Know Your Enemy - Legal Trouble

Matt and Sam finally get to talk about the lawsuit that's been hanging over the podcast; then we turn to analyze three devastating SCOTUS rulings from last month.

Duration: 1h 17m
Broadcast on: 17 Jul 2023
Audio Format: other

After several trying months, Matt and Sam can finally discuss the lawsuit against KYE and Dissent magazine filed by Young Americans Foundation , the successor organization to Young Americans for Freedom. (We prevailed, for now anyway.)

Then we turn to three SCOTUS rulings from the end of the session: (1) Biden vs Nebraska (the student debt ruling); (2) Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (the affirmative action ruling); and (3) 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (the gay wedding website design ruling). Each of these rulings represents a victory for the conservative legal movement, an exercise of raw power by the court, and a blow to dignity and decent policy for millions of Americans. Taken together, they help us understand the workings of the conservative intellectual pipeline — at law schools, fellowships, and well-endowed non-profits — to change federal policy.

How do conservative institutions work together to (in the eyes of the law) turn victims into oppressors and vice versa? Listen to find out.

Sources:

Jennifer Schuessler, "Conservative Group Withdraws Lawsuit Against Left-Wing Podcast," New York Times, July 12, 2023

John A. Andrew III, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (1997)

Sarah Posner, "The Legal Muscle Leading the Fight to End the Separation of Church and State," Washington Spectator, April 1, 2007

Emma Brown and Jon Swaine, "Amy Coney Barrett, Supreme Court Nominee, Spoke at Program Founded to Inspire a 'Distinctly Christian Worldview in Every Area of Law,'" Washington Post, September 27, 2020

Melissa Gira Grant, "The Mysterious Case of the Fake Gay Marriage Website, the Real Straight Man, and the Supreme Court," New Republic, June 29, 2023

Thomas Sowell, "The Day Cornell Died," Weekly Standard, October 30, 1999

Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (2020)

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Oh, right listeners, welcome to episode 75 of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sitman, your podcast co-host, and I'm here with my great friend, Sam Otherbell. Hey, Sam. Hi, Matt. How are you today? I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm good. Doing better than we might have been otherwise. Some listeners will know just this week the New York Times ran a story about a lawsuit we were involved in. We talked about that at the beginning of this episode, so we don't say anything more about that. The first topic for today is the three Supreme Court rulings that came down at the end of their session, those being the ruling on Biden's student loan forgiveness program, and the affirmative action case and the gay wedding design website case, which is about the First Amendment and carving out a place in civil rights law for homophobia. As always, we're grateful to our partners at Descent and now more than ever, because Descent was named in that lawsuit along with me and Sam, so we were really in the trenches with our comrades at Descent. One thing they do for us is if you subscribe on our Patreon for $10, you can do that www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy. Not only do you get all of our bonus episodes, but you get a free digital subscription to Descent, and I think now would be a great time to consider doing that. Support Descent. Support us. Sign up on our Patreon, become a part of the podcast community that is terrifying right-wing organizations the world over. And of course, as always, for $5 a month, you get all of our bonus episodes. As always, we want to thank our intrepid producer, Jesse Brennan, and Will Epstein, who does the music for the podcast. Alright, let's get to it. Here's our discussion of our recent legal problems and some other legal problems. Besetting America. Yes, besetting the United States due to our Supreme Court. Enjoy. Alright, Samuel, shall we get started? Let's do it. Always, I'm excited to record with you, especially because today is a Matt and Sam episode. No interviews, no guests. Just Matt and Sam. That's right. I get to podcast with one of my best buds. Aw. And this is a legal centric episode of Know Your Enemy. We're going to talk about, for most of the episode, the recent Supreme Court cases on affirmative action, student debt cancellation, and a First Amendment case about making websites for gay people. The horrors, the unimaginable horrors of being coerced to make a website for Adam and Steve. And obviously, given these are Supreme Court decisions, legal cases, there's been a lot of commentary and even podcasting about the substance, the legal reasoning of those cases,

Transcription truncated.

Matt and Sam finally get to talk about the lawsuit that's been hanging over the podcast; then we turn to analyze three devastating SCOTUS rulings from last month.