Midterms are around the corner. Democrats have a shot at the House and Senate. And the maps that will decide those races are being fought in courtrooms as much as in legislatures. Hosts Kathryn Johnson, Joshua Kleinfeld, and Ilan Wurman take on the gerrymandering arms race — and the deeper question underneath it: Should courts referee election maps, or does that hand too much power to judges who never have to face the voters?

They start with Virginia, where Democrats tried to turn a 51 percent state into a 10–1 congressional map, then lost on a technicality. Then Texas and California: two states with 60–40 splits in 2024 but maps that look nothing alike. Josh argues that partisan gerrymandering is exactly the kind of attack on democratic machinery courts exist to stop — and that Rucho v. Common Cause was one of the Supreme Court’s great mistakes. Ilan disagrees on the merits: the Fourteenth Amendment protects civil rights, not political rights, and nothing in the Constitution forbids a political gerrymander.

Then the Missouri firestorm. Republicans passed a new congressional map. Democrats put it to a referendum. State and federal courts issued conflicting orders to the same official. The U.S. Supreme Court stepped in three times — on the shadow docket — and Missouri will go to the midterms with the old, more Democratic-friendly map.

The hosts ask who was right, what the Purcell principle actually requires, and why the Left’s sudden silence about the “shadow docket” is so revealing.

This is the rational — and based — discussion of gerrymandering, judicial power, and election maps you won’t hear anywhere else.

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A public university is “We the People” spending our money on our children. A foreign student with a visa is a houseguest, not a relative.

So why are judges telling states they cannot stop DEI dogma in public classrooms — and telling the United States it cannot send home non-citizens who preach hatred of the country?

Hosts Ilan Wurman, Kathryn Johnson, and Joshua Kleinfeld take on two new cases that split conservatives from libertarians. First, a divided Eleventh Circuit held that Florida’s “Stop Woke Act” violates the First Amendment. Second, a California district court held that the Trump Administration cannot revoke student visas for anti-American, antisemitic, or other speech contrary to U.S. national interests.

The hosts draw two lines. On immigration, citizenship is the line: speech that is fully protected from an American may still be reason to send a guest home. As to universities, public versus private is the line: a private university may teach what it likes on its own dime, but the people of a community should be able to oversee the institutions they create and fund for the sake of a public mission.

This is the conservative/libertarian fight that will decide whether the Constitution is a charter of self-government or a suicide pact. And this is the rational — and based — discussion of free speech, woke ideology, and immigration you won’t hear anywhere else.

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Lindsay Clancy sent her husband out of the house, strangled their three children one by one, and then claimed a voice told her to do it. Was she insane? Eleven jurors voted to acquit. Has the jury system failed us?

The conservative media sphere is getting this wrong, hosts Ilan Wurman, Kathryn Johnson, and Joshua Kleinfeld argue. The rage is justified. The insanity defense and the jury — ancient foundations of Anglo-American liberty — are the wrong targets.

The disease is identity politics: a culture in which women side with women, and every group sides with its own, no matter the crime. Dead children become an inconvenience. Justice becomes secondary. Fake compassion becomes a tool of power.

This is the most passionate episode we have ever recorded. Josh, who has taught criminal law for fifteen years, explains what legal insanity actually is, why it is vanishingly rare, and why this jury still almost acquitted.

This is the rational — and based — discussion of crime, gender, and justice you won’t hear anywhere else.

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New Podcast Episodes every Thursday morning, find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or on YouTube!

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