Emily Bazelon

Are Americans taking in and absorbing the threats and risks that I think that, you know, you and David are laying out there in a way that affects Americans?

how they vote, what message do they send to the Republican Party, which has been, you know, so much behind Trump.

And then eventually, you know, what message do they send in 2028 when they're electing the next president?

And it's in some ways because, you know, the polls have sagged, right?

Trump is not popular, but he's not like in the basement.

And also the stock market, while it seems shaky with this latest, you know, threat to Greenland, has not totally tanked either.

The indicators are not blinking red in a way that if you are a politician other than Trump, you can conclude that you obviously should like run as far as you can from him.

And it's those political and market indicators that I think in the end matter as much or more than the courts, even though I don't want to let the courts off the hook.

David, you go first.

Well, that gives lawyers and courts a lot of power.

It reminds me of a nonfiction book that I really love called Devil in the Grove.

The subtitle is Thurgood Marshall, The Groveland Boys and the Dawn of a New America.

Yeah.

And it's from 1949.

So it's like a kind of precursor to the civil rights movement.

I was thinking about a character who looms very large for me, different era entirely, Portia from Merchant of Venice, who, you know, deploys all the tactics of clever lawyers to try to change society.

what we think of now as the quality of mercy in the courts in her Shakespearean time, somehow that was like a comforting, reassuring sort of trial to go back to.

I mean, it's a time, obviously, of deep prejudice without a lot of the

safeguards of the rule of law that we think of now, but she was able to achieve a better result by making legal arguments.

So maybe I'm trying to be with you in some ways, David, in going back to a kind of touchstone where we can imagine lawyers having a good effect.