Hello, fellow law nerds.

Welcome to a special confirmation hearing episode of Boom Lawyard, a rewire.

News podcast hosted by the legal journalism team that really misses spending days on end

live tweeting confirmation hearings. Having Kavanaugh

flashbacks. I'm Imani Gandhi. And I'm Jess Piclo. Rewire. News is dedicated to bringing you the best

reproductive rights and social justice news, commentary, and analysis on the web, and the team legal

podcast is part of that mission. So a big thanks to our subscribers

and a welcome to our new listeners. So today we had day one of the confirmation hearing of

William, aka Bill Barr. And Jess, I mean, you live tweeted the first the morning session.

So I'm just going to shoot it over right to you.

What were your initial impressions after you finished watching the morning session?

So it's a huge contrast.

The bar hearings have been day one compared to the Kavanaugh hearings.

We didn't have anyone getting all puffy-faced and swearing and, you know, spittle and maybe crying.

Nobody cried. Not yet. We still have

tomorrow. But so it was, it was pretty mild compared to the Brad McBeer hearings. But that's not

without some action. And I think that what's important in the bar confirmation hearings to pay

attention to is the action's going to be really snoozy, but it's still action. And we expected the hearings

to start with some Russia talk, and it did, a lot of it focused on Russia. But he gave some

really important signals as to where he stands on civil rights laws and how, as Attorney

General, he would enforce those civil rights laws. So what sort of signals are you talking about? What made your spidey sense tingle?

So folks who are not real keen on federal civil rights laws like to go back to this idea of

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