Hello, this is Jen Rubin, and this is Jen Rubin's Green Room. Happy 2024. We have a special show today

for those of you who were paying attention last week or who saw

the notes, and that is we're going to have a Ask Me Anything Day.

And boy, we got a lot of questions and a lot of interesting ones.

So we will get to that.

But first, I want to hit on two developments that happened just in the last 24 hours or so.

We're recording this on Tuesday, so that is Monday or Tuesday. Monday, the Supreme Court in Israel

struck down the government's attempt to limit court review. I know it's a little complicated. They passed a

reform that said courts could no longer consider whether a law was reasonable or not.

The Supreme Court of Israel said, not so fast, government, we still have a role in this democracy, and the courts are

independent and get to separately assess legislation. So this was a victory for independent court

review. It was a big loss for Bibi Netanyahu, who has become increasingly authoritarian as time goes on.

And most importantly, it is a huge win for hundreds of thousands of Israelis, which, understanding

it's a very small country, is a huge percentage of the population that was out in the streets for over 30 weeks protesting this

attack on the judiciary. So essentially they said, you're trying to change the fundamental

nature of Israel. You're saying if you've got the votes, you get to decide everything. That's not

the Israel we know and that's not the Israel we want.

And the Supreme Court said, you know, you're right. And there were actually two decisions. One was

whether to uphold this specific statute. And the other was on the more general principle about

whether the Supreme Court can weigh in on these changes to so-called basic law, the kind of foundational law of Israel.

And the vote on the second one was quite lopsided.

They actually had double digits on a usually heavily divided court.

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