Centering the court in our political lives is something critical and actually, you know,

actionable.

I don't think tomorrow Neil Gorsuch is going to write an opinion that says, I declare Donald

Trump king and emperor forever, but I do think they will and have issued decisions that

enable democratic decline, enable autocracy, and further undermine democracy to a point where

we will no longer recognize our government as a legitimate healthy democracy.

What explains what has happened more recently has a lot to do with what happened over the Obama

administration and the failure of the Obama administration to get judges nominated and confirmed

because of the recalcitrant of the right.

Hello and welcome to a very, very special crossover edition of Why is this happening?

Slash Strixcourtney podcast with me, your host or co-host Chris Hayes.

And just one more note before we dive in here, we recorded this episode before the court had

even heard the challenge to the OSHA workplace vaccine mandate and then they issued that decision

after that.

So we don't touch on any of that because this all took place before that argument and decision

was handed down.

Hey everybody, today is very special.

Melissa Murray, who you can hear from a second, described it as our first ever conjugal podcast.

Which cracked me up because I was like, whoa, wait, no, but then it's true that conjugal really

is just an adjective that means like marital.

And the reason that it's our first ever conjugal podcast is, as if you listen to Why is this

happening or if you listen to Strixcourtney, I think we have listeners from both right now in this

...