The MAGA Justices Get Torched by... Amy Coney Barrett?!

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:03 Jenessa: Barrett just says, does this law violate federal election law? And it doesn't.

0:00:17 Jenessa: What if they did this to steal an election? What if THEY did THAT to steal an election? And she's like, I don't know, man, what if monkeys flew out of my ass? I don't see a reason to think that I have a right to intervene.

0:00:37 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is 081278. I'm Thomas. That over there is real life attorney Jenessa. How you doing?

0:00:43 Jenessa: I'm doing pretty good. I am excited to talk about some voting rights coming off of our lovely little holiday weekend.

0:00:50 Thomas: Excited to talk about voting rights. I don't believe you.

0:00:54 Jenessa: We have good voting news to talk about.

0:00:57 Thomas: Not possible.

0:00:58 Jenessa: You'd think, right? Out of the Supreme Court of all things.

0:01:01 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, I know. We're still catching up with the deluge of bullshit from the Supreme Court. But, sounds like this one is one of the better ones. One of the rare better ones?

0:01:13 Jenessa: Good news in the sense that we got the good outcomes. So this is Watson v. Republican National Committee. Refresher for everybody, we talked about this very briefly in episode 1236. Mississippi is one of a few states states that has a rule where if you postmark your ballot on or before election day, they will count it as long as it is received within five days of election day. So it can show up late, just has to be postmarked by election day? Some states are a little longer, some states are little shorter. Most states don't allow it except for overseas and military voters. Some states don t even allow it for them.

0:02:00 Thomas: I did not realize that. I just assumed everybody had it.

0:02:02 Jenessa: Yeah, I live in New York and we have it, so I too assumed that was just a thing, but actually for all voters, that is only 14 states. DC, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands are the only ones that allow it. 30 states allow it for the overseas and military voters. The fact that the Supreme Court says, yes, you can keep doing this, it's affecting a relatively small number of voters in a relatively small number states. For most voters, I would say hey, just mail that thing way in advance anyway, and then we don't even have to worry about this, right? Try to stay on top of these things. But there's something really interesting going on here where it's not just the outcome. As we read through this, I didn't even realize at the time how much this was a pathway to getting some of the far worse things that Trump wants to do to elections to actually end up happening. This would have been not the end of the world for voting rights, but this could have been the beginning of, oh, maybe you shouldn't count any of those ballots that come in after that. Maybe you need to certify the election sooner. Maybe if you can't verify somebody's eligibility after election day, maybe shouldn't be doing that. And I think we pretty pretty firmly shut the door on that and it's written by Barrett yeah

0:03:32 Thomas: So this was like a gateway drug case to more election effery.

0:03:35 Jenessa: Absolutely like I think if this went the wrong way it would have opened a door to say oh you're right maybe this early voting thing is not so good what about this what about that Barrett like lays a smack down here like if this was written by Kagan I'd be like wow she's having a really good day she's like really tolerant and pleased. And she must have gotten a massage before she wrote this. I don't know. But for Barrett, this is like catty. It is very aggressive and it's a 5 -4. It's against the four most conservative men on this court.

0:04:15 Jenessa: She is writing like the dissent says this and they're wrong because of this. And the dissident says that and they'RE wrong because OF this. And like some footnotes that I will read in honor of Matt that are for Barrett rude I think we're seeing how she is a bulwark on this we like it's not Jackson who you would expect to be like of course voting rights something interesting is happening

0:04:40 Thomas: So what you're saying is we got a good decision, and just like the birthright citizenship one, it's like, well, this was almost the end of the world and the stupidest decision ever. The birthright one would have been worse and we were saved again by five people saying the constitution means what the constitution means and that is so that's bad news but it is interesting so you're telling me that this was written by amy coney barrett and she laid a smack down on conservative morons in the court wow I am excited to hear about this this

0:04:55 Jenessa: Here yeah I continue to be excited to watch her development as a judge it will always if nothing else be weird

0:05:19 Thomas: Is more evidence in the you know for a while there's that narrative of like is amy coney barrett the savior of the the whatever. And then it was like, no, definitely not. And then it's kind of like, well, that's been my impression of it's like, No, definitely Not as though you're overreacting. And then after a while, it was like, okay, she might there might be some redeeming qualities here.

0:05:39 Jenessa: I continue to hold out hope and the thing I've said about her from like the very beginning is if it's a case about religion or abortion you can trust her to be as extreme as possible and to like lose all legal sense and just act as an activist but when it's not religion or abortion you can get very reasonable answers out of her this might be leaning this way I mean we're gonna see her say you guys are making up history you guys are like selectively Citing the Dictionary this is a whole other person

0:06:22 Thomas: That Yeah, that opens a whole if you're gonna start questioning how the idiot originalists are making up history on the court, that could be that could lead you down. That's a I don't know what color pill that is. But it's you're getting Yeah, Yeah, something pilled while we're at it. Might as well give her quick credit for I mean, again, this is partial credit. Just let everyone let us not be, you know, under any impression. This is grading on the most extreme curve. This is the Nazi curve. We're grading on a fascist Christian nationalist curve. Of course, like they should go without saying this does not mean like this. She's awesome or something. But we are in such a horrible state on the Supreme Court. We'll take anything we can get. Like we're just, it is so bad that truly we're just looking for any signs of like slightly less bad. And she was, I think that one of the only ones I can, if I'm remembering right, we just, we talked about so many, uh, Supreme court cases, uh、 last Friday, but she was like one of the, the only one or one of two, if, I can't remember who said, who was like, Hey, how come we're doing one rule for,

0:06:36 Jenessa: Yeah, I cannot reconcile this person with the decisions she has signed on to in the past Mm-hmm.

0:07:30 Thomas: Uh,, the federal reserve or whatever. And then another rule for all of the other independent things. And it's like they're all the same. There's sort of a level of blatant hypocrisy she's unable to do.

0:07:34 Jenessa: Mm-huh. Yeah.

0:07:43 Thomas: You know, that might actually be, that is interesting. I'm forming this theory in real time. Maybe that's a little bit more of the explanatory force. Cause like, say what you want about the abortion opinions. They're not like hypocritical really. Like they're just fundamentalist. Do you know what I mean? Like, correct me if I'm wrong. It's mostly like they They have a fundamentalist view of abortion and of how that should work. At least the legal arguments are like they're pretty consistent. I disagree with them, obviously. But it seems like maybe that's something to look at to keep an eye on with Barrett, where it's like she's not willing to do this. The level of hypocrisy that these idiots are willing to deal with, the men, the fucking men, are willing to make up history in one case and talk about how important it is. Next case, don't care about history. The history goes the other way. Don't care. Or we make it up. And it seems like she's not really willing to do that. So that's all right. I'm excited to dig into this. That's my current. I'm not committing to it.

0:08:39 Thomas: I have a thesis. We could test it. I have an hypothesis. We'll see if it holds up. But that's currently kind of how I'm looking at it. So let's take our usual break, which you can avoid at patreon .com slash law. Support the show. Get the goodies. The book club. The law awful movies got another one coming at you pretty soon. And most of all, just support the show, this is how Matt and Jenessa can come and teach us about stuff and help us learn and help us take on the news in a more illegal news in a more accurate way than you're getting most other places. So please support the show. If you can't, please share the show and after this, we'll be right back.

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0:09:15 Thomas: Okay, where should we start? Do you want to tell the story of this nonsense challenge to mail -in ballots?

0:09:19 Jenessa: Yeah, so let's start there. So we mentioned people can mail their absentee ballot on or before Election Day, and Mississippi rule is up to five days after Election Day will still accept it. The rule in the Constitution is this, Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1, the times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof, but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations except as to the place of choosing senators.

0:10:03 Jenessa: And I always have a hard time reading that last part because it says choosing, C-H-U-S-I-N-G, and I always want to say chussing your senators. Just old timey spelling, I guess.

0:10:16 Thomas: Oh, yeah, I see it right there. Choosing. Choosing, boy. I don't, is that how they spelled it? It I think it would be funny if it was that like one person was like spelled it wrong and then everyone was just assumed like well that's like old timey talk so it's fine no if I look for wow I'm just doing a control f how have I never seen this that I remember choose if you do control f for,

0:10:20 Jenessa: It's weird, right? Old timey spelling, man. I mean, I guess. I don't think somebody spelled it wrong on the, well, our government website. Chussing.

0:10:46 Thomas: Yeah, for Chuss, C-H-U-S, you get a bunch of Chusses in a Massachusetts. That's a, wow. Yeah, Chuss. Huh. Okay. So what does that mean when it comes to how they Chuss their senators?

0:11:01 Jenessa: So essentially the important part is when they wrote the constitution they were basically saying the default is states decide time place manner of elections like you guys figure it out how you want to do elections but congress can override you if they choose to so we're going to assume unless congress said something it's up to the state obviously you know within constitutional constitutional bounds, the state is going to have to, you know, adhere to the rest of your civil rights and all of that. The state is gonna pick things. Congress can say, you guys are making a mess. We'll put a law in here. And they have done that over time. Obviously, most famously, like the Voting Rights Act, they have put in rules about what the states can and cannot do. What's going to be most relevant for these cases, they passed a law, in 1845, that says the election for the president is on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. It occurred to me that I should look up why. That is weird.

0:12:09 Thomas: Yeah, that's a random ass date.

0:12:10 Jenessa: It is, isn't it?

0:12:11 Thomas: And a Tuesday. Why not vote on the weekend or something, you know?

0:12:16 Jenessa: Well, Sunday, obviously, day of rest, and we all have to go to church. We cannot have an election on a Sunday. It would take people a whole day of travel, sometimes if you live in rural areas and, you know, we didn't have cars and everything, to get to your polling places. That means if we can't do it on Sunday, we can't do it on Saturday or Monday. And And apparently in our largely agrarian society back then, Wednesday was the day everybody went to market and like sold stuff. So we couldn't do Wednesday.

0:12:47 Thomas: Or they were like, well, let's make it so you go in on a Tuesday to vote and then you stay Wednesday to, to buy a fat ham or whatever.

0:12:55 Jenessa: That was pretty much the idea. Yeah.

0:12:57 Thomas: Yeah. Make it a long week.

0:13:00 Jenessa: Go to church on Sunday, travel on Monday, vote on Tuesday, sell all your shit in town on Wednesday.

0:13:07 Thomas: Middle die of rickets on Thursday.

0:13:10 Jenessa: And it had to be after the first Monday in November, because otherwise, hypothetically, it could be Tuesday, November 1st, some years. And November 1 is All Saints Day. And it's also the first of the month is when like everybody's got to, you know, fix their books and like do a lot of work on the first day of the year. And so we make sure it's either anywhere between November 2nd and November 8th. And then like why November? Well, the harvest is over, but it's also not that cold yet and that's how we ended up where we are it's kind of a mess because it's obviously all of those factors are far less important today and the meanwhile we're all working nine to five on a Tuesday and then everybody's trying to vote between like 5 30 and 9 30 in in New York at least the polls are open till nine and by the way if you get online before the polls close you can stay online and vote don't leave some states close earlier than that like like it's a whole mess. There've been proposals to make it a federal holiday. I don't know why that is not just an obvious

0:14:19 Jenessa: Bipartisan consensus. Just give people more time off. We love it. Whatever. So that's why. So they pass that one about the presidential election and the problem, why do the states all have to do it on the same day anyway? Barrett kind of, she alludes to that there either was fraud or there was a perception of fraud. And either way, that's bad.

0:14:46 Thomas: Now she does. Oh, back in the day. Oh sorry.

0:14:52 Jenessa: Way back in the day, not now, at no point is she going to say there was fraud in 2020 or something like that. Not like that, but that there was, you know, literally when they passed this in 1845, the concern was, well, if this state has their election in September and this other state has their election in october like you could literally vote in one state and go to the other state and vote over there she leaves it open to interpretation like maybe people really did that maybe they didn't but that was the rumor and that introduced fear around it that is like I mean that's still not good if people perceive

0:14:54 Thomas: Oh gotcha. Okay. Okay yeah. Yeah yeah. And this just sounds like a no nonsense thing to do. Like the, the, nowadays I'm just on the lookout for how much does she signal to the stupid 2020? Because I've heard the justices do that thing. Well, there's the perception of unfairness. It's like, no, you can't just, because lying assholes try to lie about an election, you Can't therefore be like, well, you know, we can't have the perception that there's something wrong. So we got to fix it. Well, okay. Then you get to just lie your way into whatever change you want. I think the difference there too, would be that's a neutral policy also like, Well, we'll just all have it in November. And unless I'm who knows, was there any argument that's like, well, you know, Texas can't vote and, you know, whatever, like it's going to be pretty much like a rule that makes sense for everybody. That's not. Whereas what's happening here with the mail -in is obviously a way in the Republicans mind, in the MAGA mind to try to get more votes

0:15:48 Jenessa: That yes yes right

0:16:27 Thomas: For them and fewer votes for us. It's unclear how much that happens, but it is what they're trying to do.

0:16:33 Jenessa: Right and so like keep in mind how much this disproportionately impacts military overseas voters. There's more diversity of opinion in the military than I bet people realize. It's not a wildly Democratic voting group of people, that's for sure. Also mail -in voting has a big impact on older voters and on rural voters. Particularly for absentee voters voters who are rural, a possible mail delay has a much bigger impact on them than a mail voter in a city where, you know, that thing might only have to go a couple of blocks. I recognize the postman doesn't literally walk at a couple blocks, but you know what I mean. It's not an obvious universal thing that like doing this would like guarantee one party wins, which probably helps to avoid some partisan bias flowing into this decision. Not that it ultimately doesn't. It made made sense to just set a day where every state's going to do what it wants. And that's going to be the day where you all have your election. And then you're all going to deliver your electoral votes to the college or whatever. And, and then there we go. That's the nationwide thing. And eventually Congress will pretty shortly after pass another one that says, Hey, can you all do your representatives on that same day as well? Not just the president. President, and eventually they'll say the senators as well. We'll put it all together, everybody on the same day.

0:18:05 Thomas: You know, why don't we just do it all? I don't know why that took so long.

0:18:08 Jenessa: Yeah, why not? We get these three rules and they say this is election day. If you just look at this in the abstract, all you knew was they said election day is on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. I think reasonable people could disagree about what that means. Does it mean the ballots have to be received by that day? Does that, I mean, that could arguably mean early voting is not okay.

0:18:36 Jenessa: That could arguably mean you have to count the ballots by that. It could mean a lot of things, right?

0:18:42 Thomas: Maybe.

0:18:43 Jenessa: The good news is we don't have to read this out of context and that's going to solve a lot of problems. To me, the argument that is just like knock down, drag out, you cannot defeat this argument. The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA, you will hear it called. This was passed in 1986, sometime in the 80s. Congress said, hey, we have a problem. Overseas and military voters, we want to like really make sure they overwhelmingly vote by absentee. Our military voters overseas in particular may not have the option to come home at all. It could be literally against the law for them to come back. It's not a good idea. It would be a bad idea to to vote by absentee. And some states are good about this. Some of them, not so much. And so we're going to create rights for these voters. One of the things they did was they said, okay, what if your state absentees system is just like not up to par? It fails. We have a problem with it. You're not getting it out to them on time, blah, blah. We're going create a backup federal federal absentee system for those voters but we don't have a federal election system

0:20:05 Jenessa: Which is great for a lot of reasons but it's going to be a problem now because we just told you we're going to create a federal absntee how's that supposed to work we're gonna tell you how to do it because really the state is going to still administer it and so we're to say in multiple places in the 80s. The deadline for these federal absentees is whatever your state deadline is. Barrett will say this repeatedly. If Congress thought that by passing a law that says election day is the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, they created a nationwide absentee deadline. Why in the eighties did they write a law that said the deadline is whenever the hell your state says it is that doesn't make any sense what are you talking about this is the same congress they had an opportunity in that moment to say it's on election day or before election day like what you know and they didn't do that And they knew at the time, for over a hundred years, in one fashion or another, some states had been allowing ballots to be postmarked on or before Election Day and arrive after Election Day and get counted. They had an opportunity to say, by the way, Demis, it's not legal. We said it wasn't legal in 1845. What are you doing?

0:21:08 Thomas: Let

0:21:34 Jenessa: And they didn't say anything. They specifically said the deadline is whenever you say it is. And we know some of you say It's after election day and we are declining to speak to say that that's wrong. What are you supposed to say to that? That's the end of the discussion, right? Right.

0:21:54 Thomas: Me make sure I have this. So because they were creating this federal absentee, which is kind of weird. And because they made it say, well, we'll just have that date be whatever your state is because the argument was wait I might have missed that so the first part of this was someone was arguing there's a national drop dead election date kind of

0:22:17 Jenessa: That essentially when Congress passed a law that said Election Day is on this day, that means that's the deadline for absentee ballots, even though we didn't have absenteee ballots when they passed that law. That's the headline. God damn it. That's Election Day. And you got to get those absenteea ballots in on that day.

0:22:30 Thomas: Thing right

0:22:39 Jenessa: And then, 40 years ago, Congress passed a law that said, hey, your absentee ballot's just like it's due when it's due, man. It's due whenever your state says that it's do.

0:22:38 Thomas: Right

0:22:51 Jenessa: If that's what they thought it meant, why would they say that? That makes no sense whatsoever. What's important here, Barrett opens with the facts and the history, and then ultimately tells us this in part two. The question before us is a narrow one about timing. Plaintiffs do not challenge the manner in which Mississippi carries out federal elections. They do not, for example, challenge the general practice of absentee voting, nor do they challenge the use of the postal service or a common carrier to transmit ballots. Although the election day statutes refer to a particular, quote, day for the election, election plaintiffs do not contend that everything must occur on that day. For instance, they do not object to early

0:22:50 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:23:40 Jenessa: Voting or dispute that officials may count votes and certify a winner after election day. Finally, this is not a case about the Constitution. We do not consider the scope of Congress's authority to regulate federal elections. The sole question before us is whether counting counting ballots postmarked by election day, but received up to five days later, violates the federal election day statutes. The way she has narrowly couched this is what's really going to save it here. All these hypotheticals about all the possible things that could happen. Yeah, but it's not though. This is not a constitutional question. This Is not a question about all The different manners in which it is literally a timing question. And it is a an interpretation of a statute. What did Congress mean when they said? Nobody's questioning whether any of this is constitutional or not. So like the court has a much more limited right to interpret any of these. If the question is when Congress said this is when the election day is, did they mean your absentee ballot can't arrive after that date? I mean, they passed a law in the 80s and And they said, your state can determine when your absentee ballot is due. And they knew there were states where the deadline was after election day. And they just didn't say a thing about that. This decision could have been a paragraph if that was enough. And it's enough for me, you know. This is where I think it gets interesting. They are trying to do a lot more. I think this is where they were trying to open the door here. They say we're not questioning the manner of voting. They say we're not questioning whether you can count ballots afterwards, we're not questioning early voting, but like obviously they are. Obviously this opens the door to that. The liberal justices really harp on this in oral arguments like if you are saying election day is this day and that means an absentee ballot can't arrive after, the ballots have to be cast on this day. And it's not not just the day that you cast your vote, it's the day that we collect the ballot. That's what's so secret and important. By what logic would early voting be allowed?

0:26:05 Thomas: Yeah that seems like the biggest thing to me is like if you're going to make the argument that nope it's this day then how how could you say there's early voting And that's OK. That doesn't make any sense.

0:26:15 Jenessa: It doesn't. It doesn't work. They say, well, you know, that's just not an issue in this case and we're not arguing that it's not okay.

0:26:25 Thomas: Oh, that's convenient. Yeah.

0:26:27 Jenessa: I think it's a test. I really do. One of Trump's biggest complaints was, we all know in the 2020 election that like the the news did a really good job of that like pre -bunking where it's like before you get the misinformation, let me hit you with the truth. Yes, the red mirage. You're going to see them count the in -person votes first. And we know Republicans are in - person voting despite the pandemic and Democrats are overwhelmingly voting by mail. And what you see the night of the election election will almost certainly look like republicans are winning by margins we've never seen in our lives and then it's going to shift blue be prepared for this to happen and trump will on his deathbed try to tell you that that was the fraud that everything that happened after the night of the election when he was winning by a landslide that's all fake and that we should actually stop counting votes at, like, 9 p .m. on Tuesday. Like, not just that we shouldn't accept ballots after then, that, like if we just haven't gotten to the bottom of the stack yet, we should just throw them out. Speed it up.

0:26:39 Thomas: Mm hmm. Yeah, the red mirage. Yeah yeah.

0:27:42 Thomas: That's obviously ridiculous. He's a liar. I think that, you know, while I don't know that this law, just the one we're talking about with the, you you know, post -state that thing. I don't know, like numbers wise, how much that would have helped Republicans versus us. But I do think it's an important it's just a signal. It's just a signal to Trump, to Lord God, Savior Trump that, hey, something was fishy with the with the mail in ballots. And there's a way we can continue to have that be our constant refrain and then get it It's somewhat legitimized by the MAGA Accord.

0:27:57 Jenessa: I agree. Exactly.

0:28:15 Thomas: And they almost did it.

0:28:15 Jenessa: Exactly, precisely what was going going on is trying to open this door that, well, really, this kind of stuff can't be allowed, right? And if the court had been receptive to that, they might have tried a more bold argument. For example, Barrett cites that, by this logic, couldn't you say that we have to adjudicate the eligibility of every voter that day.

0:28:47 Jenessa: If somebody fills out a provisional ballot because we're not quite sure that day, are you an eligible voter? She cites to an amicus brief from some election officials who say it would be difficult or impossible to finish that process the night of the election. We almost certainly are going to have to go into the following days to finish going through all of those provisional ballots.

0:29:14 Thomas: But election day means election day, except for early. I'm an idiot. Yeah, it's just bad faith.

0:29:19 Jenessa: Yeah, like that's, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't made any sense. All you do is whip out a dictionary. Like we can have a stupid fight about what Webster's had to say about it, or we can look at the full context. And when you look at the full contexts, the answer is obvious. That is where Barrett starts to get like, this is obvious, this is obviously, this obvious, like all of these arguments are bad and stupid and bad faith. And it gets like I'm gonna resist the urge to read you this entire thing like that's it's so good it's really good yeah

0:29:56 Thomas: Well, we definitely want to read some of it. Fangirling over ACB. B, feminist icon Amy Cunningham. Stick it to those men.

0:29:58 Jenessa: So like I know I feel very weird about this oh my god oh it's bad so you know I I continue to hold out the dream that like there has been many leaks about court politics and one of the earliest and biggest things was that she found the boys club to be very rude and exclusionary and terrible hard

0:30:30 Thomas: No, I refuse to believe that about the four worst people in the world. Oh, I got to censor that. Or five. I don't know. I forget. I've lost count how many assholes there are. I think that Roberts is not, I would bet that Roberts is not an asshole in person.

0:30:37 Jenessa: To imagine right right I bet you're right

0:30:49 Thomas: I would bet Roberts is probably pretty nice. All of the other ones, I don't know. I bet like Kavanaugh has his moments, you know, like one of the good old boys or whatever. Yeah, yeah. But freaking Alito and Thomas just, I just kill myself rather than talk to them. Like, I mean, well, I would yell at them, but like if I had to work with them as who knows with Gorsuch too, can be such an asshole at a moment's notice to even people who are like agreeing with them.

0:30:57 Jenessa: He's such a people

0:31:17 Thomas: So, yeah, no, no mystery there when it comes to, like, how upsetting or how unpleasant that must be.

0:31:07 Jenessa: Pleaser yes Yeah Yeah I would not be surprised to hear I wasn't surprised to hear that she's finding it extremely unpleasant to work with them. We've heard other people say that before about Thomas and Alito. I'm not surprised to hear it about Gorsuch. And I just have this dream that she is going to spend more and more time palling with the gals and just become a more reasonable person over time.

0:31:52 Thomas: Oof. So what you're telling me is one of the gals, one of The Liberals has to take one for the team and be like, oh, hey, want to hang out? What are you and your nine kids doing this weekend? God, I hate this. I hate every moment. Oh, we're praying together. You know, who knows?

0:32:12 Jenessa: Just all you got to do is,

0:32:14 Thomas: Do it. It's for the country.

0:32:14 Jenessa: I mean, her and Sotomayor are both Catholic. They just say grace over their pizza and hang out.

0:32:22 Thomas: One of them probably actually believes in Catholicism. And the other one is like, I don't have to recuse when there's a death penalty case, whatever.

0:32:26 Jenessa: It is really solid as she goes through this. I think the UOCAVA point is the most solid point. And then what she walks us through is that the history is not dispositive here.

0:32:41 Thomas: All right. I can't wait. Let's hear some ACB owns.

0:32:45 Jenessa: We have the definition of elections. She does for one singular sentence have to pull out Webster's Dictionary and it's the worst argument she makes in the whole brief. Stop doing this. We have UOCAVA argument, which I think is just extremely hard to get around. And then, okay, well, let's see what the plaintiffs and the dissent said. And she says, well what you'll see the plaintiff's echoed by the dissent say is election means a choice, but they don't think it means I make a choice of who I want and you make a choice of whom you want. It's the electorate's choice. It's choice of the whole group of people. That's election day.

0:33:26 Thomas: We're so far away already from anything. So they went they did the like Webster's Dictionary defines election as a choice. And then they're like, well, I can even. Is that really what they were doing?

0:33:31 Jenessa: I I tried so hard to read Alito's dissent. You ever do that thing where you read the first paragraph like 17 times and then you're like, I can't do this?

0:33:47 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:48 Jenessa: I got a few pages in multiple times and I was just like, you know what? I don't have to do this to myself. Why am I doing this? And I skimmed it. For me, that was reading pre -Adderall. It was just so painful. I read the first couple of paragraphs over and over and I was just like, okay, there's explain it like I'm five. And then there's explained it like, I have two brain cells and one's on vacation. It's just rude. And it's like, well, we all know what a choice is. And I'm like, clearly we don't. Obviously, if it was just an individual voting than it would be that, but the electorate is more than one person. So choosing is more complicated than that. And I'm like, what if I just jumped off a bridge instead of reading the rest of this?

0:33:54 Thomas: For me, that's just reading. This is kind of how that works. But yes, I see what you mean.

0:34:30 Thomas: What does that mean? How does that help them?

0:34:33 Jenessa: I don't know. And this is exactly what she's going to say is it doesn't help them. It really, really doesn't help them according to the dissent ballot receipt is necessary because it renders the electorates choice quote authoritative, but The Dissent never says what authoritative means, much less why ballot receipt carries this transformative power.

0:34:57 Thomas: Wow. I see what you means. Oh man, I want to read something. I think I'm bitchier. Let me read.

0:35:06 Jenessa: Truly? I would read this whole thing. It's so good.

0:35:09 Thomas: Yeah, that was good.

0:35:11 Jenessa: It sassy for her.

0:35:16 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:35:17 Thomas: Let's dig into to more of

0:35:18 Jenessa: Yeah, plaintiffs, for their part, suggest that ballot receipt is significant because it marks the point at which we can say, quote, who won. But plaintiffs fail to explain why the electorate's choice is not made until we know who won. And in any event, we do not know who won when all ballots are received. Many other acts must occur first.

0:35:36 Thomas: It yeah right so so that would mean like you can't do anything so you got to receive the ballots count the ballots all in one day right that'd be like the election says yeah I well that would be the one yeah voter qualification well oh like as in them making the determination like of the right right right because I was gonna say I feel like you could still register to vote But but you're saying that's when they check. OK. Yeah. The thing with the provisional ballot kind of thing.

0:35:50 Jenessa: Voter qualifications, authentication. Yup, the adjudication for provisionals.

0:36:08 Jenessa: Yeah, the adjudification of any ballot that's been challenged or any provisional, you'd have to authenticate all the ballots, Let's authenticate the results, certification, count them.

0:36:19 Thomas: It's so stupid.

0:36:19 Jenessa: But like, we don't know who won for months.

0:36:21 Thomas: If the election day means election day, then that means you have to do it all. You got to do it all. You gotta be Santa Claus. He finds a way to every single time. You have to count it. You receive me. I can't do everything. You Have to make a determination. Otherwise, we didn't have an election because that's how it works. I don't know. There's no this is terrible. The only thing that they have at all worth thinking about is, well, what is the limit of this?

0:36:40 Jenessa: It doesn't make sense.

0:36:48 Thomas: That's like the only thing That's, like, okay, could you have that ballots have received, you know, two months later, like and what determines that limit? That's Like, you Know, one of those limit questions, like literally a boundary question kind of thing, like what's the outer bounds of this Those are always tough questions, but like, Okay, I'll listen to that if you have some theory about whatever it is. But that's it. Like, other than that, I don't see any good argument for why you could have the election means the election for like this one thing that you're trying to make happen, but nothing else. Like for everything else, like, well, that's fine. Early voting, that'S fine. Counting votes, thatS fine. Making determinations, that' s fine. But post marked for the ballots. Stupid.

0:37:05 Jenessa: Mm-huh. Mm -hm. I think we would all just universally agree if that thing was postmarked after the election, yeah, that can't work, right?

0:37:38 Thomas: Yeah, sure.

0:37:39 Jenessa: Like that, you have to vote on election day. That's gotta be what that means. And what is voting? I mean the postmark is when you gave up the ballot to somebody else so that works but if it was postmarked after you voted after election day and that can't be allowed so like that one I think would work everything else some of this stuff has to happen after election Day some of the stuff has to happen before election day that can be what Congress meant and we know that because they had had a chance to speak in the 80s and they affirmed what was already happening.

0:38:15 Thomas: The 80s or the 1880s? What was that one that you said?

0:38:18 Jenessa: The 1980s was the UOCAVA, the absentee stuff. The stuff in 1845, there was no absenteeing voting when they said this is election day.

0:38:19 Thomas: Oh, oh, gotcha. Mm. Gotcha.

0:38:29 Jenessa: So all of this is trying to hinge on something where it doesn't really work. She then goes on to say here, lacking a statutory foothold, plaintiffs, parentheses, parentheses, tracked closely by the dissent, pivot quickly to their primary argument, historical practice. They emphasize that in the mid to late 19th century, 1800s, if you're like me and needed a reminder of what the heck that stuff means, around the enactment of the first and second election day statutes, ballot receipt occurred on election day. While one might dismiss dismiss this timing as a byproduct of in -person voting, plaintiffs insist the advent of absentee voting proves otherwise. The first time we get absenteeing voting is during the Civil War. There's important context for you. When some states authorized soldiers to vote by mail during the Civil War, ballot casting and ballot receipt were no longer simultaneous. So these states could have allowed a grace period for receipt, but none did. Instead, plaintiff's contend ballots traveling Traveling through the war -torn country were not counted unless they were received by Election Day. Why would any state be so exacting, plaintiffs ask, if federal law did not demand it? Notably, plaintiff's admit they cannot precisely tie this historical practice to the text of the Election Day statutes. That is a delicately put understatement. Plaintiffs' theory is that if the relevant states could have changed the rules, they would have changed the rules.

0:40:06 Jenessa: Yet despite a deep dive into the historical record, plaintiffs have found no evidence that any of these states wanted to extend ballot receipt deadlines, much less that they thought federal law prevented them from doing so. She then goes on to give us some reasons why, yeah, maybe they had this rule for this reason or that reason. They might have believed it was essential to election integrity to open soldiers' ballots in the public presence, which was possible only if ballots arrived by the day communities gathered for in -person voting. They might have thought it efficient for election officials to accept absentee ballots when the officials were already assembled for in person voting. Frankly, in this first experiment with absentees voting, extending the deadline might not have even occurred to them. Habit has force." This is a great historical analysis.

0:41:00 Jenessa: There could be a hundred reasons why people did what they did.

0:41:03 Thomas: You can't just tell your just so story. And the just so stories are often weak, but seems particularly weak when it's like about an implied thing that they probably wanted to do. Too.

0:41:14 Jenessa: Yeah, you're like making all these assumptions. And she actually has a footnote about this that is even more sassy about it. The dissent, which treats this inference from history as dispositive, uncritically accepts plaintiff's version of events. It asserts without citation that states during the Civil War, quote, wanted to ensure that soldiers had a voice in selecting the officials who would direct the deadly conflict in which they were engaged. Abraham Lincoln had a less rosy view. In his annual message to Congress, President Lincoln estimated that at least 90 ,000 soldiers were unable to vote in the 1864 for presidential elections because, quote, the laws of their states did not permit them to, quote, vote away from their homes, that several states did not allow soldiers to vote absentee at all belies the dissent's narrative that states did everything in their power to enable the soldier vote.

0:42:17 Thomas: So rather than it being like, oh, they definitely would have wanted to do this, but they didn't. It's more like the states were like, ah, we don't really care about making voting easy at all. Is that what I'm getting? Yeah.

0:42:27 Jenessa: So, no. In the middle of a civil war. Yeah, essentially, she's like, the estimate from Abraham Lincoln is that 90 ,000 people People didn't get to vote in that election because their state didn't create absentee voting. But you want me to believe the other states did the extremist absentee voting they possibly could. And even though they didn't say so, they believed federal law stopped them from extending the absentee ballot deadline. And that's why they didn' t. It's the only reason they didn. World War I is the first time we saw these absentee ballot deadlines get extended. She has a footnote here that says, the dissent brushes off these World War I statutes as, quote, short-lived outliers, but relies heavily on Civil War mail -in voting statutes that were themselves short -lived outliers. It's not kind.

0:43:21 Thomas: Oh, boy. She's not having it. She is not having it.

0:43:24 Jenessa: No, really, really not. Not. She just really knocks down this idea that you can use history, which is normally the place where this originalism is going to try to lay on 1800s. At bottom, plaintiff's theory is that because we are governed by 19th century election day laws, we are also governed by 19th -century voting practices. Carried to its logical conclusion, this theory would call into question the way modern elections work but historical practice detached from statutory text is not controlling statutes do not trap in amber every contemporary practice on the same subject matter and that's a citation to rahimi which is the gun case where they said yeah you can still stop somebody with a domestic abuse allegation.

0:44:21 Thomas: Just a refresher. This is one of my favorite things was when Clarence Thomas wrote Bruen, which was stupid, obviously, discarding the lower court's analysis and just saying, well, you know, history and tradition. How? How? No idea. No idea, and then Rahimi was the one that was so bad, like the facts were just so terrible that, you know, we were kind of, we're kind of worried. I think people were like, well this is really bad, and by the logic of Thomas's idiotic Bruen decision maybe this awful like stalker person you know just domestic violence just awful this awful person probably the worst like the worst person that could be at the center of a case if you're trying to win it or whatever uh is going to just get the right to his guns and like to probably uh kill somebody you know a domestic partner or something and then they go eight one no justice thomas being the lone dissenter so what's going on here is that But Amy Coney Barrett is citing that one.

0:45:18 Thomas: That's like the correction to the idiotic Bruin one saying, hey, it doesn't just because you say history and tradition doesn't mean you're stuck with only what's going on back then, essentially.

0:45:31 Jenessa: Mm-hum.

0:45:32 Thomas: And what I love about that is that, A, it's awesome because she's citing like the one that's kind of correcting the stupid one. And B, I love that Thomas was the dissent in that one, so it's like it's just taking. His stupid case, correcting it, and then she's citing that favorably over his essentially his objection at the time, which is it does, as you say, this this whole thing feels like such a such a good and not like a petty, but a good substantive slap in the face to a lot of this bullshit.

0:46:03 Jenessa: Yes. And she really knocks down, I mean, I think they're bullshit, of course, but a lot of like attempts at policy arguments. I can imagine a lot OF bad policies. OK, wait till those policies show up and try to see if there's a problem. But like at the end of the day, she says policy arguments are better directed to the legislature.

0:46:26 Jenessa: If the legislature passed a law and you think that's bad policy, like, I don't know, vote better. Like it's with right right it's one thing if we had a truly ambiguous law or constitutional issue and there's multiple possible interpretations and one of them has a way better policy outcome I think it's reasonable to say well I mean if all of these are possible interpretations like why don't we just do the one that also makes a better planet but when we have a pretty clear law from from Congress that says this and the constitution says states get to decide the time, place and manner of their elections unless Congress says otherwise.

0:46:33 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Or challenge it then or whatever. Right?

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0:47:14 Jenessa: We have all the evidence we need to say Congress really hasn't said otherwise. You don't get to tell me, yeah, but it'd be bad policy though.

0:47:21 Thomas: Yeah, there could be bad policy. Is that what the argument was these are so bad

0:47:23 Jenessa: There could be, literally they start, oh my God, Gorsuch goes on this rant about, I swear to God, here's his hypothetical. And just imagine the nastiest tone possible. What if there was an election and there was some scandal that came out the day after the election and the guy's opponent tried to tell everybody, recall your ballots.

0:47:38 Thomas: What it's a good way to start

0:47:53 Jenessa: And then people did, and it changed the results, but you can't do that.

0:47:53 Thomas: But that what what if monkeys flew out of my butt man there's not you can't that's

0:48:05 Jenessa: Exactly. And the guy just keeps trying to be like, but that's not legal.

0:48:10 Thomas: Nothing that's like seven what ifs okay okay hold on hold on what what it what if they let you take back your ballot but then again if you recalled it I would assume you'd have to like so you're just taking away your vote

0:48:23 Jenessa: Just take away your vote.

0:48:23 Thomas: You're not changing it you're just taking away your vote yeah

0:48:27 Jenessa: And imagine in my hypothetical, we somehow know that changed the result. But also if we knew that changed your result, then it wouldn't change the result because we'd know that. But imagine. Every time this guy tries to be Like, but that's illegal here's the thing that's important to know I don't know how they do it in mississippi but in new york we give you that ballot with a prepaid envelope to send that thing back nobody's paying fedex to overnight that thing unless they are mailing it the night before and they're in a panic right so hypothetically if you mailed it like priority overnight oh my god mail those ones hypothetically sometimes you could now I don't know if you've ever tried to recall a package or redirect a package hypothetically one

0:48:41 Thomas: What are you gonna do like intercept the mailman like what hmm like the next morning or something oh

0:49:21 Jenessa: Could and then what and the guy's like but in the rare instance that an individual chose to mail it not by the prepaid free envelope that is is not recallable because it's an envelope, but chose to pay extra out of their own pocket, paid UPS to overnight this, and then also somehow got lucky enough that if you've ever tried to intercept a package, they're often just like, yeah, I can't.

0:49:35 Thomas: -huh oh they'd have to out of their own pocket like cat like hey yeah

0:49:50 Jenessa: And you're like, but why? And they're like just because I can. And it's like, why though? And they're if you pay me $50, I'll intercept it and it's like oh so you can but you just won't sometimes they can't sometimes they can who knows somehow I'm supposed to imagine that enough people will do this and the guy's like but that's illegal and Gorsuch argues with him for like a solid minute of like no it's not no it's and he's like all right I don't know I'm um yeah this is the oral arguments and the guys like I donno man I'm a Mississippi lawyer and you're not I he didn't really say that but he said that that in my head because Gorsuch is a dickhead to

0:50:14 Thomas: It's this in the oral arguments? Oh, wow.

0:50:26 Clip: Let's say you have a state where a large portion of the electorate mails in their ballots on or close to Election Day.

0:50:32 Thomas: Okay. Okay, concluding.

0:50:35 Clip: Then, the day after the election, a story breaks that one of the lead candidates engaged in an inappropriate sexual escapade or perhaps is concluding with a foreign power. Again, not far-fetched, I think. And the competing candidate immediately goes on the airwaves and urges voters to recall their ballots and to tell the common carriers not to deliver them. And many common carriers will do that with anything that you send through them.

0:51:03 Thomas: What?

0:51:04 Clip: FedEx, you just call them up and say, I want it back. In that hypothetical, did the election happen on Election Day? Oh, by the way, it swings the election. So the election did happen on Election Day, Justice Gorsuch.

0:51:15 Thomas: By the way, that ballot's name? Albert Einstein.

0:51:18 Clip: As we've explained, our ballot does not allow using mail recall, anything like that. Well, just first deal with my hypothetical, and then I'll deal with your statute.

0:51:27 Thomas: What? You can't.

0:51:28 Clip: The election happened on Election Day. Even though it changes the outcome? I mean, I think it— Yes, it has to be your answer, doesn't it? I mean—yes, Your Honor, I'm just—I want to be clear about the— We are not agreeing that the outcome can be properly changed in that circumstance. It did in my hypothetical.

0:51:39 Thomas: What.

0:51:48 Clip: You can't change my hypothetical counsel. And I'm not saying it's unlawful, Your Honor. I don't mean to disparage your hypothetical. I'm just saying that it's an unlawful circumstance because we don't allow ballots. But that hypothetical could happen in another state, right? I think if the state is not providing that on mailing there's a final choice made, I think that would be a problem with that law under the federal statute. Now, you say your statute, you're different. You admit my hypothetical could have happened, but you say it can't happen in Mississippi because recall is not allowed. I couldn't find that anywhere in Mississippi law. In fact, what I did see was a statute that says that the Secretary of State can promulgate rules and regulations. That's 23, 15, 6, 37, 3. And then I went and looked at the regulations.

0:52:37 Thomas: God, dude.

0:52:37 Clip: And Rule 2.1 says that an absentee ballot is the final vote of a voter when the ballot is marked accepted. That doesn't preclude recall. In fact that allows recall. I respectfully don't agree with that, Your Honor. Where does it say recall is not permitted? I couldn't find that anywhere in your statutes or the rule. And I think by providing that ballots are final when cast under our statute. No, it doesn't. It says they're final when marked accepted. That's the regulation, Your Honour. Yeah. It's your regulation and it allows recall. Respectfully, it does not allow recall, Your Honor. Would you read to me the provision that precludes it? It's subsection three of the I read you section three that says that Secretary of State can make rules.

0:53:01 Thomas: Jesus. Oh, my God.

0:53:26 Clip: To ensure that the ballots are final when cast. The key thing is the ballots aren't final when it says, no, votes promulgated by an absentee ballot, that the absentee ballot, person's absentee vote is final. You can make the rules about when they're final. And what the rule says is it is final when marked accepted. And that's, I mean, it's speaking to a processing rule about what to do when somebody's ballot potentially doesn't arrive on time, they submit an affidavit ballot. But I would come back to the text of the statute you're on. I mean, final when cast is what our law is. Mr. Stewart, I just want to ask a clarifying point to this.

0:54:00 Thomas: I just love that she's cutting in as a sign of the future. Yeah.

0:54:03 Jenessa: Just end this bullshit because let me read you what the actual statute says that Gorsuch is dancing around the secretary of state shall promulgate rules and regulations so like you don't have options here necessary as necessary so it's absolutely you have to do this because it's important because to ensure that when a qualified elector who is qualified to vote absentee votes by absentee ballot either by mail or in person with a regular paper ballot because hypothetically if you never receive it you could go vote in person that person's absentee vote is final and he or she may not vote at the polling place on election day presuming you mailed it that says it's the law that you can't like you can t oh well I went and tried to look at the regulations and I read every regulation by the secretary of state in Mississippi and I didn't find like you're not a Mississippi state election law lawyer like cut it

0:54:55 Thomas: Jesus. Yeah. That's how desperately he's grasping for something. This isn't even in service of a good argument. It's so desperate.

0:55:05 Jenessa: Out no This all relies on the idea of like a hypothetical that once again okay this idea of like don't fight the hypothetical what they mean is you shouldn't go well that's not what happened in our case okay they know you can say that's physically impossible you can't say it's illegal legal.

0:55:26 Thomas: Yeah right. Yeah if it's an idiotic impossible logically impossible hypothetical that's when you can fight the hypothetical.

0:55:35 Jenessa: Yes, you can absolutely say, well, you're trying to say that would be legal, right? And I'm going to say, no, under this other law. And he flat out says, if you're imagining some hypothetical other state where this could happen, I agree with you that that state might be violating federal election law. But we're not. Because we make it illegal to recall your ballot. And like Gorsuch goes on this whole thing of like, well, if a fraud can happen, it will happen. And they're like, no, that's like, not every crime that could happen has happened.

0:56:14 Thomas: Not even close.

0:56:14 Jenessa: Like, there's a lot of bad stuff I could go do right now. I'm not doing it.

0:56:18 Thomas: Oh my god, what an idiot. That's so bad.

0:56:20 Jenessa: He's so, I hate him so much. And he's so mean. Imagine the entitled. I don't care if you're a Supreme Court justice or the president of the United States or the second coming of Jesus Christ. You have to speak to people with some basic respect. I can't wait for somebody to put this guy in his place someday. He's the worst. I hate him. And he's making a stupid, stupid point. Barrett just says very simply, Policy is left to Congress. You can bitch and moan about all the policy problems you want. The question is, are they violating federal election law in and of itself, not by leaving a door open that could be abused? In and of itself, does this law violate federal election laws? And it doesn't it's

0:56:40 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, he sucks. Right. Yeah, deservedly so.

0:57:21 Jenessa: Just like really good it's just really well written and kind of snotty and I love it deservedly and alito wrote this stupid dissent that tries to argue absolute nonsense and rely on history that she rebuts the way I expect jackson to rebut it to say well here are alternative interpretations of the history here are the reasons that's not dispositive here are the reasons that you're cooking up policy hypotheticals that are like but that's not really what happened and if that does happen someday we'll deal with it then I don't know who this person is but I love it it's really good it makes me feel confident that if this comes up something like this again that we don't have to be worried you know she says in one place the one little bone that she throws to people is this idea that like, okay, maybe it does like look bad sometimes that Mississippi law can give rise to the appearance of fraud because election results appear to flip after Election Day.

0:58:27 Jenessa: She says like, Okay, that's a real concern. But even under plaintiff's interpretation, last minute flips are possible. The Election Day statutes do not set a deadline for counting ballots or certifying the election results, right?

0:58:40 Thomas: Yeah. Good point. You could still just be taking a long time to count and then that'll still happen.

0:58:48 Jenessa: So she kind of throws a bone like I see what you're saying that reduces confidence in elections but like it's not my job to create confidence in elections and you're not fixing that you know she says at one point here plaintiffs and the dissent argue that if we uphold Mississippi's law states could put party bosses ballot harvesters or uber drivers in charge of collecting ballots yet this would also be permissible under their interpretation, so long as the ballots are delivered by Election Day. What are you

0:59:21 Thomas: Oh, my God. She's just not having it.

0:59:21 Jenessa: Talking about? No, it's like really a smackdown of just, you are making stuff up and it's the kind of stuff she would sign onto in the past, I don't know.

0:59:34 Thomas: Maybe. Yeah. I'd be interested to go back and see if they're now under this new lens. Like, is she doing that? Because this I just imagine the asshole man in the background like, hey, don't we're not don't. We're allowed to kind of just say stupid shit and you can't. What are you doing? This is not this is not the game. What are your. Oh, man.

0:59:50 Jenessa: No, she's not having it today. And really held the line on like, all of these bullshit arguments you could make about what if they did this to steal an election what if they did that to steal an election and she's like I don't know man what yeah what if monkeys flew out of my ass it didn't happen and I don't see a reason to think that I have a right to intervene and like that is what I wanted to hear is just you say what you're going to say fight it out in the legislature in the congress this is not my job that's all we needed is to not have nine people in robes change the election laws with no accountability like we can fight this in the state legislature we can fight this in Congress I don't know what we would do if the Supreme Court thought they could just change election results oh my god I mean we do not need another Bush v. Gore feeling pretty good Kavanaugh's

1:00:43 Thomas: They would do that, though. If they had the opportunity for a Bush v. Gore, they'd do that. But short of that,

1:00:49 Jenessa: Written a lot about how bad that decision screwed stuff up I mean he would he yeah he said some pretty critical stuff about it but then I mean then he's on the dissent in this yeah

1:00:57 Thomas: That's funny. Yeah, he's probably doing that in, like, that's a bad faith way to be like, hey, listen, fellow liberals, definitely, you know how this one was so bad? Well, anything that changes an election late is bad. Blah, blah, blah. I'm sure he wouldn't actually stick to any sort of consistent framework there. Well, yeah, he's a MAGA pleaser.

1:01:13 Jenessa: Right. No, because he's a people pleaser. He wants to make everyone happy and make everyone like him. Yeah, yeah.

1:01:22 Thomas: All right. Well, that is so much fun. Anything else we need to know about this before we call to a close?

1:01:28 Jenessa: I think the important takeaway is we upheld what is solid, reasonable laws. We probably shut the door on some very scary challenges. I don't see how on a worse challenge. We're going to lose Barrett or Roberts seeing how forcefully she fought this. I think it's an important reason to actually read these decisions because she could have written a really weak defense of this where I would have said to you, hang on, we held the line today, but tomorrow she's going to cave and that would be really scary, right? So we held The Line in an important way here. And we're seeing possibly an evolution on Barrett as a judge. I want to keep an eye on that as well.

1:02:19 Thomas: For sure. And in the same way, it's important to read the Birthright Citizenship one to see that it's worse. Kavanaugh's part is worse than you would think. It's not a 6-3. It's a it's a 5-4 when it comes to the constitutional question.

1:02:26 Jenessa: Oh, yes. 5-4 with a battle plan.

1:02:33 Thomas: Yeah. So important to know. I'm glad that we've got it all here for everyone. So thanks so much for the breakdown. And thanks most of all to our feminist icon, Amy Coney Barrett.

1:02:45 Jenessa: Oh god, we'll make a feminist out of her yet someday.

1:02:51 Thomas: Die

1:03:27 Jenessa: Morty, do not eat a quaff drop. God, he's such a pain in my ass.

1:03:32 Thomas: Of rickets on Thursday.

1:03:35 Jenessa: There's a lot of bad stuff I could go do right now. I'm not doing it.

1:03:39 Thomas: Do it. It's for the country.