It's the democracy, stupid

Lisa Graves is the founder and executive director of True North Research, author of Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights, co-host of Legal AF on the Meidas Touch network. As busy as she is, she still finds time to talk with me from time to time about SCOTUS, and about American democracy.

A year ago, she and her research partner, Alyssa Bowen, published a Primer on the Authoritarian Infrastructure in the U.S. I wondered whether, a year later, she thought that infrastructure had grown. The discussion that followed was fabulous.

Lisa describes the history of building autocratic infrastructure from the 1970s to the present and wanted to make sure I understood what it really was, telling me,

Some people call it conservative. There’s nothing conservative about it. It’s radical, and reactionary. It is a deep and wide effort to regress American society. It is not conservative. It conserves nothing. It destroys things.

Things like civil liberties.

I always learn something when I talk with Lisa. This time she shocked me with the origin story of how the right wing embraced “originalism” as a form of understanding the Constitution.

…part of that also was the creation of the Federalist Society in 1982. Its first meeting was about Roe v. Wade, was attacking Roe v. Wade. But the precursor to the Federalist Society was this so-called originalism, which was really targeting Brown v. Board of Education and trying to claim that the Supreme Court never should have issued an order desegregating the schools because there were segregated schools in D.C. immediately after the Civil War.

You will want to hear every word. And after you do, let us know what you think.

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Adam Klasfeld is the owner and editor in chief of All Rise News. He created it because traditional media wasn’t meeting the moment when it came to covering the judiciary. His work is timely, clear, and vitally important. We spoke this week after another round of dismal rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court.

With SCOTUS still sitting on the birthright citizenship case, Adam made the stunning point that Trump has already won.

This is the second time it’s gone up to the Supreme Court. The first time they didn’t challenge it on the merits. They challenged universal injunctions, nationwide injunctions. And they and they won.

It was a huge victory. This strategy is to find some sort of scholar or fringe activist who will rubber stamp some sort of policy objective that they want and turn it into an executive order. And maybe they’ll win something along the way.

But the news is not all bad. In fact, as Adam says, the antibodies to the autocratic virus are growing every day.

As Adam described what the courts have done to stop the many of the abuses of the Trump administration, he took time to remind me that the process is sometimes as important as the result. I listened carefully and came away thinking that our courts are where Trump’s lies go to die.

And, indeed, judges are becoming more assertive with the Department of Justice to demand and even to command honest representations in their courtrooms. Adam explained,

Look at what happened with the Broadview Six that this is the Trump Justice Department is not entitled to the same presumption of regularity that was given to prior justice departments because we’re in a new era.

We’re in a new time where the face of the head of state is now of the justice department. And we’ll see what happens.

There’s been a similar motion in the case of Don Lemon over in the Twin Cities. What happened in Chicago might be just the beginning of the kind of accountability for the warping of the grand jury processes in criminal cases.

As ever with Adam, we talked about specific cases. And with this Supreme Court session there are plenty important ones to cover.

On the end of TPS for Haitians and others, Adam described the court’s refusal to see racism no matter how plain it is,

The real jaw-dropper with the Haitian TPS challenge was, of course, they were saying that Trump has a long history of very racist statements about the Haitian community, saying that they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats, saying they’re poisoning the blood of the people.

And you had Justice Kagan really laying it out. I’m just giving two examples of a page of long itemization of racist statements.

And you had Justice Alito claiming that there was a race neutral explanation- Trump just hates the TPS program.

If this isn’t racial discrimination in the eyes of the court, what could be?

This echoed a previous conversation Adam and I had when the Callais decision came out earlier this session. Then, we talked about the voting districts in Alabama and the pretzel the Court made of itself to make sure blatantly discriminatory maps are imposed in that state. As Adam said, “we’re in a very dark place when such a blatant racial discrimination is characterized as race neutral by the highest court in the land.”

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Margaret is a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School. She served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Connecticut and before that in the JAG Corps for six years as a captain. She writes for Just Security.

During this conversation Margaret- who served in Iraq- talked about what it’s like for military personnel to hear elected officials say crazy things. She worries about the impact on our soldiers when they support actions that are clearly illegal. Then she pointed out that as Commander in Chief when Trump supports illegal actions, he actually has authority to order them, which puts every soldier in a terrible position.

Unfortunately, the cohesion inside the military that might provide support for healthy decision-making is being by Pete Hegseth's interference in the military promotion lists. Margaret explained how damaging this is.

Just imagine a workplace, and that is probably one of the most important workplaces in America, where your boss is sending this message to people that whatever you do, if you’re black, if you’re a woman, if you’re a religious minority, you’re always going to have this monkey on your shoulder telling you that you’re not really supposed to be here. And [everyone is] always going to second guess when you get promoted because it’s DEI.

Hegseth’s leadership hasn’t just undermined military cohesion; it undermines everything from logistics to planning to procurement. Here’s what Marget said,

Watch these briefings where it’s him and General Kane. Hegseth doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know the strategy. He doesn’t know the assets. He doesn’t know the next steps. He doesn’t know the logistics that go into a military operation.

He just knows culture wars. That’s all he knows because he knows soundbites, because that’s what he’s that’s what he specialized in. He was a weekend news host.

He’s probably in panic mode on any given day. And so he retreats to what he knows best, which is sound bites, making inflammatory remarks based on culture and pop knowledge.

Margaret is kinder than I am. I had harsher words for Mr. Hegseth in this discussion.

We talked about the War Powers Act. She reminded me that it passed with large bipartisan support in order to protect our soldiers. On this she was passionate.

Those [soldiers] are people. Those are fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters. Those are parents who did not see their kids open up their Easter baskets Easter morning. Those are parents who are missing. Those are kids who are missing summer vacations with their extended families. Those are boyfriends and girlfriends who haven’t seen each other in months. There’s a very real human cost [to deployment] And that was what Congress foresaw back in the 70s, which is that those people matter.

Of course, the GOP Congress today refused to act on their war power, allowing Donald Trump to send our soldiers on lengthy deployments, one after the other, in search of world changing victories that (see above) his administration lacks the strategic know-how to accomplish. It is cruel.

Margaret talked about the illegal killings in the Caribbean and Pacific. She has a warning for those involved.

We are over 200 people killed in the Caribbean. This is not going away. This is something that Congress will be looking at. These are offenses that do not have statutes of limitations. So as soon as there is a new administration, maybe even before that, when Congress changes hands, there are people who are going to be subpoenaed to testify and they’re going to be asked, why did you pull the trigger?

In fact, Margaret made the point that Congress has the power to check all the abuses in the military and in the national security agencies but seems unwilling to use it. I pointed out that this particular Congress is not merely unwilling to do its job, but is all in with the Trump agenda.

That’s why we need a new Congress, and one that works. That critical topic was at the heart of the conversation below with Maya Hornburg of the Brennan Center. I hope you will watch both videos and let me know what you think.

Edwin hosts “It’s The Democracy Stupid” on Lincoln Square & a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. He is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago’s public schools

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Dr. Maya Hornberg is senior researcher in elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. She is the author of articles and papers and books. Her latest is, Stuck- How Money, Media and Violence Prevent Change in Congress.

We talked about our broken Congress, and Maya wasted no time in explaining that, even though Americans have always complained about Congress, something changed beginning in the 1970s that fundamentally broke the institution.

In 1976, the Supreme Court and the Buckley v. Vallejo decision rules that spending limits are unconstitutional in campaigns. And as a result, money starts flooding campaigns… Things start to change in terms of money distorting pathways to power, even within Congress, not to mention running for office.

She tells the story of Congressman Henry Waxman who understood the implications of that decision and decided to raise what’s called a leadership PAC. That allowed him to raise funds not for his own election, but to spread it around Congress. She credits this with winning him an important committee chair. And, she notes, most members of Congress now raise leadership PACs.

In addition to money, Maya explained how the jurisdiction of Congressional committees is hopelessly dated.

The last time that committee jurisdictional lines were redrawn in the House was the1970s. So completely outdated. You shouldn’t be surprised that when Mark Zuckerberg comes in to testify, half of the Senate is there. And we know-- you’ve worked in organizations, I’ve worked in organizations— When everyone is in charge of something, no one is in charge of something.

So you need a tech committee if you want to regulate tech. You need generally committee jurisdictions that align with the modern American economy.

We talked about Congressional staffing, the size of Congress, proportional representation, and more. We even talked about how Congress can regain its Article I powers whether they are threatened by an expansive executive branch or an overreaching Supreme Court.

Here’s a prediction: the next Congress is going to rely on Maya’s work to revise its rules, redraw committee jurisdictions, and re-balance the power relationship between leadership and committee chairs- all changes aimed at restoring Congress’ role in our democracy.

As always, give a listen and let us know what you think.

This interview is from my radio show on WCPT@820/ Heartland Signal on June 20, 2026.

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Gillian Brockell is a careful, thoughtful, hardworking journalist who has turned her talents towards one of the most important and hidden cruelties of the Trump Administration- ICE flights.

We talked on my radio show on WCPT820 this week. It was a conversation that stayed with me long after.

Gillian’s been tracking the 50-90 ICE flights conducted every day. I was surprised to learn that most of those flights are domestic.

The rate of those shuffle flights between the detention centers has been way higher under Trump’s second term than the regular removals. Removals have about doubled, but the shuffle flights have almost tripled.

And what we hear from migrants, from immigration attorneys and rights groups is that they’re using the shuffle flights to wear people down basically to torture them to make their court cases harder to file every time you’re moved to a different federal district, you have to start your court case all over again, you have to get a new lawyer. You have to get your documents moved and you have to do it from a detention Center. You’re farther away from your family.

The entire time that you’re being transported you are not in the ICE locator system. So you have no way of telling your family, hey, I’m going to be transferred to Arizona tomorrow. There’s no way to know that. So people will just disappear from the locator system.

Gillian described the way third country deportations work. Turns out, the ability to send people to countries they’ve never been to before was originally a humanitarian policy Congress created years ago so that deportees who were not safe in their home countries could be sent somewhere safe. Instead, the Trump administration uses third country deportations to create a chain deportation- send a migrant to a third country and then let that third country send them back to their home countries where their lives are in in jeopardy.

She also told me that ICE flight attendants were told that, in the event of an evacuation they were to save themselves and let the prisoners die.

This is an important topic, and one we don’t hear enough about. Give a listen, and let us know what you think. You can also visit Gillian’s website for more information and follow her on Blue Sky.

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I sat down with Amanda Marcotte, senior politics writer at Salon.com and star of the podcast Standing Room Only. Amanda is fearless. Her reporting and commentary focus on the where many are afraid to go- race, religion, gender. Where Donald Trump goes to divide us into factions, Amanda goes to find the sources of American strength.

We talked about the tumbling down of Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center before launching into the Iran War. Amanda explained to me why Pete Hegseth is the reason fascists lose wars. She said,

The problem with these people who have these kind of authoritarian ideologies is they never succumb to evidence because they think that thinking is for wimps and strategy is for wimps and that just more woke nonsense. If you point out to them how many times their ideology fails, they just brush it aside and they say, well, the problem is we didn’t hit them hard enough.

We talked about Hegseth purge of Black and female leaders in our military, and that led to a discussion of his exclusion of Mormons from the Department’s list of Christian religions. She reminded me that “another rule of authoritarians is that once they define the in group and the out group, the in group keeps getting smaller.”

That lead to a conversation about Turning Point USA’s latest gathering- an effort to shore up support among young women. Amanda noted that

the Christian right for a long time has been pushing the idea of complementarianism and female submission and sort of this idea that men and women are different, but they complement each other. They’re not unequal, is how they would argue. When you actually look at the details, of course they’re unequal.

But she said this gathering was a bit different. There was not pretending at complementary roles. Instead, conference goers were told that witch burning was okay, that women love themselves too much, and were left with the notion that men should not have to pick up their underwear.

We talked about the future. What Dems should do when they win. High on this list was reforming the Supreme Court.

Give a listen, and, as always, let us know what you think.

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Amazingly, Indivisible, founded just a decade ago, has become a well-known and powerful organizing force in our politics, giving structure to the collective voices of millions of American.

Ezra Levin, the organization’s co-founder and co-executive director is passionate about what Americans can do together, and realistic about what we will fail to do individually.

We talk from time to time about his work, the arc of American history, and the current state of our political parties. This week, Ezra emphasized that political impact has to be “locally led,” because there’s no one in Washington “calling the shots on everything that’s going on.” He goes on to argue that “if we’re just waiting for somebody somewhere to save the day, I think we lose.

I couldn’t agree more. Not a knock on Sen Chuck Schumer to say that if you are waiting around for him to save the democracy you are failing in your job as a citizen. The response to this dangerous moment is up to us, not to any one person, and certainly not up to any political party.

And, by the way, organizations like the Democratic National Committee exist to raise money, to organize debates, to build infrastructure. Party organizations aren’t designed to lead this fight; they are, however, very important tools we can use to win the fight. That’s why Ezra says, “the only solution to rising authoritarianism is massive engagement in the democratic process.”

Towards the end of the conversation, we talk about the transformation happening in both political parties. The GOP is walking away from the idea of democracy in its complete fealty to Mr. Trump. Dems are engaged in a move from the let’s make a deal politics of a former era to the get-s**t-done politics of the moment, while simultaneously managing a generation transition.

As always, give a listen and let us know what you think.

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Every week, Joe Walsh and I catch up on the news of the week.

This week we spent little time on the crybaby in the White House (okay, Joe did call him that). A few minutes on the feckless handling of the Iran war. And a few more on his ill health.

We talked about important and interesting evolution of both political parties. On the Dem side, there is passion for outsider candidates along with a generational shift, while the GOP is transforming itself into a cheerleading team for one guy.

We shared a concern that ICE will be in full force in New York after the World Cup ends, and there for the purpose of inciting a violent reaction. “Trump wants troops on the street,” Joe told me.

We also agreed that if a judge tells Trump he cannot throw his corrupt birthday party cage match- you know, the one where he uses the monuments of our democracy to brand a private company where he’s an investor- he will throw the party anyway.

Then Joe told me the Republicans will confirm Todd Blanche as our next A.G. Will that cost some Senators their jobs? We’ll see.

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Every week Joe Walsh and I let loose on the state of our politics. There’s a lot we don’t agree on, but both of us are determined to preserve American democracy and American freedom. That’s not something anyone can say about the GOP Congress these days.

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Today’s news ecosystem can be confusing to many. But for a generation raised on multiple platforms and social media, it’s second nature. Each news consumer makes the key decision about who to trust. Then they double check to be sure they got it right. Many of them trust Aaron Parnas.

I asked him about the stories he’s thinking about this week. Instead of leading with the China summit, or the ballroom, he went right to the damage a particular data center is doing to one particular community near Memphis. That speaks to his focus on things that matter to people.

You can follow his work here: The Parnas Perspective

Give a listen and let us know what you think.

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