Political Gabfest - America Has a King Now
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2026
⏱️ 62 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Emily Bazelon, David Plotz, and guest host Ruth Marcus discuss this week's momentous Supreme Court rulings. The FTC/Slaughter case overturns nearly a century of precedent protecting independent agencies from presidential power while Cook makes a suspicious exception for the Fed, birthright citizenship prevails on constitutional grounds but the close vote further reveals what's broken at the Court, and the Court rules against transgender people, again, by upholding state bans on trans athletes.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, David, and guest host Ruth Marcus discuss how Trump's rally-turned-fireworks-delay, a militarized downtown, and a rebranded "Freedom 250" have turned DC's festivities into a loyalty test. They ponder whether skipping DC's fireworks means ceding the flag to Trump and if attending old-fashioned local cookouts and parades is the more patriotic move.
In the latest Gabfest Reads, Emily Bazelon talks with Senator Chris Murphy about his new book, Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America. Murphy lays out a provocative agenda for Democrats to call Americans to national service, break up corporate power, rebuild local communities, and create a bigger tent that reaches disaffected conservatives hungry for change.
Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Nina Porzucki
Research by Emily Ditto
You can find the full Political Gabfest show pages here.
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Find out more about David Plotz's monthly tours of Ft. DeRussy, the secret Civil War fort hidden in Rock Creek Park.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest. |
| 0:06.7 | July 2nd, 2020, the America has a king now edition. |
| 0:20.7 | I'm David Plotz of CityCast in a sweltering Washington, D.C., from the New York Times Magazine |
| 0:26.7 | in Yale University Law School and probably a sweltering New Haven, is Emily Bazelon. |
| 0:31.4 | Indeed. Nice still, though. I love summer. |
| 0:35.7 | You do, you do like a swelter. You're, you're one of these people who would prefer to be |
| 0:40.3 | extremely hot than cold. |
| 0:43.4 | Well, that's true, if I have to choose. I don't love being extremely hot, but I do love |
| 0:47.2 | summer. Introduce Ruth. |
| 0:49.0 | I will. John Dickerson is on vacation from, although how can you be on vacation when you |
| 0:53.5 | don't have a job? Good question. Let's ponder. That is on vacation. Although how can you be on vacation when you don't have a job? Good question. |
| 0:55.1 | Let's ponder. |
| 0:57.0 | That is really rude to say with him, not even around. |
| 1:00.3 | Oh, Ruth. We have been making fun of John and his joblessness for many months now. |
| 1:05.2 | I know that. He's so busy. He's so busy. Also, that's why I can do it. It's like he's a man who has like seven jobs. His substack. He writes more for a substack than, I don't know, than even you write, Ruth. We are joined, thrilled in this gotacy week to be joined by the New Yorker's brilliant legal writer Ruth Marcus. Hello, Ruth. |
| 1:27.8 | How you doing? |
| 1:28.2 | Hello. |
| 1:32.7 | This week on the Gab Fest, it's all Supremes, top to bottom. |
| 1:34.6 | It's just Diana Ross and the Supremes. |
| 1:40.1 | First, the court video, we don't have video, but Emily was just doing her best. Dancing, like one of the Supreme. |
| 1:41.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:42.9 | The court wipes out the independent-ish agencies that have helped oversee key aspects of American government and American life and gives the president absolute power to fire basically anyone who works for the federal government. |
... |
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