I could have breakfast, read the paper, and be ready to go by 5:30 a.m.I've been unable to get off of that, so I still wake up before dawn every morning. And I spent three months in Florence, and I thought the jet lag would bring me out of this—not in the slightest. Within two weeks, I was waking up at 4:30 a.m. Central European Time. So that's why I get about six hours, because I can't really go to bed before 9 or 10 p.m.DL: Well, I was struck by your being able to do this podcast fairly early West Coast time.PK: Oh no, this is the third thing I've done this morning! I had a 6:30 a.m. conference call.DL: Oh my gosh, wow. It reminds me of that saying about how you get more done in the Army before X hour than other people get done in a day.My last question, is any final words of wisdom, such as career advice or life advice, for my listeners?PK: Yes: do what you love, with people you love doing it with.DL: Well said. I've loved doing this podcast—Professor Karlan, thanks again for joining me.PK: You should start calling me Pam. We've had this same discussion….DL: We're on the air! Okay, well, thanks again, Pam—I'm so grateful to you for joining me.PK: Thanks for having me.DL: Thanks so much to Professor Karlan for joining me. Whether or not you agree with her views, you can't deny that she's both insightful and honest—qualities that have made her a leading legal academic and lawyer, but also a great podcast guest.Thanks to NexFirm for sponsoring the Original Jurisdiction podcast. NexFirm has helped many attorneys to leave Biglaw and launch firms of their own. To explore this opportunity, please contact NexFirm at 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment at nexfirm dot com to learn more.Thanks to Tommy Harron, my sound engineer here at Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to you, my listeners and readers. To connect with me, please email me at davidlat at Substack dot com, or find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, at davidlat, and on Instagram and Threads at davidbenjaminlat.If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review, and subscribe. Please subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction newsletter if you don't already, over at davidlat dot substack dot com. This podcast is free, but it's made possible by paid subscriptions to the newsletter.The next episode should appear on or about Wednesday, July 23. Until then, may your thinking be original and your jurisdiction free of defects. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit davidlat.substack.com/subscribe

The second half of the 2025 United States Pro Kart Series is underway with the Wisconsin Grand Prix hosting the third round of this year's championship program. The July 27-29 weekend at the Briggs & Stratton Motorplex at Road America welcomed nearly 200 entries over the seven IAME categories, battling the tough circuit in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin along with the warm weather. Rob Howden and David Cole review the racing from America's National Park of Speed in this episode of the Debrief – presented by OTK Kart USA. The show begins with the Sodi Racing USA Paddock Pass before getting into all the details of the weekend with the AiM Sports Race Report. The EKN Trackside Live Race Calendar presented by D.I.D Chain completes the podcast.

The EKN Trackside Live program visits multiple events throughout the karting season. Leading up to major events on the calendar, EKN is happy to provide a show as part of the EKN Radio Network. The EKN OutLap is a preview podcast show, geared at providing you the top stories, breaking news, and championship battles going into the weekend. The second half of the 2025 United States Pro Kart Series is kicking off with the Wisconsin Grand Prix at the Briggs & Stratton Motorplex at Road America. Over 200 entries in the seven IAME categories will compete at the Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin facility, as the series returns for its fourth visit since 2020. Rob Howden and David Cole preview the weekend in Episode 93 of the OutLap, presented by Sodi Racing USA.

Alex Golden is joined by the amazing guys from the Group Chat, David Cole, Lincoln Anderson and Carson Stafford to preview Game 7. We discuss X-Factors for this pivotal Game 7, the keys to defeating OKC on both offense and defense, what a Pacers NBA Championship would mean to us, how special this team's run has been and so much more!Please join our Setting The Pace Group Chat in Chat BCC!

The 2025 Challenge of the Americas completed its 18th season, hosting its first ever event at the Burt Brothers Motorpark over the June 13-15 weekend. The trip to the Grantsville, Utah facility hosted Round Seven and Eight, deciding this year's champions in the six categories. The addition to the event was the COTA Briggs 206 Shootout that provided a lot of excitement over the two days of racing. Rob Howden and David Cole review the racing from outside Salt Lake City in this episode of the Debrief – presented by Stilo USA. The show begins with the Odenthal Racing Products Paddock Pass before getting into all the details of the weekend with the OTK Kart USA Race Report. The EKN Trackside Live Race Calendar presented by Franklin Motorsports completes the podcast.

Alex Golden is joined by David Cole and Carson Stafford to discuss Tyrese Haliburton's calf injury, what a Game 6 would look like with or without Haliburton, what it will take for the Pacers to force a Game 7 and different things we would like to see strategically against OKC for Game 6.  Join the Setting The Pace group chat on Chat BCC!

First up, Georgetown law professor and former national legal director at the ACLU, David Cole, joins us to discuss the legal response to the Trump Administration's serial violations of the Constitution. Then Mike Ferner of Veterans for Peace checks in to update us halfway through his Fast for Gaza, 40 days of living on 250 calories per day, which is the average caloric intake of Palestinian survivors in Gaza. Finally, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Joe Holley, stops by to pay tribute to his mentor and colleague, the late crusading journalist, Ronnie Dugger, founder of the progressive Texas Observer.David Cole is the Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy and former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He writes about and teaches constitutional law, freedom of speech, and constitutional criminal procedure. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and is the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation.Trump is obviously not concerned about antisemitism. He's concerned about targeting schools because they are places where people can criticize the president, where people can think independently, are taught to think independently, and often don't support what the president is doing. He's using his excuse to target a central institution of civil society.David ColeThe decision on Trump versus the United States is only about criminal liability for criminal acts, not for unconstitutional acts. And violating the Constitution is not a crime. Every president has violated the Constitution probably since George Washington. That's not a crime.David ColeMike Ferner served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, and he is former National Director and current Special Projects Coordinator for Veterans for Peace. He is the author of Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran for Peace Reports from Iraq.Two hundred and fifty calories is technically, officially, a starvation diet, and we're doing it for 40 days. The people in Gaza have been doing it for months and months and months, and they're dying like crazy. That's the whole concern that we're trying to raise. And I'll tell you at the end of this fast, on the 40th day, we are not just going out silently. There are going to be some fireworks before we're done with this thing. So all I'm saying is: stay tuned.Mike Ferner: Special Projects Coordinator of Veterans for Peace on “FastforGaza”They're (The Veterans Administration is) being defamed, Ralph, for the same reason that those right-wing corporatists defamed public education. So they can privatize it. And that's exactly what they're trying to do with the VA. And I can tell you every single member of Veterans for Peace has got nothing but praise for the VA.Mike FernerJoe Holley was the editor of the Texas Observer in the early 1980s. A former staff writer at The Washington Post and a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist at the Houston Chronicle, he is the author of eight books, mostly about Texas.He would talk to people, and he would find out things going on about racial discrimination, about farm workers being mistreated, all kind of stories that the big papers weren't reporting. And this one guy, young Ronnie Dugger, would write these stories and expose things about Texas that a lot of Texans just did not know.Joe Holley on the late progressive journalist, Ronnie DuggerHe knew the dark side of Texas, but he always had an upbeat personality. I had numerous conversations with Ronnie (Dugger), and he was ferociously independent.Ralph NaderNews 6/13/251. On Monday, Israeli forces seized the Madleen, the ship carrying activist Greta Thunberg and others attempting to bring food and other supplies past the Israeli blockade into Gaza, and detained the crew. The ship was part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and Thunberg had been designated an “Ambassador of Conscience,” by Amnesty International. The group decried her detention, with Secretary General Agnès Callamard writing, “Israel has once again flouted its legal obligations towards civilians in the occupied Gaza Strip and demonstrated its chilling contempt for legally binding orders of the International Court of Justice.” On Tuesday, CBS reported that Israel deported Thunberg. Eight other passengers refused deportation and the Jerusalem Post reports they remain in Israeli custody. They will be represented in Israeli courts by Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. One of these detainees is Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament.2. Shortly before the Madleen was intercepted, members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressing concern for the safety of these activists, citing the deadly 2010 raid of the Mavi Marmara, which ultimately resulted in the death of ten activists, including an American. This letter continued, “any attack on the Madleen or its civilian crew is a clear and blatant violation of international law. United Nations experts have called for the ship's safe passage and warned Israel to “refrain from any act of hostility” against the Madleen and its passengers…We call on you to monitor the Madleen's journey and deter any such hostile actions.” This letter was led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, and drew signatures from Congressional progressives like Reps. Summer Lee, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Greg Casar, and others.3. On the other end of the political spectrum, Trump – ever unpredictable – seemed to criticize Israel's detention of Thunberg. In a press conference, “Trump was…asked about Thunberg's claim that she had been kidnapped.” The president responded “I think Israel has enough problems without kidnapping Greta Thunberg…Is that what she said? She was kidnapped by Israel?” The reporter replied “Yes, sir,” to which “Trump responded by shaking his head.” This from Newsweek.4. Of course, the major Trump news this week is his response to the uprising in Los Angeles. Set off by a new wave of ICE raids, protesters have clashed with police in the streets and Trump has responded by increasingly upping the ante, including threatening to arrest California Governor Gavin Newsom, per KTLA. Beyond such bluster however, Trump has moved to deploy U.S. Marines onto the streets of the nation's second-largest city. Reuters reports, “About 700 Marines were in a staging area in the Seal Beach area about 30 miles…south of Los Angeles, awaiting deployment to specific locations,” in addition to 2,100 National Guard troops. The deployment of these troops raises thorny legal questions. Per Reuters, “The Marines and National Guard troops lack the authority to makes arrests and will be charged only with protecting federal property and personnel,” but “California Attorney General Rob Bonta… [said] there was a risk that could violate an 1878 law that…forbids the U.S. military, including the National Guard, from taking part in civilian law enforcement.” Yet, despite all the tumult, these protests seem to have gotten the goods, so to speak: the City of Glendale announced it would, “end its agreement with…ICE to house federal immigration detainees.” All of this sets quite a scene going into Trump's military parade in DC slated for Saturday, June 14th.5. In classic fashion however, Trump's tough posture does not extend to corporate crime. Public Citizen's Rick Claypool reports, “Trump's DOJ just announced American corporations that engage in criminal bribery schemes abroad will no longer be prosecuted.” Claypool cites a June 9th memo from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, which reads, “Effective today, prosecutors shall…not attribute…malfeasance to corporate structures.” Claypool also cites a Wall Street Journal piece noting that “the DOJ has already ended half of its criminal investigations into corporate bribery in foreign countries and shrunk its [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] unit down to 25 employees.”6. Americans can at least take small comfort in one thing: the departure of Elon Musk from the top rungs of government. It remains to be seen what exactly precipitated his final exit and how deep his rift with Trump goes – Musk has already backed down on his harshest criticisms of the president, deleting his tweet claiming Trump was in Epstein files, per ABC. Yet, this appears to be a victory for Steve Bannon and the forces he represents within Trump's inner circle. On June 5th, the New York Times reported that Bannon, “said he was advising the president to cancel all [Musk's] contracts and… ‘initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status'.” Bannon added, “[Musk] should be deported from the country immediately.'” Bannon has even called for a special counsel probe, per the Hill. Bannon's apparent ascendency goes beyond the Oval Office as well. POLITICO Playbook reports Bannon had a 20-minute-long conversation with Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman on Monday evening – while Fetterman dined with Washington bureau chief for Breitbart, Matt Boyle – at Butterworth's, the DC MAGA “watering hole.” This also from the Hill.7. On the way out, the Daily Beast reports, “Elon Musk's goons at the Department of Government Efficiency transmitted a large amount of data—all of it undetected—using a Starlink Wi-Fi terminal they installed on top of the White House.” Sources “suggested that the [the installation of the Starlink terminal] was intended to bypass White House systems that track the transmission of data—with names and time stamps—and secure it from spies.” It is unknown exactly what data Musk and his minions absconded with, and for what purpose. We can only hope the public gets some answers.8. With Musk and Trump parting ways, other political forces are now seeking to woo the richest man in the world. Semafor reports enigmatic Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley and chaired Bernie Sanders' campaign in California, “talked with one of…Musk's ‘senior confidants' …about whether the ex-DOGE leader…might want to help the Democratic Party in the midterms.” Khanna added, “Having Elon speak out against the irrational tariff policy, against the deficit exploding Trump bill, and the anti-science and anti-immigrant agenda can help check Trump's unconstitutional administration…I look forward to Elon turning his fire against MAGA Republicans instead of Democrats in 2026.” On the other hand, the Hill reports ex-Democrat Andrew Yang is publicly appealing to Musk for an alliance following Musk's call for the establishment of an “America Party.” Yang himself founded the Forward Party in 2021. Yang indicated Musk has not responded to his overtures.9. Meanwhile, the leadership of the Democratic Party appears to be giving up entirely. In a leaked Zoom meeting, DNC Chair Ken Martin – only elected in February – said, “I don't know if I wanna do this anymore,” per POLITICO. On this call, Martin expressed frustration with DNC Vice Chair David Hogg, blaming him for, “[destroying] any chance I have to show the leadership that I need to.” Hogg meanwhile has doubled down, defying DNC leadership by “wading into another primary,” this time for the open seat left by the death of Congressman Gerry Conolly in Virginia, the Washington Post reports. The DNC is still weighing whether to void Hogg's election as Vice Chair.10. Finally, in some good news from New York City, State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani appears to have closed the gap with disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo began the race with a 40-point lead; a new Data for Progress poll shows that lead has been cut down to just two points. Moreover, that poll was conducted before Mamdani was endorsed by AOC, who is expected to bring with her substantial support from Latinos and residents of Queens, among other groups. Notably, Mamdani has racked up tremendous numbers among young men, a demographic the Democratic Party has struggled to attract in recent elections. Cuomo will not go down without a fight however. The political nepo-baby has already secured a separate ballot line for the November election, meaning he will be in the race even if he loses the Democratic primary, and he is being boosted by a new million-dollar digital ad spend by Airbnb, per POLITICO. The New York City Democratic Primary will be held on June 24th.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Alex Golden is joined by the guys from the group chat, Lincoln Anderson, David Cole and Carson Stafford. The guys discuss what the NBA Finals run has meant for them personally and then they dive into this pivotal Game 3.-Making Changes vs. Staying With What Brought Indy This Far-Rotation Changes (4 Man Bench Lineups Need to Go)-Balancing how to Guard Shai, minimizing the amount of wide open 3PA the role players got-How to get Tyrese and Pascal more scoring opportunities-Other Adjustment Ideas: Less TJ? Crashing the offensive glass? Change Starting 5? -Game 3 Predictions Download the Chat BCC Application on your phone and join the Setting The Pace Group Chat to talk Pacers with Alex and Facci, as well as your fellow Pacers fans!

The EKN Trackside Live program visits multiple events throughout the karting season. Leading up to major events on the calendar, EKN is happy to provide a show as part of the EKN Radio Network. The EKN OutLap is a preview podcast show, geared at providing you the top stories, breaking news, and championship battles going into the weekend. The series finale for the 2025 Challenge of the Americas heads to the Burt Brothers Motorpark over the June 13-15 weekend. The Grantsville, Utah facility welcomes the Challenge for the first time in the 18-year history of the series, hosting Round Seven and Round Eight. Six categories competing on the Shinko Racing Kart Tires will be joined by the Challenge Briggs 206 Shootout, racing for a $1,000 to win. Rob Howden and David Cole preview the weekend in Episode 92 of the OutLap, presented by AiM Sports.

eKartingNews.com is the hub of the karting world, providing you with all the latest news, insider information and race reports from events around the globe. ‘This Week In Karting' helps to tie everything together in one weekly podcast, bringing our listeners up to speed on the most recent news in the sport. The 85th Episode of ‘This Week In Karting' brings Rob Howden and David Cole back to the EKN Studio after four months away for the show program. It's been a busy 2025 season, taking the duo all over the country for karting events and the USF Pro Championship program. In this show, early details of the MG Tires 200 at New Castle Motorsports Park are discussed along with the expansion of Tillotson T4 USA Series to Music City Kartplex. Information on 2026 schedules for Challenge of the Americas, ROK Cup USA and Superkarts! USA are conversed in this show presented by Margay Racing.

National Egg day.  Entertainment from 1981.  Andy Warhol shot by feminist, Willie Nelson hit with $32 million tax bill, 1st baseball uniforms.  Todays birthdays - Jimmy Rogers, Tony Curtis, Ian Hunter, Eddie Holman, Deniece Williams, Danny Wilde, David Cole, Doro.  Muhammad Ali died.Intro - God did good - Dianna Corcoran   https://www.diannacorcoran.com/Egg Song - Land before timeBette Davis eyes - Kim CarnesFriends - Razzy BaileyBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent   http://50cent.com/Thats all right - Jimmy RogersOnce bitten twice shy - Ian HunterHey there lonely girl - Eddie HolmanLets hear it for the boy - Deniece WilliamsJust the way it is - The RembrandtsI'll be there for you - The RembrandtsGonna make you sweat - C&C Music FactoryAll we are - WarlockExit - Those kind of songs - Brinley Addington   https://www.brinleyaddington.com/countryundergroundradio.comcooolmedia.com 

eKartingNews has launched a new program for social media and the EKN Radio Network - Face2Face. The show is broadcasted live over Facebook and YouTube, with the audio version making its way to the only 24 hour / 7 days a week radio station. Episode 87 of Face2Face with hosts Rob Howden and David Cole welcomes Jeff Scott of the Quincy Grand Prix. The 2025 edition of the historic street race in Quincy, Illinois is set for the June 28-29 weekend. The two-day karting festival will welcome thousands of spectators to the South Park to take in fun and excitement on and off the track, cheering on the karters from all over the United States taking on what many consider to be the most unique karting street circuit in the world.

A new milestone has been reached with the 150th episode of the EKN Debrief. The new show breaks down the 2025 Superkarts! USA Pro Tour SpringNationals, held at the Motorsports Country Club of Cincinnati over the May 23-25 weekend. The event welcomed over 250 entries in the eight categories competing, reaching the halfway point of the 2025 championship chase. Rob Howden and David Cole review the racing from the MCC Kartplex in this episode of the Debrief – presented by Comet Kart Sales. The show begins with the Parolin USA Paddock Pass before getting into all the details of the weekend with the Franklin Motorsports Race Report. The EKN Trackside Live Race Calendar presented by Odenthal Racing Products completes the podcast.

[Encore Episode] Left Coast Airlines. LCA wanted a podcast to advertise to both new and existing customers. Dreamr Productions went a step further creating an unending universe of branded sound possibilities.  This episode was the first of many fake company episodes that demonstrated real sound in marketing solutions. From the brain of Jeanna to your ears- enjoy. Dreamr Productions creates, consults and educates on the power of sound in marketing. Contact us for all of your sonic branding and sound strategy needs. Thank you to my brilliant voice actors who brought this fake story to life. You can hire them for your next project through the links found below. Jodi Krangle, LCA's brand voice, can be found at Voice Overs and Vocals. You should also check out her podcast Audio Branding.  David Cole, my amazing CMO Jerry Morgan, can be found at https://davidbcole.com/. This man's range is fantastic and his outlook on life is just the best.  Adam Lofbomm, or Gary, the overly positive guy in the Left Coast commercials, can be found at https://adamlofbomm.com/.  And finally thanks to Jason Gilbert, or Fred, my overly negative guy in the Left Coast commercials. Jason is heavily involved in voice conversational design & a great storyteller in his own right. ------ To get all the latest, sign up for the Sound In Marketing Newsletter http://eepurl.com/gDxl6b.  The Sound In Marketing Podcast is produced by Dreamr Productions and hosted, written, and edited by Jeanna Isham. It is available on all the major podcast channels here https://pod.link/1467112373. Let's make this world of sound more intriguing, more unique, and more on brand. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeannaisham/    https://twitter.com/Jeanna_Isham  https://www.facebook.com/DreamrProductions/  https://www.youtube.com/@Dreamrproductions 

Alex Golden is joined by David Cole and Carson Stafford from the Group Chat to discuss the Pacers mistakes in Game 3, what adjustments they want to see in Game 4 and whether or not this a must win game. The guys also discuss whether or not Aaron Nesmith will play, as he is questionable with the ankle injury and deemed to be a game-time-decision. If Nesmith doesn't play, who should and will start? The case for both Mathurin and Sheppard are made and the guys talk through them, as well as Mathurin's struggles since being tossed against Cleveland in Game 4. 

The EKN Trackside Live program visits multiple events throughout the karting season. Leading up to major events on the calendar, EKN is happy to provide a show as part of the EKN Radio Network. The EKN OutLap is a preview podcast show, geared at providing you with the top stories, breaking news, and championship battles going into the weekend. The midway point is upon us for the 2025 Superkarts! USA Pro Tour as they are set to host the SKUSA SpringNationals from the Motorsports Country Club of Cincinnati in Batavia, Ohio. The May 23-25 Memorial Weekend event is set to host roughly 250 entries over the eight categories, contesting the second event of the championship chase. Rob Howden and David Cole preview the weekend in Episode 91 of the OutLap, presented by D.I.D Chain.

What obligations do colleges and universities have to protect students from anti-Semitism and Islamophobia? What obligations do they have to let students speak freely about issues they care about? David Cole just testified before Congress about that—he's the former National Legal Director of the ACLU, and The Nation's legal affairs correspondent.​ Also: Trump's partnership in Washington with his biggest donor, Elon Musk, is coming to an end. The richest man in the world, who made the biggest campaign contribution in history, is going home the clear loser in this affair. Historian David Nasaw comments.Next: In 1948, Alger Hiss, a prominent New Deal Democrat, was convicted of perjury for testifying that he had not been a Soviet spy. The conventional wisdom is that he was probably guilty. Now, Jeff Kisseloff says it's not hard to show that Hiss was innocent; the hard part is figuring out who framed him. Jeff's new book is “Rewriting Hisstory: A Fifty-Year Journey to Uncover the Truth About Alger Hiss” (originally recorded April 30, 2025).Plus: Your Minnesota Moment: In St. Francis, a small town north of Minneapolis, a high school got hit with a book banning policy. The Minnesota ACLU and the Teachers' Union both filed lawsuits; inspiring author Dave Eggers to host an event there. Students sat outside of the school and read from some of the banned books that included "The Kite Runner" by Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini – small town high school kids stand up to book burners.

What obligations do colleges and universities have to protect students from antisemitism and Islamophobia? What obligations do they have to let students speak freely about issues they care about? David Cole just testified before Congress about that—he's the former National Legal Director of the ACLU, and The Nation's legal affairs correspondent. Also: Trump's partnership in Washington with his biggest donor, Elon Musk, is coming to an end. The richest man in the world, who made the biggest campaign contribution in history, is going home the clear loser in this affair. Historian David Nasaw comments. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What obligations do colleges and universities have to protect students from antisemitism and Islamophobia? What obligations do they have to let students speak freely about issues they care about? David Cole just testified before Congress about that—he's the former National Legal Director of the ACLU, and The Nation's legal affairs correspondent. Also: Trump's partnership in Washington with his biggest donor, Elon Musk, is coming to an end. The richest man in the world, who made the biggest campaign contribution in history, is going home the clear loser in this affair. Historian David Nasaw comments.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The first half of the 2025 United States Pro Kart Series was completed following the action at the Carolina Grand Prix, held at the Trackhouse Motorplex in Mooresville, North Carolina. The May 2-4 weekend featured changing weather conditions for the second round of the 2025 championship, welcoming 240 entries. Rob Howden and David Cole review the racing in ‘Race City USA' in this episode of the Debrief – presented by AiM Sports. The show begins with the Sodi Racing USA Paddock Pass before getting into all the details of the weekend with the D.I.D Chain Race Report. The EKN Trackside Live Race Calendar presented by Margay Racing completes the podcast.

The second half of the 2025 Challenge of the Americas kicked off at the Sonoma Raceway over the April 25-27 weekend. The Sonoma, California facility hosted Round Five and Six of the 18th year of the championship, welcoming nearly 100 entries over the six categories. Rob Howden and David Cole review the two days of racing at the WinterNationals in this episode of the Debrief – presented by Kart CRG USA. The show begins with the Factory Karts Paddock Pass before getting into all the details of the weekend with the AiM Sports Race Report. The EKN Trackside Live Race Calendar presented by Sodi Racing USA completes the podcast.

The EKN Trackside Live program visits multiple events throughout the karting season. Leading up to major events on the calendar, EKN is happy to provide a show as part of the EKN Radio Network. The EKN OutLap is a preview podcast show, geared at providing you the top stories, breaking news, and championship battles going into the weekend. For the 13th time, the United States Pro Kart Series will visit the Trackhouse Motorplex with the Mooresville, North Carolina facility hosting the Carolina Grand Prix. Over 230 entries will battle in the seven IAME categories in the second event of the 2025 season following the inaugural visit to Daytona International Speedway in March. Rob Howden and David Cole preview the weekend in Episode 90 of the OutLap, presented by Rolison Performance Group.

Send us a textEver wondered what life could look like if you broke free from the conventional 9-5?David Cole and his family sold their home in Chicago in 2019 and haven't stopped moving since. Cecilie and Jesper talk with him about how they made the shift from occasional travellers to full-time nomads."I think what stopped us the most was mindset," David reveals, reflecting on their journey from dreaming to doing. After years of passionate but occasional travel, they finally made the leap—starting with house-sitting across the US before boarding a 22-day cruise to Singapore and continuing through Southeast Asia. What began as a shared love for exploration evolved into a complete lifestyle redesign that prioritizes presence, connection, and curiosity. This isn't about escaping; it's about deciding how to live and taking the next step—even if it's not perfect.

On today's episode, Alex Golden is joined by David Cole, Lincoln Anderson and Carson Stafford to dive into what the Pacers did well in Game 4, what they're looking forward to seeing from the Pacers in Game 5. The guys also discuss the importance of winning Tuesday night and how allowing Milwaukee a chance to extend this series would be a horrific outcome. 

The EKN Trackside Live program visits multiple events throughout the karting season. Leading up to major events on the calendar, EKN is happy to provide a show as part of the EKN Radio Network. The EKN OutLap is a preview podcast show, geared at providing you the top stories, breaking news, and championship battles going into the weekend. The second half of the 2025 Challenge of the Americas begins at Sonoma Raceway with the April 25-27 weekend hosting Rounds Five and Six. The Sonoma, California facility is set to welcome nearly 100 entries over the six categories competing on the Shinko Racing Kart Tires. Rob Howden and David Cole preview the weekend in Episode 89 of the OutLap, presented by Sodi Racing USA.

eKartingNews has launched a new program for social media and the EKN Radio Network - Face2Face. The show is broadcasted live over Facebook and YouTube, with the audio version making its way to the only 24 hour / 7 days a week radio station. Episode 86 of Face2Face provides insight into a new karting program in the United States. The FAT Karting League is a new karting program, aimed at making motorsport accessible and appealing to aspiring young racers with their own spec electric kart driver development series. Race Liberante leads the new FAT Karting League US operation, in the middle of the current ‘Try Out' schedule to begin the 2025 season. He joins Rob Howden and David Cole to provide more details around the FAT Karting League.

The Fighting Oligarchy tour of Bernie Sanders and AOC has had amazing turnouts: 36,000 people in Los Angeles, 100,000 people in Coachella, and huge crowds in red districts across the country; followed by big campaign donations as Bernie and AOC become "the personification of the resistance" against the Trump administration. Also, Trump continues to defy court orders, including those issued after the unanimous Supreme Court ruling to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the US from El Salvador after an illegal deportation – the defiance of such a court order by a US president is the first of its kind in history – Harold Meyerson comments.Next: While Trump's attacks on the universities have broadened, and while Columbia is submitting to his requirements, Harvard's president has declared that Harvard will not comply with Trump's demands in exchange for keeping its federal funding. David Cole comments - he recently stepped down as National Legal Director of the ACLU to return to teaching law at Georgetown.Plus: The illegal detention of Palestinian students attending US universities: the detention of Mohsen Madawi seems to be the most outrageous of all the cases of detained students opposing Israel's war in Gaza; UCLA Professor of Jewish History David Meyers reports.

While Trump's attacks on the universities have broadened, and while Columbia is submitting to his requirements, Harvard's president has declared that Harvard will not comply with the Trump's demands in exchange for keeping its federal funding. David Cole comments - he recently stepped down as National Legal Director of the ACLU to return to teaching law at Georgetown.Also: Elon Musk's obsession with rockets and robots sounds futuristic, but “few figures in public life are more shackled to the past” – that's what Jill Lepore has found. His ideas at DOGE seem to come from his grandfather, a founder of the anti-democratic Technocracy movement of the 1930s. Jill Lepore teaches history and law at Harvard, and writes for The New Yorker.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

While Trump's attacks on the universities have broadened, and while Columbia is submitting to his requirements, Harvard's president has declared that Harvard will not comply with Trump's demands in exchange for keeping its federal funding. David Cole comments - he recently stepped down as National Legal Director of the ACLU to return to teaching law at Georgetown.Also: Elon Musk's obsession with rockets and robots sounds futuristic, but “few figures in public life are more shackled to the past” – that's what Jill Lepore has found. His ideas at DOGE seem to come from his grandfather, a founder of the anti-democratic Technocracy movement of the 1930s. Jill Lepore teaches history and law at Harvard, and writes for The New Yorker.

The 16th season of the Superkarts! USA Pro Tour began with the 2025 SKUSA WinterNationals, held at the Speedsportz Racing Park on March 28-30. The New Caney, Texas facility welcomed the series for the first time, with SKUSA returning to the Lone Star State since 2014. It was a record turnout with 305 entries over the eight categories competing on the weekend. Rob Howden and David Cole review the two days of racing at the WinterNationals in this episode of the Debrief – presented by Parolin USA. The show begins with the D.I.D Chain Paddock Pass before getting into all the details of the weekend with the Comet Kart Sales Race Report. The EKN Trackside Live Race Calendar presented by Sodi Racing USA completes the podcast.

Epic Brewing has been a mainstay in Utah's craft beer scene since opening in 2009.

Catalyst is a Creative Industries podcast, from Chapman University. Each episode features Chapman students who have completed a Podcasting course through the Center for Creative and Cultural Industries at the university. Students who had no podcasting experience or technical ability in the genre before taking the course were able to contribute all the segments to Catalyst this season with the goal being that they will take this ‘hands-on' experience and carry it over to the launching of their very own series. Each episode of Season 13 will feature one to two different interviews conducted by CCI students, exploring different aspects of the Creative and Cultural Industries. In our first segment this week Lauren Kalama sits down with Kamaka Dias, host of The Keep It Aloha Podcast, to explore his unique journey of starting his podcasting career. Dias reflects on growing up in Hawaiʻi as a Native Hawaiian and shares how his heritage shaped his worldview and influenced his career. They explore how Dias' passion for social media evolved into a thriving creative career leading him to podcasting and the importance of infusing cultural authenticity into his media content. The interview then concludes with offering advice for aspiring creatives in hopes of being an inspiration and guide in navigating their path while honoring their cultural identity. We wrap up this week's episode with David Cole who interview with journalist-turned-content creator Dani Schulz. Cole talks with Schulz about how she built a thriving 7-figure digital business centered around empowering others to create, connect, and monetize through social media. The pair start by looking at Dani's college days and the pivotal moments that shaped her professional life and led to the creation of her successful brand.  Schulz also shares some of the struggles she has faced and  how determination to turn obstacles into opportunities helped her to cultivate an authentic social media presence, build a loyal community, and develop scalable income streams, all while staying true to herself and her values. They wrap the conversation with a look at Schulz's approach to overcoming adversity and embracing creativity in order to offer practical advice for anyone looking to pursue their dreams on their own terms.

In January of 1987, Michel Shehadeh, a Palestinian man who'd lawfully immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager, was taking care of his toddler son at home when federal agents arrived at his door and arrested him at gunpoint. Shehadeh soon learned he was one of eight immigrants arrested on charges relating to their pro-Palestinian activism. Then, in March of 2025, federal agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate student, and Georgetown professor Badar Khan Suri. Both are in the U.S. legally, being threatened with deportation. And both are targets of the Trump administration's crackdown on what they describe as anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas speech on college campuses. We hear from David Cole, who represented the Los Angeles Eight for insight into this moment, and what we can learn from their plight.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at considerthis@npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The EKN Trackside Live program visits multiple events throughout the karting season. Leading up to major events on the calendar, EKN is happy to provide a show as part of the EKN Radio Network. The EKN OutLap is a preview podcast show, geared at providing you the top stories, breaking news, and championship battles going into the weekend. The 16th season of the Superkarts! USA Pro Tour will begin over the March 28-30 weekend at the Speedsportz Racing Park. Visiting the New Caney, Texas facility for the first time in series history, the 2025 edition of the SKUSA WinterNationals is welcoming the largest SKUSA Pro Tour event ever at 306 entries for the eight categories set to begin their battle for the 2025 championships. Rob Howden and David Cole preview the weekend in Episode 88 of the OutLap, presented by Factory Karts.

Keith Whittington is joined by David Cole, the Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. He is also the former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. This episode focuses on the recent “Statement from Constitutional Law Scholars on Columbia,” of which Professor Cole was a lead author. That statement was published on the website of the New York Review of Books, and was signed by an ideologically diverse group of 18 scholars ranging from Steven Calabresi and Eugene Volokh to Erwin Chemerinsky and Pam Karlan. Keith Whittington also signed the statement. 

The 2025 United States Pro Kart Series kicked off with its inaugural visit to the Daytona International Speedway. The Daytona Super Grand Prix was held on March 13-16 inside the ‘World Center of Racing' in Daytona Beach, Florida. Four days of action decided the seven IAME class winners, kicking off the four-round championship season. David Cole and Nate Dean recap the action from Daytona in this episode of Debrief – presented by Franklin Motorsports. The show begins with the Rolison Performance Group Paddock Pass before getting into all the details of the weekend with the Parolin USA Race Report. The EKN Trackside Live Race Calendar presented by completes Comet Kart Sales the podcast.

A key source of opposition to authoritarian regimes in recent history has come from universities and colleges. Trump has been attacking the independence of American universities, demanding they submit to his requirements and using massive funding cuts as his weapon. David Cole, formerly National Legal Director of the ACLU, has our analysis. Also: Mahmoud Khalil is the Palestinian student activist at Columbia arrested and jailed by ICE. The Trump administration intends to revoke his status as a permanent resident—a green-card holder – and deport him – they say, to protect Jewish students on campus. That's clearly a violation of freedom of speech. But is deporting Palestinian student activists a good way to protect Jewish students? David Myers comments – he teaches Jewish history at UCLA.Plus: Katha Pollitt comments on The Right to Sex, a provocative title by the feminist philosopher Amia Srinivasan. Does anyone have a right to sex? Who does? Who doesn't? (First recorded 2-3-2022)

A key source of opposition to authoritarian regimes in recent history has come from universities and colleges. Trump has been attacking the independence of American universities, demanding they submit to his requirements and using massive funding cuts as his weapon. David Cole, formerly National Legal Director of the ACLU, has our analysis. Also: Mahmoud Khalil is the Palestinian student activist at Columbia arrested and jailed by ICE. The Trump administration intends to revoke his status as a permanent resident—a green-card holder--and deport him -- they say, to protect Jewish students on campus. That's clearly a violation of freedom of speech. But is deporting Palestinian student activists a good way to protect Jewish students? David Meyers comments--he teaches Jewish history at UCLA.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A key source of opposition to authoritarian regimes in recent history has come from universities and colleges. Trump has been attacking the independence of American universities, demanding they submit to his requirements and using massive funding cuts as his weapon. David Cole, formerly National Legal Director of the ACLU, has our analysis. Also: Mahmoud Khalil is the Palestinian student activist at Columbia arrested and jailed by ICE. The Trump administration intends to revoke his status as a permanent resident—a green-card holder--and deport him -- they say, to protect Jewish students on campus. That's clearly a violation of freedom of speech. But is deporting Palestinian student activists a good way to protect Jewish students? David Myers comments--he teaches Jewish history at UCLA.

The second stop on the 2025 Challenge of the Americas program visited the K1 Circuit for its inaugural visit to the Winchester, California facility. Rounds Three and Four were contested over the March 7-9 weekend, featuring over 100 entries in the six categories competing on the new circuit. Rob Howden and David Cole recap the action from K1 Circuit in this episode of Debrief – presented by OTK USA. The show begins with the Factory Karts Paddock Pass before getting into all the details of the weekend with the Comet Kart Sales Race Report. The EKN Trackside Live Race Calendar presented by Rolison Performance Group completes the podcast.

The EKN Trackside Live program visits multiple events throughout the karting season. Leading up to major events on the calendar, EKN is happy to provide a show as part of the EKN Radio Network. The EKN OutLap is a preview podcast show, geared at providing you the top stories, breaking news, and championship battles going into the weekend. The 13th season for the United States Pro Kart Series is set to begin with its inaugural visit to the Daytona International Speedway. The World Center of Racing in Daytona Beach, Florida is hosting the Daytona Super Grand Prix over the March 13-16 weekend, welcoming over 200 entries in the seven IAME categories. David Cole and Nate Dean preview the weekend in Episode 87 of the OutLap, presented by Margay Racing.

The EKN Trackside Live program visits multiple events throughout the karting season. Leading up to major events on the calendar, EKN is happy to provide a show as part of the EKN Radio Network. The EKN OutLap is a preview podcast show, geared at providing you the top stories, breaking news, and championship battles going into the weekend. The second stop for the 2025 Challenge of the Americas takes the program back to SoCal! The new K1 Circuit will host Rounds Three and Four over the March 7-9 weekend. It will be the first visit to the Winchester, California facility with over 100 entries set to battle in the six categories, now featuring the Shinko Racing Kart Tires. Rob Howden and David Cole preview the weekend in Episode 86 of the OutLap, presented by AiM Sports.

The 2025 Race Rotax RMC USA West event featured a special one-off weekend program at the Phoenix Kart Racing Association facility over the February 21-23 weekend. The Glendale, Arizona circuit hosted a two round weekend that helped award six tickets to the 2025 Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals, set for Bahrain later this year. Nearly 100 drivers battled in the six divisions for the tickets to the ‘Olympics of Karting' with overall weekend points deciding the ticket winners. Rob Howden and David Cole recap the action from PKRA in this episode of Debrief – presented by Stilo USA. The show begins with the CRG Nordam Paddock Pass before getting into all the details of the weekend with the Odenthal Racing Products Race Report. The EKN Trackside Live Race Calendar presented by OTK USA completes the podcast.

The EKN Trackside Live program visits multiple events throughout the karting season. Leading up to major events on the calendar, EKN is happy to provide a show as part of the EKN Radio Network. The EKN OutLap is a preview podcast show, geared at providing you the top stories, breaking news, and championship battles going into the weekend. The 2025 Race Rotax RMC USA West is a one-off event, set for February 21-23 at the Phoenix Kart Racing Association. The event in Glendale, Arizona is replacing the US Trophy West series that had been contested over the last few seasons. Nearly 100 drivers from all over North America will be competing in six Rotax divisions, fighting for the six Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals tickets that will be up for grabs around two rounds of racing. Rob Howden and David Cole preview the weekend in Episode 85 of the OutLap, presented by Comet Kart Sales.

Alex Golden is joined by David Cole to discuss the most intriguing storylines for the rest of the season! The guys dive into Haliburton, Turner, Mathurin, Nesmith, Defense, Rebounding, Injuries, Opponents Success against the Pacers and MORE! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

eKartingNews has launched a new program for social media and the EKN Radio Network - Face2Face. The show is broadcasted live over Facebook and YouTube, with the audio version making its way to the only 24 hour / 7 days a week radio station. Episode 85 focuses on one of the largest regional programs in North American karting – the Texas Sprint Racing Series. Joining the EKN Studio is series owner Brittany Lobaugh to discuss the upcoming 2025 season. The five-event championship series is set for its 11th season, kicking off at Speedsportz Racing Park on February 21-23. Lobaugh sits down with Rob Howden and David Cole to discuss the details of the 2025 season.

The Superkarts! USA Winter Series concluded the 2025 edition with the final two rounds contested at the Orlando Kart Center over the February 7-9 weekend. The Orlando, Florida facility hosted Round Three and Four to decide the nine champions of the eighth season for the program. Another record setting entry total of 288 made the 2025 SKUSA Winter Series the largest ever for the organization. Rob Howden and David Cole recap the action from the Sunshine State in this episode of Debrief – presented by AiM Sports. The show begins with the Franklin Motorsports Paddock Pass before getting into all the details of the weekend with the Factory Karts Race Report. The EKN Trackside Live Race Calendar presented by Sodi Racing USA completes the podcast.

The 18th season for the Challenge of the Americas kicked off at the Musselman Honda Circuit in Tucson, Arizona. A total of 105 entries over the six categories contested the opening two rounds of the 2025 championship. Rob Howden and David Cole recap the action from Tucson in this episode of Debrief – presented by CRG Nordam. The show begins with the Sodi Racing USA Paddock Pass before getting into all the details of the weekend with the Comet Kart Sales Race Report. The EKN Trackside Live Race Calendar presented by Parolin USA completes the podcast.

The Supreme Court has upheld a ban on TikTok. On this week's On the Media, hear how the ruling could affect other media companies, and where TikTokers are going next. Plus, California's latest wildfires are devastating, but they're not unprecedented.[01:00]  Host Micah Loewinger sits down with David Cole, professor of law and public policy at Georgetown University, and former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, to discuss what the Supreme Court TikTok ban could mean for all kinds of media companies.[16:39] Host Micah Loewinger speaks with Ryan Broderick, tech journalist, host of the podcast Panic World, and author of the newsletter “Garbage Day,” on the great TikTok migration to RedNote, and what the platform's potential ban means for the future of the Internet.[35:08] Host Brooke Gladstone speaks with Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, on what she, a California native, has found shocking but not surprising about the Los Angeles fires. Further reading:“Free Speech for TikTok?,” by David Cole“America's youth longs for Chinese e-commerce,” by Ryan Broderick“TikTok doesn't need America,” by Ryan Broderick“The chronicle of a fire foretold,” by Rebecca SolnitA Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing onthemedia@wnyc.org.

Alex Golden is joined by David Cole to discuss Indiana's epic meltdown in the 2nd half, why the Bucks zone stifled their offense, inability to score in the paint against the zone, Tyrese's indecision as a scorer, Mathurin's impressive game and growth, plus MORE! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices