The Nicole Sandler Show

Emptywheel Friday: Klan Act Lawsuits, Chicago's Reckoning, and Georgia's Ask

It's Emptywheel Friday, and Marcy Wheeler is here to connect the dots on a week that kept piling up. We open with two new lawsuits from Renee Good's family, one a wrongful death claim and one under the 1871 Klan Act that names Jonathan Ross, several Trump administration officials, and a list of alleged co-conspirators. Marcy explains why the Klan Act is such an interesting tool, and how a new suit from the Chicago protesters Benny Johnson called "domestic terrorists" fits the same story.

Then we get into the Broadview case, where Judge April Perry held a hearing that Marcy says may point toward contempt or a special prosecutor, and DOJ's judicial complaint against Judge Patrick Schiltz, which Marcy says presents paraphrases as quotes. We cover Georgia's election board asking DOJ to intervene, the dismissal of Davy Hearn's case, and the Time interview with Trump and the AI summit that followed.

Marcy also walks through polling that suggests many 2024 Trump voters are misremembering their votes, why Texas border districts are moving, and the Jack Smith hearing where Senator Eric Schmitt's gotcha moment went sideways. We close with a speed round and Marcy's ask: help make Trump a loser in the public mind, because it matters for what he can get away with.

Find Marcy at emptywheel.net and go support her work. The Nicole Sandler Show is independently produced and listener-supported: nicolesandler.com.

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Heather 'Digby' Parton and I go back more than 20 years, to the early days of the progressive blogosphere, and today she helps me look past the Trump spectacle to what's happening underneath it. She walks through Russ Vought's rescission and impoundment push, a test of whether the executive branch can seize Congress's power of the purse, and why the Supreme Court may get to decide it. We dig into Trump's Time interview, the Iran deal he rejected, Pete Hegseth's latest firings, and the AI (Arrogant Idiots) executives lining up at the White House.

With 33 days until the midterms, we also talk about what Democrats can realistically promise (Digby says lowering prices isn't one of them), why accountability matters, and why every vote counts against what we both see as a rigged field. Along the way: a Randy Rainbow cold open, a House Hunters-style ad that has Ken Paxton looking for a home, the news that the DOJ is reviewing the Watergate special prosecutors, and my questions about Trump's new America.gov chatbot.

Find Digby at digbysblog.net and salon.com. Tomorrow it's Emptywheel Friday with Marcy Wheeler.

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It's another Wednesday with Driftglass, and what a Wednesday it was.

 Mangy Fetlocks kicks things off with a song about Senator Eric Schmitt, who tried to spring a gotcha on Jack Smith over a basketball game and instead sprang one on himself.

Before the good stuff, it's the Mal-Lady segment: my latest medical news (carpal tunnel, an ulcer, and thankfully some very welcome benign biopsy results).

Driftglass and I break down the whole fiasco: the staffer behind him who clearly saw it coming, the TMZ follow-up, and Amy Klobuchar calmly pointing out that Smith had it right (it was the Iowa Hawkeyes, not the Atlanta Hawks). We also talk about why a blunder like this won't get the coverage it would if it had been a Democrat.

From there we roam: gas prices and the war that's making them worse, the new fuel economy standards (34.9 mpg by model year 2031, down from 50.4 under the Biden-era rules), and the midterms.

What happens the day after Democrats win? We say we fix what's broken, restore the rule of law, and own the apology to the rest of the world.

We also get into Arizona's races (including those fake "Democrats for Biggs" signs and the allegations swirling around Mark Lamb, who's running in the 5th District:), Elizabeth Lee, the Democratic nurse running against Lamb, a Kansas pastor's case against Christian nationalism, how the evangelical movement got to where it is, what billionaires and hedge funds have done to newspapers, and a bit of good news about a local paper that found a way to survive.

We close on the difference between breaking news and making sense of it, why our healthcare system doesn't look at the whole patient, and why independent, paywall-free media depends on listeners who can chip in.

Find Driftglass at driftglass.blogspot.com and the Professional Left Podcast at ProLeftPod.com.

The Nicole Sandler Show is independent and listener-supported, based at nicolesandler.com

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Jack Smith testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the theater was almost as remarkable as the testimony. In his opening statement, Smith said the evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump committed serious crimes, and that he'd bring the same case against a president of either party. Then came the questioning. Senator Eric Schmitt accused Smith of attending an Atlanta Hawks game and perjuring himself. Turns out Smith had gone to see the Iowa Hawkeyes play Maryland, and Senator Klobuchar had to point out the mix-up. Ted Cruz delivered a long speech about Javert, John Kennedy did his country-lawyer bit, and at one point Chairman Grassley left without putting anyone in charge.

I also share what happened when I went to the Heritage Foundation's website to link its voter fraud research and couldn't find it, why the Brennan Center's analysis of Heritage's own database is worth your time (ten in-person impersonation cases in billions of votes), my test of the new America.gov AI assistant, and a hopeful closing clip from James Talarico. Alex Lawson returns Monday, and Driftglass joins me tomorrow.

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Welcome to a new week in opposite world. I opened today's show with a video that put a smile on my face (and apologize for playing something created by AI which I said I wouldn't do). Then I got into Friday's Extreme Court shadow docket rulings: a 6-3 unsigned order letting the administration use the SAVE database to check voter rolls (which, as I explain, is a solution in search of a problem, and one that has already flagged actual citizens as non-citizens) and a third refusal to let Missouri use its redrawn congressional map. I also shared how I'm approaching my ballot, and followed up on last week's interview with Claude with some new frightening AI news out of OpenAI.

Then Dan Froomkin of Press Watch (presswatchers.org) and Heads Up News (headsupnews.org) joins me. His latest column reimagines the media's coverage of Trump's taxpayer-funded ads as if Trump had shot someone on 5th Avenue, and we talk about why the press keeps normalizing the abnormal, what a real follow-up question looks like, and what will need fixing once Trump is gone.

After Dan, it's a news roundup: the FBI's No. 2 resigns, the reaction to that "paid for by the US government" ad, the nor'easter and hurricane season, the Cornell fraternity case, the war with Iran and gas prices, and January 6th defendants suing for damages. Stick around for bonus overtime with Spocko, who calls in from the Northeast.

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It's Empty Wheel Friday, and Marcy Wheeler is here to make sense of an absolutely chaotic week.

We start with Trump's underwhelming state visit with Xi Jinping — the press bans, the Thucydides trap reference, and the trade detente that buys us two more months before the real reckoning. From there it's straight into the numbers that should terrify Republicans: diesel prices spiking, bond markets flashing warning signs, and a Senate map that now includes Kansas and maybe even Mississippi. Marcy walks through race after race — Roger Marshall's brutal OB-GYN lawsuit story, Susan Collins' bribery scandal, Mary Peltola's iguana, Sherrod Brown and the crypto money that showed up too late to do much damage.

Then we go deep on the legal front: a DOJ prosecutor in the Broadview 6 case just resigned and filed a bombshell response that puts the US Attorney at the center of the misconduct he tried to pin on her. And Marcy breaks down what she's calling Judge Aileen Cannon's "two-hat problem" — running a grand jury designed for vengeance while also enforcing her own gag order, in a case built on a legal theory so thin the 11th Circuit already rejected it back in 2022.

Forty days to the end of this election. It's going to get crazier before it gets better.

Read Marcy's work and support it at emptywheel.net.

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Today I did something I've never done before — I interviewed Claude AI, live, about all the unsettling stuff happening with AI right now (blackmail tests, hacking incidents, hallucinations nearly causing an international incident). Mixed feelings, honest conversation. Also: Trump's UN speech was something else. Tomorrow, in honor of Bruce Springsteen's 76th birthday, you'll hear my interview with Warren Zanes about the Nebraska album and movie.

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It's Constitution Day, and we're 46 days from the end of voting in the midterms. I open with YouTube's attempt to demonetize and block a Hamilton-cast get-out-the-vote video — over parody music, of all things — so I play it anyway, because getting people to check their voter registration matters more than YouTube's copyright bots. Then I dig into the "Democrats for Biggs" sign campaign spreading across Arizona: an AI-generated, deepfake disinformation operation from Turning Point USA meant to trick voters into thinking Democrats are backing Andy Biggs for governor. It's fake, their signs are everywhere in my neighborhood and I want to know if I can legally do something about it (a caller sets me straight).

Then Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jonathan Kaufman — director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern University — joins me to talk about his new book, When America Roared: How the 1980s Saved, Then Broke, The Country --and Led Us To Today. We trace how Reagan-era decisions on media deregulation, the Fairness Doctrine, and free-market ideology built the "invisible architecture" we're all still living in — from Fox News to Trump's own media instincts. It's a fascinating, sometimes uncomfortable look at how the 80s built today.

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Today has been one of those days when everything that could go wrong did. I'm finally posting this at 7pm because I had to fix the audio which was fubar on today's show. It seems the gremlins that I banished have come back. So I fixed today's show as much as I could, but I still must fix my studio so we'll have a show tomorrow. But do have a listen as Driftglass was excellent as usual. And of course, there was that Kash Patel bestiality discussion near the end. No, I'm not kidding. It's even in the Congressional Record. This regime is so classy... or not!

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