In honor of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s lousy performance in the first presidential debate, we are rerunning our episode on his intervention in wild politics of The Villages, Florida.

In 2019, residents of The Villages, an iconic retirement community in Florida, were suddenly hit with a 25 percent hike in their property taxes. In the master-planned community of 130,000 across the state’s Sumter, Lake, and Marion counties, many residents are on fixed incomes. The tax hikes were intended to subsidize new developments south of the community, rather than cover new amenities or upgrades for current residents. The entity known locally either as “the developer” or “the family” benefited from the tax hike and could then escape paying fees associated with the expansion of their development. This week on Deconstructed, host Ryan Grim takes us to The Villages to meet residents who banded together to rollback the tax hike but who were ultimately blocked by powerful players. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the local political machine run by The Villages fought the residents, leading to one of their champions being thrown in jail.

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Last week, Intercept journalists Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain published a bombshell investigation into Pakistan’s political crisis. Grim and Hussain were provided a Pakistani intelligence document by an anonymous source, outlining how the U.S. government pressured the Pakistani government to oust former Prime Minister Imran Khan. This week on Deconstructed, Grim and Hussain discuss their reporting, the leaked cable, and the fallout from the political crisis in Pakistan.

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The U.S. has been at constant war for the past two decades. Yet the public rarely sees the results of U.S. violence, or the bodies of Americans coming home. Norman Solomon, a journalist and antiwar activist, says that this is by design. This week on Deconstructed, Solomon joins Intercept writer and guest host Jon Schwarz. Solomon breaks down how American politicians, alongside mainstream media, spin lies and hide the true cost of American wars. Solomon is the author of “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.”

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In a provocative new book, historian Eli Merritt argues that the Thirteen Colonies only overcame their differences and united into a single entity due to an existential fear of civil war, collapse, and invasion. That fear is now gone. This week on Deconstructed, Merritt joins Ryan Grim to discuss his new book, “Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution.” Merritt argues that the founders — motivated by surviving as an independent government — united to avoid a civil war between the colonies. The “survivalist interpretation” of the nation’s founding, he explains, led to a historic “shotgun wedding”: a compromise-laden journey leading to the Declaration of Independence and a failure to confront slavery.

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The Republican Party’s full embrace of the culture war as a political tactic — from drag queen story hour to critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives — has been chiefly guided by activist and polemicist Christopher Rufo, author of the new book “America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.” But is the effort fundamentally nihilistic? And is it overly obsessed with sex while claiming to uncover pedophiles everywhere in our midst? This week on Deconstructed, Rufo joins Ryan Grim to defend his approach and his philosophy.

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The House overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Tuesday pledging "the United States will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel” and that Israel is “not a racist or apartheid state.” This week on Deconstructed, Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, joins Ryan Grim to discuss the resolution sparked by recent remarks from Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. Miller and Grim break down the bipartisan furor to swiftly condemn Jayapal calling Israel “a racist state” and promise unconditional support for the Israeli government, despite its decadeslong campaign to violently force Palestinians off their land.

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Today, we’re sharing an episode of the podcast Lever Time with David Sirota from our friends at the investigative news site The Lever. On this week’s episode of Lever Time, David Sirota is joined by law professor Stephen Vladeck, author of the new book, "The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic."

The Supreme Court has received a lot of attention in the last several years for its extreme rulings on matters such as abortion rights, environmental regulations, and affirmative action. But there’s another very important court procedure that doesn’t receive nearly as much attention: the aptly named “shadow docket.”

These are the cases that occur outside of the court’s regular docket and usually involve urgent matters, such as requests for emergency stays, injunctions, and other types of temporary relief. These cases are often decided through brief orders, meaning without oral arguments, full written opinions, or even disclosing how the justices voted. But in recent years, the court has increasingly used the shadow docket to effectively leapfrog over the appeals court system on major decisions, sometimes with devastating effects.

David and Stephen dive deep into the shadow docket’s history, how it continues to undermine the Supreme Court’s credibility, and how most of these decisions are not based on any kind of legal rationale or precedent.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Links:

• The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic (Hachette Book Group, 2023)
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• Supreme Court “Shadow Docket” Under Review by U.S. House of Representatives (American Bar Association, 2021)

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Friday afternoon, the House narrowly passed a defense bill full of Republican culture war priorities. Hopeful efforts earlier in the week to rein in U.S. foreign policy fizzled out by week’s end, including an amendment to block the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine and other countries. On this week’s Deconstructed, Ryan Grim is joined by Erik Sperling, executive director of Just Foreign Policy, and The Intercept’s Deputy Editor Nausicaa Renner to discuss how a bipartisan bill to prevent the Biden administration from sending cluster bombs to Ukraine went from gaining momentum to being undermined by another bill introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

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Centrist and right-wing economists continue to advocate for laying off workers and engineering a recession to address inflation. But why not set price controls instead? This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim is joined by James K. Galbraith, a professor of government and business relations at the University of Texas at Austin. Galbraith has an extensive history of working in government, including as executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress and an economist for the House Banking Committee. Galbraith and Grim discuss the implementation of price controls by the U.S. government, how it brings down prices, how the Biden administration has used it and could use it more, and how Galbraith’s father — economist and politician John Kenneth Galbraith — was instrumental in setting price controls during World War II.

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Today, we’re sharing an episode of the podcast Lever Time with David Sirota from our friends at the investigative news site The Lever. David and The Lever’s Andrew Perez are joined by ProPublica journalist Justin Elliott, who recently co-authored an exposé detailing how Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito failed to disclose luxury gifts provided by billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer. This story follows ProPublica’s reporting from earlier this year about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who also failed to disclose gifts he received from his own billionaire benefactor, Harlan Crow. They discuss how these new revelations raise questions about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, why a lack of judicial oversight contributes to the problem, and how powerful GOP operative Leonard Leo ties all of these stories together.

If you like Deconstructed, be sure to search for Lever Time with David Sirota on your podcast player to subscribe.

For a special discount on a full subscription to The Lever’s investigative reporting and news, go to Levernews.com/Deconstructed

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