Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - The Supreme Court’s Dangerous Return to Its Roots

Get your tickets for Amicus Live on May 24th. 

On this week’s Amicus, we head to Seattle for a live taping of the show at the Cross Cut Festival with guest Michael Waldman, President of NYU Law School’s Brennan Center. Dahlia Lithwick asks him about his new book, THE SUPERMAJORITY: How the Supreme Court Divided America, and what the ongoing ethics scandals and plummeting public approval for the court mean for our democracy. They also look ahead to next month when the court’s legitimacy may be stretched even further by major decisions that fly in the face of the majority of public opinion.


In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to talk about the decisions that came out this week concerning pork producers and public corruption, which delivered some surprising and depressingly unsurprising opinions. They also try to figure out how many more times E Jean Carroll might have to sue Donald Trump to halt his defamation demolition derby.


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Dahlia’s book Lady Justice: Women, the Law and the Battle to Save America, is also available as an audiobook, and Amicus listeners can get a 25 percent discount by entering the code “AMICUS” at checkout. https://books.supportingcast.fm/lady-justice

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What Next | Daily News and Analysis - TBD | Who’s Afraid of A.I.?

Artificial intelligence—as it already exists today—is drawing from huge troves of surveillance data and is rife with the biases built into the algorithm, in service of the huge corporations that develop and maintain the systems. The fight for the future doesn’t look like war with Skynet; it’s happening right now on the lines of the Writer’s Guild strike. 


Guests: 

Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, co-founder of the AI Now Institute at NYU


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Slate Books - A Word: The Privilege of Play

The persistent stereotype that role-playing, tabletop game players are overwhelmingly white is rooted in race, housing, and history. The suburban homes where people could dedicate a surface to a sprawling, multiplayer board game used to be almost exclusively white. And the knights, wizards, and other fantastic creatures in these games were closely tied to European mythology. But a more diverse world of game playing is rising, with more people of color getting a seat at the creative table. On today’s episode of A Word, Jason Johnson discusses diversity in hobby games with Aaron Trammell, a professor of informatics at U.C. Irvine. He’s also the author of the new book The Privilege of Play: A History of Hobby Games, Race and Geek Culture.


Guest: Aaron Trammell, author of The Privilege of Play: A History of Hobby Games, Race and Geek Culture


Podcast production by Kristie Taiwo-Makanjuola


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Make an impact this Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month by helping Macy’s on their mission to fund APIA Scholars. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more.

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What Next | Daily News and Analysis - Debt Ceiling Dinner Theater

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that June 1 is the “drop dead date” by which the American government has to either raise the debt ceiling or run out of money to pay its obligations. Can President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy come to an agreement that will mollify their bases and keep the government working? And why does it feel like we have to go through this ritual every couple of years? 


Guest: Jordan Weissmann, Washington editor at Semafor.


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What Next | Daily News and Analysis - The Border’s New Normal

Activated during the Trump administration in 2020, Title 42 is a controversial border policy that makes it easier to quickly expel asylum seekers. Even though Biden campaigned on moving away from Trump’s anti-immigration stance,, his administration has also leaned on Title 42 to control the border. . Now that the policy is being lifted this week, pressure is on the Biden administration to answer the practical question: “What does a fair and humane asylum system look like in America?” 


Guest: Arelis Hernández, immigration reporter at the Washington Post


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What Next | Daily News and Analysis - Why Richard Glossip Has Escaped Execution Nine Times

Richard Glossip has been on death row for 26 years and stared down nine execution dates. The 1997 killing that sent him to death row has been investigated numerous times and the actual killer—who brutally bludgeoned a motel owner with a baseball bat—has even sought to recant his testimony against Glossip. Over the decades, anti-death penalty activists and a growing number of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have spoken out to save Richard Glossip. But now his case is in the Supreme Court’s hands.


Guests: 

Liliana Segura, investigative journalist at The Intercept focused on prisons and harsh sentencing.


Mark Joseph Stern, Slate senior writer covering courts and the law.


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Make an impact this Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month by helping Macy’s on their mission to fund APIA Scholars. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more.

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What Next | Daily News and Analysis - Can DeSantis Beat Disney?

To hear Ron DeSantis tell it, “Disney” represents “wokeness.” To the state of Florida, though, the company represents tourist dollars and tax revenue. As the war between Mickey and the Florida governor heads to the courts, Disney CEO Bob Iger doesn’t seem worried. Is DeSantis?


Guest: Lori Rozsa, the Washington Post’s Florida correspondent. 


If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.


Make an impact this Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month by helping Macy’s on their mission to fund APIA Scholars. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more.

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What Next | Daily News and Analysis - TBD | What’s Going on at Meta?

Meta’s reached a sort of mid-life crisis. Between the layoffs, the stagnant metaverse and Facebook’s dwindling profile, does Zuckerberg have a plan here?


Guests: 

Naomi Nix, Washington Post reporter


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Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - Clarence Thomas and the Billionaires

After weeks of controversy, piled upon intrigue, heaped with scandal and topped with crisis at the Supreme Court, it can be hard to get your bearings. What’s illegal, what’s unethical, what’s just a bit hinky? And what does it really mean for an institution that is about to hand down decisions that reach into every part of our lives, from justice to climate, from youtube to universities? On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Lisa Graves from True North Research. Lisa ia a veteran investigator of the dark money spigot that has been flooding the Supreme Court and rewarding some of the justices, and the causes and people close to their hearts. If you can’t see the woods for the trees, Lisa will paint you a picture. And that painting will, of course, include; Clarence Thomas, Leonard Leo, Harlan Crow and Mark Paoletta. 

In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia is joined by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern to talk about the possible end of Chevron deference the impacts for the administrative state, the Texas abortion case that is a case study in SB8 working exactly as it was intended, and why it is so puzzling that the Justices won’t rescue themselves from the ethics quagmire that’s sinking trust in SCOTUS.

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