Two, three, four.

Two, three, four.

Two, three, four.

Hello, fellow law nerds.

Welcome to the first episode of Boom Lawyer for the year of our Laura 2025.

We're a Rewire News Group podcast hosted by the legal journalism team that's

literally already exhausted and we're barely a week into January. I'm ReWire Newsgroup's

editor at large, Imani Gandy. And I'm Jess Peeklo, ReWire News Group's executive editor. ReWire Newsgroup is

the one and only home for expert repro journalism that inspires you to keep smack talk in the court.

And the boom lawyer podcast is part of that mission.

So a big thanks to our subscribers and welcome to our new listeners.

So folks, one of the New Year's traditions in this nightmare of a country right now is the annual release of the state of the judiciary

by the chief justice. John Roberts drops this report at the end of the year, and each year it is

worse and worse, but not for the reasons you'd think, and this year was no different. It was just

chockful of self-pitable, finger-wagging, gaslighting,

nonsense. So here's what I'll say. John Robert, who was at least some point in time ago,

a reasonable jurist in some circles, not these, but in some, has turned into your average reply guy. You know the type, right?

The guy who knows everything and is never wrong, but don't you dare quote tweet them or otherwise they push back on their nonsense because they immediately will don't their quill and ink pot and begin to winge in the most flowery terms about how you're being

mean or unfair or you know what you just don't know what they're talking about and that they

are the real victim even though folks like roberts are part of a cadre of unelected goons who are holding our rights hostage in their grubby little fists.

And they talk in circles and make less and less sense as they go on.

And that's what the John Roberts annual report was like.

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