The Politics Guys Michael Baranowski

Mike & May open with a discussion of the guilty verdict in the Hunter Biden gun trial. They discuss Biden’s defense, the possibility of a pardon or commutation by President Biden, Donald Trump’s reaction, and how this may all play out politically.
Next, they turn to two big Supreme Court decisions. In the first of these, a unanimous Court found that the group challenging the FDA’s loosening of restrictions on the abortion drug mifepristone didn’t have standing to sue. Mike agrees, but May feels that standing has become such a degraded doctrine that the right should be able to take advantage of it as much as she feels the left has in the past.
They close with the Court’s ruling that the Trump-era ATF exceeded its authority by banning bump stocks. Mike and May agree with the ruling, but Mike is more inclined to give regulatory agencies some deference in interpreting statutes than May.
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Mike talks about the The Kevin Rose Show. Hope you enjoy it too.

Political scientist Travis Taylor talks with law professor Joshua Douglas about his new book The Court v. The Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights, in which he writes about the U.S. Supreme Court's recent history of prioritizing the power of states to regulate elections over the rights of voters.
Topics Travis and Josh Cover Include:
·      how the Court has changed the standard by which it reviews voting rights cases
·      combating election fraud and maintaining voter access
·      the direction the Court is going in light of more recent decisions in "extreme" cases
·      potential solutions to correct the Court's current course
·      conservative criticisms of the book and why conservatives should read it
Follow Josh Douglas on X
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Check out Mike’s other podcast -  Sustainable Planet.
Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo we’re @PoliticsGuys.
The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
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Trey and Ken finish the Bill of Rights by delving into the origins and significance of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Topics covered include:

Federalist and Anti-Federalist debates during and after the Constitution's drafting, addressing concerns that listing specific rights might imply that others were not protected. 

Does the Ninth Amendment make textualism pointless?

The conflict between the philosophic origins of the Ninth Amendment and why legal scholars abandoned it.

The Tenth Amendment's balance between federal and state power

Lessons learned from the Articles of Confederation

The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions

The modern (1990s) application of the Tenth Amendment.


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Check out How Do We Fix It and Mike’s other podcast - Sustainable Planet.
Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo we’re @PoliticsGuys.
The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
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Trey and Ken start the show with Biden’s immigration order. President Biden has announced a sweeping executive action on immigration, authorizing U.S. immigration officials to deport large numbers of migrants without processing their asylum claims. This new policy, seen as one of the most restrictive border policies by a Democratic president, marks a significant shift in the administration’s approach to border security. Ken partially defends Biden’s order, even if it looks similar to past Trump policies. Trey argues that Biden issued it as a proclamation instead of an executive order because he recognizes it is not inherently constitutional. 
Next, Attorney General Merrick Garland faced intense scrutiny from Republicans this week. Garland was grilled on Capitol Hill and has seen his standing on both the right and the left fall. Ken argues that Garland has overemphasized neutrality and has not properly pursued former President Trump and allies. Trey argues that the left’s attacks on Garland are nearly identical to those from Republicans and are no more founded than those from the Republicans.
Finally, the pair discuss Dr. Anthony Fauci’s testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, where he addressed critical issues related to the U.S. response to COVID-19. Fauci admitted that the “6 feet apart” social distancing recommendation lacked robust empirical support and it was more of an arbitrary guideline. He also acknowledged that the lab leak theory regarding the origins of COVID-19 should not be dismissed outright, a significant shift from his earlier stance. Both Trey and Ken continue to agree he largely did well in his capacity during the pandemic, however, Trey faults him for wrongfully downplaying, primarily for political reasons, the possibility of a lab leak in China.
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Check out How Do We Fix It and Mike’s other podcast - Sustainable Planet.
Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo we’re @PoliticsGuys.
The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
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Mike talks with Les Leopold, co-founder and executive director of the Labor Institute, a nonprofit organization that develops and conducts education and policy programs for unions, environmental organizations, community groups, and immigrant worker centers on workplace health and safety, the environment, economics, and movement building. He’s also the author of multiple books. His latest is Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It, which they talk about in this episode.
Topics Mike & Les Discuss Include:
- if Wall Street is really at war with workers
- how to understand ultra-low unemployment rates
- technology, globalization, and US workers
- the economic and psychological toll of mass layoffs
- the decline of public sector unions in the US
- how government policy can make things better for workers
The Politics Guys on Facebook | X
Check out Mike’s other podcast -  Sustainable Planet.
Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo we’re @PoliticsGuys.
The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices