The Gray Area with Sean Illing2 Heinä 2018

The Supreme Court vs. Democracy

If 75,000 votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania had tipped the other way, President Hillary Clinton would’ve named both Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy’s replacements. But they didn’t. And now Donald Trump, in less than two years, will fill as many Supreme Court seats as Barack Obama did in eight. When news of Kennedy’s retirement came down, I knew exactly who I wanted to talk to: Dahlia Lithwick, Slate’s exceptional legal analyst, and host of the podcast Amicus. I can’t say our conversation made me feel better about the Supreme Court. If someone as knowledgeable and humane as Lithwick is this alarmed, then, well, it’s alarming. But it at least left me feeling like I understood the stakes. Lithwick is brilliant in tracing the ideological and political trends that have led us to this moment: We talk about how the Court has moved steadily right for a generation, such that John Roberts — John Roberts! — is now the closest thing to a swing vote; how lifetime appointments have collided with deep politicization; what it means that voting rights are under attack from judges who wouldn’t hold their jobs if America was more of a democracy, and much more. The right has won the fight for the Supreme Court for the next few decades, and they have done so because they were more focused, more committed, and better organized. This is how they did it, and what comes next. Recommended book: One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy by Carol Anderson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(765)

How to sink into silence

How often do you find silence? And do you know what to do with it when you do? Today’s guest is essayist and travel writer Pico Iyer. His latest book is Aflame: Learning From Silence, which recounts h...

10 Maalis 202546min

How to change your personality

If you could change anything about your personality, anything at all, what would it be? And why would you want to change it?Writer Olga Khazan spent a year trying to answer those questions, and docume...

3 Maalis 202539min

Is ignorance truly bliss?

Are you ever happier not knowing something? As Aristotle famously claimed, “All human beings want to know.” But denial and avoidance are also human impulses. Sometimes they’re even more powerful than...

17 Helmi 202534min

Is America broken?

What do you think of America’s institutions? Alana Newhouse, founder and editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine, says that may be the most important political question in America. In an essay published mo...

10 Helmi 202549min

The cost of spending time alone

Americans are spending an historic amount of time alone, a phenomenon that is often referred to as an "epidemic of loneliness." But are we actually lonely? Or do we prefer being by ourselves? And if w...

3 Helmi 202541min

Attention pays (with Chris Hayes)

Where is your attention right now? Where was it a minute ago? A second ago? Where will it be a minute from now? One of the primary features of this age — the age of the internet and smartphones and al...

27 Tammi 202550min

How to be happy

What does it take to be happy? Professor of psychology Laurie Santos just might have the answer. This week The Gray Area takes a break from its regular programming to bring you an episode of another ...

20 Tammi 20251h 6min

The screens between us

What is the first thing that you touch in the morning? What about the last thing you touch before you go to sleep? For many of us, it’s our phone. Digital devices are with us constantly, often putting...

13 Tammi 202545min