Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
On today's show, we'll talk about how the Iran war has reignited as gas prices reach record highs, all while Trump's approval continues to crater with just six months left until the midterms. But could Democrats blow it? Of course we could. We'll talk about all the reasons why, including redistricting hiccups, Republicans wooing John Fetterman, and Ken Martin crushing it at the DNC.
Then I talk with Strict Scrutiny's Melissa Murray about the appeals court ruling on Mifit-Pristone, new threats to safe and legal abortion, and Melissa's new book explaining the Constitution for you, the modern reader. Thank you. Quick note before we start. If you are not a fan of right-wing propaganda or podcast ads, do we have a deal for you?
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Chapter 2: What is the current state of Trump's approval ratings?
Yeah. So this plan, it's not the Navy ships are physically escorting other ships to the Strait of Hormuz. Guiding you sounds like we'll give you directions and wish you luck. Yeah. Like, right, based on what happened today, because they're calling it a coordination effort to guide ships with real-time information, safety guidance, and coordination. So, like, I don't know, GPS? What is this?
So, but as we saw today, Iran is very willing to take shots at these vessels. They're willing to take shots at other targets in the region. The Pentagon can't guarantee that the Strait of Hormuz isn't mined. So it seems like, once again, more of a PR effort. They roll out over the weekend ahead of markets on Monday.
But it didn't work this time because the price of gasoline shot up again yesterday. The average price is at $4.50 per gallon now in the U.S., but you've seen analysts say there could be a break at some point pretty soon in the global economy and get us to $7 or $8 a gallon. So we just seem stuck here.
Chapter 3: How are Democrats responding to Trump's decline?
There's a lot of troops stuck in the Gulf trying to figure out what's next. Iran is not going to backtrack. The bet seems to be that we can create enough pain for Iran that they buckle and they capitulate. I still think that's a flawed strategy because the IRGC doesn't give a shit about their own people and they have all the guns.
But yeah, in 10 days, Trump's supposed to go to China, which is by far the most important meeting of his entire second term so far. And this is dominating the whole agenda, not the trade deal or anything else he wanted to get done.
It seems like we're now begging China to help put pressure on Iran to open the strait, which is exactly where you want to be. He said also today in that event that we just saw, he's like, what is this? We're only in like the sixth week. It is the 10th week of war right now.
Yeah, well, time flies when you're trapped in a conflict you thought would last a few days because you have advisors who like to drink in the morning. Allegedly. The Strait of Hormuz was open. There was a question around Iran's nuclear program. Now the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and there's a question about Iran's nuclear program.
I don't know what kind of card game you're playing where whatever number of cards you're holding, the situation keeps getting worse and worse all around you. I don't think it is.
I don't even know if he has a couple of twos.
Right, yeah. And I also, like, you know, he's holding all the cards, but he's playing Uno. The point of Uno is to have no cards. The goal is no cards. They literally tweeted that out. The more cards you have, the worse you're doing. Also, if you're holding a bunch of wild Uno cards, the game's over, my friend. You've won. You've won the game of Uno. Play those cards.
Yeah, he's calling the blockade the greatest military maneuver or one of the greatest maneuvers in history. Then he sent a letter on Friday saying that we're actually no longer in any kind of a conflict, so don't worry about that. It's all resolved because we're saying that we haven't fired on each other in a while, but they're still sinking in.
He's saying if you attack our ships, then we will then destroy you. But then Iran has to go around and then fire at the ships that are in the strait because they can't legitimize that threat because they have to prove that that threat is empty. And we just keep doing this over and over and over again.
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Chapter 4: What recent events are affecting gas prices and the economy?
And I mean, that is a sort of a fancier term for just it just shut down, just no longer there. Not like we're not selling tickets anymore, like thousands of flyers stranded, everyone with a future spirit ticket screwed. They said in a court filing on Monday that, quote, recent geopolitical events resulted in a massive and sustained increase in fuel prices. Driving isn't much better.
Average prices are now $4.45 a gallon, above $6 in many places, highest level since the pandemic, all-time record high here in California and Washington state. And then experts are saying we could hit a national average of $5 a gallon by Memorial Day. I know some of you crass political types are trying to link these things to the new forever war that Trump started.
But here's Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Treasury Secretary Scott Besant trying to explain just how wrong you all are.
To be really clear, yeah, fuel prices have gone up. This story was not written because of the Iran war. This story was written years ago because of what Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and the DOJ under Biden, what they did to prevent the merger from happening. What do they want, a nuclear Iran? In the Democrat world, the alternative is to have a nuclear Iran.
I recognize that prices have come up, but they will start to go down immediately once the straight issues are resolved.
We are cognizant that the that this short-term blip up in prices is affecting the American people. But I am also confident on the other side of this, prices are going to come down very quickly. I think the Iranians are starting to believe their own propaganda. Good button on that one.
I just love the argument now that they've reached, which is like, yes, yes, prices are high now, but just think of what will happen when the war is over.
It's very it's it's amazing, like the parallels to how like when Trump's up there saying, like, my foreign policy is not popular, but actually, if it was described properly, people would be more receptive to it. Like he's doing Biden and then his people are out there going, actually, these are longer term causes of inflation. It's not because of this and it's not because of that.
And it's going to be OK. The the the ways in which they're out there trying to kind of spin this, just it's very amazing how much it sounds like the way Biden was spinning this.
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Chapter 5: How does the situation in the Strait of Hormuz impact U.S. foreign policy?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that one didn't smoke on the planes too. That one didn't quite fly. So spirit airline sucks. Like not my favorite to fly, but having them in markets was a really good thing because it pulled prices down. And there's a study that showed that, that markets with spirit or discount airlines in them have 21% lower fares as compared to markets without them. So this sucks for all of us.
So there were two mergers on the table. One was with frontier, which is another ultra low cost carrier. And there was jet blue, uh, jet blue offered more money. The CEO of spirit at the time said, uh, we shouldn't do the jet blue one because it's not going to get approved.
And it wasn't going to approve because it was clear that if jet blue were to acquire spirit, all those ultra low cost routes would go away, which would eliminate something. But look, uh, monopoly law, antitrust law has been really, um, uh, like neutered, uh, But one of the ways it was neutered was to say you had to show what the effect would be for consumers specifically.
And there's all kinds of other effects that haven't been seen as important. But even JetBlue's own internal documents said this would cause costs to rise for consumers. Their own plans were basically to make Spirit part of JetBlue. If Frontier and Spirit had merged, you'd have one bigger project. ultra low-cost care.
And there might be problems with that, but you would still have the competition that Tommy's talking about. The CEO was aware of these regulatory problems. The judge who did it was a Reagan appointee. This was just a clear-cut case where the judge came in and said, the law is the law, and this would hurt consumers. And there was a famous quote, if you remember from the time, which is,
Like something I don't have in front of me, I lost it, but it was something the effect of Spirit may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it has customers who love it. And I don't know who those insane people are, but it served a purpose. And so when it didn't get approved, oh, one other point about this is Spirit could have said, hey, if you don't approve of this merger.
We're going to go out of business.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of the recent court rulings on abortion medication?
And then if you go out to 2028, a bunch of states. Oh, yeah. That's a real bad. Illinois could decide to go nuts and be a 17-0 Democrat state. Like California could redistrict again. You could crack a bunch of Democratic districts, spread those voters all across. You could do it in New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon.
The problem is if they Republicans move in 2026, we can't move until 2028.
Yeah, I mean, just the just I guess what I'm getting is the overall estimate for how much the Supreme Court voting rights ruling will impact things. They're all over the place, depending on where you look like. It's like from a dozen to two dozen seats could be impacted to help Republicans.
And then Fair Fight, the Stacey Abrams group looked at a bunch of districts that Democrats could change to help us. So it's just like it's a mess. It's impossible to know what's happening. None of this is good for democracy.
No, I mean, someone just sort of posted this map as like a kind of a joke, I guess, but it's not really, which is you could end up by 2028 or beyond where if it's a red state with a governor and a legislature that is majority Republican, there are no Democratic seats left. And if it's a blue state with a governor, then there's no red seats left. So that's just talk about polarization. Yeah.
On Louisiana, Trump posted on Sunday, quote, we cannot allow there to be an election that is conducted unconstitutionally simply for the convenience of state legislatures. If they have to vote twice, so be it. Any idea what he's actually saying there, Levitt?
So it's unclear who the they is there. Does he mean the legislatures have to vote twice as an approved new maps? Doesn't totally make sense. If this is because Louisiana is already voting and that's why there's some question as to whether the election could proceed, I think that's what it has to mean. Now, like who knows what the Supreme Court will do.
But the idea that, look, the Supreme Court, this court is a huge fan of unleashing chaos and then being like, we can't believe what's happening. We can't believe what your people are doing with our very obvious and simple ruling.
But I do think it's a possibility that the Supreme Court would intervene in some way to say, we cannot have a bunch of states throwing out their maps and having people revote and all of this chaos in the run-up before an election is a tradition of of not disturbing election as it's already begun. And I think that's what Trump is worried about.
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Chapter 7: How are redistricting efforts affecting the upcoming elections?
If you're a modern reader, this is for you. If you're Sam Alito, it's probably not for you. You're not a modern reader. Why now? Because I think we need to engage with the Constitution perhaps now more than ever. This is a document that was meant to be read. It was meant to be debated. And if you ask most Americans...
I think very few people have read the Constitution cover to cover, in part because some of it's just really boring. Trust me, I read it and I wrote about it and I was like, there were times I was like, whoa, article one's really long, but I did it so you don't have to.
And I go through and I explain what every single clause is doing, what it's for, what they were animated by when they decided to include it. There's all kinds of really fun stories about the Constitution that you probably didn't even know that are in this book and detailed here.
Ordinary people who make claims on the Constitution and manage to affect constitutional change, that's important to know right now. We live in a world where we act like the Supreme Court is the final word on our rights. And I guess that's kind of true unless we take seriously the idea that we can be constitutional changemakers in our own right.
And in fact, there are people in our history who have done exactly that and have changed the Constitution and made it more responsive to we the people.
Talk about the project of explaining the Constitution to a general audience, the modern reader, if you will, in a moment when its meeting is this contested.
So... This is not what I would have done on strict scrutiny. So, you know, one of the things my editor and I talked about at length was whether this was going to be as forthright about my particular take on things as we are on strict scrutiny.
And we decided that maybe it was just better to sort of explain things, really focus on the history of certain things and do a kind of one group says this, one group does that. In order to give people, of all stripes, the tools that they need to dive deeper, draw their own conclusions. And I think that was probably the right choice.
I think there are certainly some places where my own views come into play in shaping the book. Like, for example, one of the things that I felt very strongly about was being absolutely forthright about all of the ways in which slavery is literally organized. all over the original Constitution, even though the document never says the word.
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