The Malicious Incompetence of Trump's DOJ

**Leah Litman** (0:00)
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 US. 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 USDA employees. A handful of employees reached out saying the proselytizing Easter email sent by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins to more than 100,000 USDA employees is an abuse of power that violates the separation of church and state promised in the First Amendment. They are absolutely right. Not only is it in the First Amendment, it's in the first sentence of the First Amendment, quote, no law respecting an establishment of religion and no means no, as in no proselytizing government employees.
The hits just 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_2** (1:15)
Mr. Chief Justice, please support. It's an old joke, but when an argument man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:27)
She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex.
All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.

**Kate Shaw** (1:58)
Hello and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We are your hosts today. I'm Kate Shaw.

**Leah Litman** (2:04)
And I'm Leah Litman. This is, alas, another Just the Two of Us episode. We are without Melissa Murray today. But fear not, the Department of Justice may have beclowned themselves just enough that we think we have some gags, even without Melissa jokes and humor.
Okay, so today we're gonna be covering the opinions that the Supreme Court managed to release. Spoiler, not that many. So most of it is gonna be a smorgasbord of news that includes Judges Going Wild, as in Feral, the Department of Justice doing a lot of oopsies, and the White House signaling that it basically views all of anti-discrimination law as unconstitutional. More precisely, it appears to think that conventional anti-discrimination law is unconstitutional because anti-discrimination law is itself discrimination. As always, it will make a lot of sense and we will explain it.

**Kate Shaw** (2:53)
Two things, one, when you said it is just the two of us, the rhythm of your voice saying just the sound is like you were saying this is just the tip episode and I just wanted to make sure that it is not just the tip episode.

**Leah Litman** (3:02)
I was honestly thinking of the just the two of us song as I was saying it like in that rhythm.

**Kate Shaw** (3:08)
Okay, well, why not both?
And yes, as Leah said, the DOJ has been very busy this week. We will explain. But does it sort of feel to you like there's this little bit of a gap because the Supreme Court is taking its sweet time in issuing like the horror show of decisions to come and so DOJ has seized the opportunity to kind of step into the breach. Anyway, we will elaborate. And because we will spend a fair bit of time talking about the Department of Justice, including what prosecutors should not be doing, we're going to end this episode with a segment about what they should be doing. And that is a segment with a first time strict scrutiny guest that we cannot wait to share with you. So if you are wondering what can be done to check federal law enforcement and their overreach and protect our democracy in the lead up to the election, please tune in for that last segment.

**Leah Litman** (3:57)
And now to Supreme Court opinions. So we got three opinions last Thursday.
None of the big ones. This means there are now 20 opinions left in argued cases and potentially just two weeks left of the term. That's going to make for a completely bananas next two weeks and possibly more if they go into the week of June 29th. It seems like they are likely to start adding opinion days. So brace yourselves for that and possible bonus episodes to go along with those good times. I just want to say, like, what is taking them so long because I wrote an updated version of Lawless while you guys were doing shit and it's actually out tomorrow. So if you are looking for something to read and it's the absence of Supreme Court opinions, you can get the paperback version of Lawless out tomorrow, just in FYI.