Continues. Host welcome back, my guest is brian fallon, the cofounder and outgoing executive director of demand justice, talking about Supreme Court reform. Welcome to the program. Guest thanks for having me back. Host yes i should say welcome back but before we get to our topic in my wanted to get your reaction to the third indictment of former President Trump. Guest i think the special prosecutor thats been handling this case, jack smith, former head of the Public Integrity section at the Public Integrity section at the Justice Department is very well respected, nonpartisan prosecutor and i think he has done a very methodical job here. The case is pretty watertight. I think this country will get a little bit of an education into our legal system here through the course of this case. I know some people will try to argue that the president will emerge from this indictment politically stronger somehow and that this whole rally will mobilize his supporters but this is now the third indictment. He will be hamstrung significantly just from a political standpoint. A lot of fundraising resources are being diverted to his legal fees and he personally will have to be devoting time to planning for trial so he will have to go through that and it will take time away from the campaign trail. He will be a less strong candidate because the fact that these cases are all playing out. Regardless of what happens in the court of law, as a candidate, he will be weakened by these indictments. Host if you would like to call in and ask questions and share your thoughts, you could do so on airlines by party affiliation. Republicans, 202 7488001, democrats 202 7488000, independent, 202 7488002. Youre wrapping up your tenure as founding executive director of demand justice, remind us of what that organization is about. Guest demand justice was started in 2018 by myself and my friend and colleague chris kane who had worked as a Deputy White House counsel during president obamas term in Office Working on judicial nominations. We start the group with the mission of trying to galvanize the public against the capture of our federal courts by a rightwing element that was very much out of step with the country. Now we are seeing the sort of results of that capture as the cords play out in the last couple of terms where the decisions of the Supreme Court have happen. We have been trying to mount a campaign to push back on the nominees that President Trump was putting forward during his time in office and trying to galvanize support among the public and try to counterbalance the takeover the hard right successfully achieved at the Supreme Court level. Our funding is primarily from two sources. We have a lot of institutional donors and Foundation Type donors that believe in our mission. Also, we have over half a million supporters online that contribute to us on an average of 20 per contribution. We have a mix of small the small dollar donations and levels of support from Foundation Type donors. Host i want to show a New York Times article from the launching of demand justice back from 2018 in the headlines this the idea back then that republicans were about judicial reform, is that still true today five years later . Guest the pendulum has started to swing back. The project that was carried out in terms of capturing the court has many objections. The effort to fight back and try to undo that damage is not going to happen overnight either. We are five years into this project now but we have made a good amount of gains in the last five years. We started in the aftermath of what happened with Merrick Garland. Mitch mcconnell blocked president obama from filling that seat but more distressing was even his Mitch Mcconnell was doing that, the public didnt seem that upset about it. It was not a big issue in the 2016 election. Even though the fate of the Supreme Court, whether it would be controlled by a majority of liberal or conservative justices, literally would be decided by that election. There was some attention during the president ial debate step but not much. When neil gorsuch was confirmed in 2017, that happened with a whimper and there wasnt much of a fight by the democrats against that nomination in 2017. From that, our group was started with the goal of trying to galvanize the public to care a little bit more. Five years later, i would like to take credit for it but its really external events that have happened over the last five years. You had the kavanaugh conversation, Ruth Bader Ginsburgs untimely passing followed by Amy Coney Barretts confirmation, highly charged confirmation battle that focus the public attention on this issue. In the ensuing years, you had rulings like the overturning of roe v. Wade that have really thrown the public for a loop, people who took that for granted that was 50 years old. We were trying to tell people that was on the line and a lot of people didnt believe it until it actually happened. I think you are now seeing that the issues have never been more salient especially among democratic voters. They tell us in polls more than Republican Voters that this is a voting issue for them in a complete flip from 2016. You also see it in the form of the low Approval Rating the court has. They have an historically low Approval Rating and this creates the Supreme Court as a highly charged political issue. More than its ever been host i want to talk about the election and the impact the Supreme Court decisions can have on the election. Break that down a little more for us as far as where you think that will go, especially with the Dobbs Decision. Will it impact Younger Voters or the womens vote . Guest we certainly saw in the 2022 midterms, evidence that the backlash to the Dobbs Decision helped soften the losses the democrats were otherwise in store for in the 2022 midterms. Historically, the democrats take a drubbing in the midterm elections when that partys president is in power. Democrats held the senate and their losses in the house were fairly minimized to the point where democrats have a legitimate chance to take back the house in the 2024 election. A lot of the polling shows the reason that democrats are able to keep their losses in 2022 to a minimum was because, especially suburban voters, women voters were externally upset about the Dobbs Decision and completely taken aback they actually follow through and overturned roe. I think that dynamic will persist into 2024. This is an issue that is creating a political wing that at joe bidens back. President biden is reluctant to engage in this conversation. He has stopped short of directly criticizing the court. A lot of democrats on capitol hill have started directing criticism at the Supreme Court. Joe biden has sort of stood back from directly engaging that conversation but that dynamic is certainly there. His team is certainly aware of it and i think they know it will only benefit him this backlash to the Supreme Court. This court is seen as an arm of the republican party, the maga republican wing that joe biden is running against in 2024. Host here is the front page of demand justice. Org. How are you really going to do that especially if joe biden has said he is not interested in doing that . Guest this is a generational struggle we are in. The republicans werent able to win over and capture control of the Supreme Court in a matter of months or a couple of years. They did it over the course of many decades. They had the Federalist Society to help them carry out that result and the pendulum starting to swing back but its only just starting. This will really be a generational, years long struggle we are in. They have a 63 super majority on the Supreme Court. Some people think democrats can just sit back passively and hope that retirements or illtimed illnesses occur in the democrats may organically regain a majority on the Supreme Court. Realistically, we will have to go out and convince the country about structural ones of the court. There has been Academic Studies like a harvard researcher that said in less than legislative was sutured results, legislature is needed. Other than that, the Supreme Court will remain in power until 2065 which is a sobering thought. A lot of us are trying to help cultivate a conversation about Structural Reforms that can rebalance the center than that to include ideas like term limits, adding seats but this will not happen this congress when you have a republicancontrolled house. But we are making a lot of Great Strides to build support for these ideas, not just at a Grassroots Level with voters, but the judiciary act which is a proposal that would add seats to the Supreme Court. Host you mentioned the Federalist Society. We will start taking calls shortly but one more question the federal society and there is also the Judicial Crisis Network. What kind of impact of these groups have . Guest they have been highly successful. Host in doing what . Guest in mobilizing Republican Voters to care about the court as an issue and vote according to the Supreme Court as an issue and insist on their candidate speaking to the issue where to the point where donald trump literally released a list of names and 2016 about people he promised to look at in tombs in terms of who he would nominate. They succeeded in getting super donors on the republican side to give money to this project. Leonard leo, the head of the federal society, the former head, has been particular successful at getting large megadonors on the republican side to give huge eight figure gifts to the Federalist Society and affiliated groups to help fund this effort. One structural advantage they have is resources. They are giving their flows into groups like the Judicial Crisis Network and its like 71 as opposed to groups like mine on the other side. Theyve been externally successful and if anything, when we go to capitol hill and meet with democratic lawmakers, or point to them as we need to get into the game and compete with the groups doing so well on the republican side and galvanizing support for this issue. Host lets take a look at a gallup poll that asked the question about the Supreme Court job approval by party. Republicans have a 62 approval rate for the Supreme Court, independents are at 41 and democrats are only 17 . You said before that approval of the Supreme Court is at historic lows. What needs to happen to turn that around . Guest thats a relatively recent phenomenon. When we started pulling democrats in 2018 when we started, democrats approved of the job the Supreme Court was doing because democrats had sort of a view of the Supreme Court that was somewhat rosy based on civics lessons we learned in history from brett brown versus board of education and there have been recent rules like the decision to uphold the Affordable Care act on the decision to recognize samesex marriage that caused progressive to think that by and large the Supreme Court was doing an ok job. The events of the last five years with the confirmation battles and things like the dobbs one have caused democrats and independents, they are underwater with those two key groups. Its not surprising that two thirds of republicans are supporting it because they are getting what they voted for in terms of rulings like the dobbs ruling. Democrats and independents being against the court in such large numbers is not a viable situation longterm for the Supreme Court. Host lets go to calls in our first one is james and mount airy, north carolina, democrat. Caller brian, who used to work for Chuck Schumer, right . Guest i did. Caller i can tell you the biggest problem we have right now in the u. S. Senate is Chuck Schumer and the senate democrats. A perfect example of it is Amy Coney Barrett. She got put on the court at the very end of trump presidency. She could have been blocked. At any point during the confirmation any democrat could have come to that floor and said mr. President , reserving the right to object and they didnt. Chuck schumer made a joke of it. I dont know if you saw that. People behind the scenes, the big money behind the scenes were telling him block her. Use the right to object. He came to the floor and made a mockery of that. He said people are telling me to use the right to object so i will with a big smile on his face. And he said something about asking permission for the following committees to me today. Procedural type things. Then he goes, mr. President , i object. He was objecting to his own request. Guest host host lets get a response. Lets get a response. Guest makes a point about democrats not using every tool at their disposal in 2020. We were centrally involved in trying to organize the opposition to Amy Coney Barrett. We had a lot of meetings with Chuck Schumer and democrats urging him to use the objection and we urge that they boycott the hearings. At the end of the day, i had to say that while there was some guidance from us that we were giving, maneuverings they could undertake to slow things down, the ability to out to outraged up the nomination is not something they democrats have in their power. I wish that was the case but if they had the power to do that, we would have been harping on them to do it. They had the ability to slow things down at best so its frustrating and expense as that was, i think Chuck Schumer was doing as much as he possibly could in that moment. Host david is a republican in woodbridge, virginia, hi, david. Caller good morning and thanks for taking my call. For me, there is a lot to unpack here. I dont understand the big push back that organizations like the gentleman works for has against judges and people who want to follow the constitution. Whether they are conservative, liberal, follow the, follow the constitution and the law of the land. Democrats seem to want to hang their hat on that topic no matter what time of year. I would rather have an even ginsburg was not in favor of this becoming a law. I would rather have the states have the Supreme Court and give it back to the states which is what they did to you can have local jurisdictions and legislatures make your role and you can vote accordingly. Your thoughts on that . Guest for years, folks that worked at the Federalist Society and conservative judicial nominees, for confirmation hearings would sort of say their theory was the one true way and they were not taking an ideological approach, that they were interpreting the constitution very strictly according to the text of the document and that all these complaints about the rulings being issued i republican appointed judges was really just sour grapes of a question that had been settled earlier by the Founding Fathers in the way they wrote the constitution. There have been decision after decision in the last few years that have you lied that narrative and exposed the socalled originalist approach that republican appointed justices like to take and mostly bunk. Take a look at the gun issue. You have the heller decision a little over a decade ago written by Antonin Scalia a, a great conservative lion, adored previously by Federalist Society types. He said there is a fundamental right to bear arms in this country but in that same opinion, he said there was room for reasonable regulation on that right. In the interest of Public Safety and in recent years, the justices from the far right that are still on the court said no, this is basically an unfettered right and there is not room for any of those reasonable restrictions. They continue to move the goalpost closer and closer and ideological vision they have. It is sort of exposed that this is the one true way its grounded in a textural list interpretation of the constitution. Host eric, independent in cedartown, georgia, good morning. Caller i would like to make a comment. The court makes no difference whatever laws the democrats passed in the house and the senate and the president. The Supreme Court can overturn it. You are actually taking black people getting their rights taken away with other groups of people getting the rates expanded. No matter what the democrats say , unless they add members to the