Transcript

LIVE: SCOTUS to Make BIGGEST DECISION of Trump Term | The Weekend Show

From MeidasTouch · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

December 15, 2025 · 1 h · 10,412 words · 112 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "LIVE: SCOTUS to Make BIGGEST DECISION of Trump Term | The Weekend Show", an episode of MeidasTouch published December 15, 2025 (1 h, about 10,412 words). It mentions 75 people, works and ideas, including Weekend Show, executive branch, official act, Anthony Davis, the Caribbean.

What this episode is about

The discussion centers around the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to review the legality of Donald Trump's order to restrict birthright citizenship, a fundamental constitutional principle. Activist and public defender Emily Galvin Almanza highlights the motivations behind this controversial move, emphasizing the radical views on immigration held by Trump's administration and its implications for America's identity as a nation built by immigrants.

Key takeaways

Trump's citizenship order: An island of isolation among a sea of immigrant nations.
Birthright citizenship isn't a US oddity; 30 countries, mostly neighbors, do the same!
Supreme Court now swayed by ideology, not impartial law: democracy's Achilles' heel.
Court supports admin whims, except when 'See, we can say no!' helps credibility.
In modern America, birthright citizenship: a hot potato or constitutional staple?

What is discussed, and when

0:00 – 10:00: executive branch, Weekend Show, Anthony Davis, Emily Galvin Almanza
10:00 – 20:00: Brett Kavanaaugh, coup from the inside, precedent, The Price of Mercy
20:00 – 30:00: official act, Shopify, Aura Frames, executive branch
30:00 – 40:00: trial court, carceral cycles, Caribbean Sea, coup from the inside
40:00 – 50:00: Weekend Show, Al-Mansour, Almansa, Andromeda galaxy
50:00 – 1:00:00: Anthony Davis, Christian nationalist movement, Independent journalists, Middle Eastern nations
1:00:00 – 1:00:19: 5-Minute News, Weekend Show

Notable quotes from "LIVE: SCOTUS to Make BIGGEST DECISION of Trump Term | The Weekend Show"

Emily Galvin Almanza, welcome back to the Weekend Show.
about Weekend Show · at 0:49
Exact same thing and they tend to be our neighbors. Central America, South America, the Caribbean, our entire Canada, Mexico, like our part of the world. Why, you might ask…
about the Caribbean · at 3:09
Court that has been seemingly highly motivated to support the administration, the executive branch, in many of its strangest endeavors might be looking for an opportunity where…
about executive branch · at 5:44
To this case, I'm going to read it a third way. We are a legal system based on precedent. Judges are supposed to listen to the interpretations of the judges that came before…
about precedent · at 10:26
Has been suggested by many commentators and political scientists that this is a coup from the inside that involves obviously the executive and the judiciary but the Supreme…
about coup from the inside · at 19:17
Right to decide whether the president gets immunity because they get to decide what is and is not an official act. So let's take for example these executions of people on boats…
about official act · at 20:49
But simplifies everything can be such a gamecher and for millions of businesses that tool is Shopify.
about Shopify · at 25:20
We're back on the Weekend Show with Emily Galvin Elmans. I'm Anthony Davis.
about Anthony Davis · at 26:49

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

Anthony Davis — Person · 3 mentions · first at 0:23
Emily Galvin Almanza — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:49
Emily Galvin Almanza, welcome back to the Weekend Show.
Russell Vote — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:34
Mind why Donald Trump and certainly those around him, undoubtedly Steven Miller and Russell vote and you know the architects of the project would not want people born in the US to automatically get citizenship.
Brett Kavanaaugh — Person · 1 mention · first at 12:30
Gorsuch as well, kind of sat in his own lane and Brett Kavanaaugh everybody has opinions about, but undoubtedly these individuals owe Donald Trump a debt of gratitude.
Judge Bowber — Person · 1 mention · first at 31:17
Like six people standing in front of a federal building. Right. So or no one violated Judge Bowber's order to like not leave the country.
Judge Aileen Cannon — Person · 1 mention · first at 38:48
Stuff through and are in must be in cahoots with some of the judges. Eileen Cannon is a perfect example. Some of those judges that helped Donald Trump get off his own indictments and potential convictions, too. So, it does feel more.
Kobe Bryant — Person · 1 mention · first at 45:56
So wooed by the Italians that they all become culturally Italian and live like Kobe Bryant was culturally Italian.

Books & papers

The Price of Mercy — Book · 2 mentions · first at 0:42
Defender, and author. Her book on the criminal court system, and smarter public safety solutions called The Price of Mercy will be published in February and is available for pre-order now.

Companies & orgs

Weekend Show — Company · 7 mentions · first at 0:25
patreon.com/5minutnews — Company · 2 mentions · first at 0:31
International Criminal Court — Company · 1 mention · first at 22:53
The boats and the kind of international community's view, including the international criminal court and what they have to say about this. We'll do it next here on the weekend show.
Wire Cutter — Company · 1 mention · first at 24:31
One American Network — Company · 1 mention · first at 38:22
And so we know that the farright media is complicit. the Fox and the One American Network and all, all of these, they're like state regime media effectively. So they've been working on the information side. Obviously Trump and.
CleanHub — Company · 1 mention · first at 42:53
Donate thousands of mattresses each year to those in need while also partnering with organizations like CleanHub to help remove harmful plastic waste from our oceans. Go to…
Munich Security Conference — Company · 1 mention · first at 44:13
I first got a whiff of this at the beginning of the year when JD Vance went to the Munich Security Conference and basically told the Europeans that they wouldn't have the…
5-Minute News — Company · 1 mention · first at 1:00:01
Check out my Substack, the Anthony Davis. You can also join the 5-minute news YouTube channel. And I'll come back next Sunday with a brand new special guest and more factual…
AFD — Company · 1 mention
FIFA — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

Aura app — Product · 1 mention · first at 23:57
Sleep. And speaking of time, it only takes about 2 minutes to set up a frame using the Aura app. Just download the app, connect to Wi-Fi, preload your photos before it ships…
Legend mattress — Product · 1 mention · first at 42:05
Deadlines. When I finally hit the mattress at the end of the day, I need it to deliver. My Legend mattress from Lisa has completely changed how I recharge at night. Gives me…
Carver matte frame — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

executive branch — Concept · 4 mentions · first at 5:49
official act — Concept · 4 mentions · first at 20:54
Independent journalists — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 0:29
European leaders — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 1:02
To talk a little bit later about Trump's national security document that has sent European leaders kind of running, but I want to start closer to home with the US Supreme Court who last Friday decided to going to hear the legality of Donald.
precedent — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 10:30
coup from the inside — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 19:22
trial court — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 30:09
Court system, there's like a bunch of levels of court, right? Like they start out in a trial court, which is the court that hears all the facts and decides who they believe and who they don't believe.
gerrymandered Texan maps — Concept · 1 mention · first at 7:57
Bolstering that interpretation, you could look at the fact that they're allowing the gerrymandered Texan maps to stay in place through the midterms. I mean I really don't want to be sitting here in front of you as a lawyer, as an.
unhoused — Concept · 1 mention · first at 9:36
Intrude into your house without a signed judicial warrant. But if you are a person who is unhoused and the place you live is in a tent or a you know a constructed space in an…
tripartate government — Concept · 1 mention · first at 19:08
I would be gravely concerned for my reputation as an independent branch of our tripartate government. I guess not. I guess I well maybe they're just beyond the point of caring…
independent agencies — Concept · 1 mention · first at 20:16
True especially when it comes with the power to control who's working in supposedly independent agencies or whether those agencies even are independent.
Extrajudicial killing — Concept · 1 mention · first at 21:13
Yes. extrajudicial killings in the ocean. I believe that there will later be an analysis of people's actions leading up to these killings.
bribery — Concept · 1 mention · first at 22:12
Okay, that's that's a [snorts] form of bribery. It's a form of interference, public corruption. It's like there's crimes there. Again, it would be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the.
public corruption — Concept · 1 mention · first at 22:14
Okay, that's that's a [snorts] form of bribery. It's a form of interference, public corruption. It's like there's crimes there. Again, it would be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the crimeing was an official act. And the.
right without a remedy — Concept · 1 mention · first at 28:35
Is we say in the law that you have no right without a remedy. Meaning, if I tell you, for example, you have the right to remain silent if you're accused of a crime.
right to remain silent — Concept · 1 mention · first at 28:40
Right without a remedy. Meaning, if I tell you, for example, you have the right to remain silent if you're accused of a crime.
False Confessions — Concept · 1 mention · first at 28:49
And if you're forced to speak and inappropriately interrogated and bullied and broken down into a false confession, if you have no remedy, meaning you have no legal way to…
deference — Concept · 1 mention · first at 29:51
Ability to hold the rights we think we hold is lack of deference to the findings of fact of the lower court. And I know that sounds like something so boring and legalistic that I just said, but I swear I'm going to make it's it's actually.
finding of fact — Concept · 1 mention · first at 30:20
Where you present evidence and witnesses and stuff. And they do what we call the finding of fact, whether it's a judge or a jury.
global capitalist system — Concept · 1 mention · first at 34:10
We are very much in a global capitalist system and trying to isolate the US in this way is being proven time and time again that it simply it doesn't work. you.
carceral cycles — Concept · 1 mention · first at 35:20
Creating real accountability for people who engage in harm without continuing to perpetuate the stupid carceral cycles that actually make us less safe and sicker and less…
Crime lab — Concept · 1 mention · first at 40:00
Supposed to impose on them. engages in really weird rigging of the system like the fact that 80% of crime labs which are supposed to be neutral evaluators of forensic evidence…
forensic evidence — Concept · 1 mention · first at 40:02
Like the fact that 80% of crime labs which are supposed to be neutral evaluators of forensic evidence are actually part of the police and prosecution arm. And there's kind of…
trial by ambush — Concept · 1 mention · first at 40:22
To across the board, often very skimpy and you're supposed to kind of like do trial by ambush where you don't really know what evidence there is against the person and they're…
neo-Nazi — Concept · 1 mention · first at 41:40
Of the night last week where it basically, we've been hinting at this kind of neo-Nazi aspect of this Trump regime, but they went and wrote it all down and decided that the Europeans should follow their lead with this kind of isolationist.
civilizational erasia — Concept · 1 mention · first at 43:33
Emily Galvin Elmanza. Donald Trump's regime has said that Europe faces civilizational erasia within the next two decades as a result of migration and EU integration, arguing in…
national security policy document — Concept · 1 mention · first at 43:38
Civilizational erasia within the next two decades as a result of migration and EU integration, arguing in a national security policy document that the US must cultivate…
Nazi party — Concept · 1 mention · first at 44:31
Germany, for example, which is a kind of modern-day equivalent of the old Nazi party.
Al-Mansour — Concept · 1 mention · first at 45:29
Well, how did the Spanish get the word almansa? Comes from Arabic. Al-Mansour.
Moorish culture — Concept · 1 mention · first at 45:38
How did the Arabs get there? You've got spade with this incredible history of like Arab culture, Moorish culture, Catalan culture, Basque culture, like or like how many people…
Basque culture — Concept · 1 mention · first at 45:41
Spade with this incredible history of like Arab culture, Moorish culture, Catalan culture, Basque culture, like or like how many people have invaded Italy over the years only…
Catalan culture — Concept · 1 mention · first at 45:41
Spade with this incredible history of like Arab culture, Moorish culture, Catalan culture, Basque culture, like or like how many people have invaded Italy over the years only…
regulatory suffocation — Concept · 1 mention · first at 47:27
Europe must remain European, regain its civilizational self-confidence and abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation, arguing that the continent's lack of assurance is…
he B — Concept · 1 mention · first at 48:39
How much worse are people doing now? And oh yeah, like there's children dying of measles and soon to be dying of he B.
voter suppression — Concept · 1 mention · first at 53:13
Opposition to their extremist work and try to undermine legitimate opposition, engage in forms of voter suppression. There was a very interesting article last week about how…
Christian nationalist movement — Concept · 1 mention · first at 58:26
To be a president for all Americans. he only the white ones only the ones who subscribe to his kind of Christian nationalist movement and increasingly only the ones who support…
appellate court — Concept · 1 mention
colonialism — Concept · 1 mention
disenfranchisement — Concept · 1 mention
exclusion from court — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

the Caribbean — Place · 3 mentions · first at 3:16
Caribbean Sea — Place · 2 mentions · first at 27:53
That we get where Trump is going as far as he can legally and testing the water, not least in the Caribbean Sea and is would rather do it that way around rather than kind of…
Western Europe — Place · 1 mention · first at 3:23
Canada, Mexico, like our part of the world. Why, you might ask, does our part of the world do this when Western Europe, countries that normally they're like allergic to…
Andromeda galaxy — Place · 1 mention · first at 40:34
Ever knowing. the state of things became something that if an alien came down from like the Andromeda galaxy and looked at our criminal court system, they would be really…
Munich — Place · 1 mention · first at 44:13
I first got a whiff of this at the beginning of the year when JD Vance went to the Munich Security Conference and basically told the Europeans that they wouldn't have the…
Almansa — Place · 1 mention · first at 45:21
Let's take Almansa. Okay, comes from the town of Almansa in Spain.
Middle Eastern nations — Place · 1 mention · first at 54:36
Says that you know we should these relationships we have now with the Middle Eastern nations should remain as they are completely ignoring these nations human rights atrocities and everything else.

Sponsors

Shopify — Sponsor · 4 mentions · first at 25:26
Aura Frames — Sponsor · 2 mentions · first at 23:10
Out of ideas of what to buy. The stores are packed and forget about finding parking. Aura frames is the best lastminute solution with a gift that feels thoughtful and personal.…
Lisa — Sponsor · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:20 It's Sunday, December 14, 2025. I'm Anthony Davis. Welcome to the Weekend Show, where we make the time to consider the news of the week. You can support my work and independent journalism at patreon.com/5minutnews. Our guest today is an activist, public defender, and author. Her book on the criminal court system, and smarter public safety solutions called The Price of Mercy will be published in February and is available for pre-order now. Emily Galvin Almanza, welcome back to the Weekend Show.

0:52 Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be back. Uh Emily, so much happening. Um, I want to talk a little bit later about uh Trump's national security document that has sent European leaders kind of running, but I want I want to start closer to home with the US Supreme Court who last Friday decided to going to hear the legality of Donald Trump's order to heavily restrict the right to birthright citizenship, the uh long-held constitutional principle that individuals born on US soil are automatically United states citizens.

1:27 Firstly, [snorts] just tell us in your mind why Donald Trump and certainly those around him, undoubtedly Steven Miller and Russell vote and you know the architects of the project would not want people born in the US to automatically get citizenship.

1:44 Well, we're talking about people who hold a truly radical margin view on immigration. They believe that in a country like ours with a growing aging population and a falling birth rate that has been historically largely comprised of immigrants, thrived through the contributions of immigrants and been a country built by immigrants um as long as we're not talking about our history of slavery, which was the real way we built this country. Um they believe that that should all end uh and that this should be an isolationist nation that does not welcome others from other shores. And certainly if they were here they would talk a lot about well certain immigrants and special you know like people with as far as I can tell they're really really into white South Africans and beyond that who knows but the point is what they're trying to do here is to normalize a view that has never to my knowledge been officially

2:42 held in this country. Um, what our constitution says is that any person born or naturalized on our soil who is subject to our jurisdiction is a citizen. And you'll hear the administration saying that this is like some weird thing that only we do and nobody else does it and nobody else should do it and like it's way out of line. That is absolutely not true. There are 30 other countries that do this exact same thing and they tend to be our neighbors. Um, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, our entire Canada, Mexico, like our part of the world. Why, you might ask, does our part of the world do this when Western Europe, countries that normally they're like allergic to comparing us to, but now they suddenly really want to compare us to like we don't want to talk about socialized medicine in Europe, but we really want to talk about birthright citizenship in Europe. Well, these are former colonies. These are nations that

3:42 were built through incredible suffering, violence, strife, oppression and who when they constituted themselves as a new world and as a new nation wanted to have a strategy to encourage people to come here and also to incorporate the people who had been historically excluded. So this provision in our constitution was also built to ensure that black people who had been enslaved in this country were given the full rights of citizenship as well. So we have this this long history and this normalization of a practice in a part of the world that suffered colonialization that essentially this administration is trying to completely erase for what might be termed highly xenophobic ends.

4:23 The Supreme Court has heard this before and it's it's they've kind of turned it away because this is so baked into constitutional law. Why would they hear it this time? I mean, it requires four of the judges to agree to hear it. And it does seem that you could count four potentially five or six that certainly subscribe to Donald Trump's far-right nationalist mindset. So, so you know what has changed? Well, I mean, we can start with the principle that we used to have a court where the political views of the justices did not determine their legal rulings.

5:09 Um, that has been the dominant way we've conceived of our court throughout our history. We have had to come to terms in these recent years with the fact that we have a court now whose rulings may largely be determined by their political ideology rather than a neutral assessment of the law before them, which given the role of the Supreme Court in our government is nakedly terrifying or should be nakedly terrifying to anyone paying attention or who cares about the rule of law. In this particular case, it's very hard to read what's going on.

5:42 On the one hand, I would say that a court that has been seemingly highly motivated to support the administration, the executive branch, in many of its strangest endeavors might be looking for an opportunity where the executive branch is asking for something so far beyond the pale that even this court is going to say, "Pool your jets. That's wildly unconstitutional." And then be able to say, "See, we don't agree with the executive branch on everything. We do turn them down sometimes. We do reign it in. Maybe it's that. Maybe it's that this court is prepared to radically reinterpret our constitution in a way that strips people of a fundamental right and essentially is like the official debut of an open ending to the rule of law.

6:33 The scary part is we have no way of knowing. Legal scholars can't tell you, court watchers can't tell you, people can guess, but we don't know what's going to happen next spring and summer. Th

6:43 those of us who live in reality, modernity, kind of, you know, progressive mindset, we would just assume that the Supreme Court would do the right thing and and, you know, come down on on the side of uh of history really. But what we sometimes forget, I guess, is that there were and still are people that are desperately opposed to the civil rights movement, who are desperately opposed to integration, who and I'm even referring to the black member of the Supreme Court, too, who has extremist views and has and and has kind of been reported as as aligning with the far right in a way that you just would not expect. I is that a reality that we have to face that America has fundamentally changed under Trump. He has been the the Trojan horse that has allowed this kind of nationalist movement to rise and they know that the mid midterms are coming up next year and they're trying to just push everything through before they

7:49 potentially lose control of government. That is an interpretation. And in bolstering that interpretation, you could look at the fact that they're allowing the gerrymandered Texan maps to stay in place through the midterms. I mean I

8:03 I really don't want to be sitting here in front of you as a lawyer, as an officer of the court.

8:10 I don't want to be sitting here saying like, yeah, probably we can't really trust the Supreme Court to be giving us their best legal analysis, their their best unpolitically in inflected political analysis. I I do want to name something that I think we gloss over a lot when we pretend that not pretend this court is radically different. This court is radically different. This court is doing stuff that we have not seen courts the Supreme Court do in recent history. The court has always done some really weird bad stuff from time to time. I mean, when you look at rulings, there are sectors that we notice a lot because they impact everyone, right?

8:48 Consumer protection, civil rights, there are sectors that people don't notice as much like criminal law, which is my sector, my my area of focus, you know, where the court has made decisions that when you explain them to like lay people turn people's hair white. like the idea that if you're wrongfully convicted in this country and you can prove it, uh that may not be enough to get you a new hearing or to get you out of a your sentence. Innocence may not be enough in our criminal court system to undo that which was done. So like there are really weird there's the constant chipping away of our fourth amendment protections. The idea that if you are a person who is lucky enough to live in a house, you have a fourth amendment protection. police cannot intrude into your house without a signed judicial warrant. But if you are a person who is unhoused and the place you live is in a tent or a you know a

9:43 constructed space in an alley somewhere, you don't have those fourth amendment protections. You don't have like literally status can shift what constitutional protections you've been entitled to by by the rulings of the court over the years. So, I want to name the like our Supreme Court has always pitched some weird ones, but now what we're seeing is the court becoming untethered from its own history. I mean, this is there are there are some systems of law where judges are allowed to reinterpret a statute every time it comes before them. The statute is the law. It is written out in black and white. It has some words and every time it comes in front of a judge, the judge can be like, "Well, I read it this way today and I read, you know, read it this way another time and as it applies to this case, I'm going to read it a third way." We are a legal system based on precedent. Judges are supposed to

10:31 listen to the interpretations of the judges that came before and build their interpretations based on that. Again, sometimes that turns into a weird game of telephone. But when you have a court now that is willing to overturn clearly established precedent, it's not a game of telephone. It's not a misunderstanding,

10:50 right? They are just saying that now the government is allowed to do stuff that the government was not allowed to do before.

10:58 We lose our footing because we can't predict what they're going to do based on what we believe to have been established. So yeah, it is a different world. It is very very unsettling. I think a lot about what the legacy of this court will be because it's not actually been you might have guessed I'm not like a John Roberts super fan but honestly this is not what I expected from his court like maybe I was too optimistic but I I expected more I expected I expected better. It's so interesting because, you know, I I I don't feel I don't have the history that that you have and I I'm not a lawyer, so I I don't necessarily have the same respect as is probably baked into American culture for the Supreme Court.

11:46 I'm I am just always skeptical. And obviously with the reversal of of Row, that was a very much a turning point. And then came giving Donald Trump this kind of blanket immunity to to kind of break the law with impunity. I mean this these things certainly change a lot of people's minds about the direction that Supreme Court was heading headed in. And then of course you know Trump in his last presidency he was able to appoint three farright nationalist judges effectively. So he was the one who changed the direction of the court. So, it might be Roberts's court, but Amy Coney Barrett was a, you know, very left field, very inexperienced.

12:27 Uh, Gorsuch as well, kind of sat in his own lane and and Brett Kavanaaugh everybody has opinions about, but undoubtedly these individuals owe Donald Trump a debt of gratitude. They're very much batting for him. And as I see it as an outsider, they are politicians rather than independent judges.

12:48 I think that's what's so different. I mean like okay many of us can understand the the respect and the honor that we give to veterans right when you meet a person who decided to put their life on the line for their country and to put their own interests aside in service of something that they believe in that benefits the rest of us

13:05 again very uniquely American not something we are used to in in the UK or Europe

13:11 really 100%. Yeah. It's wild to me because I feel like I mean this applies I feel the same way about teachers to be clear like people we can agree on their own their own material interests aside in to to serve our community and and to do something for the greater good and civil rights heroes and like I feel like maybe maybe this is uniquely American but it is a country built on the story of what happened and in order to maintain the mythology that drives so any of our beliefs about oursel and ourselves and our country. We need to maintain these stories of sacrifice and honor and bravery.

13:54 And judges do fit into that story in a particular way. Being a judge should be an unbelievably hard job. I mean, I I clerked for a judge, a judge I admire enormously. And so, I've seen up close and personal exactly how difficult this job is. For one thing, there's pressure on you to be right. Now that sounds like something a lot of professions have, right? Like doctors should also be right. But as a lawyer, my job is usually is to be accurate, to be truthful. But I get to take a side. I get to pick up a cause and argue the arguments that go with my side. As a judge, you may have to deal with a quandry that goes to the very heart of who we are as a nation or that will fundamentally alter someone's life or cause their death or potentially cause the death of many people. I mean, you're faced with these decisions no one would want to be faced with. And your job is made harder by the fact that your job is supposed to be not

14:52 to turn to what do you personally believe in? What's your moral code? How did your dad raise you? You're supposed to turn to the voices of thousands of other people in your role who came before you and you're supposed to understand their thinking and carry forward the ideas that have defined us legally as a nation. And sometimes when you do that job as it's supposed to be done, you find yourself forced to conclude something that you didn't want to conclude and make rulings that you didn't want to make. That's why the job is hard. That's why we give judges so much honor. Not to mention the danger that they put themselves in because they make a lot of people mad and have to live more and more in this country under threat of violence from an enraged public. So yeah, I think that the the I don't want to say like deification, but the the lionization of the Supreme Court

15:45 Yeah. has a reason. The problem is we now have people in the role who are not doing they're cutting the corners of that job. They're not sitting down and setting aside their own belief structure. They are reverse engineering their interpretation of those that came before them in order to meet the goals of that belief structure. And so it's really horrifying to watch somebody walk into a role that carries this honor for this reason and see that role potentially be perverted. But they are appointed by the the president and

16:22 but they rule against the president's like the in the past they've ruled against the president all the time like like mafio debt of gratitude thing

16:30 right but but things have changed and there is a mafia boss running the country now and so that you know and we saw him point at Roberts in the inauguration in a way that you would not expect that finger [snorts] to to you know to to to face the leader of the court. I I would suggest that the the very nature of a high court being appointed by a political person, which does not happen in many other countries, certainly doesn't happen in the UK, that that is not a great place to start when the country is so polarized. And

17:07 it's not great. Yeah. When the country is so polarized, but I have to say there's there's kind of two ways we can get judges. One is appointment and one is election. And we have both kinds in this country. The Supreme Court happen to be the appointed kind. Our federal judges are appointed. But you know millions of lives annually are impacted by elected judges. Um who

17:27 there is a third there is a third way which is that an independent body would would appoint judges that was entirely bipartisan. And that's certainly the way it's done in the in the UK and and where it's just taken away from the hands of the politicians.

17:44 That feels like a seat belt we could use, right? Really? Um no, in in a country this polarized, both of our ways both of our ways of doing it are kind of terrible right now.

17:55 Yeah. Um there's a lot of data, I actually wrote about it in the Price of Mercy, but there's a ton of data on how

18:01 judges decisions are impacted by having to run for reelection. I mean, literally, there was a study showing that judges criminal court decisions become harsher when their electoral opponents ads are running more on TV and they see those ads more. So, it's like

18:18 it's a really gross system in which people are sort of competing for who can be meaner to strangers in order to get votes. Um,

18:26 the appointment thing though, as you point out, worked historically. This is this is such a theme in this time in history. It's another thing that worked historically because of our norms, not because of our laws. We had norms that the people who were considered for appointment were people who would absolutely be willing to rule against the person who appointed them because they they believed in the law above all else, above all other things, above personal loyalties, above debts of gratitude. When I saw that moment with Roberts that you described, I thought Roberts was going to be horrified. Yeah.

18:56 I was like, "Oh my god, if I was a Supreme Court judge and the president made it look like we had a little little deal,

19:01 right? I would be gravely concerned for my reputation as an independent branch of our tripartate government. Um, I guess not. I guess I

19:14 well maybe they're just beyond the point of caring because if this is a coup as has been suggested by many commentators and political scientists that this is a coup from the inside that involves obviously the executive and the judiciary but the Supreme Court in this case where you know there are some individuals on the court who have wanted this kind of racist version of America for for decades and and they have very much been part of the plan all along that they're not going to flinch when Trump points his finger because ultimately this is what they've been playing the long game for.

19:51 Maybe. I mean, it's it's such a a dark it's a tragic description and pessimistic, but it could be the reality that we're dealing with. I will also say what I've seen from this court that I think a lot of people misinterpret about this court is they see some some they see many of these rulings as [snorts] handing unprecedented power to the executive branch and that's absolutely true especially when it comes with the power to control who's working in supposedly independent agencies or whether those agencies even are independent.

20:19 Yes. Um, but a lot of times people talk about the immunity decision where as part of this sort of analysis of of a a coordinated effort to hand the executive king-like powers, they point to this decision to give the president immunity for acts carried out in his official capacity.

20:37 And that's any president. It's just not just Trump. Any president? Yeah. What people tend to misinterpret about this decision is the decision didn't give the president blanket immunity. The decision gave the Supreme Court the right to decide whether the president gets immunity because they get to decide what is and is not an official act. So let's take for example these executions of people on boats coming out of Venezuela. I shouldn't even use the word execution because execution implies that there was a legal practice a legal process leading up to a finding of a death penalty. This is not even that. I shouldn't call it war crimes because we're not at war with Venezuela.

21:13 Extrajudicial killings. Yes. extrajudicial killings in the ocean. Um, I believe that there will later be an analysis of people's actions leading up to these killings. Is this an official act of the president? If the president is ordering the military to do something that is illegal, one would need immunity for that exact circumstance. If the president has asked someone to commit an illegal act while on the job, that's where that whole immunity decision comes in. But it will not be up to the president to say, "And I get immunity because I was doing an official act." It's up to the court to say whether that act constitutes an official act when it's illegal. Or, you know, let's say that the president pardoned a prominent Democrat in order to then try to get that Democrat to vote the way the president wants them to vote for the rest of their term in office.

22:08 Right? That's blatantly illegal. Okay, that's that's a [snorts] form of bribery. It's a form of interference, you know, public corruption. It's like there there's crimes there. Again, it would be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the crimeing was an official act. And the reason I'm harping on this is that that wasn't the court handing power to the executive branch. That was the court consolidating its own power. That was the court crowning itself king. And I think when we when we always look at this through the lens of handing power to the executive, we tend to miss the ways in which the court is handing itself power.

22:43 We have to take a quick break, but uh I want to come back and and flesh this out further, including talking about the uh the the the boats and the kind of international community's view, including the international criminal court and and what they have to say about this. We'll do it next here on the weekend show. Last minute shopping during the holidays is the worst. You're probably running out of ideas of what to buy. The stores are packed and forget about finding parking. Aura frames is the best lastminute solution with a gift that feels thoughtful and personal. I typically struggle with ideas for what to buy my family. So, I tend to put it off because I want to get them something special, something memorable, and Aura Frames, in my opinion, is the best gift for that. Aura Frames lets you share photos or video from any device and they will instantly appear on the frame wherever it is in the world. It can be

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26:12 And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with worldclass expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/weend. Go to shopify.com/weend. Shopify.com/weend. We're back on the Weekend Show with Emily Galvin Elmans. I'm Anthony Davis. Emily, we've been talking about the the Supreme Court and and and how they're going to hear Donald Trump's executive order, which is how this started, saying that, you know, he he wants the end of birthright citizenship. And so they're they're finally going to going to hear that. But we've also been hearing, you know, various courts are kind of pushing back on this extremist uh policym of the the Trump administration. Uh we've now

27:21 heard that a judge is skeptical of Trump's case whether any crisis justifying deployment of the National Guard still exists in Los Angeles. We've heard similar thing over Washington DC as well and elsewhere. This is as as Trump is like pushing forward in New Orleans by with uh you know militarizing that city too. There there does seem to be this kind of push me pull you feeling that we get where Trump is going as far as he can legally and testing the water, not least in the Caribbean Sea and and is would rather do it that way around rather than than kind of making inquiries about the legality of anything first. He pushes as far as he can and then waits for lawsuits to pull him back. I mean, we know that there's no way to kind of run a a a democratic government, but this really isn't a democratic government, is it? I mean, is that the difference between having the kind of traditional norms of a democracy

28:22 be be broken and us kind of living under a constitutional crisis and a dictatorship

28:28 in two ways? Yeah. So, thing number one is we say in the law that you you have no right without a remedy. Meaning, if I tell you, for example, you have the right to remain silent if you're accused of a crime. And if you're forced to speak and inappropriately interrogated and bullied and broken down into a false confession, if you have no remedy, meaning you have no legal way to force the other side to have a a consequence, your right doesn't exist at all. In that case, the remedy is that whatever you said should be excluded from court. So, there's a right because there is a remedy. there's a consequence for breaking or transgressing that right.

29:11 What we're finding out with the Trump administration is that a lot of the rights we thought we had, we don't have because we have no remedy. Um so a lot of these transgressions which either blatantly violate our norms or actually violate the law or you know are running into a legal process that doesn't operate at the same rate of speed and also which requires a lot of difference in order to impose the consequences that we think of as a remedy. And one of the like key areas where I see this like breaking apart like a water balloon in terms of our ability to hold the rights we think we hold is lack of deference to the findings of fact of the lower court. And I know that sounds like something so boring and legalistic that I just said, but I swear I'm going to make it's it's actually really interesting.

30:01 We'll hear you out. We'll hear you out. Thanks. I swear it's cool. So in our court system, there's like a bunch of levels of court, right? Like they start out in a trial court, which is the court that hears all the facts and decides who they believe and who they don't believe. This is where we have juries. This is where like, you know, you present evidence and witnesses and stuff. And they do what we call the finding of fact, whether it's a judge or a jury. They decide what the facts are in a case. And that interpretation of the facts can be carried to the next court level, which is the appellet court. If something went wrong down here at the trial court level, you're allowed to say like, "Hey, they broke the rules. They did this. Did that. I have a right. They violated my right. I want a remedy." And the appellet court is not supposed to reinterpret the facts. They're just supposed to based on the facts that were

30:49 found in that trial space decide whether the rules were broken and find remedies for that. What we have now is a [clears throat] a government that is transgressing in wild ways and like making stuff up, right? So you got a government that's like, you know, Portland is a war zone and then we see videos of Portland and it's like people dancing in cute suits. Yes.

31:11 You know, or LA is a war zone and it's like six people standing in front of a federal building. Right. So

31:17 um or you know, no one violated Judge Bowber's order to like not leave the country.

31:23 But it's the same in the Caribbean Sea as well and off the coast of Venezuela. It's it's using narcotics as a as an excuse when if you ask any expert, they'll tell you that those types of drugs are not coming to the US that

31:38 and over like where are the drugs? Like I I live in a place that's coastal where like drugs have washed up on our shore. If you have a boat full of drugs and you blow it up, like there's going to be drugs in the ocean like in packages. You should take them and show us. So the point is we've had numerous instances now where the lower court has found specific facts like for example in the Texas case that the lower court found that these districts were racially gerrymandered that they were actually having this racial impact factually on real humans living in Texas or in some of the National Guard cases where lower courts have found there is no crisis.

32:11 There's literally not a crisis. Portland is literally not a war zone. That's the facts we found.

32:15 Right? And then we see the Supreme Court making decisions, especially shadow docket decisions that don't seem to be responsive to or reflective of the facts that were found in the court below. And that's what's really dangerous because when we see stuff with our own eyes, when we see a boat get blown up and there's no packages of drugs in the water and there are videos that are nearly making lawmakers vomit when they watch them because it sure looks a heck of a lot like people survived, were stranded, were calling for aid and then were executed or rather just extrajudicially killed.

32:47 We don't have a legal system that we can rely on to hold the same facts as the case goes up the ranks as it's supposed to. And that's why we're ending up without the remedies that protect our rights.

33:01 And and that only goes to confirm my earlier uh theory that this is a coup from the inside because it doesn't seem to make any sense. It's not following case law as you describe or precedent. And so that can only mean that the Supreme Court is complicit,

33:21 whether overtly or implicitly. So yeah, a lot of their rulings are easy to criticize for that very reason. I mean, I I sense your disappointment and I and I'm with you because obviously we all want to live in a country where the the system works and and protects the people who need the most help and doesn't kind of overly criminalize people or certainly in this case doesn't seek to change the trajectory of the of the very fabric and culture of the nation through through these types of rulings. But it does seem to me that there are an awful lot of people who want to take the US back to the you know the early 19th century and and that is problematic because things have changed.

34:08 The country has moved on. Yeah. We are very much in a global capitalist system and and trying to isolate the US in this way is being proven time and time again that that it simply it doesn't work. you know, we're too far gone. There are too many immigrants here. I mean, they would literally need to deport tens of millions of people. My fear is that's what they will do.

34:35 I think if you ask Steven Miller, he'd have a view on that that would, you know, turn your your skin to ice. I I

34:45 I have to say it it's it's hard to conceive of this moment because you're talking to me, a person who literally just spent a year documenting every single way in which our court system in the criminal court context has been terrible and has been violently awful towards regular people, right? And also documenting all of the progress that has been made in repairing the damage and finding new paths forward and finding ways of creating real accountability for people who engage in harm without continuing to perpetuate the stupid carceral cycles that actually make us less safe and sicker and less prosperous. And like like I literally just wrote a book on like bad bad systems that are getting better and I included like literally a third of it is tested ways that things are getting better and can continue to get better.

35:38 Yeah. So on in in one aspect of our country which impacts millions of people, you have a history of deeply problematic courts and and court systems that is beginning to be amilarated. And we're in a moment of enormous hope and forward progress and like excitement about what's possible because we are actually reimagining the way we do things. And we're bringing the way we do things closer to what people actually want. Because if you pull people on their views about the law, justice, accountability, consequence, like all of that, most people want a legal system that reflects the realities they experience day-to-day on the ground, that listens to ordinary people, that doesn't just reflexively impose punishment, that undoes its own decisions when it gets something wrong.

36:23 uh that looks at the root causes of people's misbehavior and actually addresses the root causes instead of just finding a carceral band-aid to slap on things until they get worse later. In our federal system, we're seeing a court that obviously was problematic, but is now, as you describe it, like just careening into a posture of radical opposition to what people actually want. And so it's a, like I said, it's a whiplash moment for me because on the one hand, things are getting so much better. On the other hand, things are getting so much worse. And in the middle, you have a population whose views are not at all reflected in their government. And I mean across the political spectrum. Yes, there are absolutely deeply xenophobic people who would like to deport 10 million immigrants. And like those people exist.

37:09 They are not by any means a majority in this country. No, the majority of people are very reasonable and would like us to have a normal immigration system with, you know, a secure border, but also plenty of opportunities for people to come here and contribute to our country and make a better life. And they would like to have cities without militarization. They would like to have a real justice system. They would like to have, you know, access to health care. They'd like to have a lot of very basic. They would like their wages to increase faster than inflation or at least keep up a little bit. And I guess what what bugs me is we have a court system that is setting us up to continue to silence the people and to create methods of redirection and intermediation that make it very very hard for an ordinary person's opinion to register in an actual change in policy.

38:05 And that's what that's what's getting worse as well. But that's why I describe it as a coup because in order for it to be a coup, you have to have multiple aspects or multiple groups complicit. And so we know that the farright media is complicit. You know, the the the Fox and the One American Network and all, you know, all of these, they're like state regime media effectively. So they they've been working on the information side. Obviously Trump and his people, Steven Miller we've mentioned, but these are the policy people who ultimately are driving this stuff through and and are in must be in cahoots with some of the judges. You know, Eileen Cannon is a perfect example. Some of those judges that helped Donald Trump get off his own indictments and and and potential convictions, too. So, it does feel more joined up and organized than we would think because it's no coincidence that it's the ideology that that binds

39:08 all of these people together. Yes. And I'm glad you point to the ideology because like sometimes when you say the word coup, it sounds like an overt conspiracy. Like everybody got together in like a Federalist Society meeting and was like, "We're going to take over the government. Here's how."

39:20 Well, I think they did do that too. I mean, there is evidence of that as well, but not necessarily as many people as we're we're describing.

39:26 Maybe. I mean I the Federal Society doesn't invite me to their meetings so I can't tell you what's happening in there. But but

39:31 I I wouldn't worry about that invitation. Um however I would say you can get a lot through shared ideology. I mean again going back to the world I know the best which is the criminal court system. You have an entire apparatus across 50 states which by and large is highly differential to prosecutors, relieves the prosecution of many of the burdens that our system is supposed to impose on them. Um, engages in really weird rigging of the system like the fact that 80% of crime labs which are supposed to be neutral evaluators of forensic evidence are actually part of the police and prosecution arm. And there's kind of no such thing as truly independent, you know, large scale forensics labs or the fact that discovery, like the information that the defense is entitled to across the board, often very skimpy and you're supposed to kind of like do trial by ambush where you don't really know what evidence there is against the

40:25 person and they're just going to have to find out later or plead guilty without ever knowing. I mean, the state of things became something that if an alien came down from like the Andromeda galaxy and looked at our criminal court system, they would be really confused about why we thought this was a system that found like truth and safety. And that wasn't done through any kind of cabal. That was literally just done through a set of norms that put people with a shared ideology, usually a law enforcement or prosecution background, into positions of power. Um, so I'm just saying that like a lot of things that would look like deep corruption can actually be achieved just through a shared set of beliefs fears

41:08 right? Um, othering of people. And I think but invariably those people you described were the white supremacists. They were the the kind of white male land owners. They were the ones who

41:19 shared ideologies, right? And so and so that's now what we're dealing with all these years later is a system that's been built on that. and and as I see it hasn't really changed. Um, we have to take another quick break, but I want to come back and talk about this national security document that was released in the middle of the night uh last week where it it basically, you know, we've been hinting at this kind of neo-Nazi aspect of this Trump regime, but they went and wrote it all down and uh decided that the Europeans should uh follow their lead with this kind of isolationist methodology. We'll do that next here on the Weekend Show.

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42:53 with organizations like CleanHub to help remove harmful plastic waste from our oceans. Go to lisa.com for 25% off mattresses. Plus, get an extra $50 off with promo code weekend exclusive for our listeners. That's lessa.com promo code weekend for 25% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. support our show and tell them we sent you after checkout. Lisa.com promo code weekend. We're back on the weekend show with Emily Galvin Elmanza. Uh Donald Trump's regime has said that Europe faces civilizational erasia within the next two decades as a result of migration and EU integration, arguing in a national security policy document that the US must cultivate resistance within the continent to Europe's current trajectory. It was built as a roadmap to ensure America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history and the home of freedom on earth. the uh the strategy document makes explicit

44:02 Washington's support for Europe's nationalist farright parties. Um Emily, I first got a whiff of this um at the beginning of the year when JD Vance went to the Munich Security Conference and basically told the Europeans that they wouldn't have the support of the US in the event of conflict and that they should be supporting these far-right nationalist parties like the AFD in Germany, for example, which is a kind of modern-day equivalent of the of the old Nazi party. They've written down our worst fears in a document that has now ricocheted around the world and and people, you know, highly intelligent people are having to write a response to this because they their worst fears have been realized about who Trump and his henchmen really are.

44:57 Yeah. It's the kind of document that's sort of like, you know, hope nothing bad happens to you. you might not be white enough for us to help.

45:03 Um, and that I mean obviously one is very tempted to begin with the fact that this idea of who belongs in a country in Europe is so ludicrously detached from the entire history of Europe and the world. I mean, okay, let's take let's take my last name. Let's take Almansa. Okay, comes from the town of Almansa in Spain. Well, how did the Spanish get the word almansa? Comes from Arabic. Al-Mansour. How did the Arabs get there? You've got spade with this incredible history of like Arab culture, Moorish culture, Catalan culture, Basque culture, like or like how many people have invaded Italy over the years only to find themselves so wooed by the Italians that they all become culturally Italian and live like Kobe Bryant was culturally Italian.

45:59 you go to Italy, you become an Italian. And that when we talk about the nature of a nation, you know, Italy being comprised of how many kingdoms with different languages and cultures that merged into so it's this like total once again we've talked a lot about the sort of like naked clownish lying that is stated bold-face and that people are expected to accept and this idea that like the culture of European countries comes from a single people who have always lived there and never had anybody else inflecting or like

46:33 well it shows a level of naivity about it's not naive. It's it's it's this stupid lie that they're trying to sell because they want everybody to get whiter and be meaner to people who aren't white. Like it's just it's not they know they know the history. I'm sure these are very well educated people. They know that what they're saying has no basis in history, reality or in the desires of people actually living in Europe. They also know that like as a human construction, if you are a human and you built a village and you need things to happen in your village and someone from outside the village comes and says, "Yes, I would like to be your blacksmith. You don't have a blacksmith. Can I be a blacksmith here?" Doesn't freaking matter where that person came from as long as they want to be part of your village project.

47:18 Right. Well, this is what's so interesting is the document says that Europe must remain European, regain its civilizational self-confidence and abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation, arguing that the the continent's lack of assurance is evident in its relationship with Russia. I mean, it's bonkers. What they're saying is is just bonkers. And yet

47:41 the problem is when America says it, the world has to listen because the US does wield an enormous amount of authority. And and I suppose in publishing this document, it diminishes America's authority on the world stage and it means that our European former allies are now allied with Canada and and Mexico and are leaving out the United States. I mean, the only reason we have a seat at the table at this point is because of our acrudeed economic power and military.

48:17 Yeah. Um, we have no moral authority. We have We're not giving people good advice. No one should be listening to our advice. We're not doing so great right now. I'm sorry. How much did our national debt increase under this administration that was supposed to be all about like, you know, economic belt tightening? And

48:34 how much has our economy suffered? And how much worse are people doing now? And oh yeah, like there's children dying of measles and soon to be dying of he B. Like I don't think that anybody is listening to us because they think we're right. So we're making noises. We're making squawking noises on the world stage that are very, very embarrassing. And Canada with its incredible quantity of natural resources that in a world impacted by climate change are going to become ever more relevant. and Mexico with its exciting government that's actually engaged in really innovative domestic policy um become much more relevant if we look at our our sisters in our geographic region. It's embarrassing.

49:17 There is a kind of element of mind your own business that we're probably going to start to hear from European leaders if we haven't already where there is this feeling that you know you get your own house in order before you start to worry about ours. But I I think I said this on a on a an episode a few weeks ago is that if you live in the US and you do fear this regime, if you fear the military on the streets, if you fear the, you know, violent mass shootings and and gun crime, if you fear ICE abducting you or your neighbors, it it's it's sometime it seems becoming increasingly easy to forget at what European culture actually looks like in functioning democracies.

50:08 Cafe culture, people sitting out on the street enjoying a en enjoying a an espresso. People talking to each other, strangers engaging in the street or watching uh a kind of arts event that is kicking off paid for by the local government. things that, you know, cobbled streets and an environment where people are driving the smallest cars because they don't want to pollute or they're on bicycles. I mean, it's a completely different thing without fear of the the militarization of a city, without fear of people being abducted like the stars he might have done once upon a time because Europe learned its lesson from all that stuff. Maybe the US didn't.

50:51 I hope so. I mean, I hope I hope they did. There are far-right parties there. You know, as much as I I just I just praised Italian culture. That's also a culture that has people historically throwing bananas on the field when a black player takes the field,

51:04 right? And Italy is the rise of the far right as is as are many European nations. But, you know, they they are still they are still relatively fringe. Well, also they have an educational system and a set of educational infrastructure that lets people meaningfully understand the policies that are being applied to their lives and understand how those policies are formed and who's responsible. I think that's a really really really big thing that Republicans have achieved over the years by dismantling public education has made it very hard for Americans who didn't have that advantage to identify who is responsible for their hardships.

51:41 Um because of course who is responsible is always obfuscated under huge time delays and multi-step processes and lots of layers of government bureaucracy and you might have to look back 10 years to understand who's responsible for your condition today. If you have a real educational system that gives you the tools to do so, gives you the means, you can be a much much much more powerful force in shaping your own government. And our governments, especially state and local, have deliberately stripped people of that advantage over the years in order to not have a population like you have in Europe.

52:15 I I hope with the midterms a year away that the extremist policies of the US will force people to the ballot box, will force people to go out and vote in a way that maybe they didn't last time around. We saw some of it in the special election, but certainly when it came to the last uh general election, there was a certain lethargy. And and I I I hope that all of these kind of aforementioned atrocities like the ICE abductions is reason to want to vote this uh administration out. And I kind of feel like maybe they know that's coming too.

52:55 So they have a window of 2 years, which is why everything seems to be happening so quickly, including birthright citizenship, that that to get all this stuff done before there is a legitimate opposition to to their extremist work

53:11 and and try to undermine legitimate opposition, engage in forms of voter suppression. There was a very interesting article last week about how contact with police makes people less likely to vote. I mean, we already know that like our court systems can strip people of their political voice, a thing that is highly unique to to to the United States. Um, or I should say limited, not exclusively limited, but it's we're pretty rare in stripping in linking people's political voice to how they are policed and accused. Um, but there's a million ways in which we're watching this administration sort of hit the speedun in order to try to get everything done before they can attempt to suppress uh the revulsion of voters in 2026, which I think we're already seeing some signs of. I think Europe is watching. Nobody's looking over from Europe and looking at us and being like, you know what, it looks delicious over there. It looks great.

54:05 They're doing everything fabulously. We should copy them. Nobody's thinking that. Nobody's thinking that. I mean, so I think that this administration engages in tactics like issuing a very embarrassing and xenophobic global

54:20 proclamation. Um maybe to gain brownie points with nations that we now are closer allied to because of our increasingly anti-European worldview.

54:30 Right. Um well, that's what the document says. It says that you know we should these relationships we have now with the Middle Eastern nations should remain as they are completely ignoring these nations human rights atrocities and and everything else.

54:46 We are certainly in comparison with nations that we were never compared to. Yeah.

54:51 Before um and it's it's again not reflective of the will of the people. We have a people that is more receptive to the policies of nations that we are now less like. I mean, if you told Americans that instead of paying, you know, whatever 20% of your paycheck towards health care costs that you're having to fight with insurance companies about and always being, you know, at risk of bankruptcy through the profit margin of someone you've never met, you could just put like three or 4% of everybody's paycheck into a system that keeps people covered and you kind of never have to worry about going to the doctor again.

55:26 Like most people are very into the idea of paying less and getting more. They're also into the idea of making wages that actually reflect the economic circumstances we're in. Um this administration is coming dangerously close to showing people what they are really about. even a people who have, as you point out, been historically apathetic, voting at lower rates than similarly situated countries and not having educational infrastructure, which pushes most people to meaningfully engage with policy.

55:56 And just finally, the the the true lack of self-awareness about this is when Trump convinced the the football association to kind of give him an award for peace. I mean, he's been holding out for a Nobel Peace Prize, which will never come if he hasn't worked that out by now. And certainly, you know, the more people that he executes in the middle of the sea is causing his um Nobel Peace Prize to to diminish day by day. But we we see this kind of ridiculous demonstration of of corruption really where he is awarded a a peace prize that didn't exist prior to him asking for it and then wanting to put on the medal like a child at a at a kind of sports day.

56:45 It it it really kind of encapsulated his inability to see what the rest of us see and how obvious all of this cruelty and corruption really is.

56:56 We're not caring. I mean, it's hard to tell whether it's unawareness or a a a constitution that does not enable him to care what other people think as long as he's getting in the moment what he wants. So, I I I can't speak to that. I can say it was a very ridiculous thing to watch. And like the nice thing for me was that it gave me a great chance to sit with FIFA's incredible history of of human rights abuses and you know how how are all those stadiums built so fast in cutter? I we probably shouldn't talk about it. I I it is disgusting to sit around and watch people curry favor with an aged and flatterable leader who wants to have a medal he can keep. It's embarrassing to be in a country, you know, there's a lot of people younger than me who have only known Trump really as president. They've they grew up under Trump and Biden presidencies. Um, obviously there there are many ways in which people can legitimately critique

58:00 policy decisions during the Obama era, but we had a president who was exciting and inspiring and I and honorable and

58:14 was a president for all Americans. I think that's really what's changed seismically is that Trump does not want to be a president for all Americans. he only the white ones only the the ones who subscribe to his kind of Christian nationalist movement and increasingly only the ones who support him. I mean that is the fear that there you know if you're not a Trump supporter then you could face um you know deportation or worse and so that is the fear and the other thing that made I was thinking about on this is that if he's trying to you know celebrate the world cup and the forthcoming Olympics and various things that are coming to the US and at the same time announce 30 countries where he is banning people from entering. I mean, it is going to be an absolute mess when athletes

59:04 been that it's been like stopping people and harassing them at the border. I had a friend whose son was trying to fly in from London. He's a British citizen. He's a darker complexed young man with a beard and he spent, you know, 5 hours getting interrogated for no apparent reason. He's a student with a British passport. Like,

59:22 I I don't think that this is going to be a pleasant experience for anyone who is planning to visit the United States. I mean, if I were thinking about coming to the World Cup, I would have real misgivings about my own safety in doing so.

59:35 Yes. Well, not not least athletes with accreditation who won't be able to get in. That's uh going to be the next thing to look out for. Okay, we have to finish, but I'm so grateful to you and I wish you every success with the book Emily Galvan Almanser.

59:49 Thank you so much. I'm Anthony Davis. Don't forget to support me and independent journalism at patreon.com/5minutnews. Check out my Substack, the Anthony Davis. You can also join the 5-minute news YouTube channel. And I'll come back next Sunday with a brand new special guest and more factual news to discuss on the 5-minute news weekend show with Midas Touch.

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What is "LIVE: SCOTUS to Make BIGGEST DECISION of Trump Term | The Weekend Show" about?

The discussion centers around the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to review the legality of Donald Trump's order to restrict birthright citizenship, a fundamental constitutional principle. Activist and public defender Emily Galvin Almanza highlights the motivations behind this controversial move, emphasizing the radical views on immigration held by Trump's administration and its implications for…

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