Who Will Protect Us From the Supreme Court?
Gaslit Nation
Gaslit Nation
4.7 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2023
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Supreme Court is at it again! This current season of the American Hunger Games, also known as a Supreme Court session, could be as disastrous for the American people and great for the far-right donor class since Citizens United.
Here to help us make sense of the firehose of corruption coming out of the nation's highest court is Jesse Eisinger, a senior editor and investigative reporter for ProPublica and author of "The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives." Eisinger edited and led the team of journalists who produced several investigations exposing the massive bribes— we mean, the totally unethical and impeachable financial entanglements of Republican-appointed justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The discussion includes why Republicans build war chests to capture our courts for generations and why Democrats continue to have no strategy in response; why the DOJ let Wall Street off the hook for tanking our global economy and what that means for whether Trump and his co-conspirators will also get away with their crimes and corruption, and how to push back against elite criminal impunity in a time of historic income inequality—worse than the Gilded Age.
This week's bonus episode will answer questions from listeners at the Democracy Defender level and higher on Patreon. Andrea will also share some colorful insights from someone who had to work with Russian oligarchs back in the car bomb 1990s in Russia. For our Patreon community, Mark your calendar for the January 18th, 8 pm ET social media workshop to help us get in gear for raising our voices as we head into another make-it-or-break-it election year for our democracy and, therefore, the world
Want to join the conversation? Subscribe to join our community of listeners at Patreon.com/Gaslit
Show Notes:
Urgent call-to-action from Razom for Ukraine: Call your representative and ask them to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine. More info for taking quick action here: https://www.votervoice.net/RAZOMFORUKRAINE/Campaigns/107413/Respond
How to Volunteer in Ukraine https://www.volunteeringukraine.com/
How to Visit Ukraine https://visitukraine.today/
Make a tax deductible donation to the Berliner Odessa Express https://www.we-aid.org/en/initiatives/berlinodessaexpress/
Short film by Rick Minnich on the Berliner Odessa Express: "We Are Here" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjzAsCG--6I
Clarence Thomas' 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-other-billionaires-sokol-huizenga-novelly-supreme-court
Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-secretly-attended-koch-brothers-donor-events-scotus
We Don't Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right's Supreme Court Supermajority https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority
The Parallax View (Journalistic thriller recommended by Jesse Eisinger)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View
Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court
https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court
It's Not Personal: Why Clarence Thomas' Trip to the Koch Summit Undermines His Ethics Defense
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-koch-network-trips-disclosure-law-scotus
Citizens for Ethics: "Republicans are promising to unleash a whirlwind of 150 subpoenas on allies of Democrats if Senator Durbin moves forward with a subpoena of Harlan Crow in his Supreme Court ethics investigation. That threat just shows how powerful Harlan Crow really is."
https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1730195116663394757?t=-epurOECtmwyOyu6rjyEgQ&s=19
New Supreme Court Ethics Code Is Designed to Fail
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-supreme-court-ethics-code-designed-fail
Supreme Court conservatives seem likely to axe SEC enforcement powers
Behind the Scenes of Justice Alito's Unprecedented Wall Street Journal Pre-buttal The Journal editorial page accused ProPublica of misleading readers in a story that hadn't yet been published.
https://www.propublica.org/article/behind-scenes-alito-wall-street-journal-prebuttal-editorial
Supreme Court's SEC case ruling could 'upend government as we know it'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYooyPcRNVc
Supreme Court Skeptical of Argument That Could Hobble Consumer Watchdog The justices heard a challenge to the way Congress funded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but seemed persuaded that it was constitutional.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/us/supreme-court-cfpb.html
Billionaires had a surprisingly bad day in the Supreme Court today
https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/12/5/23989306/supreme-court-wealth-tax-billionaires-moore-united-states-elizabeth-warren
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone. |
| 0:12.3 | I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, |
| 0:23.2 | about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine. |
| 0:26.0 | A film the Kremlin doesn't want you to see, so be sure to watch it. |
| 0:29.4 | Today, speaking of the Kremlin, today is Tuesday, December 5th, Volunteer Day. |
| 0:35.0 | I celebrated by hanging out over Zoom with a group of volunteers from all over the |
| 0:41.1 | world who are in Ukraine right now volunteering. This special event was organized by David, a longtime |
| 0:48.3 | Gaslit Nation listener who is on his way to Ukraine now to join the fun. Their stories are incredible, and they're all |
| 0:56.6 | being put to work. They're meeting a lot of extraordinary people. It's really a soul uplifting time. |
| 1:03.2 | I was getting, you know, Mia's getting very tearful hearing their stories in the Zoom hangout. |
| 1:07.7 | And their number one piece of advice, which really surprised me, but it makes a lot of sense, because it's very similar to my story on how I just sort of just showed up in Ukraine in 2005 |
| 1:15.1 | and ended up staying there for several months and helping start a rock band and getting my |
| 1:20.1 | grandfather's memoir translated and discovering the story of Gareth Jones from his family that |
| 1:24.9 | had just put up their website and just going on this extraordinary |
| 1:28.5 | life-changing adventure that led to where I am today in such a major soul-shifting, |
| 1:36.0 | elevating way. |
| 1:37.6 | So their number one piece of advice, if you ever want to volunteer, go to Leviv, a beautiful |
| 1:41.8 | medieval town. |
| 1:42.9 | It just looks enchanting. It looks like the kind of |
| 1:45.8 | city that will always have a Christmas fair outside. You know, just gorgeous cobblestone streets |
| 1:51.9 | and old churches and beautiful restaurants and outdoor bars and cafes and things. It's just a |
| 1:57.0 | cozy place to spend time anywhere. And they need you there. So the number one piece of |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Gaslit Nation, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Gaslit Nation and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.