Originalism is the Southern Strategy of Our Courts

Gaslit Nation

Society & Culture, Politics, News

4.8 • 4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

All we want for Christmas is a new Supreme Court. Here to tell us how we get there is legal scholar Madiba Dennie, author of The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back.

What's "originalism"? It's white supremacy's answer to the Civil Rights Movement, every bit as sneaky and immoral as Republican operative Lee Atwater's "Southern Strategy," which mobilized racist voters through racist dog whistles instead of open slurs. Originalism sounds fancy by design, but it's pure fascist gaslighting, now wielded by the trash MAGA majority on the Supreme Court.

Gaslit Nation's holiday gift to our listeners this year is to remind you of an inconvenient fact the media ignores: Donald Trump came to power in 2016 with the Kremlin's very illegal help, as documented in both the Mueller Report and the bipartisan U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election. That makes him an illegitimate president, which means his extreme Supreme Court picks should be impeached. More on that in part two of our discussion, coming Thursday.

Thank you to everyone who joined our holiday party on Monday. As requested, the link to the Outreach Committee for listeners interested in discussing ways to reach current or former MAGA cult members and help guide them back toward the light is available in the show notes on Patreon.

Join our community of listeners and get bonus shows, Q&A sessions, invites to exclusive events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, ad free listening, group chats with other listeners, ways to shape the show, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine.
0:22.5	The film The Kremlin doesn't want you to see, so be sure to watch it. This holiday season, all we want for Christmas is a new Supreme
0:28.5	Court. Here to help us make sense of the gaslighting coming out of today's Supreme Court is Mediba
0:35.1	Dunny. Mediba Denny, author of The Originalism Trap, how extremists stole
0:41.1	the Constitution and how we, the people, can take it back. Denny is the deputy editor and a senior
0:47.8	contributor at the critical legal commentary site, Balls and Strikes, and a former council
0:54.1	at the Brennan Center for Justice,
0:56.3	and she taught at Western Washington University and NYU School of Law.
1:02.1	Welcome to Gaslit Nation.
1:04.3	Now, originalism is one of the greatest tricks conservatives ever pulled.
1:10.4	Could you unpack exactly what originalism is and how
1:14.8	it's wreaking havoc on our democracy today? Yeah, for sure. And thanks so much for having me on
1:20.6	here to explain this and to give at least a tantalizing view for people's Christmas wish.
1:27.0	I say, here's the Supreme Court we have, but here's what we could have instead.
1:30.8	So let's talk about what we have.
1:32.9	Originalism is the main model that the conservative legal movement has promoted for constitutional
1:40.7	interpretation.
1:41.3	And so this is something that has been adopted and embraced by the conservative justices
1:47.4	on the Supreme Court, more or less.
1:49.5	I say more or less because, you know, if it takes you to some less convenient results,
1:53.9	then suddenly originalism stops.
1:56.5	But usually they are interested in promoting this idea of originalism, which says that the meaning
	...

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