The Supreme Court: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

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concerns the fact that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died

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end, which was quite distressing, but has been compounded by the fact that this happened yesterday. good evening, we start with the breaking news: the president nominates amy coney barrett for the

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barrett is a favorite of religious conservatives for his strong opinions against abortion rights and, if confirmed, would move the

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towards right for a generation. Trump is about to replace a liberal icon with an extremely conservative judge who has been called the Antonin Scalia woman and who could serve for a long time, Amy Coney Barrett is only 48 and I know I make 43 sound like 76, but believe me, it's young to be a Supreme Court justice and look if, and almost certainly, when Barrett is confirmed to the Supreme Court, the impact could be dire.

In recent years, key cases have been decided with just one vote, from upholding the affordable health care law to preserving daca and striking down an incredibly restrictive abortion law. If those issues were to come before the court again, they could now easily go the opposite way and there is clearly no solution. The point is to hold on to the hope that conservatives will choose to respect the president they appointed by refusing to even consider Merrick Garland in an election year because that was always in bad faith, as was obvious at the time, in fact, before 2016 election, Senator Richard Burr even said this privately to a group of campaign volunteers, if Hillary Clinton becomes president, I will do everything I can to make sure that four years from now we still have a vacancy in the Supreme Court.

Yes, that's a Republican senator who is committed to blocking the confirmation of a judge not just in an election year but for an entire presidential term and just think about how long four years is four years ago harvey weinstein was still producing movies in the

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few four years Harry and Megan started dating they got engaged they got married they left the The royal family and I think we now own Netflix and in the last four years Leonardo Dicaprio's girlfriend gets the right to drink alcohol legally for two more years and she won't have trouble getting a rental car to get your belongings out of your house.

The timing is incredible, and some Republicans seem to rationalize their party's blatant hypocrisy by saying that confirming Trump's nominee will simply bring the court closer to the will of the country. I recognize that we may have a court that has a more conservative leaning than this one. I have had it for the last few decades, but my liberal friends have been accustomed for many decades to the idea of ​​having a liberal court and that is not written in the stars, it is also appropriate for a nation, that is, if you focus on the Right, have a court that reflects a center-right point of view, what the hell are you talking about?

Mitt, put aside the notion that a court that gutted the voting rights law is a liberal court, since when is this nation naturally center-right? I can't remember picking your favorite fall lasagna toppings and we'll tell you which way the nation's electorate leans because, for the record, more Americans say they align with the Democratic party than Republicans, plus poll after poll has shown that Americans are in favor of abortion rights. with support for Roe V Wade reaching record highs while a large majority of the public also supports Medicare for All, and by the way, a solid majority says the winner of this presidential election should be the one who chooses Ginsburg's successor so our country doesn't be so much. center right like mitt romney is center wrong look this has been a very dark

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for many people the

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court is about to swing to the right for the foreseeable future and if things seem hopeless right now it's because, to be completely honest, Basically, this is a pivotal moment and what we got here, a little bit by bad luck and bad timing, we also got here because of the diligent effort of the Republican leadership and fundamentally some very big systemic problems that simply need to be addressed, So

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let's talk about that. specifically how we got here and what we can do next and there are basically two main factors that got us to this point.

The first is this man, Mitch McConnell, the only one who came out of Kentucky more brazen than the KFC menu. You want your Cheeto chicken crispy and normal, with a hot bun flavor, because it's all on the table at KFC, we promise the maximum flavor for you, the maximum disrespect for the memory of a chicken, reconfigure the courts of America it's been a determined focus for mcconnell trump wants marvel's bob woodward, you know what mitch's most important thing is in the whole world, his judges and his obsession is not just with the supreme court, mcconnell's blocking of merrick garland , rightly received a lot of attention, but also ensured that trump could stack the lower courts. with the conservative judges, something Trump also explained to Woodward, very soon I will get to 280 judges, no one has had those 180.

Obama gave us 142 judges, yes, when I came here, yes, that never happened, you never had one if you were president. You'd never have any feds, you know they're like gold nuggets, right? Well, first, it's weird to refer to something as gold nuggets unless you're talking about actual gold nuggets or you're describing your husband's balls in the middle of his tiger. themed funeral while posing as a priest, those are the only two perfectly appropriate moments, but needless to say, obama didn't deliberately leave those vacancies open for trump. When republicans took the senate in 2014, mitch mcconnell began systematically blocking The lower court appointees so that a future Republican president could fill the seats later, so Obama didn't give Trump those judges any more than the National Archives gave Nicholas Cage the Declaration of Independence, in fact. , Obama only gave Trump two things: a brief tour of the White House and a colossal inferiority complex that fueled Trump's rise to power and infuriated him so much that he decided to turn America into an apocalyptic hell and destroy democracy as such. as we know it. kavanaugh hearings because right after christine blasey ford's heartbreaking testimony, apparently mcconnell had this conversation with the president, they were both testing each other a little bit.

Where are you on this? You know how strong you are and mcconnell basically tells the president, don't worry about me, I'm strong as a mule, that's his quote, I'm strong as a mule, in other words, he's not going to give in, he's not going to give up. , he's not going to give up, wow, that's extraordinary because it's easy. forgetting that after blasey ford's testimony kavanagh's confirmation felt much less confident and reacting to what she said with don't worry, i'm strong as mule urine is both horrendous and deeply strange quick side note, no I was sure how strong mulepis are.

There are actually surprisingly few videos of mules urinating on the internet, although we did manage to find this footage titled donkey urinating at sunset and I have to say it's an impressively strong current so I totally get it now and in the future. The time I think about Mitch McConnell, I'll think about that donkey you're on at sunset, but as easy and fun as it is to blame Mitch McConnell and his mule urine for everything, it's a mistake to focus only on the people involved here because there is an entire system beneath them that has allowed them to do what they have done and that brings us to the second important factor that got us to where we are now: the deeply undemocratic nature of American institutions because there is no doubt that the Republican party currently controls both the Senate and the White House, it is true and they will argue that this gives them a mandate to do exactly what they are doing.

Chris, the Senate majority is doing our constitutional duty and fulfilling the mandate the voters gave us. a Republican president, they've elected a Republican Senate and I think Republicans need to keep their promises here and that's what I intend to do, the American people elected President Trump and a Republican majority because we want to protect the constitution and the bill of rights and that It's our job it's what we have to do I don't like that man Ted Cruz I don't like his backward views I don't like his stupid suits I don't like his cowboy boots I don't like it when he sneezes I don't like eating cheese I hate seeing his face of a fool smiling because his beard looks like a merkin but look, let's talk about that mandate because neither the presidency nor the senate reflect the will of the American people as much as they suggest that the In the White House, a Democrat has won the national popular vote. in four of the last five elections, but we have spent 12 of the last 20 years with a Republican in office and that is because the electoral college, with its winner-take-all approach, most States can distort the will of the majority, as well as give disproportionate power to less popular states that tend to be rural and more conservative, something that is even more pronounced in the Senate, where there are 15 states representing 38 million people who They have 30 Republican senators even though that's less than the entire population of California, which has only two Democrats and that's before even getting into the fact that places like Puerto Rico and Washington DC, where the populations are majority black or Hispanics, they have no representation in In fact, if you take all this together, the Senate gives the average black American only 75 percent more representation than the average white American and the average Hispanic American only 55 percent more and clearly not great when the best What I can say about your representative democracy is, hey, at least blacks were over three-fifths this time, at this rate, you could count as 100 of a white person from 2408 onwards, blacks , you truly are an inspiration to half of Hispanics everywhere.

So the fact is that when Barrett is confirmed, a president who lost the popular vote will have chosen a quarter of the federal judiciary and a third of the Supreme Court and his picks will have been approved by a Republican Senate majority representing 15 million fewer people. that the Democratic minority and if that seems absurd to you it is because it clearly is, especially when those courts have allowed Republicans to establish tremendously unpopular policies that would not actually be approved by voters and that brings us to our final question of what can be now done right for the democrats the first priority is to try to take control of the white house and both houses of congress this november, which given everything we just discussed is by no means a certainty not only could they win the election directly even if not Couldn't he, as he has repeatedly indicated, refuse to concede and force the result through the courts and that possibility is clearly part of his rush to get a judge confirmed before the election because he's not even trying to hide it Now that we made nine judges, what do you need? that with the millions of unsolicited votes that they are sending, it is a scam, it is a hoax, everyone knows it and the Democrats know it better than anyone, so you will need nine judges up there, I think it will be very important, okay?

There are a number of dark insinuations there, including that it's important for us to elect the next justice so they can decide what the American people elect, and that makes it pretty clear that for Trump to have an additional appointment to the Supreme Court is absolutely crucial to his re-election. . so crucial like angry white people in red hats, Facebook posts from undercover Russian agents, and based on his campaign's online store selling Trump coloring books, that even the children in the ad seem bored by what's happening there , the youngest child is not even paying. Pay attention and the oldest seems to be trying to turn the coloring book into a Nintendo Switch with his eyes.

Also, why aren't they coloring the coloring book? The father seems to be reading it to his children, which is objectively the only wrong way to go. to enjoy a coloring book, but look, let's say that, for the sake of argument, the Democrats manage to sweep the next election, the biggest mistake would be to think that that in itself has fixed everything or even anything, because it has no There is no point in gaining power unless we are then willing to be bold enough to use it to make significant structural changes. We have argued before that the filibuster that would allow legislation to pass with a simple majority should be abolished.

It is true that it is risky, especially for a party that again, for structural reasons, can hope to be in the minority more often than it should, but those same factors make itextremely difficult for Democrats to win a filibuster-proof supermajority and do anything meaningful. What's frustrating is that some centrist Democrats like Joe Manchin honestly seem to think that even if they somehow gain significantly more power, the best way forward is to try to return to a more civilized moderate era in American politics. I will make every decision I can to keep the bipartisan Senate on the right, just so that we have to basically fight for who we are.

As the Senate, can we represent the people in a bipartisan way, Democrats and Republicans? Oh, I have an answer to that question for you, Joe, no you can't, it seems like the message Manchin would take from America, surging to the left against all odds, would be I think they want us to work with the Republicans and that's not It's just nonsense, it's James Cameron level nonsense, you know what people want four more Avatar movies and I tell those two men that no one wants them to stop talking. about that and just give us what we want, one more good Terminator movie and a new green deal, I don't care which of you does who, just get it, although I will say even if the Democrats sweep the election and even if they then get rid of the filibuster and then having the courage to pass important laws, those laws are now increasingly vulnerable to being struck down by a more conservative supreme court and that has led some to suggest taking the more dramatic step of expanding the supreme court by adding justices, is possible the constitution does not specify how many seats there should be and it can be done, and has been done in the past, through a simple act of congress, although there are real concerns about what the eventual rollback would be because it doesn't take a genius.

To imagine what the Republicans would do the next time they take control of the government seriously, it doesn't take a genius, they want to pack the court, you know, that means they want to put in a lot of judges, these are things that are just horrible, I guess . We could do that too well, we could also do that, yes you're right, I absolutely could do that, which is undeniably chilling. Expanding the court is a little like doing naked yoga. One way to dampen your enthusiasm for the idea is to imagine Donald Trump doing it too. Expanding the courts could open the door to an endless cycle of both sides doing so, potentially permanently destabilizing one of the fundamental institutions of American governments.

That now outweighs the potential for a court with Barrett to undo or block years of protections for our climate health care and civil and women's rights that are definitely worth considering, nothing should be taken lightly here, although I will say that there are some other steps we could take that should be impossible to discuss at this point, steps that would make both the Senate and the White House more representative of the electorate on the Senate side statehood could be granted to Washington DC and if the Voters there would like Puerto Rico. That would not only help balance the Senate's bias toward white rural voters, but it is also the right thing to do for the nearly four million Americans who currently have no Senate representation at all, which is simply astonishing.

It's about the population of Rhode Island, Maine, Montana and Wyoming combined. As for the presidency, we need to get rid of the electoral college, which may seem radical, but it really isn't. Even a new idea, in fact, in the late 60s almost happened. Here is Birch Bai, the senator who spearheaded those efforts, making what in retrospect is a pretty compelling case: There is a great danger with the current electoral college system of electing a minority or a minority. -pluralistic president of electing a president who has fewer votes than the candidate he is running against when we have an electoral college system that threatens to elect a man who has fewer votes than his opponent, we tend to erode trust in the people of this country and its president and its form of government and as someone who has lived through exactly the hypothetical situation you just described and can twice report that our trust in the government has not eroded that much, the erosion is a slow process and worthy as it has been. hit by an asteroid full of sentient jackhammers until it collapsed on itself like a star inside a black hole back then the idea of ​​abolishing the electoral college had bipartisan support, then President Nixon even urged Congress to move forward writing Every four years, American democracy makes a big, unacceptable and unnecessary bet that the electoral college will work once again, which makes sense because if there's one thing we know Nixon didn't like, it's leaving elections to chance. and if there are six things we know he wasn't a fan of his Jews, blacks, hippies, snitches, Vietnamese who lived and then left elections to chance, I miss you, but obviously we didn't end up eliminating the electoral college in 1970 because the legislation finally was blocked by you guessed it. filibuster and even today the idea has broad support: 61 percent of Americans say we should abolish the electoral college, but Republicans will defend it fiercely, in fact, when a movement to switch to a national popular vote started gaining steam a decade ago, mitch mcconnell said republicans need to kill it in the crib before it grows up, but the good thing is that the movement mcconnell was talking about doesn't necessarily require his cooperation or even a congressional law because a group of states has quietly signed an interesting agreement.

Possible alternative solution Recently, 15 states and the District of Columbia joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and have committed to giving their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote rather than to the person who wins the national popular vote. your state, but this one won It won't go into effect until enough states adopt it, which so far hasn't happened, yeah, it's kind of amazing, basically, if enough states just pretend the electoral college doesn't exist, it could functionally disappear. It's the same approach every Harry Potter fan is currently trying. to take towards jk Rowling forget, go to the books, stay now for this idea to go into effect, leaving aside the legal hurdles you would almost certainly face, you would need states representing 270 electoral votes to sign on, you currently have 196, which is a lot, but you need 74. more, which would be increasingly difficult to achieve and obviously the best way to abolish the electoral college would be to do it through a constitutional amendment, but that is even more difficult and I will say that there are other ideas for reforms significant, such as establishing term limits for supreme presidents.

The court justices we've argued before should absolutely make the point here: It's time for a big change and maybe that's why Republicans like Kevin McCarthy already seem to be freaking out, Democrats think it has to be their way or No. but now it's a new extreme, they want to expand the court, they want to bring new states into the union, anything that manipulates the system in their name instead of believing in the rule of law, okay, first of all, Kevin, if there is a A group of people. those who can't complain that their opponents go to extremes to get what they want are congressional Republicans, and second, we've expanded the court before and added states before adding two states in 1959, we don't fight in the World War. ii with 50 stars on the flag, America is constantly changing and granting DC and Puerto Rico statehood or ending the electoral college would actually make our system more democratic rather than less because the inevitable truth here is that the system is already rigged and is rigged in a way that has allowed a party with no popular support to dramatically reshape an entire branch of government for the foreseeable future by appealing almost exclusively to white voters in some of the least populated regions of the country.

That is not a mandate and it is not democracy, it is a farce. We are at the end of a generational battle and the heartbreaking thing is that we lost and that hurts. It's going to hurt a lot of people for a long time, in ways that might take a while to fully understand, but the next battle has to begin. right now and it will be a long time, we did not get here overnight and we will not get out of here overnight but we must be willing to fight tirelessly and with all the tools and tactics at our disposal because sometimes we fight fire with fire It's not enough.

You have to fight mule pee with mule pee.