"Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof"
Political Gabfest
Slate Podcasts
4.4 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss yesterday's oral arguments in the monumentally important birthright citizenship case at the Supreme Court, Trump's primetime attempt to convince Americans that both their wallets and the Iran war are just fine, and strategy versus vibes in key Senate races in Maine and Texas.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss the launch of NASA's Artemis II mission to the Moon. They muse poetically about space exploration, ask what NASA has been doing all this time, and discuss the benefits to humanity of such expensive missions.
In the latest Gabfest Reads, David Plotz talks with journalist Gabriel Sherman about his new book Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family—and the World. Sherman, who also wrote the bestselling biography of Fox News chief Roger Ailes, spent 15 years reporting on the Murdoch empire. In this book he turns his lens on the family itself — the rivalries, the wounds, and the secret Nevada courtroom battle that finally forced Rupert’s hand.
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
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome for the Slate Political Gab Fest. |
| 0:19.7 | April 2, 26, the subject to the jurisdiction thereof edition. |
| 0:21.7 | I'm David Plotz of CityCast here in Washington, D.C., from New Haven, Connecticut, always |
| 0:28.3 | representing Yale Law School, always representing the New York Times magazine, New York Times |
| 0:34.1 | generally. |
| 0:35.5 | Emily, Emily. |
| 0:37.9 | Hello, hello, Emily. Hello. |
| 0:38.3 | Hello. |
| 0:39.2 | Hello. |
| 0:39.4 | Hello. Hello. |
| 0:39.8 | And from Providence, Rhode Island, where he is, uh, touring group houses of |
| 0:44.7 | various sorts. |
| 0:46.2 | Uh, John Dickerson, Lego just released the first of John's new Lego kits of presidential libraries. |
| 0:56.1 | I think it's a great idea. |
| 0:57.7 | I don't, I mean, other people say maybe people aren't that interested in the architecture presidential libraries, but I trust John's vision of both any petty critic. |
| 1:08.6 | Which library did you start with, John? |
| 1:13.5 | This is my new favorite thing on the planet. |
| 1:16.0 | The only problem is that it has to do with me, which is the only thing that makes it. |
| 1:20.8 | The Obama Library, of course, because it was actually out my window when I i was at the university of chicago and um it's a |
| 1:30.5 | it's a fascinating piece of architecture and it looms above the above the landscape and really |
| 1:37.2 | arrests the eye um and and it is sort of as if it's almost legoesque in fact in its kind of blockiness well the kit is 2495 if it's almost Lego-esque, in fact, in its kind of blockiness. |
| 1:45.1 | Well, the kit is 2495 and it's available in stores everywhere and wherever you shop online. |
... |
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