Background Briefing: July 30, 2024
Biden’s Supreme Court Reform Plans Now That Leonard Leo and the Federalists Have Stacked the Courts
We begin with President Biden’s call for reform of the Supreme Court on Monday which fell short of adding new justices to the bench but that hasn’t stopped the Republicans from fulminating that he plans to stack the court even though Leonard Leo and the Federalists have installed the 6 far-right justices on the Supreme Court and have stacked the judiciary with judges like Aileen Cannon. Joining us is Harry Litman, a former United States attorney and deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department. A professor of constitutional law and national security law at the University of California San Diego and University of California Los Angeles, he is the Executive Producer & host of the Talking Feds podcast and Youtube channel and the host of the Talking San Diego speaker series and the senior legal affairs columnist at the Los Angeles Times where his latest article which we discuss is “With Supreme Court reform ideas, Biden is playing the long game.”
As Governor Shapiro Auditions for the VP Slot, We Look at His Pros and Cons
Then with Governor Whitmer and Governor Shapiro speaking at rally for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania yesterday, which some interpreted as an audition for the VP slot, we speak with Christopher Borick, a Professor of Political Science and Director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. He is a nationally recognized public opinion researcher who has conducted over 300 large-scale public opinion surveys during the past two decades. He is the co-director of the National Surveys on Energy and the Environment and currently conducts surveys for the Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, Pennsylvania and we will examine the pros and cons of Josh Shapiro for Vice President.
The Cryptocurrency Industry is All-In For Trump Who is Promising to Give Away the Store to Them
Then finally we look into the flood of donations to Trump and Vance coming in from the crypto industry with Trump promising to give away the store at their conference in Nashville on Saturday while Vance headlined a fundraiser on Monday at the home of the CEO of BitGo. Joining us to discuss the Trump/Vance embrace of the Bitcoin industry that harms the environment and enables money laundering and extortion is Molly White, a software engineer and cryptocurrency critic. In addition to her longer-form critical writing about the topic, she maintains the website Web3IsGoingGreat.com, where she catalogs only some of the many disasters happening in cryptocurrency, decentralized finance, NFTs, and other blockchain-based projects. She is also the author of the Citations Needed newsletter where her latest post is ”When did cryptocurrency policy become a voter issue? I don’t believe that it has.”