WTH is Going On with the Supreme Court? Jonathan Turley Explains
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2023
⏱️ 59 minutes
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Summary
The Supreme Court went out with a bang in 2023 – before heading off to recess, SCOTUS struck down affirmative action, ruled Biden’s loan forgiveness grab unconstitutional, and prioritized the First Amendment in a creative design case. Each of these cases (save for KBJ’s recusal on the affirmative action vote) was decided 6-3: the conservative majority versus the liberal bloc. Despite the ensuing media mayhem that accompanied the rulings, however, the cases are each staked squarely in the law – not political pandering. Indeed, politics aside, Biden lacked the authority under the HEROES Act to forgive billions in debt; the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause prevents quotas based on race in universities; the First Amendment prohibits forcibly asking an individual to provide services for a cause they are opposed to. Polls suggest that Americans are losing faith in the efficacy of the Courts, but likely only think so based on the political fervor that persuades us that these decisions were not made in good faith. So, we brought in a legal expert to explain just how these decisions are made.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. At GWU, he is also the Director of the Environmental Law Advocacy Center, and Executive Director for the Project for Older Prisoners. Professor Turley has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades including the representation of whistleblowers, military personnel, judges, members of Congress, and more. He publishes columns on jonathanturley.org.
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.0 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell is talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on? |
| 0:01.1 | Who in God's name |
| 0:21.7 | knows what it's all about. |
| 0:35.2 | Hi, I'm Daniel Pletka. And I'm Mark Teeson. Welcome to our podcast. What the hell is going on? Mark, I think you know what the hell is going on. Yeah, what the hell is going on? It's the Supreme Court has laid out a bunch of decisions for the American people. We're thrilled by them. Some are not. We're going to talk today about three major decisions. One, overturning Biden's |
| 0:54.7 | student loan act. Second, allowing a religious exemption from LGBTQ affiliated business requests. |
| 1:01.0 | And third, rejecting affirmative action in college admissions. We have a wonderful guest, |
| 1:05.7 | Jonathan Turley, who's a colleague of mine on Fox News, who's one of the best legal analysts |
| 1:10.0 | in the country, and we're going to get into the legal aspects of this with him. But let's talk a little bit about the politics of this, because there's politics obviously involved in all these things. What do you think of these decisions, Danny? So, first of all, I think you actually characterize 303 creative LLC versus LN. I said a little wrong. This was really a First Amendment case. This wasn't about |
| 1:28.0 | LGBTQ plus, I can't keep track, but it wasn't about that at all. It was simply about people's |
| 1:35.6 | right to speak and to control their work in the way that they choose. And it was a real |
| 1:42.4 | vote of confidence for free speech. |
| 1:44.4 | In terms of the politics, I think every day in every way, |
| 1:49.4 | our country's leadership has further lost its mind. |
| 1:53.7 | Our Constitution is no longer the crowning document of our nation. |
| 1:58.3 | It's no longer the pillar of our rule of law. We are now ruled by |
| 2:03.4 | country club members and Ivy League school graduates and people from California. Basically, |
| 2:11.7 | it's New York, Washington, L.A. and San Francisco. They're ruling the airwaves. They're ruling the country. They're |
| 2:18.5 | ruling the Democratic Party. It's insane. So what's happened to the left and free speech? The left |
| 2:23.4 | used to be the champion of free speech. There was the whole in the 60s was the free speech movement. |
| 2:28.3 | And now they don't seem to care. This is, I mean, whatever you think about this web designer's opinions on same-sex marriage, whether you support same-sex marriage or oppose same-sex marriage, the reality is in our country, we don't have compelled speech. You can't force somebody to articulate views that they don't agree with. By the way, just to put it in another way, this is how over the last weekend a whole |
| 2:53.7 | bunch of Nazis were demonstrating outside a synagogue. |
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