And we've talked about some of these issues that you're discussing, right? The way that Congress has kind of decayed from the inside, right? That there are these issues like the filibuster and like gerrymandering, like other kinds of like vote like voting rights uh vote suppression that have like degraded congress's ability to represent the people and that has produced these other dysfunctions right of the court just seizing more and more power for itself so one one thing actually i think is interesting here is to look at how the court has kind of elected itself to be a legislature right not just to be as he famously says roberts famously said calling balls and strikes but making policy uh and i think there were some documents that were leaked relatively recently about the debates over the big obamacare lawsuit right there's this first lawsuit where various republicans challenged obamacare they say this is unconstitutional and there's rank and eventually they say it's mostly constitutional right you know the the mandate the individual insurance mandate that's constitutional but medicaid expansion that's not constitutional and the you know they they put whatever reasoning they want in the in what they publish but these internal discussions are leaked and basically you find roberts is just negotiating with the liberals on the court and he's like look we'll you know i want to support you on this but you have to give me something and the liberals are like well the most important thing from a policy perspective is the individual mandate and like medicaid expansion we can let that go right and like it's just the most transparent political horse trading happening behind closed doors in personal correspondence that does not make it into like the the official ruling about it and i i think at this point like yeah if congress or whatever if the court wants to act like a legislature then like we should start treating them not like a court but like just another group of politicians in washington

I think that's right, but it's always been the case.

Any unanimous Supreme Court decision, any even partisan one, though, that garners the votes of one side is a product of compromise, of negotiation.

So that's that's but that's basic judging.

That's basic appellate judging.

That's basic panel decisions.

What made that the Obamacare case different? And I think you're talking about I think it was Joan Biskupic's book about the biography of the chief where she wrote about that.

whole career.

Thank you very

much.

And Mr. Sachs.

All right, let's blow some minds here.

Virtually anyone in this race can beat Mike Lawler in the general election.

Why? Because he has never run in this district while tied to the mast of a regime that's dedicated to hurting people.

In 2022 and 2024, he ran as a member of an opposition party.

But Mr. Sachs, you on aid to Israel, you haven't gotten a shot at this yet.

No. [laughs]

It wasn't until, it wasn't until the 1920s when Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who wanted to entrench plutocratic will into our Constitution against the rising progressive movement, decided with what the then very conservative ABA, uh, decided to make a, a, a hero out of John Marshall and Marbury when no one was talking about John Marshall and Marbury by, at that point.And then for various reasons, for whoever's political ox was going to get gored by the Supreme Court, liberals and, and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans alike over the last s- century have gone back and forth saying the Supreme Court will save us from the, the political whims of the majority.

And you know what? The Roberts Court's proving all of that just a ruse, and returning us to an understanding of the Supreme Court that has almost always been the handmaiden of power and privilege and plutocracy in this country.

So I say all that to say that Congress has the power, if it wants to, say, overturn Citizens United, or if it wants to overturn the Calais decision, or if it wants to pr- to protect the preclearance provision that the Supreme Court invalidated its formula in the Shelby County decision, to pass laws saying, "Oh, money is not speech.

Corporations are not people." Let's, let's talk about Citizens United for a second.

And yes, sure, the Supreme Court might, might disagree, but you know what? We're gonna str- we're gonna strip federal courts, all federal courts and state courts of jurisdiction to even review our enforcement of campaign finance laws as existed before the Supreme Court got its hands on them.

And people might think, "What? Wait.

Mm-hmm.

How do you bring this, not just the issues of inflation and unemployment and economic issues, but this crucial issue of our democracy to those voters? How do you convince them that it matters?

Well, here in New York's 17th district, which is comprised of northern Westchester, Rockland County, Putnam County, a little sliver of Dutchess County, affordability is a big issue.

But affordability and autocracy in this stage go together.

Yes.

We have a would-be autocrat and his enablers in this Republican Congress, including Congressman Mike Lawler, who are just handing their power of the people and our power of the purse over to Trump and the White House wholesale.

So that they can enrich themselves and their billionaire best friends who put them in office at all of our expenses.

Quite literally stealing from the vulnerable.

Great piece on the oath in the