Save Our Courts to Protect the Constituion - TEASER

Gaslit Nation

Society & Culture, Politics, News

4.8 • 4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This holiday season, we wish you peace, joy, and a new Supreme Court. In Part 1 of our discussion, we pulled the mask off originalism and called it what it is: the Southern Strategy of our courts, a legal laundering scheme for white terrorism. In Part 2, we discuss how to take our courts back from GOP extremism to protect our Constitution–before it rips apart our country. To hear this week's full bonus show, subscribe at Patreon.com/Gaslit and support our independent journalism.

According to legal scholar Madiba Dennie, author of The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back, the answer is finally taking the Constitution at its word. The Constitution was built on principles from Enlightenment ideas that fueled the American Revolution: human equality, self-government, and the radical notion that legitimacy flows from the people, not from tradition or bloodlines. We fought a Civil War to finally live up to those ideals. In the Reconstruction era, through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments , the Constitution was fundamentally transformed into a document meant to support a multiracial democracy, one that promised equal protection, due process, and citizenship not tied to race.

Taking back the Supreme Court means delegitimizing originalism and replacing it with a constitutional vision aligned with democracy itself. A Constitution that works for everyone. A Court that understands its job is not to drag us backward, but to help the country finally live up to its founding promises.

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	Hey everyone. Welcome to this week's bonus show. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, and we are going to continue our conversation with legal scholar Mediba K. Denny, author of The Originalism Trap,
0:24.2	how extremists stole the Constitution and how we, the people, can take it back.
0:30.6	Denny is the deputy editor and senior contributor at the critical legal commentary outlet,
0:35.9	balls and strikes, and a former council at the Brennan Center for Justice
0:40.2	and is taught at Western Washington University
0:43.1	and NYU School of Law in part two of our discussion.
0:47.5	We look at how the hell do we get out of this hostage situation
0:52.8	of this MAGA, trashy Supreme Court?
0:57.5	This is a hostage situation, America.
1:00.2	What steps can we take to extract ourselves out of this?
1:04.8	And as I've been asking on the show to anyone with a lot of agree, does this MAGA extremist comment section on a conspiracy theory
1:15.7	YouTube video court threaten the very existence of the United States? Like, will we eventually
1:22.4	break apart because of their extremist overreach? So the larger picture is discussed in part two of our discussion.
1:31.3	And this is for our folks on Patreon who keep Gaslit Nation going and support our journalism.
1:36.3	And I want to thank all Gaslit Nation listeners, wherever you are in the world, happy holidays, happy New Year.
1:43.6	2026 is our year. We're going to join together and watch
1:48.9	Trump and Putin both implode their long game against democracy, finally crumbling because we,
1:58.1	the people, wherever you live, are fighting back with defiance, hope, and
2:03.5	unity. And yes, we will win. Happy New Year, everyone. So I want to ask you about the larger
2:12.4	picture of where all of this is headed, because I live in New York State. It's largely blue. That could always swing,
2:19.3	depending on so many things. Obviously, Long Island, where there were Nazi camps back in the
2:25.2	1930s during the first America first isolationism. We have some problematic dark red patches all
	...

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