Corruption Special: AIPAC’s Election Influence and Our Tainted Courts, with Branko Marcetic (In These Times/Jacobin) and Alex Aronson (Court Accountability)

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain minor errors.

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: Welcome to Block and Build, a podcast from Convergence magazine. I’m your host and the publisher for Convergence, Caden Mak. On this show, we are building a roadmap for the movement that’s working to block the ascent of authoritarianism while building the influence of a genuinely progressive trend in the broad front that we need to win.

[00:00:28] Before I get started, [00:00:30] I want to acknowledge our newest Movement Builder subscriber, Rockwell Chin. Thank you, Rockwell, for being a crucial part of Convergence’s work. And if you want to join Rockwell and all the generous folks who make our work possible, you can become a subscriber at convergencemag. com slash donate.

[00:00:47] Today on the show, I am joined by the Executive Director of Court Accountability, Alex Aronson, to dive deeper into the conservative capture of the courts and what we can do about it. But before all that, we will talk to Jacobin staff writer and journalist, [00:01:00] Branko Marchatici, about his research for In These Times about how AIPAC spends its money, and of course, these headlines.

[00:01:08] First the United Auto Workers have brought a labor complaint against AIPAC. Smug billionaire Elon Musk and former president Donald Trump for their comments on Twitter gloating about their union busting activities. 

[00:01:21] Sound on Tape: I look at what you do. You walk in and you just say, you want to quit? 

[00:01:25] They go on strike.

[00:01:27] I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, [00:01:30] that’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So every one of you is gone.

[00:01:45] Cayden Mak: This is not Elon Musk’s first run in with the UAW, and there is reason to be optimistic about the outcome here. The Biden administration’s National Labor Relations Board has been the most functional it has been in years. Former Michigan Congressman Andy Levin and [00:02:00] University of Michigan Law Professor Sanjuk DePaul wrote it in the Times this week that the UAW’s so called special master is strangely concerned about the union’s stance on Gaza, even though this has nothing to do with the outside monitor’s purview.

[00:02:14] The monitor was appointed in the wake of the corruption scandal that led to the union’s first open elections in decades, ushering in the leadership of current union president Sean Fain and his running mates. The Union’s Monitor received a complaint from the Anti Defamation League after the Union took a public stance on [00:02:30] ceasefire in December of last year, and although the Monitor acknowledges that this is outside the scope of his duties, he still saw fit to communicate about it to UAW leadership.

[00:02:39] For more on the story, we will drop that in the Times article in the show notes. Meanwhile, we’re starting to see some members of Congress call for an arms embargo against Israel. Notably among them is House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. Now that we know that Pelosi was a major inside factor in getting Biden to step out of the race, it seems like she is shifting her position on Israel’s genocidal [00:03:00] campaign in Gaza.

[00:03:01] Could it be that outside pressure works? Also, Columbia University President Manoush Shafiq resigned this week amid pressures about returning to so called campus order in the fall. Shafiq came under heavy scrutiny in the wake of Columbia’s crackdown on anti genocide protesters. The university has named an interim replacement and will likely begin the search process for a permanent replacement soon.

[00:03:25] Although these kinds of searches should be an opportunity for faculty, students, and the university [00:03:30] community to weigh in on the kind of leadership they want, Without concerted organizing, I know that can sometimes slip. On the electoral front, Donald Trump has been tilling the fields for discord by claiming that rallies for Kamala Harris have been filled in using AI.

[00:03:44] While this might seem kind of a silly headline, it’s part of the drumbeat that you might be able to hear if you listen closely of the right wing figuring out ways to undermine the results of the presidential election should things break in Harris’s favor. Relatedly, lawsuits in key swing [00:04:00] states like Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada are wending their way through the courts.

[00:04:04] Many of these suits are about spurious claims of election fraud, and may mean that voters may be removed from the voter rolls before the November election. It’s always a good idea to check your registration status before you go to the polls, and remember that if you are told that you are not registered, you can always request and vote on a provisional ballot.

[00:04:23] One thing that I also know about these kinds of efforts from my previous work with 18 million rising. is that people of color, [00:04:30] especially Asian Americans and Latin voters, are disproportionately impacted by deregistration. All of this stuff points to one thing. We have to get ready and stay ready, no matter what goes down on November 5th.

[00:04:41] There’s a longer battle ahead of us if we care about democracy in this country. Finally in election news, Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota squad member, won her primary on Tuesday handily, which interestingly was a race that AIPAC declined to get directly involved in. After Cory Bush’s loss last week, [00:05:00] we spent some time examining some of the conditions that led to these outcomes, which brought us very quickly to Branko Marchatici’s reporting on how AIPAC picks and chooses its fights and what we can learn from that strategy.

[00:05:12] Joining to talk us through a little more of that research is Branko. It’s really nice to see you. Thank you for joining us today. Yeah, thank you for having me. First of all, let’s talk a little bit about the web of interests that’s behind. A lot of this APAC spending because it’s not just APAC itself.

[00:05:27] It’s also a number of [00:05:30] related political action committees and super PACs. And a lot of people who aren’t super involved with electoral politics might not know what all these entities are. Could you lay out a bit of the landscape of the players that you have? You’ve been looking at 

[00:05:43] Branko Marcetic: sure.

[00:05:44] The main one that we looked at was a united democracy project. That’s the super pack that AIPAC set up to get involved directly in these different primary races to try and knock out candidates that they didn’t like that they, that, that took a position on Israel and Palestine that was contrary to their [00:06:00] own.

[00:06:00] That’s probably the major player here because it can funnel unlimited amounts of money as long as it has it into these primary races and it has where it’s chosen to do that. Another group is a democratic majority for Israel DMFI. People might. Remember that one best from 2021 to when Nina Turner, who was a former surrogate for Bernie Sanders, she was a member of this campaign.

[00:06:25] She’s a very prominent Sanders supporter in public and in the media. She ran [00:06:30] for a safe blue seat in Ohio. She’s someone with a very, very deep roots in Ohio and in that seat in Cleveland she had been a state level politician there for many years and she was, on her way to winning a major victory.

[00:06:44] And then DMFI basically came in, they found the candidate. Challenger and they just threw a massive avalanche of money and just negative ads and mailers and all kinds of things basically attacking her character. And she lost then she lost again in 2022 [00:07:00] when she tried for the seat, that’s another big group.

[00:07:02] Beyond that, there’s A variety of, pro Israel, the kind of pro Israel landscape has always relied on a huge array of various political action committees to get involved in races and so on and so forth. But I think for our purposes and certainly when we talk about the primaries this year UDP is the main one and DMFI has kind of played a supporting role.

[00:07:22] Cayden Mak: Great. Yeah, super helpful context. And I think one of the interesting things that. You have found is that a lot of [00:07:30] what the strategy is here is about myth making around APAC. And for so long, we’ve heard that the Israel lobby is the lobby that you cannot cross on the hill, especially sort of after the relative implosion of the National Rifle Association, right?

[00:07:45] But there’s, and there and there is this narrative in sort of the assessment of Jamal Bowman’s primary and Cori Bush’s primary, that there’s a relationship between that dark money spending and their primary losses. But what are we to make of the [00:08:00] fact that AIPAC basically didn’t play in Ilhan Omar’s race this week, and also Rashida Tlaib came out on top?

[00:08:06] Very handily last week. 

[00:08:08] Branko Marcetic: Those are really key points. I think for people to keep in mind, it’s a tough thing to have both of these things in a mind at the same time. But the fact is that it is a problem that APAC and any group, any industry can just involve itself in elections like this and basically by.

[00:08:26] Elections wholesale that is a big problem and money is very difficult to overcome in [00:08:30] elections. At the same time, we also have to keep in mind that it’s not the be all and end all that is possible to defy these things. And actually what we saw in this election, even though the Defeats of Bowman and Bush got a lot of headlines as they were designed to do.

[00:08:44] For the most part, actually, APAC has just has had a pretty poor track record this election. What they often do is they will endorse candidates who are basically either running unopposed. Or running in safe blue seats. And then these people win their primaries or they win their general [00:09:00] elections and AIPAC goes, look at that.

[00:09:01] We have a 99 percent track record. You see it being pro Israel is good politics and good policy. So you shouldn’t go up against us when you drill down into it. It’s these people would have won this season, no matter what, regardless of what AIPAC did. In terms of where it’s really tried to step in and influence the outcome of an election.

[00:09:19] It has not gone super well for them, until these Bush races, there was Dave men in California for Katie Porter’s old seat the seat that she’s going to be giving up who’s a centrist Democrat, [00:09:30] not someone who’s particularly a firebrand on Israel or anything else. But he had voiced some criticisms of Israeli policy and settlement expansion, that kind of thing.

[00:09:39] So Israel spent 5 million again. Attacking his character and running tons of negative ads, and they failed. There was a very high profile failure, partly because people scratched their head and said, why were they even intervening in this race? But it’s a very good demonstration of the limits of their power.

[00:09:56] To give another example, they went after the [00:10:00] Republican side that went after Thomas Massey, who’s kind of a more libertarian Republican and more anti war Republican. He’s been pretty critical of Israel that completely failed. He won by massive margin reelection.

[00:10:11] And then as you mentioned the squad we focus a lot on Bowman and Bush but summerly, Came into the house in 2022. She very nearly got beaten by UDP, which spent, I think it was something like 8 million and through, like a million in the last like month or a few weeks to try and [00:10:30] beat her her initially very high lead shrunk, but she scraped through, she managed to get through people thought she was going to be on the chopping block this election.

[00:10:38] Yeah. And instead what happened is she won pretty comfortably. And in fact, AIPAC decide that they wouldn’t even. Get involved in the race. They did some polling, they ran some ads to begin with. But then they realized, no, we can’t beat this woman. We have to stay out of this. And that’s actually been a pattern throughout a lot of the squad races.

[00:10:55] Rashid Tlaib, Rashid Tlaib was censured by the house. That was one of the most high profile prominent [00:11:00] things. She was accused of anti Semitism. She’s been bitterly criticized for all sorts of things. She said about the war, about her pro ceasefire, anti military aid. To Israel stance, they could not find anyone to run against it, even though they basically offered a couple of candidates briefcases full of millions of dollars to do it.

[00:11:17] They did the same thing with LR Noma. I think they, they polled and then realized. I remember despite the fact that again, huge lightning rod for criticism on this issue throughout this war and before very nearly lost [00:11:30] her seat in 2022 to the same candidate. This time she beat some, I think by 14 or 17 points, something along those lines.

[00:11:37] Sound on Tape: Yeah. And 

[00:11:37] Branko Marcetic: APAC did not even get involved. So overall, not a great track record for APAC. And actually the squad for the most part has beaten the This onslaught of big money which I think is a good thing. 

[00:11:47] Cayden Mak: Yeah, no, it, it’s actually a very hopeful take at a moment when I think a lot of people may be just like low key freaking out about the fact that Bowman and Bush’s primaries were the most expensive, two most expensive [00:12:00] primaries in history But, and I think that it is the case that it’s going to take more than one cycle to really counter AIPAC’s influence in U.

[00:12:08] S. elections, and obviously there are other pieces to this puzzle, too, about sort of, regulatory frameworks and laws that permit people to spend basically as much money as they have on our elections. But are there other ways that you can see from your research that may point organizers in the right direction to counteracting the influence of this kind of money?

[00:12:29] What are the [00:12:30] lessons that we can learn about, the communities that are supporting people like Summer Lee, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar? 

[00:12:37] Branko Marcetic: I think that’s a really important question. There is I don’t want to beat up on Byron Bush who defeated it’s a. Tragedy, I think, and it’s a, it’s an absolute disgrace that they were basically kicked out of their seats by just this onslaught of character assassination that was paid for by, by basically the finance and real estate industry.

[00:12:59] But Obama and [00:13:00] Bush were already vulnerable coming into these elections. Partly for things out of the control, Obama’s district was changed and basically they incorporated much more of the wealthy Westchester suburbs and took out a lot of the Bronx. That was the previous base.

[00:13:13] So he was more vulnerable. However, he also made some mistakes himself. He I’m not going to go super into it but, there were complaints that he did not reach out enough to local Jewish groups that, that had supported him and supported even his criticism of Israel but felt that he had not reached out to them in the wake of this and [00:13:30] generally, a pattern among both, The local detractors of both Bush and Bowman the common kind of thread of criticism is that they were kind of, it felt like they were absent from the district, that they weren’t focused on local issues there that were important to people, that obviously Gaza is important, but ultimately voters are thinking about their own, issues in their lives.

[00:13:50] They just didn’t feel they were there. Summer Lee, by contrast she made a really concert effort to I don’t want to say ingratiate herself to to build a political base in Pennsylvania in [00:14:00] that part of Pittsburgh where she has a house seat. So she not only had a bunch of local allies as by the way, so did some of these other people that won, Tlaib and Omar.

[00:14:08] Have good relations with the local democratic party because they have a lot far deeper roots there as politicians But she also, you know put a big focus on constituent services and that kind of thing she made sure to be there for her constituents. She made sure to be publicizing when she was delivering money and so on so forth so I think that’s a really important.

[00:14:27] Thing to note. I think all the [00:14:30] negative, ads and everything in the world Cannot make that much of a difference. If your local constituents, the voters that see you know you see that you shop for them feel like you are representing them. That definitely is the takeaway for people in the summer league camp.

[00:14:47] And I think it is for the others. 

[00:14:50] Cayden Mak: Cool. That’s super helpful. And again, I think that we’re going to link to the story in the show notes so people can read more about also the stuff that you found about, like, where [00:15:00] do the financial contributors to UDP and these super PACs, like where are they making their money and where’s that money coming from, which is also feels very relevant when we talk about those constituent services and delivering for the people of districts who.

[00:15:15] Are largely working people, right? That there’s a relationship there. 

[00:15:19] Branko Marcetic: Yeah, absolutely. I’ll just very quickly add that, that, what we found going through UDP’s list of donors is that yes, obviously they are motivated by by the Israel Palestine issue and they, and [00:15:30] by resentment and criticism of Israel and attempts to kind of end this war.

[00:15:33] But also they have business interests in getting rid of. These progressive lawmakers who want to challenge a lot of the things that might hurt their bottom lines rather, just sure they make less profit. The real estate industry, the finance industry, private equity let’s not forget.

[00:15:47] Corey Bush was a major actor in the eviction ban getting briefly extended, so 

[00:15:54] Cayden Mak: great. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your research with us, Bronco and joining us today. Yeah, of course. Thank you for [00:16:00] having me. Speaking of the influence of a handful of very rich people. I am very excited to welcome alex aronson the executive director of court accountability On the show today, court accountability’s essential work is to help expose the influence of some of that dark money in our judicial system and develop the communications and organizing strategies that we need to fight back.

[00:16:20] Alex, it is great to talk to you. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? Thanks kid. 

[00:16:23] Alex Aronson: Thanks for having me It’s good to be here 

[00:16:25] Cayden Mak: Yeah. I think that, this is not a topic or an issue that we’ve talked about [00:16:30] explicitly on the show before, but is something that is kind of like always on the radar.

[00:16:35] Could you talk a little bit about the backstory for why you started Court Accountability? What is court capture? And when did this start happening? 

[00:16:45] Alex Aronson: Yeah. It’s a long and winding tail. I started this work out of work I had done in sort of all sorts of different places in the sort of pro democracy movement first as a organizer at the state level, working to improve voter access was [00:17:00] registering voters with clipboards back in the mid 2000s in Oregon, and trying to really expand access to the franchise through efforts to past election day voter registration or automatic voter registration Oregon was the first state in the country to do that.

[00:17:14] And, even back then we were encountering these kind of dark money forces Republican legislature legislators at the state level in Oregon. Who were backed by groups like the State Policy Network and Alec. And even back then, we were pedaling these, same [00:17:30] election integrity, voter fraud myths that you referenced at the top.

[00:17:34] And sort of seeing that and not seeing a great way through it. I decided to go to law school, had a whole career in law, was in the civil rights division. And then when Trump won, I made my way to the Senate Judiciary Committee, mostly actually out of concern that Trump was going to just be a total menace to the rule of law and to the proper functioning of justice.

[00:17:53] And I was a civil rights lawyer, an appellate lawyer for the United States at the Justice Department and could sort of see the writing on the wall because he was they [00:18:00] didn’t have it as well organized as they do now. Like with project 2025, but immediately upon that transition, right?

[00:18:06] It was folks from these big law firms like Jones day that had been a huge part of the efforts to take out the Voting Rights Act in big cases like Shelby County that were taking these important political positions at the Civil Rights Division. So I made my way to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mostly with those concerns in mind, but ended up working for Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island senator for that period of years and Sheldon sort of [00:18:30] uniquely saw what was happening in the court space from his work as a champion for climate justice.

[00:18:37] And his work to push back against dark money influence on climate denial and what we did we sort of approached the What happened during the trump years folks will recall in the senate was that no legislation got passed except the big Tax cuts and jobs act for billionaires and then the senate really became a conveyor belt For these extremist judges and senator whitehouse really had this kind of [00:19:00] eagle eye for it because of that background in fossil fuel funding of climate denial And so what we were seeing was the wholesale outsourcing of the judicial selection process to outside interest groups that were really motivated by You know anti democratic counter majoritarian agendas And it really dates back to your question I think, you could date it, into a couple of different points in time.

[00:19:24] But in, in earnest, it really began after the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in [00:19:30] Brown versus Board of Education which of course was a huge watershed seminal decision of the Supreme Court, but provoked a massive reactionary backlash to the idea of racial integration. And of course there was this massive resistance.

[00:19:42] There’s this incredibly important political science article that Came out just a few years ago that sort of traces how originalism which is the, purported purported Interpreted methodology of the conservative legal movement, 

[00:19:55] Sound on Tape: you know 

[00:19:55] Alex Aronson: organized around groups like the Federalist Society was really actually created as a [00:20:00] political cudgel of the massive resistance to beat back against racial integration So that was I think, you know the first real wave of It grew a lot of power.

[00:20:08] And, when we want to talk about money, it started getting real investment in the early seventies with a famous memo that a guy who ended up becoming a Supreme Court justice. He didn’t disclose that he wrote this memo, but he wrote this memo for the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. His name was Lewis Powell.

[00:20:24] The memo is called the Powell Memo it’s titled the attack on American free enterprise. And what it lays out was a [00:20:30] plan for the business community to really take politics seriously for the first time and to take judicial politics seriously. They had looked at, what progressives had been able to achieve in cases like Brown and then more recently in the context of, like consumer welfare issues, like Ralph Nader was leading and public citizen and said, no we need to fight back here.

[00:20:48] And so that saw the emergence of the first wave of quote, unquote, public interest litigation groups on the right that were really fighting for property rights and for business interests in the judiciary. And [00:21:00] then the final thread that has really emerged and given this movement electoral basis, of course, the religious right.

[00:21:07] And what to my mind is that a theocratic project to, overturn Roe versus Wade first, first and foremost, which they have now accomplished, but then to really implement a sweeping theocratic agenda that goes far beyond abortion rights and really seeks to impose a a fundamentalist Christian nationalist worldview upon all of the rest of us.

[00:21:27] And that really taking shape in project 2025, [00:21:30] which of course is backed by a lot of the same interests that captured the court. 

[00:21:35] Cayden Mak: Yeah, no, that’s a super helpful backstory because I think that when we think about what is going on, or like when we see headlines about recent SCOTUS decisions. I think it’s easy to be like, Oh, no this is like a unique sort of emergent phenomenon in our time.

[00:21:52] But that there’s a much deeper story here that is part of, a lot of the folks that are part [00:22:00] of our network talk a lot about this, like 50 year backlash against the civil rights movement. At this point, it’s more like a 70 year backlash against some of these things that like There’s a broader context for it, and the reason that it feels so sort of inevitable and almost quote unquote natural is because it’s been taking place over these much longer timescales.

[00:22:20] Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I’m curious also, and I have been thinking about this a lot too, is that I think that there’s also this phenomenon happening where it seems like the influence [00:22:30] of the courts has increased? In my lifetime, as a person who’s in their late 30s. Yeah, that’s Is that?

[00:22:39] Alex Aronson: You’re absolutely right. Yeah, that’s what they’re doing you know the I think the critical insight from this movement, which you know has deeply unpopular policies You’re seeing the public backlash to This agenda, which they, had some idea, some crazy idea to make public in the project 2025 agenda.

[00:22:57] When we found that we, our jaws dropped, like, how did they put [00:23:00] this out with their names on it? This is so deeply unpopular. We’re going to tell everybody about it. But I think that’s the, that was the critical insight was that they weren’t going to be able to pass these, pro billionaire, bureaucratic, racist agendas through the democratic process.

[00:23:15] So they needed the courts. And that’s why the courts passed. Provides it provided such a valuable weapon for them because it’s insulated from scrutiny. It’s insulated from accountability. It’s insulated from pushback It has the veneer of impartiality away from the law It has the kind of the [00:23:30] you know The trappings of legitimacy and doctrine when they tell us the constitution means x who are we to say no it doesn’t And so what they’ve done is, through the course of these decades, and you’re right, it’s been a, it’s been a decades long process they have aggrandized this judicial power.

[00:23:46] They have taken more and more power for the courts, insulated from all that accountability and away from the people. And sure, we have lots of frustrations with Congress, but if you look at sort of structurally in the Constitution, the Congress is the most democratic of the branches. It’s [00:24:00] deeply. Compromised and it’s incredibly problematic, I would argue in large part because of what the Supreme Court has done to flood our political system with money and make money the exclusive coin of the political realm, which has, not only fueled the rise of the Republican party and the muscle of the Republican party, but really trapped a lot of Democrats from being able to represent everyday people because they can’t.

[00:24:22] As as you discussed in the last segment, they can’t really do anything that would cross these interests because they can flood any race with enough money [00:24:30] to vote them out of office. And so that’s what’s happened is we’ve got this kind of accumulation of constitutional and policy making power in the courts.

[00:24:39] And so now they’re not sort of resolving good faith, legal disputes between litigants like they’re supposed to, they are serving as a super legislature that decides all questions of law and policy in our country. 

[00:24:50] Cayden Mak: Yeah, not great 

[00:24:51] Alex Aronson: for democracy. 

[00:24:52] Cayden Mak: No, it’s not. It’s pretty. It’s a pretty sobering assessment of the landscape, right?

[00:24:58] But yeah, it’s nice. [00:25:00] And I think that the thing that also certainly troubles me when I think about these things is that, The courts do feel like things that like, I don’t understand how those levers of power work, right? Like they’re not levers that are made super obvious to just like regular humans.

[00:25:17] Can you talk a little bit about what levers might exist and where there are maybe some handholds for us to try and understand our relationship as like ordinary people to the [00:25:30] courts? 

[00:25:31] Alex Aronson: Yeah, actually, before we do that, it might be useful to just dig into one more, I think. piece of context, which actually is at the heart of what we’re a lot of what we’re trying to do in court accountability is sort of promote a paradigm shift and how people are thinking about.

[00:25:44] Power and power in the kind of constitutional sense because, as we look at the 20th century, this important period of time, that war and era, the era of the great society, when the court did those good things it gave us one person, one vote it created the right to [00:26:00] choose fundamental protections for abortion access all sorts of other good things, criminal defendant protections under the constitution.

[00:26:08] That’s actually a really narrow frame of the court’s entire history. And if you look at the entire scope of the court’s history, it’s always, or generally really served as a tool for anti democratic reactionary and corporate interests. And one thing I think we sort of got wrong and it’s understandable.

[00:26:24] We went to the courts when, because we’ve never really had a good. A real democracy in this country. We went to the courts to secure those [00:26:30] freedoms, particularly when reactionaries at the state level were, clamping down on freedoms. And so we sort of needed the court. And I think as a result of that, we sort of created a mythology of courts and the Supreme court as a font of justice and freedom.

[00:26:46] And we’ve got over, really over reliant on it, which created a ton of goodwill. That now these theocrats and right wing billionaires and oligarchs are exploiting and using as insulation [00:27:00] for their political projects I think that context gets to your question caden about kind of what we can start to do to push back because At the end of the day the court All it has is it’s the, the persuasiveness of its reasoning and our respect for its decision making as a legitimate authority under the Constitution.

[00:27:19] And that is eroding, right? It’s eroding that in itself. 

[00:27:22] Sound on Tape: Yeah. Very rapidly. 

[00:27:23] Alex Aronson: Yeah, really quickly, right? Between, extreme decisions that, shatter precedent that these justices told us [00:27:30] that they were going to respect. 

[00:27:31] Sound on Tape: Yep. 

[00:27:31] Alex Aronson: And, this past year in particular of scandal and corruption at the court, where we’ve learned about people like Clarence Thomas taking millions upon millions of dollars in secret luxury travel, half million dollar yacht trips to Indonesia, paid for, By the very billionaires who are trying to drive their agenda, who have interest before the court.

[00:27:53] And so what that has created, and it’s not just the left thing, right? This is across ideological outrage. It is provoked and the lack of [00:28:00] public trust in this institution now. That makes it vulnerable. It makes it vulnerable not to, I wouldn’t, I, not to, tor, torch bearing.

[00:28:08] protesters or whatever, but to the political process and to other branches. And so we’re starting to see more pushback from, co equal constitutional actors like Congress, like Schumer and 36 members of the Senate caucus introduced a bill a couple weeks ago, the No Kings Act, that strips the court’s jurisdiction to decide this question of presidential immunity.

[00:28:28] It says, you got this [00:28:30] wrong. We’re going to actually do this now. You’ve overreached here and we’re going to take your power away, which is something that Congress has the power to do. You can debate kind of the scope of that, but Congress has a lot of power. And the court doesn’t have the power of the sword or the power of the purse, like the other two branches.

[00:28:45] And so there’s actually quite a lot we can have, demand that our elected officials are doing, should be doing. If we start to organize our politics around these questions of constitutional power. 

[00:28:58] Cayden Mak: Awesome. Yeah, that is super helpful [00:29:00] because I think that it’s it feels like we’re still kind of, getting oriented to the state of play around the courts right now, that I there’s, there are these bits and pieces moving forward, but that a clear sort of set of political demands around the courts is not We it hasn’t quite materialized yet.

[00:29:19] So that’s really helpful context because I think, you hear like when all those stories broke about Clarence Thomas taking these basically bribes, it just was like, [00:29:30] I remember reading it and just being like, this is literally disgusting, It’s illegal. He broke the law.

[00:29:35] And it’s like an affront to, even outside of like the law, it’s like an affront to sort of a sense of fairness, right? That this is somebody who sits on a court, who’s also making these decisions about basically criminalizing homelessness. And he’s taking these like luxury vacations from rich people who want to make, On house people into problems that like 

[00:29:57] Alex Aronson: cultivates his like public image [00:30:00] as like an RV driving every man.

[00:30:01] That’s really 

[00:30:02] Cayden Mak: right. It’s like such a like, bizarre and sort of perverse. It looks like the Hunger Games

[00:30:12] Alex Aronson: a little too on the nose there. 

[00:30:16] Cayden Mak: And yeah, I think that, like that sort of. Yeah. Insight that they are, they’re going to start having a bigger communications problem in the coming years is right on. Can you talk a little bit about. I guess, other [00:30:30] ways what are the ways that we could leverage that image problem and what are the things that you think that we should be asking for in terms of control over the course?

[00:30:38] Alex Aronson: The first thing I think is that, whatever your issue is that you’re organizing around, whatever your priority is, I think is first, kind of, Connect connecting the dots to how the court is the ultimate impediment to progress on whatever it is, gun safety. They created a completely invented special interest conceived doctrine around this, the second amendment that now makes it impossible to [00:31:00] regulate gun safety, reproductive rights, Trump says it’s at the state level, but they’re marching towards creating a 14th amendment fetal personhood that would ban Abortion and IVF and likely contraception nationwide.

[00:31:13] It’s like this is super integrated with whatever you’re doing, right? So I actually I Push back a little bit on the notion that we should have a court reform agenda that stands apart from our other priorities, whatever they are. So you know really having that integrated and whenever you’re kind of making demands [00:31:30] of people in power to take stuff seriously, they have to have an answer for what they’re going to do about the court.

[00:31:36] And one of the challenges of the kind of big paradigm shift that we need to make Is that you know the policies in terms of court reform that are starting to come out? Thankfully they’re coming out I think it’s a positive sign that somebody like biden is saying I think we need to do something right beginning of the administration He’s had that court reform commission.

[00:31:53] It said let’s do nothing here. That’s not acceptable Now what he’s saying is I want enforceable ethics. That would be a great thing to [00:32:00] have right and real accountability Maybe that looks like, real criminal liability potentially For this type of law breaking which is actually already in the law that garland should be prosecuting this stuff Term limits super easy like low hanging fruit.

[00:32:13] Very popular, they’ll raise constitutional questions, whatever and then you know amending the constitution to overturn this lawless immunity decision That’s not something that’s going to be achievable, right? We can’t Not only can we not achieve a constitutional amendment. We shouldn’t accede to the legitimacy of that.

[00:32:29] [00:32:30] Opinion at all as like legitimate constitutional law because we can see that these are like mega justices Who are behaving corruptly to help a you know aspiring dictator, but those are like those are starts i’m, and then court expansion of course is you know seems well justified by The constitutional norm breaking that the republicans in the senate did to create these vacancies to steal these seats effectively the problem with something like court expansion having spent years in the senate You know, frankly working for the most forward leaning [00:33:00] champion on court reform and confrontation issues senator whitehouse he’s not a co sponsor of the court expansion bill because You know We hadn’t developed the politics to make that something that we had power around if you look at the polling You can’t get support around that doesn’t mean we should give up on it or stop demanding it But we need to be realistic that we’re still not quite close to having it and I actually you know Just sure to share his view that driving politics around this stuff, creating, base support and political capital to push things forward is [00:33:30] perhaps useful before we go out with demands that make, that open us up to the types of attacks from our adversaries who come to this with, decades of their own experience and built up capital around principles like judicial independence, which they can.

[00:33:44] Convince the media with what I really, what the lane of reforms that I think are most appealing and that have had gained the kind of least traction and least attention are tools sitting right there in the constitution. I alluded to 1 earlier, the [00:34:00] ability of the Congress to take jurisdiction away from the court, right?

[00:34:02] 99 percent of the court’s docket. Is made up of its appellate jurisdiction a very tiny class of cases are, you know within the original jurisdiction that the constitution creates for the court tiny little sliver of these cases Almost everything they take in here and remember they take you they pick and choose their cases.

[00:34:22] There’s nothing normal about that, right? They are like acting like a legislature in that context But the congress Sets [00:34:30] exceptions and regulations for the entire remainder of that jurisdiction all of their appellate jurisdiction So what schumer is doing? In that no kings act is saying no actually we’re going to carve out your jurisdiction because you can’t review this stuff so you know one argument I make to issue advocates in the repro space or in the voting rights space who want to Restore and repair the damage That the court has done in these arenas is that we need to consider tools like this to insulate our achievements from anti democratic judicial [00:35:00] buzzsaws, which we can see coming for them.

[00:35:02] Like, why go through all the time and effort and money and investment of political capital into passing a row codification if we know, based on what the court is already telling us, that they’re going to strike it down on constitutional grounds that we are unprepared to respond to. More to the point, though, is like whatever we do, like this court is durably entrenched in power, particularly after Justice Ginsburg died and was replaced at the 11th hour by Coney Barrett, giving them a 6 3 majority.

[00:35:29] This [00:35:30] is a durably entrenched majority that was put there to cement a constitutional counter revolution, so they will strike down whatever type of legislative constraint Congress may try to pass. And so then the question is what do we do then? What do we do then? And I have some thoughts about that, but I’ve been yapping,

[00:35:48] Cayden Mak: Yeah. No, this is great. I think that that is I think the insight about building political will around court expansion seems right onto me. That also that like [00:36:00] without. popular political will around it. There’s also the opportunity for that to be like spun against us in some way. That doing the organizing and the political education amongst people who are playing not just on the Hill, but like in communities and doing this sort of spade work of movement building is deeply necessary.

[00:36:18] And, I do wonder about that. If you run into issues, talking to people about, Changing the courts that like if people if this is something that feels still pretty [00:36:30] inscrutable or like impenetrable to people that like if there are some roadblocks From an organizing perspective that you’re seeing in this work 

[00:36:40] Alex Aronson: Yeah, hugely and by design, right?

[00:36:42] I think I sort of alluded to it before like they make this and you did too like they make this so inaccessible like I’m a lawyer so I can sort of see what they’re doing but you don’t land and you know I heard this a lot actually like working on the senate judiciary committee There’s a lot of senators on the senate judiciary committee who aren’t lawyers And so you [00:37:00] hear a lot from those senators and their staffs like you know I’m, not a lawyer or my boss isn’t a lawyer.

[00:37:04] So We’re going to stick to this lane. It’s no, this is our lives. 

[00:37:08] Cayden Mak: Yeah, this is kind of everything actually. Yeah, 

[00:37:12] Alex Aronson: And so we need, we certainly do need more lawyers who are sort of like getting in the trenches of movement organizing and trying to translate this stuff. As I try to do, sometimes I feel like I’m definitely way too in the weeds and I’m talking about the exceptions clause of the article three of the constitution or whatever, but yeah, no, I [00:37:30] think sort of like demystifying all this stuff.

[00:37:32] And connecting the dots to the issues that people care about that, that they’re voting around that they are organizing around is like the first order of business. And I think we’re starting to see real progress on that is one thing I’ll say, 

[00:37:42] Sound on Tape: the world 

[00:37:43] Alex Aronson: I worked in, of had the most interaction with in terms of advocacy when I worked on.

[00:37:48] And the hill was like judicial advocacy groups, like full of lawyers who, think about, the constitution and, want to make fair courts, but like the movement groups, we’re [00:38:00] not ever kind of at the table there. And we need to change that, like the movement group, like the Senate Judiciary Committee, the chair of the, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who I think has been, largely ineffective in responding to the biggest judicial legitimacy crisis in US history.

[00:38:15] Senate leadership, the house, like they need to hear from the movement about. The importance of the courts and this these messages needs just to start getting integrated into the movement work we’re doing on the ground because like they have, they are adversaries have figured [00:38:30] out how to control these levers of power and we just need to also.

[00:38:33] Cayden Mak: Yeah I think this is maybe also a good time to plug the fact that the newest installment in the series that we’ve been working on with Movement Law Lab just went live today, which features you talking about the, 

[00:38:44] Sound on Tape: The 

[00:38:45] Cayden Mak: history of the right wing takeover of the courts and a lot of the work that they’re doing to Really demystify this stuff for both people who are like legal practitioners and then folks in the movement is super useful because I [00:39:00] think that there are a group of people who speak both organizer and lawyer in a way that I think is really helpful.

[00:39:06] So specific, yeah. Sorry. Good time to shout. I think I dropped out. 

[00:39:09] Alex Aronson: I dropped for a second there. But yeah. Movement Law Lab is doing this. Tremendous stuff. And right. The convenings they do the trainings that kind of the curation of the groups of people that they’re bringing together is exactly I think the work we need to start doing right?

[00:39:23] Because it can’t just be, we talk a lot about how we’re siloed, but this is back to block and build, right? We you know, we need a [00:39:30] broad coalition It can’t be just the left. It can’t just be the center left. It cannot just be the lawyers You know, the lawyers are not going to save us right now like the lawyers, you know I think too many of the lawyers really still believe notwithstanding everything we’ve seen out of this court that like if it comes to that, the courts will still be courts, like we’re still litigating, we’re still winning some cases, and sure, we definitely need to be litigating but we can’t have all our eggs in that basket anymore.

[00:39:57] Cayden Mak: Yeah, it’s, I think that one of the [00:40:00] things that has been, For me the deep lesson in doing this show actually and talking to people who are trying to pull different threads and Move different people on different issues is just that there’s there’s not one way that’s gonna do it And in fact, we need to be pushing on as many levelers as possible simultaneously in order to really win Abolition democracy in this country and really make the system work in ways that it honestly was never designed to, 

[00:40:28] Alex Aronson: yeah, and it’s there’s a, [00:40:30] I work with some folks that are doing constitutional vision work, sort of, for a post constitutional future, and maybe there’s a world where that’s necessary, but frankly We’re not doing our best with the tools we have in our existing constitutional framework Yes, there’s the constitution is deeply flawed, right?

[00:40:45] Yes We have baked in relics of a slave era, you know The senate itself the existence of the filibuster the electoral college like those are hurdles We must overcome if we want democracy but you know, we’ve got the [00:41:00] majority of the people for the stuff we want to see in the world and we’re just not doing a good enough job pulling the levers we have 

[00:41:07] Cayden Mak: Yeah, for sure.

[00:41:08] What are the things that are sort of on your, like the top of your to-do list this year with this election coming up and I don’t know, a lot of the sort of like concerning things that we’ve seen both at the sort of like federal court level and then that the Supreme Court has pointed at that are kind of coming down the pike.

[00:41:28] What are the things that you’re paying attention to? [00:41:30] 

[00:41:30] Alex Aronson: Sure. Let’s do like maybe in a, like a more block and build I think the, some of the worst threats facing us are also huge opportunities. We’ve seen that in, we’ve seen that in project 2025 which Trump is trying to run to the hills from, I think largely unsuccessfully, but that’s a real believability gap that continues to exist.

[00:41:51] More and more people have heard about it. People are completely repelled by its agenda, but, and we’re seeing it in the polling we’re seeing in the focus groups, a lot of [00:42:00] people just don’t think this is feasible. We’ve done a lot of work to try to close that believability gap, help people understand how, not only how extreme the policies are, but how the work that they’re doing to sort of.

[00:42:10] Staff it with, MAGA Trump officials, check out our one of our websites. It’s project 2025admin. com talks a lot about those personnel and how they’re, pulling these different levers of of government power to make it really feasible. So closing that believability gap on project 2025.

[00:42:29] Another [00:42:30] way to do that is really highlighting how project 2025 is already in operation in these state laboratories of autocracy Because of course that’s what’s I was having in, Florida, Tennessee, Texas. All these states are mini project 2025s in action you know because repro is such a huge priority and I think People are going to be voting You out of a loss aversion principle, they as they realize what they stand to lose, they will turn [00:43:00] out and, I think, frankly, a lot of people in blue states and purple states underappreciate just how at risk their own reproductive freedoms are in the Project 2025 and Supreme Court agendas, I mentioned earlier the threat of fetal personhood, which is now in the RNC platform.

[00:43:18] This is a theocratic invented doctrine that they are marching toward, enshrining in our constitution, which would in a flash ban abortion nationwide, ban access to Mephistophle [00:43:30] Stone, continuing to bang the drum to help people understand to to connect those dots for folks.

[00:43:35] In your intro, you mentioned one, which I’ll close on in terms of Priorities for this year and up until the election and after which is these threats of election subversion election interference claims You know, we think that we’re in a really a wildly different context versus 2020 I don’t think anybody should look at what the court did in the 2020 election and be assured that it served as some sort of a Bulwark [00:44:00] or a guardrail like all it did was it like didn’t agree to hear some cases and then, there’s a couple other like Context differentials between 2020 and now that have us really concerned about the chance of a Supreme Court theft of of a potential Harris win.

[00:44:15] One is that, stop the steal. The first effort that, that Trump undertook that led to January 6th was like a fly by night, last minute operation. 

[00:44:22] Sound on Tape: Totally. 

[00:44:23] Alex Aronson: It was a couple of fringe lawyers, John Eastman, Jeff Clark, Ken Cheesebro, they were kind of trying to cobble it together quickly. [00:44:30] And, Fox News had called that election for for Biden pretty early in important states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, 

[00:44:38] It would have been very hard for the Supreme Court to overturn that election.

[00:44:41] In contrast, this year, as you mentioned, these lawsuits are already underway. Leonard Leo, the person that put all these judges on the Supreme Court, who now has a billion and a half dollars at his disposal as a result of the biggest dark money transfer in US history is funding major voter [00:45:00] intimidation efforts, challenges to election integrity.

[00:45:03] Elon Musk is agitating in this domain. Bill Barr, who, somehow maintained some posture as like an establishment bulwark against Trump. He is trying to help steal the election through dark money litigation efforts. So they’re just so much farther ahead than they were. Couple other differences, like dobs they needed to accomplish that’s done and then as a result of dobs as a result of the year of great investigative [00:45:30] reporting finally exposing their corruption And abuse of power to the american people their own stature is much is much weaker, right?

[00:45:36] So whereas I think they really didn’t want trump before and they thought that you know Just like the interest behind them sort of wanted a de santis or a haley who would have been a much more predictable and reliable Partner for the advancement of this agenda I think they sort of thought they could sort of get rid of Trump that he wouldn’t come back now as their popularity and public trust is in the tank, I think they, they understand that without Trump, [00:46:00] they are very vulnerable.

[00:46:01] And the entire project that they have been working toward for 50 years that, they have achieved so much to accomplish is in jeopardy as the movement as the kind of pro democracy majority in this country will no longer accept. Their reckless abuse of power in, contradiction of the will of the people if he does not get elected.

[00:46:20] So lots of concerns around that and doing a lot of preparation to try to sort of sound the alarms in a lot of different spaces. 

[00:46:27] Cayden Mak: Totally. Yeah there’s no dearth of work to do. So [00:46:30] I guess with that, are there, what are the ways that folks can follow your work find out more about the stuff that y’all are working on?

[00:46:36] And potentially like plug into things or lean on you all for support too. 

[00:46:42] Alex Aronson: Yeah we we’re a baby organization. We just got started last year So we’re like cranking up the gears to try to operationalize all this we’ve got a website up. We’re going to be working to build it out. It’s at court accountability dot org We’d love to have folks, you know plug in your info and get in touch with us that way i’m trying to i’m trying to [00:47:00] migrate to less evil social media platforms, but I Have a compulsive Twitter habit of blasting stuff out.

[00:47:08] And so you can find me there at Alex Aronson and then, yeah, we’ll be, we’re going to be rolling out more kind of like public facing and movement facing communications right now. A lot of what we do is sort of like working with our allies in the movement to try to build capacity and get this stuff out through their better platforms.

[00:47:24] With less pointy headed, nerdy, like legal speak, so that’s what we’re [00:47:30] trying to do. But yeah, I would love to love her folks to reach out. We’re super eager to build a movement around this stuff. 

[00:47:35] Cayden Mak: Yeah, no it’s honestly like the assessment is dark, but also it’s really good to talk to somebody who is like a sober assessment of what’s going on, not pulling the punches, but also seize the landscape for what it is and where the opportunities are.

[00:47:47] So I really appreciate you and your work and for joining us today. 

[00:47:50] Alex Aronson: Yeah, thanks. And I do often do that where it’s just oof, morbid, macabre, darkness, I do actually, I wouldn’t be doing this work if I didn’t think we had like [00:48:00] a real chance to win this fight. And I think we’re seeing, we’re starting to see the script really flip on this.

[00:48:06] And I think, if we get through this kind of immediate threat of fascism, that we’re staring down the barrel of this year, like we can do this, we can do this together. 

[00:48:14] Cayden Mak: Yeah, no, I love that. Very pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will vibes going on on Block and Bill today.

[00:48:21] It’s kind of our whole, it’s kind of our whole, the whole affect of our project too, 

[00:48:26] Alex Aronson: yeah. All right, thanks a lot. 

[00:48:28] Cayden Mak: Great, thanks Alex. 

[00:48:29] Alex Aronson: Have a [00:48:30] good one, bye.

[00:48:34] Cayden Mak: This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for Radical Insights. I’m Caden Mock, and our producer is Josh Elstro. Editorial assistance was provided this week by Marcy Rien. If you have something to say, please drop me a line. You can send me an email that we’ll consider running on an upcoming Mailbag episode at mailbag at convergencemag.

[00:48:52] com. And if you’d like to support the work that we do at Convergence, bringing our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial [00:49:00] historical moment. You can become a member at convergencemag. com slash donate. Even a few bucks a month goes a long way to making sure our independent small team can continue to build a map for our movements.

[00:49:11] I hope this helps.