Best of the Program | Guests: Tim Barton & Josh Hammer | 6/23/22

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Today, I'm just going to give you a quick update on what's on the podcast: Supreme Court, Supreme Court, Supreme Court.

Some incredible rulings came out.

We covered it all, and then some.

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the best of the blend back program

okay so there are many many many

uh big cases that could be game-changing uh we're going to go over a few of them i think today we might get the ruling on the EPA.

If our theory is correct,

they'll release six cases today, seven cases tomorrow, which would clear the docket.

They've been averaging about five every day, so it's not a big leap to add two tomorrow and one today.

But that would leave the Supreme Court still in Washington, D.C.

for a week after the Roe v.

Wade

decision.

Stu joins us now.

Stu,

I can only come up with 12 cases that still remain on the docket,

but let's go through some of these.

I actually

would really like to start

with West Virginia versus the EPA.

This one is, I think, could be as game-changing as the Commerce Clause was for FDR in the other direction back in the 1940s.

What happened in the 1940s, the Commerce Clause allows the federal government to regulate trade between states, etc., etc.

Well, FDR's administration took that and said,

well,

everything fits into

federal jurisdiction.

Because

even if you're using wheat or selling wheat or growing wheat, the pollination pollination will go from one wheat farm to another wheat farm across state lines.

And so we have to regulate that.

You know, some of the products made by wheat, or if you are building a car in Detroit, well, where are you getting the products?

Maybe some of them come from another place.

This allowed the federal government to bring in OSHA and all of these federal agencies into our lives.

That's the biggest problem that the

progressives brought to the administration, and it's long overdue to be overturned.

This one doesn't overturn that.

However, this one does

say

that the EPA doesn't have the right

to just make up a law if it's vague.

This would go for not only clean air, but it would also go for

the drugs that now you have to take them.

OSHA says we're there to protect workers, so now you have to take the vaccine, et cetera.

All of the government overreach that we've seen recently and is still in the pipeline coming, this could change that course dramatically.

Do I have this right, Stu?

Yeah, I think

what people, when you think about this particular case, you should think about it as the most important case that will affect

everybody's daily life, right?

Where, look, abortion is a huge, huge ruling, but most people aren't going to get abortions, right?

I still think it's a more important case, but it's not, it's not, most people don't get abortions.

Most people, I mean, statistically, most people don't carry their firearms with them.

We're talking about the Second Amendment case, which is very important.

So

I would say the abortion case is a huge moral case, but not one that's going to affect your everyday life, but will affect us as people and our country and the direction of our country.

The Second Amendment is a very important constitutional case,

even though it won't affect most people because, like you said, most people don't carry guns.

But the same can be said about the EPA, except unlike guns, and I think this is the point you were making: unlike guns, this will touch all of our lives.

This will touch us at the gas station, in our place of business, at our homes, everything.

Yeah.

And basically, this addresses essentially a workaround that the government has developed over the years, which is, hey, I really want something and Congress won't pass a law to address it.

So what if I just do it?

This is something that Obama in 2000, I think it was 14, decided to do with climate change, where he said, we're just going to start regulating these power plants.

And everyone said, well, you have been trying to pass legislation to do this for years and years and have been unsuccessful doing it.

How can you all of a sudden decide that you're going to do it?

And he said, well, we looked back, we found, it's like the

Nicholas Cage movie, the Constitution movie.

They like found a secret part of the Clean Air Act that will allow them to do this.

It was text written in invisible ink on the back.

Right.

And only progressives have the special glasses.

Right, exactly.

And so what they basically did is say, we have the power based on this old

part of the Clean Air Act that had never been used before to do this.

And their argument was it was written in such a vague way that the EPA can just make up their own rules on it.

And this is something we've talked about before.

It's called Chevron deference, which goes back to an old Supreme Court case, which basically says, if we're not sure, if it's really vague the way the law is written, then whatever agency is tied into it can pretty much decide and write their own law.

Which is this is a terrible, terrible idea.

It's something that is absolutely against the way the founders believed this country would work.

Correct.

I mean, they didn't even have any of these agencies.

And unconsciously,

right.

Right.

It's absolutely unconstitutional.

And that is, this is the direction the Biden and Obama and Wilson administration, FDR, this is the direction they want to take the country.

They want to take it away from Congress and the courts.

They want to just be able to, and this is, you know, when this was first thought of at the turn of the century, this word wasn't a bad word yet they want to just dictate they want a dictator at the top who is just an administrator and you know congress will say yep we think that smoking is bad and then the administration can do whatever it wants regarding smoking.

Yeah.

Now, obviously, with this particular case specifically, it would have to do a lot with things like energy prices.

And there's tons and tons of rules, not the one that we're talking about here, but there's tons and tons of rules already in the EPA that affect your energy prices and

your freedom to spend your money the way that you want to.

The particular rule here was put in place by Obama, but was actually taken out by Trump.

So it's not currently in effect, but it addresses this overarching idea.

And if you want to talk about a really relevant, really relevant usage of these types of powers, it's what you saw happen to you during during COVID, where places like the CDC, places like OSHA were able to come up with these wide-ranging powers we never knew they had because they had a general dictate to prevent,

to help, you know, the health of

the American people.

And so they take that and they broaden it wildly.

It's how they tried to do vaccine mandates, but again, that was shot down in the courts.

It's how they tried to

do the

rent, the eviction ban.

That was another thing they attempted to do this way.

And we've seen the courts eventually get angry at that as well.

If this gets overturned, there's a good chance that a lot of that stuff will go away.

And you...

We are so used to it.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I'm not sure it will go away because the Biden administration knows these things are being overturned.

They know that they're not supposed to do it.

They just do it until they are told to stop, and then they just continue to do it.

Yeah.

Until the court or somebody, Congress, somebody puts teeth into it and says,

that's already been ruled on, and we're taking away your money until you stop this.

Yeah, I don't think it's going to stop.

And of course they will try and try and try.

The good thing is, though,

when a ruling like this comes down, it's supposedly will set a precedent that lower courts will immediately re overturn this stuff when it's attempted.

You know, one of the big tactics of the left is to pass a big, obviously unconstitutional law, let it take effect, let it have effect on people so that they change their habits, they change their procedures.

And then when it gets overturned in court, well, everyone's already changed already, so it's not that that big of a deal.

The problem with that approach is that they lose the power going forward a lot of times.

They can only use it that one time.

They've tried to amend this process.

They've done this with guns many times, where they'll pass an obviously unconstitutional gun law.

As it's winding through the courts,

it will start taking effect.

People will have to give up their guns.

They'll have to do all these things.

And by the time it gets up to the Supreme Court, they then nullify the law.

They repeal it and then say it's moot.

We don't even have the law anymore.

What are you talking about?

Why are we going to the Supreme Court?

Because they want to be able to avoid the long-term repercussions of losing that power because it would get shut down in the lower courts.

They could do that, but didn't this court take this case after Trump had already overturned it?

Yeah, that's why I hope

this is why I'm hopeful on this one because they took this case

to make a statement about this particular procedure.

And it's totally out of control.

And the point at this point, this is such a part of your daily life, you don't even know it's going on.

It's all these rules that you are lived by, if you own a business, if you work at a business, all of these rules have been implemented through the administrative state in such a thorough way that it's become essentially the way our country operates.

And it was never intended to be that way by the founders.

The progressives certainly like it, but this could be a real dagger in that whole idea, which would just mean that they'd have to freaking pass laws if they want to do stuff.

They could still do a lot of stuff that we won't like, but they actually have to pass a law.

Their argument is, look, these

congressmen don't have the expertise in these particular areas.

They're not environmental experts, so they're not going to know what to put in these laws.

But there's nothing preventing them asking these experts before they present the text of the law.

They can get expert guidance beforehand, and they should get expert guidance beforehand.

But they can't just implement a generic phrase and then let all these bureaucrats that are unelected and unaccountable continue to put these powers in on the American people.

That's not the way our government's supposed to operate.

And there is plenty of evidence from our founding fathers, especially Jefferson.

Jefferson hated these so-called experts.

He didn't trust the experts.

He didn't trust the judges.

He didn't trust the education system.

He just didn't trust it.

And most of them, I mean, that's why of the people, for the people, by the people, that's why the people are involved in this.

We have a representative.

Well, if they're not educated enough, well, then they need to educate themselves or they need to call a hearing and bring all of the educated in front of them and us so we can make the decision.

But some unelected expert does not make a decision because they have all the facts.

That goes against everything we know about self-rule.

I'm really, really, really hopeful

on this.

This could be a real, true change in the course of America, at least legally.

But if they make all of these changes, I will tell you, not only are you going to see Jane's revenge on the street and bombings at abortion or pro-life centers, because that's what they've said they're going to do, but you're also going to see a massive push to pack the court

because

the progressives don't like it when they don't get their way.

They kick and scream until they do.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.

This appears to be a very good day for the Constitution.

The gun ruling has just come out from the Supreme Court.

The decision was written by Thomas,

and it looks very good.

By the way, we're going to have full analysis with Josh Hammer, who is right now just scouring these decisions to give us the

real important parts of it about 30 minutes from now, because they are still coming out.

We'll give you that to you in just a second.

Stu,

just give the essence of what Thomas is saying on this.

Yeah, quick 6-3 decision

on the sort of ideological lines you would expect here.

This is a great, to give you a quick excerpt.

The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not a second-class right subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guaranteed.

The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need.

The Second Amendment right to carry arms in public for self-defense is no different.

So it is as good as you could expect, and it's from Thomas.

It's a long ruling.

There's going to be a lot of good nuggets into it, and we'll get into it coming up.

Okay, we'll get into it about a half an hour after we've had time to really digest all of it.

That's coming up with Josh Hammer in just about 30 minutes.

Tim Barton is here.

He's the president of Wall Builders, and also he is

part of the American Journey Summer Institute on American History.

Our kids learn dates and names, and that's all they learn.

And so they don't really learn anything.

They don't learn anything of importance.

They can't defend the country, the Constitution.

They don't even know why it was written.

I have actually asked many people before, try this.

It'll scare the hell out of you next week.

What country did the United States break away from in 1776?

No clue.

No clue.

It is terrifying.

Tim, welcome to the program.

Thanks.

I am now a little scared to talk to people about Great Britain, or England, or

I don't know, but I'm nervous now.

Yeah, I know.

I know.

You have, I did a special last night, and I stood in front of this old schoolhouse and it actually, the hills go up and down as you're on your way.

So it is technically, when my grandparents said I walked five miles to school uphill both ways, technically they were right on this schoolhouse.

But it was amazing to see.

It was this building that was cut in half by this folding wall

and little kids on one side and bigger kids on the other.

And you have something that in those kinds of schools, back before we had the Department of Education, we had all the teachers' unions, we used to learn through catechism, which is you would learn the concepts of them and then you'd have to defend it, correct?

Right.

Yeah, we actually, I brought several things with me over to show, but one of them is that early catechism or one of the catechisms I think you're referring to.

Yeah, okay.

So this is on the Constitution.

And see how many of these you can answer yourself.

This was given to not eighth grade students.

This was for

seventh grade to fourth grade or fourth grade to seventh grade.

So presumably, because there was no Department of Education, education was handled locally.

So oftentimes the teacher would choose what she thought was the most appropriate, what he thought was the most appropriate for the students of that age.

This is an elementary catechism.

So it's a beginner catechism, and it was used in school.

So at this point, you're guessing maybe fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh grade, because there were only eighth levels or eight grades back then, but it was on the Constitution.

And they literally start with the very beginning from 1776 when America became a nation, and we are a Republican form of government.

And it goes through the sequence.

But some of the questions they ask are genuinely astounding.

I've chose a few fun ones just to give the indication of.

Stu, hang on.

I know, Stu, look up from the court for a second and see if you can answer any of these.

I've done this, I would absolutely fail.

Okay, go ahead.

Okay, so

it's a setup question.

As you mentioned, there's catechisms, there's questions and answers.

So, a question in the sequence says, May members of Congress be arrested, that is, seized by a sheriff or constable for debts they owe while they are attending to their public duty.

So, while they're serving in Congress, can they be arrested for owing debts?

I have no idea.

So, the answer is: I think the answer is, I think the answer answer is no, but after they leave, once they're finished with the business, they can be?

They can be arrested while they're sitting in Congress or if they're on their way to Congress.

But if they're done with their business of Congress, you can arrest them afterwards.

Or if they're back home, you can arrest them for debts they owe.

However, the answer goes on to says that Congress's job is so important that they can't be arrested while going or returning to their home or the place where Congress meets.

unless

they have done one of three things.

What are the three things?

Next question is, what are the three things the Constitution says

you can arrest a sitting congressman or senator for?

Three things they can be arrested for.

Treason, murder,

bribery.

Well, it actually is what they tried to charge President Trump with was a breach of the peace.

So it's a treason, a felony, or a breach of the peace.

And then it says, when is the person guilty of treason?

And so the whole thing, the catechism is a building block where they walk you from the very beginning, but it literally walks through Article 1, then Article 2, then Article 3, and Article 4.

So it's a sequence through this.

Everything is question and answer, but this is what children were getting when they were in that one-room schoolhouse when we talk about how much further advanced they were in an educational position at a very young age.

This is part of how they got there.

It's amazing because my grandfather only went up to third grade.

He got up to third grade.

He could neither read nor write, but he was a wildly intelligent man.

And

I can't, I mean, you have kids that are going, you know,

graduating from high school, even going to college, and they're morons, absolute morons.

It's incredible.

It is.

And one of the things we know is that even the Department of Education has revealed that it's approximately 19% of high school graduates who are graduating functionally illiterate, they cannot read or write.

And so those are also students that oftentimes go to college.

And

I remember being in college around people who really did not know any kind of structure of sentences and paragraphs and writing things.

And I just thought, this is crazy, but this is the reality of the brokenness of the education system.

I know that I saw some of the special last night.

This is part of the problem.

And the further removed education has become from parents, the less involved parents have been, the more it's allowed this brokenness to continue.

Yeah, we've got to break up the Department of Education.

This administrative state has got to be broken down.

It's got to be closed.

There's no reason that Washington is deciding what we can and cannot do in our own local schools.

That's madness, absolute madness.

We also are working with, through our American Journey Experience, we have our summer institute that teaches kids American history.

And we have one more this summer.

When is the next one starting?

It's July 18th through 22nd here in Dallas.

Okay.

And are we still taking applications?

We are.

We do have a few spots still available.

If people want to sign up, they can go to the American Journey Experience or Mercury One or Wall Builders.

All those websites will have places where they can sign up.

And this is something that there is an application process, there's an interview process because our goal is we're not trying to make converts, right?

Some parents get concerned and they want their kids to be changed from the socialistic ideas.

Our goal for this program is to make disciples of kids who already believe that truth exists and just want to be equipped and grow and learn more.

And so that way we can spend time helping kids go deeper, not just trying to convert them from the craziness of what they've learned from their professors.

Right.

This one is very specific because this is going for 18 to 24 year olds.

These are people in college.

These, we have had some that are a little wishy-washy and kind of torn back and forth.

But we're really trying to focus on the kids that generally get it.

I mean, they don't have to understand American history back and forth, but they understand that we're a decent nation, that, you know, we were founded in God

because it's a very short, this year, it's a short, short season because of all of our schedules.

And so it's a week, which normally takes us two weeks to do.

We're packing it into one week.

And these kids are transformed.

So if you know, you know, or maybe your son or daughter is

going into college or in college, they want to understand American history.

They want to be able to defend it.

They want to be able to find out how to find the truth.

We're not teaching the truth.

We're teaching you how to find the truth by showing you the original documents.

Please go to Mercury One or American Journey Experience or wallbuilders.com and you can find all of the

one of those, just fill out the form application, but do it right away.

How's our class doing this week?

I talked to them Monday when they first came in, and I don't think you had broken them down yet.

My favorite part of this is Tim is so good at rhetoric.

He starts with, so tell me what you believe.

And by the end of the day, all of the students are like, I don't know what I believe in.

Breaks them down on, can you defend what you believe?

And

that breaks the arrogance of today

and allows them to open up their mind and go, okay, all right, if I'm going to say I believe something, I better know why I believe it, correct?

Absolutely.

And it's something that we definitely have seen at this point now being on the fourth day in with these students.

And as you mentioned, normally it's a two-week process.

So we're able to take a little more time.

Now we're definitely force feeding, cramming some things as fast as we can.

But it's really...

It's so fun to see kids that are hungry.

They want to know truth.

And as you mentioned on the first day, we try to expose that they might not know as much as they think they do, right?

They might have some opinions and ideas, but it's maybe not as grounded as they thought they.

At 50, I didn't know as much as I thought I knew.

It's crazy.

And part of the goal of our program is we want to help kids be able to.

have experienced history firsthand holding original documents,

going through the vault and seeing all the artifacts so that when they have a conversation, they can have a much more informed, intelligent, honest conversation saying, actually, I held the original documents and here's what it said.

And I I know that story.

Well, here's, you know, almost like the Paul Harvey.

We tell them, look, you're going to get part of the story.

People are going to promote, right, some of the bad and the evil moments.

And sometimes you need to go, well, actually, there's more to that story.

Here's the Paul Harvey moment, the rest of the story.

Even

there's more bad stuff

in that story.

You know, we want them, we don't ever want any student to ever be surprised by the bad stuff in America because we have done, you know, I ask people, you know, is America good or is America bad?

The answer is yes.

Is Winston Churchill good or was he bad?

Yes.

He's both.

It's the trajectory.

And are you learning from the past and the mistakes?

That's what matters.

There's no doubt about it.

And actually, one of the things on Tuesday, we were going through some of the history of Columbus and Jamestown and Plymouth.

And in Jamestown, we talked about, you know, the 1619 projects trying to say America's bad because of this.

And they're not even telling that story, right?

But if you wanted to say things were bad, we could really go into some bad stuff.

And so we did.

And so we went back to John Smith's Journal and we talked about the starving time in Jamestown and read about the actual cannibalism of Jamestown, where they had 490 people at the beginning of the winter.

And by that spring, they were down to 60.

They had starved to death, but they started eating each other in Jamestown.

And the students, at the end of the day, when we asked him, hey, what something that stood out to you today, the number one thing students said was, I did not know that English colonies ever turned to cannibalism.

I didn't know it got that bad.

And to your point, there definitely are some really bad, despicable, evil moments in American history.

And what we do here is we try to teach students the whole story, but grounded it in truth.

So we're not just making accusations.

We actually pull out the documents and say, well, actually, here's where that was written.

Who wrote that?

Here's the story to equip them to be able to have more honest, intelligent conversations.

The American Journey Experience Summer Institute.

If you want your kids involved 18 to 24, we have a few seats left.

Wallbuilders.com or theamericanjourney.org.

You can also find it at mercury1.org.

Thank you, Tim.

Appreciate it.

Thanks so much.

The best of the Glenn Bank program.

My friend Josh Hammer.

How are you, sir?

Glenn, I'm doing great.

Just a quick point of clarification: I cannot claim the mantle of former Supreme Court clerk.

I'm a great admirer of Justice Alito, but as for myself, I actually only clerked on the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

But with that caveat aside, it's so great to be with you on such a great day for the Constitution.

Well, now I don't know if you have any credibility because I was looking for somebody who specifically clerked.

Josh, I really appreciate the time you've already taken today to look into all of these rulings.

I think this was a very good day for the Constitution.

It is.

I mean, it especially is, look, I mean, we have to talk about this gun case.

I mean, the court determined other cases today.

You know, they've just done this in the past hour.

I would be lying and misleading your listeners if I've said I've been able to comb through them all with a fine-tooth comb.

But certainly what I'm seeing here is a great day.

There's another ruling out, a case called Vega involving the expansion or the lack thereof, as the case may be of an erroneous 1960s-era criminal procedure case known as Miranda v.

Arizona.

This was like an excellent 6-3 outcome from Justice Alito.

But it is this New York state.

How does it wait, wait, wait, hang on, before we get to that, how does the Miranda case affect us?

So basically, the court had an opportunity to expand Miranda.

It had an opportunity to expand Miranda into uncharted terrain,

and they refused to do so.

It was a 6-3 ruling ruling that broke down on familiar ideological lines.

Basically, the court held that in a situation where a police officer fails to give a suspect his Miranda warnings, and then the government uses that suspect's statements against him in court, the suspect does not have an implied legal right of action under the Fifth Amendment's right against self-incrimination to sue for that.

So it's a minor fact pattern dispute, as a lot of these cases end up being, but the principle is against the expansion of flawed precedent.

And really kind of, it's interesting, Glenn, if you go back to the 1960s when the Warren Corps was obviously at its heyday,

this is a point that I make time and time again in my law school speeches that I do through the federal society.

It's usually the, you know, the culture war cases, Griswold

versus Connecticut, obviously Roe versus Wade.

It is the culture war cases that tend to generate the headline.

But it's actually the area of criminal procedure and cases like Miranda versus Arizona, Gideon versus Wainwright, that really, I think, kind of make, at least for myself, kind of like a a law and aura conservative like myself, really kind of makes the hair on the back of my spine just totally leap up.

So there's a good decision in refusing to extend Miranda.

Maybe Miranda will be overturned one day.

It's not clear, but it's a step in the right direction, at least.

Okay, so, Josh, I'd love to go back to why you think Miranda should be overturned, but we'll do that another day where we're not talking about the huge gun case up in New York

where I couldn't get a gun in New York.

I had 15 active threats.

I had Gavin DeBecker and Associates, which were they're probably the best security detail in the country, in the world, really.

And they were following these threats.

You know, my kids were looking at pursuer lists on our refrigerator.

If these people approach, go run, get mom or dad.

I mean, it was really bad.

And I couldn't get a gun in New York City because they deemed that I didn't have enough cause to have a gun.

That's been thrown out now.

So tell me what they've done.

What does this mean for New York and the rest of the country?

So it's a fantastic ruling.

Look, I have not had the chance to pour through this with a fine-tooth comb.

Looks like the Justice Thomas majority opinion clocks in at 63 pages, you know, including concurrences and dissents.

We're up to 130, 140 pages.

So I've got my reading cut out for me for the rest of the day.

But based on my quick skimming of it, this is a thoroughly well-researched, I might even say, thus far, career-defining majority opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas.

Wow.

It's really interesting.

I was thinking about this recently.

It's unclear to me to date, or at least before today, whether Clarence Thomas had a career-defining majority opinion.

He's written so prolifically for so long, but most of his greatest writings, especially on the hard-hitting cases, have been in concurrence or more often than not, oftentimes in dissent.

Really, Anthony Scalia, I think in another gun case, 2008, DC versus Heller, had his kind of landmark career-defining opinion.

And at least until affirmative action, I predict is likely overturned next term, we can get to that if you want to, at least until that day, where I predict Thomas will also have the majority opinion, this is his career-defining opinion.

This is an issue that is very near and dear to Justice Thomas.

He wrote an amazing concurrence in the court's last major Second Amendment case, the McDonald versus City of Chicago case from 2010, where he had a magisterial 55 to 60-page concurrence, just working through the history.

This issue is very near and dear to him.

He is a personal gun owner.

He enjoys hunting.

And from what I can tell, it's just a really thoroughly well-researched opinion that reaches the clear and obvious result that anyone with any degree of familiarity with the Second Amendment text could tell you, which is that this is a right.

And the very act of talking about bearing arms, not just keeping them, but bearing them, obviously entails the ability to do so outside the home without oppressive restrictions, the likes of which, Glenn, it sounds like you faced in my home state, my home state of New York.

And

a point that Justice Kavanaugh makes in his very brief

concurring opinion, he kind of drives home this point, which is the vast majority of states which have so-called shall issue regimes for their gun licensing permits, which means that you have to give the applicant a permit as long as they go through XYZ tests.

You know, they shoot the right number of targets, similar to what I did in Texas when I got my permit there years ago.

Those laws are all untouched.

The only laws that are jeopardized by today's decision are the more problematic, quote-unquote, may-issue laws, not the shall-issue laws, where they basically give the licensing authorities a ton of discretion to arbitrarily decide where you have to, you know, you have to show that you truly, truly need it, whatever the heck that means.

But, you know, Glenn, the fact that you

get it.

Yeah.

nuts.

So I wanted to ask you, so doesn't this make the Senate gun bill a joke?

I mean, that

will have no teeth to it after this ruling.

Put it?

Yes and no.

It's really interesting.

I expect a lot of the commentary over the next 24 to 48 hours, meaning it's next week, is going to focus on this exact question, right?

So in theory, they are different issues.

The ruling here today is talking about concealed carry and open carry licensing regimes in the states.

The Senate gun bill is in theory focused on other measures.

It's focused on things like red flag laws.

But it is a little intellectually inconsistent, or at least at a bare minimum, it would be a little peculiar, right, to have a liberalized, and I say that in a good way, a more liberalized concealed carry licensing regime while at the same time having a red flag law in place that would just infringe upon due process rights willy-nilly.

Those two things would seem to be in tension with one another.

At a bare minimum, the timing of the public's opinion

really kind of sucks the wind out of John Cornyn and the other 13 Senate Republicans' momentum, that's for sure.

So, how will this affect other states?

New York, by the way, has just come out, and I'm going to talk about this in a minute.

New York has already come out and said it's not going to change anything we're not going to abide by this which is ironic because that's what the Second Amendment is for to stop an out-of-control lawless government doing what they want and not abiding by the Constitution I just want to point that out

well that's wild I have not seen that but I that's that's just wild stuff if they said it that bluntly here look the entire idea behind the incorporation of the Bill of Rights, which is itself a legally debatable matter, I should say, but they have held, the court has held that the overall majority of the enumerated rights in the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, by the way, that's the McDonald versus Chicago case of 2010.

The court has held that these rights are incorporated against the states, which, you know, to escape the legalese for a minute means that a state cannot infringe upon these rights.

The federal government already cannot, but a state cannot as well.

So this case is right out of New York State.

So, I mean, if New York State wants to go, you know, flip two middle fingers at the court when they itself are a party to the lawsuit, look, parties to the lawsuits are balanced.

Let me read exactly what Governor Kathy Hochel said.

She said,

it's outrageous that at a moment of national reckoning on gun violence, the Supreme Court has recklessly struck down a New York law that limits those who can carry concealed weapons.

By the way,

I don't know if she knows this, but Buffalo is in New York, so her law didn't do anything.

In response to this ruling, we are reviewing our options, including calling a special session of the legislature.

Just as we swiftly pass nation-leading gun reform legislation, we will continue to do everything in our power to keep New Yorkers safe from gun violence.

So she didn't say we're not going to do it.

She said we're just going to find a way around it.

Right.

I mean, that statement is about what I would expect from a left-wing hack like the governor of New York State.

We'll see what they try to do.

I mean, like, they'll try to pass some law.

Maybe they'll try to issue something administrative.

Inevitably, they'll find themselves in court again.

And, you know, with the current composition of the court, if that ultimately makes its way up to the Supreme Court itself, you have to like the odds of the side of gun rights.

The reality is that if I have the number correctly, I think it's 43 of the current states in the country, if I recall the number from the Kavanaugh concurring opinion today, 43 of the states are either quote-unquote shall issue states or just straight up constitutional carry states, states where you simply do not need a license to exercise your right to keep and bear arms outside the home.

So we should note that this opinion does not actually apply to the vast majority of states.

We're really only talking here about deep blue states such as New York State.

And look, I mean, cynically speaking, as someone who was born in New York and fled many years ago, I mean, if it is oppressive laws like this that incentivize more people to flee blue state tyranny for red state freedom, you know, far be it from me to criticize people to do so.

But the statement that you read, Glenn, you know, I would expect them to say something along those lines.

So

my producers are freaking out because they want to make sure that I clarify something here that I just said.

Historically, the reason why the Second Amendment exists

is not for hunting, not a sport.

I want to go shoot clay pigeons.

Okay, that's not what it was about.

Otherwise, you might be able to find like bowling in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

It's not about a sport.

It's about protecting yourself

and protecting your community against an out-of-control, rogue government.

That's what it's about.

So I just find it ironic that if they're like, we're not going to obey by this rule, that's what the Second Amendment, that's what the founders were talking about.

Right.

But you're somebody that just decided to.

As you just read that statement, that's not exactly what's happening.

You're not exactly calling for a civil war against Albany,

are you?

I want to make sure here.

Because I mean, you're talking about this was the motivation at the time.

You have to follow these traditions and these rules, but this is a much, much different case here as we're talking about it now from some statement from a meeting.

I'm just talking about how ironic it is that that's what the founders

said.

That's really important because if they're, you know, as George Washington said, when the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

When the government fears the people, there is liberty.

And, you know, part of that is being able to question them, to speak out, to have a free press, to assemble, and also to own a gun.

Anyway, Josh, anything else that

you see

that came out today that you think is good news

in a far-reaching way?

Well, first of all, let me just chime in briefly on the conversation that you and Stu were just having.

I obviously cannot agree with you guys more on the philosophical underpinning of the Second Amendment.

Glenn, I know that you all...

You will uniquely appreciate this just because I know how much you care about this issue.

But, you know, I'm Jewish, obviously.

I keep on my desk at all times a rock that a rabbi gave to me years ago that he smuggled out of the crematorium at Auschwitz.

And I keep next to that rock

a rock that I myself took from Treblinka.

And then across my room, I have my, you know, my Daniel Defense AR with lots of ammunition and mags and all that.

And to me, I refer to that to my friends as my Warsaw Ghetto gun.

I mean, so no one understands the philosophical underpinning of the Second Amendment more than I do.

So I just wanted to echo your sentiments on that.

It's very well said.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And, you know,

the Germans gave all of the information of where their guns were to the Weimar Republic.

You give it in good faith because the Weimar Republic said, oh, we'll never use this.

Well, then the Nazis came in, and guess who took all the information and knew where all the guns were?

That's why you just don't do these things.

But anyway, go ahead.

Exactly.

Shifting a little bit as far as other cases that came across the transom today.

So there's an Eighth Amendment case about a method of execution that I have not had the chance to review yet.

It's a case out of Georgia called Nance v.

Ward.

Long story short, there's been all sorts of kind of activist litigation for many years now where the predictable groups, the ACLU, groups like that, will sue.

And they have the effect of incrementally outlawing or seeking to outlaw various forms of execution, which only then make you have to look harder and harder to find the right cocktail.

It's a very pernicious legal tactic with the obvious and not-so-subtle end goal of trying to re-abolish the death penalty in America.

It looks like the wrong side won today, but

a glimmer of hope, though.

I see that Justice Barrett actually filed a dissenting opinion in that case.

So even though Kavanaugh defected, it's good to see that Justice Barrett, at least, is on the right side of this Eighth Amendment issue.

Thank you.

Another case that I have not really fully had the chance to break down, it's out of the Fourth Circuit.

It's a case in North Carolina.

Basically, here, it's a case called Berger versus North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP.

The court ruled, and it's notable because it's an eight-to-one ruling.

It's an eight-to-one ruling, they ruled that Republican state lawmakers in North Carolina are able to intervene to defend their state's voter ID law that the NAACP challenged.

So the procedural posture there is

not a substantive claim.

It's more of a procedural claim.

Rather, the reason I want to flag it for your listeners, I think it's worth discussing at least a little bit, is because it's an eight-to-one opinion.

The only person who dissented here is, predictably speaking, Sotomayor.

And that's a real rebuke to the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the lower court that heard this, when you get reversed 8-1 by the court, when everyone but Sotomayor disagrees with you.

And it really paints a stark picture as to how much the Obama presidency changed the Fourth Circuit, among some other circuits.

So we really do have a long road ahead of us to get some of these lower courts back in order, unfortunately.

But this case did come out the right way, I'm pleased.

Josh.

Josh, thank you so much.

This is Josh Hammer.

He'll be joining us again tomorrow because more rulings are coming out tomorrow, and we're coming close to really big ones.

No, no, no, no.