Portrait of a John Roberts on Fire [TEASER]
These “boys” and in some cases “gals” keep proving us right! The 2024-2025 Supreme Court term was a beautiful illustration of this podcast’s entire thesis: this is an institution untethered by law, beholden only to right-wing ideology, and led by a real dipshit Chief Justice.
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5-4 is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto. Leon Neyfakh provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Transcriptions of each episode are available at fivefourpod.com
Follow the show at @fivefourpod on most platforms. On BlueSky, find Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social, Michael @fleerultra.bsky.social, and Rhiannon @aywarhiannon.bsky.social.
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Transcript
Hey everyone, this is Leon from Prologue Projects.
On this subscriber-only episode of 5 to 4, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are reflecting on the recently concluded Supreme Court term.
With the justices in recess for the summer, it's a good time to look back at all the wins they handed the Trump administration over the course of the term and to take stock of how the court's conservative majority now fits into the MAGA movement.
This is 5-4, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.
Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have buried our nation in scandals, like the New York Times is trying to bury Zoran Mamdani.
I'm Peter.
I'm here with Rhiannon.
Hey.
And Michael.
Hey, everybody.
Have you you heard about this lying piece of shit?
This scumbag.
Have you seen the website with the fake New York Times Mamdani headlines?
No.
Oh, they're very good.
It's like a generator.
Like, it'll generate fake headlines for you.
They're pretty good.
One I saw was like, Mom Dani's economic message failed to move these Trump voters in a rural Tennessee dining.
I saw one that was like, maybe it's not quite the same website, but I saw one that was like
breaking.
Mamdani told a waiter, you too, when they said, enjoy your meal.
Yes.
Yeah.
This one is right up your alley, Peter.
Eric Adams questions Mamdani's commitment to serving interests of turkey.
Nice.
The Mamdani hit pieces are going to keep coming.
Oh, they're so bad.
I guess they don't have much yet.
You know, maybe they'll find something, but like, so far, what they have is that when he was 18, he checked African-American with a clarifying note that said Ugandan
on his college application.
And, you know, for someone who at that point had spent more than a third of their life in Uganda.
Yeah, born in Uganda, has a Ugandan parent.
Doesn't feel particularly weird.
But I guess to the New York Times, this matters because in their mind, the very act of checking that box on a college application is cheating.
Yes.
Yes.
And so that's, that's what makes them upset.
And then it came out that his SAT scores were like 2140 out of 2,400, which like 97 percentile.
Yeah, I'm not like familiar with the 2400 scale.
It's just 800, 800, 800.
Right.
But I was just sort of like, that seems high, actually.
That seems really good.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're like, oh, it's median, but lower median for the average incoming Columbia student.
It's like, okay, so it was appropriate for him to apply to Columbia.
It's not crazy he didn't get admitted.
The whole scandal,
I want to talk about this for a second because
you got this right, Peter.
This whole thing,
you have to believe so many insane things to think this is a scandal.
The first thing you have to think is that by checking the African-American box, you're getting some massive leg up
in your admissions process, unfairly so.
Then you have to believe that that's really just code for black.
And so someone of Asian ancestry who was born and raised in Uganda could never authentically believe that African American might include them.
Right.
There's layers to that because then you also have to explain to an 18-year-old who spent basically the first half of their life in Uganda that African-American here is actually just like a term that generally means black rather than African-American.
There are so many layers of just like you have to impute.
Hey, folks, if you want to hear the rest of this episode, you're going to have to subscribe.
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