S2 Ep158: Jerome Powell is Fueled by Pure Righteous Anger—And We LOVE IT (w/ Andrew Weissmann)
The Illegal News with Sarah Longwell
The Bulwark
4.9 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2026
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sarah Longwell and Andrew Weissmann discuss the Supreme Court’s voting rights decision, the rush to redraw congressional maps before the midterms, Trump allies pushing criminal investigations against political enemies, the escalating fight over Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve, and the growing fears around abuse of FISA surveillance powers. Plus, Weissmann explains why the SPLC case is already DOA—and why he believes these moves are straight up authoritarian.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I could go on a whole Robert Mueller tangent, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to because. |
| 0:04.9 | Because I do that. Yeah, well, you're the story. |
| 0:13.3 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to the illegal news. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the bulwark. |
| 0:18.7 | And once again, I am joined by one of my all-time favorites. |
| 0:23.2 | Andrew Weissman is back. |
| 0:24.4 | But Andrew, Kate Shaw was on last week. |
| 0:28.4 | I don't know if you know Kate Shaw, but she crushed it on this podcast. |
| 0:33.7 | I was like, I don't know, man, Kate. |
| 0:37.2 | Kate. Okay, those are big shoes to fill. |
| 0:39.7 | Yeah. People who didn't, Kate Shaw is fantastic in like every way. I just like walked around |
| 0:48.1 | later being like, does everybody know about this woman? Like, she's so, but you know what she didn't do? |
| 0:54.5 | But here's the thing. |
| 0:55.1 | So Kate, she's so smart, so cogent, so crisp and clear in her delivery. She explained things so well. You know, no, no, no. This is what I'm hearing. I'm hearing. But. Yes, there is a butt. There's a but, but it's a kind, it's a kind butt, which is she didn't have any stories. |
| 1:14.3 | There were any stories. |
| 1:14.2 | There were no stories. |
| 1:15.4 | And so it was just, it was incredibly clear analysis. |
| 1:17.8 | But I do, I do think that the audience comes in part for the Andrew Weissman's story of it all. |
| 1:25.2 | And so if you've got anything sitting around, I'm sure we'd love to hear it. |
| 1:28.5 | Well, as you know, I have nothing but stories. So it's interesting. When I teach, |
| 1:33.9 | I actually am generally really careful about war stories. And I, because there's so much |
| 1:43.1 | material that you have to cover, I really try and pick a war story that's going to like elucidate and illustrate a problem. Because, I mean, I can just, as you, you know, Sarah, you probably don't know this about me, but I could just tell war stories like for the entire podcast. It does appear that way. You didn't have to tell me that. I think I could glean. |
| 2:02.8 | I don't have a law to agree, but I could glean. Okay. So this is just to be fair, we were, I was about to, |
... |
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