Ballrooms, ‘Bama and (Very) Bad Behavior
6/1/20261 hr 38 min
Leah, Kate, and Melissa recap another busy week in legal news, covering the continued fallout from the Voting Rights Act case, Louisiana v. Callais, the ongoing saga of the DOJ’s insurrectionist slush fund, wild twists with the Broadview Six, more ballroom drama, the curious case of the Georgia judge who had loud sex in her chambers and then lied about it, and more. They also cover SCOTUS opinions involving compassionate release for prisoners and compelled arbitration before Leah speaks with University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade about her book, The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government.
Favorite things:
- Kate: Trump's Illegal $250 Bill: A Micro-History of Autocracy, Ruth Ben-Ghiat (Lucid); How Callais broke the Voting Rights Act and weaponized the equal protection clause, Issa Kohler-Hausmann & Kevin Z. Yang (SCOTUSblog); Beg For Me (JADE Remix), Lilly Allen; Harmeet Dhillon Is Not Wasting Any Time, Quinta Jurecic (The Atlantic); Brown’s Advancing Impact on Maternal and Reproductive Health Lab
- Leah: Ronny Chieng’s Harvard speech; Hit the Wall, Gracie Abrams; Midnight Sun, Zara Larsson
- Melissa: Strangers, Belle Burden; her event at Politics and Prose at The Wharf on 6/3/26; Liar's Kingdom: How to Stop Trump's Deceit and Save America, Andrew Weissmann
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2026!
- 6/20/26 – New York City
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Preorder a signed paperback of Leah’s book, Lawless, here.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsLeah Litman· Host0:00
Strict Scrutiny is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The Trump administration's excessive Christian nationalist rhetoric is only building as we move toward the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Those most caught in the crossfire are federal workers. Specifically, a multi-faith group of federal employees filed a new lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture for violating the separation of church and state and the religious freedom promised in our Constitution. Our friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State received emails from multiple Department of Agriculture employees. A handful of employees reached out saying the proselytizing Easter email sent by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins to more than 100,000 Agriculture employees is an abuse of power that violates the separation of church and state promised in the First Amendment. And you know what? They are right. As Katie Fang and I talked about when Hegseth, Keg's Breath, was proselytizing to the troops, federal officials aren't supposed to be inserting religion into federal responsibilities and federal officials' authority. It's in the First Amendment, the first one, which prohibits the federal government from establishing a religion, including in the federal workforce. The hits keep on coming from this administration, and Americans United is doing their best to keep up the fight against Christian nationalism. If you want to help, head to au.org/crooked to learn more about their work and how you can get involved.
Speaker 21:20
Thumbtack presents Uncertainty Strikes. I was surrounded. The aisle and the options were closing in. There were paint