Playing In The Legal Sandbox
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bit.ly slash book club IRL for tickets. Grab yours before they sell out.

Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm V Spear. I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream, presented by Betches News. Where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience. Today, we are bringing you a temp check on the campus protests, a breakdown of the hellscape that is our court system right now, and we Americant with the death of the dollar store. But first, we have to tell you about White House Correspondents Weekend, which we got to go to this weekend.

So fun. Where do we even start? So I think last week we told everybody White House Correspondents Weekend is like this one weekend a year where all the people who cover the White House, journalists, politicians, some even celebrities, get together in D.C. and go to a bunch of parties and a fancy dinner at the Washington Hilton. We did not go to the dinner.

But we did go to some of the parties. But for me, the highlight of my weekend wasn't even the parties. It was having dinner at that restaurant with your dogs inside at the table. Oh, yeah. The dogs were favorites at PJ Clark's this weekend. As you saw, they knew the waitress.

They knew the waitress. She let them sit inside. And they were such little sweetie baby angels just sitting at the table waiting for their little treats. We made lots of friends with Pearl Mania. It was wonderful. So what would you say was like the most fun part of the weekend? So the most fun part of the weekend was definitely the NBC party at the French Ambassador's residence. I think that was definitely like the most starstruck we were ever.

It was the last event we went to. And I feel like we really cut loose and had a good time. We did. We stayed the longest. We did. Which was like two hours. Yeah. We stayed till 1am, which was very late for us. Yeah. Every other night we were tucked in bed by like 11 at the latest. Yeah. I thought that was a great party. The Puck Party. Puck and WME. That was a good one. A great party. That was like the, you know, young, fun party on the block.

I felt like everybody wanted to be there. People were so nice at that event. Everybody was just happy to see each other and chatting. It felt more like a reunion fun time. Some of the parties were a little bit like me and Sammy. We won't say which one, but we walked into a party and we immediately walked out of the party because the vibe was so uncomfortable. We won't say whose it was, but we did walk in and out of an event because some of these are

It can be kind of stodgy or like see and be seen and like, you know, social climbery. And that particular one gave me the ick. So we won't say whose it was, but we did walk out of it. The White House was really wonderful and very special. It was like a 40-person reception. I got maybe 40, 50. 40, 50 people, yeah, toasting to the First Amendment at the White House in the Blue Room, which was pretty cool. With the president. And he was...

It was really, I hadn't actually been in person with him to see him interact with people one-on-one. I mean, I've seen that, obviously. I've seen footage of that a million times. It's different when you're in the room. Totally. And he was, you know, tearing up at someone's story. And, you know, he's really able to see people in the moment, even when he's crowded by like a thousand cameras and people trying to grab his attention. Yeah.

I was standing nearby when John Cryer's son, who is trans and who is out, had the opportunity to meet President Biden and say, thank you for all you're trying to do to protect trans kids. And Biden hugged him. And it was a really special moment for them. And I think for the country in general, because as much as we want to hold politicians accountable, it's really important for them to see when they've done something right and to see the

face of this young kid who is a trans activist, who is doing the best that they can, who is just trying to survive, get a hug from the president at a time when trans children are facing such hostility, I think will inspire the president and his administration to continue to fight for the rights of trans kids and queer people. And those moments really matter.

And he spoke to his mom, too. It was really emotional. But we're actually going to talk about some of the attempts by opposition to Biden's expansion of trans rights later in this episode. So we'll get there. Special shout out to Sunshine Sachs, the publicist group, and Miss Elizabeth Thorpe, who got

our little names on some of those parties. Elizabeth, thank you for being a friend of the pod. We appreciate you so much. Definitely was a hot clout moment when me and Sammy roll up to this party with like Chris Pine is there and like Jon Hamm. And they're like, oh, do you want to skip the line for the red carpet and jump? We need you to get pictures right now. We were like giddy. We were stupid. Remember when you told Chris Pine that his button was open and he's like, oh, thank you. Yes. He was he looks great. I like his new look.

He looked cool as hell. Jon Hamm, handsome as could be. Amy Klobuchar, girl is up in there. She was all up on the celebrities. She was kissing babies and shaking hands. She was basically Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost's security for the night, basically. It was very cool. I made a list of everyone that we saw, just so I won't forget.

And thank you to everyone who invited us. And also to anyone who came up to us. There were a bunch of people who told us they are listeners of the show. Thank you so much for being listeners, for introducing yourself and...

We're excited to keep bringing you good tunes. Yeah. You got to know, while we may have acted cool when you came up to us, as soon as anyone who recognized us walked away, me and Sammy did like sparkle fingers at each other. Oh my God, we got recognized. Deeply uncool over here. Don't worry. But deeply grateful, deeply grateful. So thank you guys so much. Yeah. So now that we're back, we got to do a temp check on the college campuses.

They are the story of last week and now week two of being the story. For being the main story, I feel like we haven't gotten a ton of substance about what it is that the kids are protesting for. And so we're going to get into that now. Columbia University has been the lightning rod that seems to have sparked the now nationwide encampments and protests. And I think we're up to like thousands of campuses now that have had some sort of demonstration over the last two weeks. And I think we're up to like thousands of campuses now that have had some sort of demonstration over the last two weeks.

Folks will say online that the people protesting at Columbia are pro-Palestine or they're anti-Israel. But what exactly they're protesting for, I have not seen. But I went looking for it and I found it. It's hardly the centerpiece of the coverage. And that's why it's been so hard to talk about, because what I found very disconcerting is you're getting these sort of like minute to minute updates on things.

Just like individual accounts. Yeah. And it's hard to put together a full picture of what is going on, what is this about, the way that, you know, in a few months or years we'll be able to talk about what this was about. Yeah.

So we're going to catch up now because what's happening on these campuses is a lot more than, quote, bratty kids putting up tents and the cops showing up to give them a hard time. It's so much more than that. So here we go. The protesters at Columbia go by the name Columbia University Apartheid Divest. Now, this is a historic thing. Anytime that there is a major movement at Columbia, that group will give themselves an organizational name for archival purposes because so many protests that have started at Columbia have ended up causing great change across the nation.

So this one is called Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and they published a list of demands to end their encampment and their daily protests. The demands that they make have become the template for demands being made on other campuses across the nation. Now, the first one, and this is why I say that I think that the campus protest should be for members of that campus, because these aren't just like general war protests. They're very specific to Columbia in particular. So-

First off, they want to see a divestment of all Columbia's finances, including the $13.6 billion endowment, which is managed by a university-owned investment firm from companies and institutions that profit from their relationship with Israel. They identified these companies as BlackRock, the asset management giant with the big weapons manufacturing money, Airbnb, which has offered rentals in the occupied West Bank,

Caterpillar, whose bulldozers Israel has used, and Google, which has faced protests from staffers over Project Nimbus, which provides AI services to Israel. That's demand number one. I didn't know that was on the list until like an hour ago when I found it. I didn't know what these specific companies were, but I did understand that it was about divestment. I wonder.

people realize like I don't think this is really relevant to students but like people's 401ks are invested in these companies Israel is very interlaced in the global economy in a fundamental way

Yeah, they're like the American outpost of the Midwest in many ways. So point number two that they're asking for in their demands is they want to see an academic boycott. They want Columbia University in New York to sever academic ties with Israeli universities, including the Global Center in Tel Aviv, the dual degree program with Tel Aviv University, and all study abroad programs, fellowships, and research collaborations with Israeli academic institutions. What about all of the schools that have ties with

other countries in the Middle East that have severe human rights violations. Cornell has outposts in Qatar. Maybe that'll be next. What I think is interesting is they have such specific demands right here, which I think are very well thought out, whether you agree with them or not, or you think that they're going to happen or not. They put some thought into this. And did they know that these partnerships existed before they applied and attended the school? I don't know. That's not

part of what we're talking about today, though. Third demand is, quote, no land grabs. This one is very interesting. They say no land grabs, whether in Harlem, Lenapehoking, or Palestine. They added Palestine to an ongoing protest by Columbia students against campus expansion into historically black and brown neighborhoods in upper Manhattan. That protest had been going on since 2008. It also calls on Columbia to provide reparations and support for low-income Harlem residents. So they kind of

took a standard demand that Columbia students have wanted to see, they don't want to see campus expansion into Harlem, and added Palestine to it. Or really like anywhere in Manhattan. Lenapehoking is the traditional indigenous territory that the Lenape people occupied before the brutal removal of these people from the land that essentially goes from western Connecticut all the way to Delaware, down to Maryland, and up into the Hudson Valley. So they say they don't want

They want any Columbia occupation in any of that area. They want land back for them. They took the land and they made Fifth Avenue. The next demand is no police on campus. They want to end the targeted repression of Palestinian students and their allies on and off campus, including through university disciplinary processes. They want to defend public safety and disclose and sever all ties with the NYPD.

They are asking for total amnesty for anyone protesting that is a Columbia University student or an ally of Columbia University student protesters. Total amnesty. I think that's going to be a little bit tougher to get. I feel like that'll probably depend on what the student did, if I had to guess.

Yes.

No, but they can maybe write like a letter of support or they could say like we were lenient on them. Yes. But this has continued to develop into yesterday. They didn't want to bring in the police again. So they made a deadline of 2 p.m. on Monday for the encampment to clear.

or else the students would risk suspension. And then they started notifying them by email after, to no one's surprise, they did not actually clear out the encampment. No, they didn't. And as of just a couple hours ago, the student protesters have commandeered Hamilton Hall, which is a building used by the dean and administration.

The Public Safety Department has said in its statement that access to the campus is now being limited to students living in the residential buildings and essential employees, such as the dining, public safety, and maintenance staff. And there is only one access point in and out of campus as a result of this commandeering of the hall. Now, this recording that we're doing right now is at noon on Tuesday, April 30th. So when we have an update, we will let you know. But as of right now, they are still holding down that hall. And the police have not been called in yet.

I'm curious what they're doing. I think it's really too early. We haven't seen much footage, but have you seen anything they're doing inside the hall? They're trying to present these demands, quite honestly. What I've seen change over the weekend is initially when you were seeing the protests, you were seeing a lot of like free Palestine, stop the genocide signs, things like that. And then from the counter protesters, you're seeing a lot of the Star of David flags and the Israeli flags changing.

Now what I'm seeing is poster boards that have the list of demands on them. So I think that we're cutting through some of the noise a little bit and they're getting more clear about what their demands are. So this is where the dean's office is and the administrators. And I've seen a lot of folks who were carrying a sign that said the demands are

amnesty and the interruption of the NYPD to our lawful occupation. So that is what, in my opinion, I think they're trying to get across right now. Now, breaking windows and barricading the building may or may not be received favorably by that administration, and they may or may not care if they receive it favorably. But I'm seeing a lot more of them getting their talking points and their demands in front of people, trying to cut through some of the general protest rhetoric.

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Max Bankman, I'm the new doctor. Welcome aboard the Odyssey. ABC Thursdays. This ship is heaven. We're tending to our past and our dreams. I'm in. From 911 executive producer Ryan Murphy comes a splashy new drama on a luxury cruise ship with Joshua Jackson and Don Johnson. It's your job to keep everyone alive. She's in V-fit. One, two, three. Clear. Clear. Clear.

I have a pulse. You're going to be okay. Dr. Odyssey, Thursdays, 9, 8 central on ABC and stream on Hulu. Well, I think that that is probably a smart decision. I know that at Northwestern University, the school and the protesters reached an agreement

Where they will be allowed to protest peacefully through the end of the term, but they'll only be allowed to have school staff, students, faculty as part of the protests unless they get permission for maybe a speaker to come or something. And they are going to be having a meeting with the school where they're going to present their demands.

What puzzles me is why it is so hard for the school to take a meeting. Why not just rewind back to before they called in the cops?

And meet with them. This president of Colombia is not doing a good enough job to, one, hear the grievances of the students who pay tuition there, often of many of them whose parents paid tuition there as well. And she's not providing a safe environment the way that Northwestern has been able to kind of achieve this compromise with the protesters to ensure that we're moving forward in progress and we're not just escalating aggravations and tensions.

Now, I was looking to see, has protest like this worked at Columbia before, in particular, the divestment aspect? A lot of folks might not realize when you pay your tuition or you have a 401k or anything, they don't take that money and pay the teachers with it. They reinvest it into the stock market, into all different types of things to grow that endowment. And I would like to see some reforms to the way we grow endowments and the way we invest, but that's the situation we're in right now.

Columbia has divested substantial money in the past due to student protest. So it is possible that it could work. In 1985, students successfully pressured Columbia to divest itself from a slew of major companies that operated in apartheid South Africa.

Columbia eventually pulled out of companies like Coca-Cola, Chevron, Ford, and American Express. The total stock value that Columbia dumped amounted to just about 4% of the university's portfolio. So they can make some major changes to the things they invest in without really losing too much of themselves. So why don't they? They're not going to lose any money. Is this a joke? We're talking about people who have

an institution that has so much money and the most talented quote unquote financial managers in the world. I think they can find a way to make up for that investment income with other investments. It's just really to be quite uncomplicated. My feeling is that they probably don't want to like set a precedent and it's like, well, if they ask us to do this, then we're going to have to do this. I imagine there are people on the board who

Not even just the board within the administration who fundamentally disagree with the idea of divesting because of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. So what you're saying is, yeah, that makes sense that they should be having a meeting and pushing for it.

I mean, there is a precedent, especially at Columbia, for divestment. In 2006, the Columbia University Sudan Divestment Task Force, a student-run organization, pressured the university to divest from Sudan as human rights violations were committed in its western region of Darfur. Columbia pulled out of 18 companies that did business in Sudan. And here's the thing. They don't pull out forever.

They pull out for a period of time and then, you know, we see them creep back in. Other special interest groups at Columbia have done the same thing. They got the university to divest from tobacco companies. They got them to take $10 million of investment away from for-profit prisons. In 2017, Columbia pledged to divest from thermal coal. In 2020, it announced a no investment policy for oil and gas companies. But this time...

Columbia has said that they will not divest from Israel and negotiators between the student protesters, the university Senate and the administration quote, we're not able to come to an agreement. So the president of Columbia is now urging those in the encampment to voluntarily disperse. That's not going to happen. And wrote that the university is now quote, consulting with a broader group in our community to explore alternative internal options to end this crisis as soon as possible. She even kind of lightly threatened to cancel graduation. It's,

If these student protesters do not comply. It's kind of strange to me that everyone's acting like this is so...

I guess the encampment visual and maybe some of the extreme anti-Semitism is out of the norm. But the idea that student protesters would make demands and stand by them and really double down is hardly that extreme. I feel that they went wrong by calling in the police. Not only did that make...

make the Columbia protesters double down, but that made it expand to 100 other colleges. And historically, we've seen situations where law enforcement has been called into protest and it has resulted in death. The most famous example being Kent State protests, the song Ohio by Crosby, Sills, Nash & Young. It's about that situation. I think we both sort of tend to think that

colleges and campuses should be a place where students are exploring the boundaries of ideology, of speech, of the impacts of their opinions and actions. There's a reason the student government is not like the United States government and that there's still an administration above any student government that's ultimately making the real decisions. And it's because this is supposed to be a place where you explore and experiment with

And for some reason, this is, I mean, the reason is because of

TikTok and social media that has become nationalized. You and I went to college, so we understand. I was doing performance art, all kinds of weirdo shit at my college. I went to an art school. We were doing insane things that we thought was going to change the world. And that's part of it. You have to believe that what you're going to do is going to matter and change the world and that you have power. You're learning to have power. You're learning to think critically. Where we're seeing a lot of ickiness, for lack of a better word, is folks are

From the Republican side of government and the GOP, many of whom their constituents did not attend a college or have not had this opportunity to participate in protests in the same way. And they're saying, oh, these bratty kids up at Columbia, they should be shot. They should be suspended. They should be out of school. They should just sit quietly and learn. Sit quietly and learn is not how these elite colleges work. They're supposed to be challenging your worldview.

making mistakes in a safety net environment so that you can ideally go on and be a more productive adult and move this country forward. What has happened is in lieu of everybody wants their 1968 moment, right? That's what a lot of these protests are looking for, their civil rights moment, their Vietnam moment to say we have done something and here are the pictures. A lot of the pictures we see of the protests on campus right now, we see them side by side with those 1960s protests. What we're missing is the fact that

The culture war of the social media internet has so far overshadowed

what should be happening in a sort of closed society in some ways, where the people who were at Kent State or Columbia in the 1960s were the ones leading the protests, negotiating with the administration. There wasn't a whole lot of outside agitators coming in. And the point of the protest wasn't to go viral on social media for some people. Most, if not all of the people at the heart of these protests have pure intentions. I do believe that. It's the outside agitators who come in and they want to have their social media moment

that are overshadowing and bringing in culture war bullshit to what is, you know, a Columbia student's right to request of their administration.

Absolutely. I mean, it's tough to watch, but what's next? Are these people going to show up at prom? I know. Well, that's the thing. I did a poll and I said, should college campus protests be just for college students, college age kids? Because I wanted to include peers or siblings who might not be able to go to that particular school or haven't gone to that school yet. And there was a whole bunch of people saying,

from the internet who were like, no, why are you gatekeeping the protests? And I was like, first of all, I'm not gatekeeping anything. I'm not the gatekeeper of this. I just think when we have that students should be given the space to lead and to experience the protocols and the system that is set up for them to exercise their First Amendment rights,

without other adults coming in with a general anti-war sentiment when they're not invested in the ways in which these students are asking for divestment of campus funds.

You don't really, you know, if you've got 300 people in a crowd and 298 of them aren't students or members of that community, how seriously is the university really going to take that protest? We need to show them how many people of the community who are truly invested in hold power are against what that authoritative figure is doing. But a lot of folks were mad at me and they're like, no, I should be able to go anywhere I want. And that's my right. And I was like, okay, well, what are we going to do? Go to prom next? And that sounds silly, right? Because prom is a place where

where young people are learning about, you know, social engagements and whatnot. We wouldn't go there because we're older and we have our own clubs to go to. I think there are our own protests and our own ways of leveraging our power as non-college students to participate in whatever way you want to. But I do think that I worry about the safety of these college campus protests with outside agitators. You can support the protests,

verbally on social media. Give them some money. Their Venmos are out there. They're buying books and food and water. Or you can support them with knowledge and information or content, you know, whatever it is. There's plenty of ways to support something without centering yourself, one might say. Right. There's no telling right now if the campus protests will be as successful as the divestment demands of the past.

But off campus in the Middle East at the heart of the conflict, Hamas just got a very generous ceasefire offer from Israel that was brokered by the U.S. and presented for negotiation by Egypt. The proposal includes a 40-day truce in return for just 33 hostages and the prospect of displaced families being allowed back into northern Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the east-west corridor that divides the territory and prevents freedom of movement, and the possibility of a permanent ceasefire. So we are...

Obviously, this is all happening in real time right now. We're recording this at noon on Tuesday. If we get an update, and ideally we see some peace and some action towards progress, we will update you as we can. But for right now, you know, we're just wishing that the kids on campus stay safe and that their demands are heard. The university has a duty to hear the demands of their constituents and their students, whether they agree with them or not. And to keep campuses safe and free of outside agitators. All right, on to our main news for today.

You may have noticed that so much of what is news lately is often just updates on court cases, pending legal action, or stories that arise out of litigation or that result in litigation. This is hitting every part of our judicial system, our state courts, the federal judiciary, which decides our constitutional rights within both our civil and criminal courts.

And we wanted to kind of find a way to cover everything that's going on within our quote unquote justice system that ties it all together. And the theme we keep stumbling into is that our courts are being used for, in many cases, the wealthy and or well-funded to serve their personal interests or political goals.

Our country has long had a reputation of being one of the most litigious societies in the world. But I think what makes beyond just the sheer volume of legal activity, I think what makes America's legal system unique is how Americans approach our legal system, which is unsurprisingly in something of an enterprising and capitalistic way.

And the same way that we have like fashion or entertainment trends or trends in music or whatever it is, there are also trends in litigation and how attorneys and legal associations and big law firms push the boundaries of the way that the law is used in order to shape various outcomes and to make money. So I'll give just one example of how that works. And

of a current trend, which is third-party litigation funding, which is a multi-billion dollar global industry contributing to our GDP, wherein essentially hedge funds and other financial institutions will invest in lawsuits in exchange for a percentage of the judgment. So like a personal injury suit or another civil suit.

The reason they can do this is because it is so expensive to bring litigation or even to just write a fucking cease and desist letter. It is so expensive to do anything pertaining to legality and contracts are so important because of how litigious of a society we live in. And one of the key themes here, obviously, is that the justice system is vastly tilted in favor of which party can afford to invest in the system more.

So in the case of the third party litigation industry, this operates completely in the shadows. And neither the court nor the defendant in any case is even aware if a lawsuit is being funded by outside investors, i.e. a hedge fund or another financial institution that is basically saying, here's like, we'll pay for the litigation. We get a cut of your settlement, which will be large because we're paying for premium legal services to get you that settlement.

Also, investors are not required to disclose that they're involved. So this clearly makes it very easy for wealthy individuals and institutions to manipulate any sort of litigation. I mean, that's what we're seeing with the TikTok stuff, right? Like I got a letter from a K Street lawyer being like, well, cost you nothing. You want to join my class action lawsuit? Would you be willing to be one of the people who sues on behalf of TikTok for like loss of funds and First Amendment stuff? And I was I I'm not doing that. I

I'm not doing that, but other people are. And it comes from this third party group who's trying to get a billion dollars off the American people for banning TikTok. And if you think that that letter just arrived in your mailbox,

Just a little birdie brought it so much money spent before you got that letter. Oh, hell yeah. They've been watching me for years. I'm sure. Right. They've got a couple different people in mind from a year ago that showed up to to fight the band back then that they're like, OK, as soon as this goes through, these are going to be my leaders. So there are a ton of examples. The TikTok class action lawsuit is a great example. So we wanted to because there's so many going on right now. We wanted to dive into some of the recent examples of, you know,

How this works, and it's, I mean, really obvious, but really tie it all together. So last week, we saw two thoroughly accused sexual assailants granted reprieves under the criminal justice system. Which was also a trend of a couple years ago, though, you know? It was like there was the Me Too movement brought forth this wave of litigation and accountability and big settlements for people who were sexually abused within Hollywood. And now, a couple years later, we're seeing it sort of start to come undone.

So Me Too rapist mascot Harvey Weinstein had his conviction in New York overturned last week by a New York appeals court for his conviction for sex crimes in New York. Do you want to clarify that Harvey Weinstein will remain in jail because he was also convicted of rape in Los Angeles? But if he hadn't been and it was just this New York conviction, he would be free right now. It's so sick. And you think, why can't New York just leave well enough alone? I mean, aren't there enough cases that we could have just maybe not taken this one back up, maybe let this one languish a little bit?

But no. Exactly. But here is the legal reason they chose to do it. So the New York Appeals Court ruled by a 4-3 vote last week that Harvey Weinstein should be retried in New York. The judge in his previous trial allowed testimony that they should not have. Specifically, they allowed testimony from witnesses of, quote, prior bad acts. Prior bad acts witnesses are a type of witness who have seen other similar behavior who sometimes the judge will admit, sometimes they won't.

They say that those witnesses were not relevant to the crimes being tried and, quote, only served to establish the defendant's propensity to commit the crimes charged. I mean, OK. OK. But the Manhattan D.A. says that regardless, they are going to retry the case.

But like at what cost? You know what I mean? The man is in jail for egregious violations in Los Angeles. Why is New York spending the money to retry him over here when it's not going to let him out of jail? And it is just going to re-traumatize these victims.

Yeah, I mean, his accusers are going to have to testify again. This is a use of government resources if you're a Manhattan resident. These are your tax dollars. But I will add that you're saying, oh, he's in jail. Well, his L.A. conviction is not necessarily safe either because he has appealed that case too, which also used similar testimony from prior bad acts witnesses. Then that was the basis of overturning this ruling. So...

If this man gets out of jail, I will lose my mind. I absolutely will, too, because it's like it's like I'm saying, can't we leave well enough alone? There are hundreds of thousands of people in jail right now who are innocent.

who had actual crime done upon them when they were put in prison for things they didn't commit. I'd rather spend my tax dollars trying to work out some of those cases where there wasn't a clear villain and where somebody who committed the actual crime might still be on the loose than Harvey Weinstein, who we know committed egregious sex acts. Can I just give you further background that it reinforces why the system is broken? And the cases you're talking about

So the lawyer for Harvey Weinstein right now and for P. Diddy is a woman named Jennifer Bonjean. And Jennifer Bonjean, I know someone who works for her. Before they were doing these cases, they were getting people who were wrongfully convicted out of prison. And I don't know how much of their legal work is now that versus this, but this is able to fund people.

Because they work for Bill Cosby, that's now able to fund work that they might have been doing before. So it's like even lawyers who were or maybe still are trying to overturn wrongful convictions, that's expensive. I mean, there's just so many circus cases out there, too. Hunter Biden is going to sue Fox News apparently for defamation and for the unlawful publication of his hacked...

It's like, I can't believe this is the world we live in where every day there's something absurd in today's is that the president's son has to sue a major news network for leaking his dick pics.

Take a number, Hunter. Everyone is trying to sue Fox News. But I mean, this is a world in which the former president and the current Republican candidate for president is on trial right now. Actually, I think they're at a lunch break, but he's on trial this afternoon for federal campaign violations that stem from him trying to cover up that he had sex with a porn star. Like this is the this is the world we're living in. And it is no surprise that our court system has sort of become like a public

playground in which the strongest, meanest, wealthiest bully gets to rule the playground. Yep. And where the stories that might turn into Netflix miniseries get picked up by third parties to fund major settlements and scandals. So we'll get to Trump later because it's not just individuals that use the court system to evade punishment for their personal acts, but politicians like Donald Trump, state political parties. And now we're even seeing, I mean, we've seen this in the past, but

More prominently, coalitions of states that wish to counter federal policy that they don't like, as we just saw literally yesterday when Republican attorneys general in several states filed lawsuits to challenge the Biden administration's expansion of Title IX to include transgender students. So far, Texas, Louisiana, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina have filed lawsuits, and at least Tennessee and South Dakota have said that they plan to file or join on similar suits.

No one would know better than you. Like you think about this from the perspective of a transgender kid or a queer kid or an adult or any of their family members in any of these states or in any other state.

that they see the legal system using this to dictate their health and their daily experiences, like what bathroom they get to use. And regardless of what is actually happening in their present, it is scary for people to feel that their futures and their rights are in jeopardy. And they can't just leave their states if it's not working for them there. And that's the thing. I had a hard enough time being a queer kid before all of this had such a spotlight. I cannot imagine

trying to come out or trying to live my most authentic self and knowing that my state is litigating against me as a person. Like what an immense bummer and burden and difficulty that your state is trying to harm you. Like not even a person, it would give me such paranoia. It does give me paranoia. And to what end? Like, what is the point here? There's so many bigger problems for us to be solving. And you see these state governors just running around

culture warring us into nothingness, meanwhile lining their pockets with all kinds of dark money to distract people from the actual issues they should be facing. The Supreme Court is actually set to rule on a case out of Texas where the state of Texas is suing the DOJ over a question of whether their state border laws should supersede federal border policy. And

And it's not just about, yes, this is about border policy, this particular case, but it's really a question of whether state law should reign over federal law. It's no, we already fought this war, Sammy, and the state's lost. The state's lost. We had a whole failed constitution. Remember, the Articles of Confederation were based on fail.

So this is really a question that could vastly remake the structure of governance in the U.S. It's beyond just a question of this border law. And now that question, along with dozens of others, are in the hands of a Supreme Court bench that has been shown to be highly politicized, susceptible to money, and has more significant ethical questions surrounding its behavior and its influences by money than any bench in American history has ever had.

And these are the clowns who are not only deciding whether we will be allowed to have bodily autonomy, but whether or not Donald Trump, who appointed three of them, will get to determine whether he has to be held accountable by law or by practice for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and make himself a dictator. Like,

Literally last week, one of his attorneys argued in front of the Supreme Court that anything he did as president could be considered an official act, including if he literally ordered the assassination of a political enemy. And the attorney was not left out of the room for it. And he was deeply serious. Like when we think of attorney, this is not a fucking movie. You know what I mean? Like we would see this in a movie and you'd expect there to be like snickering from like Sally Fields in the audience or something. I don't know. This this is real. He said it with a straight face because he meant it.

made that as a legal argument. And maybe some of that is about like shifting the Overton window, because I think realistically, not all of the justices by that extent of the argument, but it was made. It's on the court record. And who says that one of the justices won't reference it in one of their opinions? To be fair, they don't seem to think that Trump should have absolute, absolute immunity. But ultimately,

It's besides the point in practice, because if they don't issue a decision or send it back to the lower court, which we're running out of time to do, he is already immune in effect because there's not going to be a decision about his guilt before the 2024 election. And if there is no accountability for the insurrection before he's allowed to run again, what does it even matter what the court says? I feel like it's a completely insane that

I am even trying to honor this situation with a logical argument when they are fighting with something else. And that's the thing is they are, they're just going to push this to give him practical immunity. And that in itself is insane. There should, there's no reason that the Supreme court of the United States shouldn't be able to just say very easily. No, you can't order the assassination of your political rivals just because you're the president. I mean,

Come on. Like, it's such a simple thing. But the courts are corrupt. And yet we continue to go there to try to get some barely qualified person to decide for us. There is a society where there is just lawsuits and orders, but there is no law and order. The Legal Sandbox.

Welcome back, friends. Today, we are going to get into our favorite segment. The only thing that brings me joy, our down-ballot girly of the week, except this week we have a twist. This week, we're doing our down-ballot villain of the week. Mwahaha!

And it's Eric Hovde. Hovde, is that you say? I think so. H-O-V-D-E. That's him. You'll recognize the name. I mean, just as much as we want to point out great candidates, there are some great candidates who are running against terrible people. And we need to let you know who you really got to avoid. So this dude is running to unseat Senator Tammy Baldwin. And he suggested that nearly everyone in a nursing home is not, quote, at a point to vote. And he said, well, I don't know.

He said, quote, well, if you're in a nursing home, you only have like five or six months left to live.

almost nobody in a nursing home is at a point to vote. He said this on Fox Radio. They were talking about like mail-in voting and he was like, no, I'm against it. And they were like, what about people in nursing homes? And he was like, fuck them older people. Like, I don't want their vote. This is probably a solid 50% of the listeners. And they're like, wait, this man is saying that I only have five to six months left. Does he realize that some people go to nursing homes because they maybe don't have care? Maybe they're a really nice nursing home. Yeah.

Yeah, assisted living. Either way, their vote matters. Your vote matters forever. And he's basically like, well, what if they vote on November 3rd, but they're dead by January 21st? I'm like, who cares? That didn't matter.

He got called in because people were like, hey, this is like the majority block of our voters. He came back out and he was like, hey, I don't hate old people. But then literally like as he's making this statement, the bank that he leads, the Utah-based SunWest, was named as a co-defendant in a California lawsuit that accuses a senior living facility partly owned by the bank,

of elder abuse, negligence, and wrongful death. So it does seem like not just in words, but perhaps also in actions, this man is not a fan of the residents of nursing homes. That is something you couldn't even write. And then he doesn't just hate old people.

And folks in nursing homes, he also hates fat people. In 2012, he proposed that insurance companies charge higher premiums for people living with obesity. Quote, you become obese, your health care is going to cost more. He said this on the public affairs channel, Wisconsin Eye. These are not things he's saying in back rooms. These are talking points that he like goes on television to say.

This man is not great in public, and he's running against an incumbent, Senator Tammy Baldwin, who is great. People are very into her in Wisconsin. Thankfully, thankfully, they're not voting for dollar store Jeff Foxworthy, who hates everyone. That's what he that's what he looks like to me. Dollar store Jeff Foxworthy. So but yes, lucky for us, the good people of Wisconsin seem poised to enthusiastically reelect Senator Baldwin.

Now that hasn't stopped Eric Haldi's brother from spending a million dollars on a super PAC attacking Tammy Baldwin. The group spent more than $220,000 in March alone on digital ads, attacking her and data from Google ads. Transparency center shows that these attack ads that he funded have been shown hundreds of thousands of times around Wisconsin and are largely being targeted only towards a male audience. Now,

When we say that we would rather meet a bear than a man in the woods, this is the man we are not trying to meet.

Well, your other option is Tammy Baldwin, who was the first woman elected to Congress in Wisconsin. She's also the first openly gay non-incumbent elected to the House of Representatives and the first openly lesbian woman elected to Congress. In 2008, she and Representative Barney Frank were the co-founders of the Congressional LGBTQ Equality Caucus. She opposes privatization of the post office, which is horrible.

obviously very important to everyone on this show. She believes in science, not a given, common sense gun safety to improve public health, and she is a Midwestern lesbian who graduated from Smith College, which is why Eric Hobdy is targeting her with ads, clearly. Tammy Baldwin, the lesbian from Wisconsin, is H-O-T-T-O-G-O. Good luck, babe. And she knows the Pledge of Allegiance. This is important. She knows

is the Pledge of Allegiance. And I don't think we can take that as for granted, because here is a clip of Eric Hovde saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm proud to be in America. I love my country. So let's say the Pledge of Allegiance together.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Amen. God bless America. Go Slinger Speedway! Thanks, Eric.

Oh, boy. Well, I forgot God be the most important part. I believe in God, but Eric Hovde doesn't. Exactly. On to our last segment of the day. Thank you all for sticking with us. This has been such a fun and I think really information packed episode. Now it is time for a Mayor I Can't.

We got one more to leave you with. And V has been texting me about this one nonstop. The only thing she texts me more about is Jojo Siwa. So...

Two things that I can't get off my mind this week, Jojo Siwa and the unhingedness of her and the fact that I literally hate the dollar store so much. So you would think that I would be glad to hear that the Dollar Tree announced it's closing 600 of its family dollar locations in 2024. In addition to that, the discount retailer also plans to close an additional 370 family dollar stores plus $30 tree locations over the next few years. So at the end of all of this,

These dollar, they're closing about a thousand dollar stores across the nation. I'm not happy about this though. In fact, the only way to truly satisfy the vigilante justice I seek against the dollar store would to be to force them to stay open and make good on the promises they made to the communities when they were given priority contracts over the last two decades. Here's why the dollar store sucks, Sammy. Top three reasons. Put them on the board. Number one.

Everything is really a dollar. That's my issue with it. First of all, correct. It's a lie. It's a lie. Top three reasons that the dollar store is the greatest villain you never knew was Evelyn. Number one, when a dollar store opens up, they are typically preying on low-income neighborhoods. And the day they open their doors, they steal business from mom-and-pop shops. Local businesses especially tend to edge out local or small grocery stores. And they do that on purpose.

According to the Institute of Self-Reliance Reporting, with plenty of cash from shareholders and institutional investors, chain dollar stores have the resources to lose money indefinitely in a community until their competitors have folded. Dollar stores don't just edge out existing grocery stores. They also make it much less likely that a new grocery store will open in the same neighborhood.

The dollar store stocks their shelves with incredibly cheap, often on the brink of expiration, processed and packaged foods. And grocery stores that operate on razor-thin margins often make ends meet by selling packaged food or snacks along with the fresh produce and other loss leader items.

When shoppers don't buy their snacks from traditional grocery stores, when they're in there to pick up the rest of their groceries, the grocery stores close. And there are thousands of examples of times that a dollar store came into community and within two years that local grocery store was put out of business.

And when a town or neighborhood has more than one dollar store, the odds are even greater that that new grocery store will not be able to survive there. By making it more difficult for a community to support adequate access to fresh food options, dollar stores create and exacerbate food deserts and chronic health conditions. Once they force your local grocer out, they're

They raise prices. This is the nefariousness. It's interesting because I'm sure people can observe throughout their own lives as millennials that there are fewer grocery stores from when you were younger and maybe fewer like smaller markets.

And what I think is probably another interesting dynamic along the theme of money running and ruining everything, as Logan Roy says, money wins. You would think that some towns would try to keep dollar stores out because it would imply that the town is more affluent. No. In fact, this is point number two, Sammy.

The dollar store are the real welfare queens. A 2020 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the major dollar store chains were among the companies with the greatest number of employees that receive SNAP and non-disabled, non-elderly Medicaid benefits. In addition, dollar stores, which are owned by an investment company, okay? The dollar store itself is not what you think. It's like owned by Goldman Sachs guys, okay? It's not like

Some nice thing. Okay. The same people who are paying for litigation are owning your dollar stores. Right. And they're, and they're doing it to like keep low income neighborhoods low in my opinion, at least. And that's, and that's what they've been proven to do. So in addition to underpaying folks, uh,

They lobby state governments for big tax-free grants and investments to open new stores that small businesses could never access. And because they're traded on the stock market, the money that comes into the dollar store gets sent to the wealthy shareholders, where money that was spent at a local business is an economic multiplier. When you spend money locally, that money is spent locally. It circulates over and over and over again.

But the investors and the bigwigs at dollar store, they are lawyers and they are investors and they know how to lobby these small governments to get money that should be going to local businesses because, this is my third point on why the dollar store is the worst, wages. You would think with all the money they have and with all of the places that they get priority access to, they would at least...

pay okay, but they don't. There have been over 2,000 wage theft lawsuits levied against Dollar General, with the average employee making just $14,000 a year. The stores are staffed with half the amount of people and at a lower wage than a grocery store pays on average.

Fewer jobs, lower wages, and bureaucracy that keeps grievances from being taken seriously means that there's very little consistency for workers in having co-workers to count on to be at the job with them or even getting a consistent schedule.

Managers are often forced to work overtime to, quote, meet company goals without getting extra pay. Because while they put the cash register people on like, you know, all right, well, we're going to keep you under $29 and pay you $14 an hour. They put the managers on a salary and then they just work them to death because then they don't have to pay them overtime. It's not that they're paying just low. It seems that they are not paying in

In many cases.

You know it makes you a target for crime. When folks come in the store, they feel like it's a big box store. Who cares about it? Or the store is dirty because we don't have enough people to keep it clean. Or I never see an employee in there. It looks like it'd be easy to steal from them. It puts people in danger. And those are the top three reasons that I hate the dollar store and I can't with them.

This is what I hope that we can take away from this if we can take our power back from the dollar store. The next time you hear that a dollar store might be opening in your town, remember this. A dollar store opening in your neighborhood results on average in a 5.7% drop in independent grocery store sales.

which leads to the closing of grocery stores. It leads to a 3.7% decrease in employment for that neighborhood and a 2.3% increase in the likelihood of a real grocery store closing or never opening. Bad news bears. I did write this before I saw that the Dollar General warehouse in the Midwest was completely destroyed by a tornado. And I'm not saying it was my rage writing this last night that did it. And I am so sorry that that happened because that is going to cause major,

for that territory. But there's one more reason that the dollar store does not step up for its people in its community. God doesn't want your dollar stores. No. And you know what they'll do? They'll write it all off as a loss and the people in that community will struggle to find fresh food. And that is just the perpetuation of their fuckery. Right. Because they've already put the grocery stores out of business. So let's say a dollar store is coming to your town and

But what about if people, that's the cheapest way to shop? You know, in a lot of cases, there's not really a choice. I'm totally with you. Now, if you have a dollar store come into your community and there's nothing there and this is providing you some relief, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about when a dollar store comes into a community that does have a setup and basically,

takes out that setup, takes out the foundational securities, the mom and pop shops, and the access to a local grocer. If you can avoid shopping at the dollar store, please do recognize it's not just a dollar. And in fact, they are the leader of shrinkflation. So while you may be in a grocery store looking at a bag of chips that says lays on it and it's $5, and you go to the dollar store and you get the dollar general version of chips and it says $3, there is probably a significantly less amount of product in

That bag, in addition, this is just me, your friend speaking, not medical advice.

Do not buy medicine from the dollar store. They are not just the generic version of a Tylenol. They are produced in a different facility and they are not as potent and oftentimes expired and do not always have the same strict level of quality assurance that a name brand even in a Walmart would have, that the Walmart brand would have. So please do not buy dollar store medications. The lessons you learn here, they're irreplaceable. Yep.

Well, on Thursday, we're going to be airing an interview with Samantha Vinograd, a member of the White House Holocaust Memorial Council, where we're going to talk about all of the things that have been going on as it results to anti-Semitism in this country and the slide towards autocracy that we are seeing. I hate it. Until next time, I'm Vitus Spear. And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream.

American Fever Dream is hosted by Vitus Spear and Sammy Sage. The show is produced by Rebecca Sous-McCatt, Jorge Morales-Picot, and Rebecca Steinberg. Editing by Rebecca Sous-McCatt. Social media by Bridget Schwartz. And be sure to follow Betches News on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.