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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Washington State’s “Family Reconciliation Act” — arguably the most Orwellian name in recent memory — requires shelters NOT to notify parents if runaway children say they want “gender-affirming treatment.” Meanwhile, the chief medical groups pushing gender transitions for children — WPATH and the AAP — now claim, in the face of lawsuits for fraud, that their medical standards of care were just “opinions” protected by the First Amendment.

Hosts Ilan Wurman, Joshua Kleinfeld, and Kathryn Johnson break down the cases and ask the hard questions: Do the parents challenging Washington’s law have standing – and does it matter if standing doctrine is just a political football anyway? Should conservatives use substantive due process to defend parental rights or try to get rid of substantive due process as the judicial invention it is? And were those “standards of care” claims of fact, or just more politics?

This is the rational — and based — discussion of transgenderism and the law that you won’t hear anywhere else.

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The Supreme Court is poised to decide a major case on citizenship and voting this Term: RNC v. Mi Familia Vota.

Only citizens can vote. That is the law federally and in all 50 states. But can states check? That is the question in this case. It seems like a no-brainer that, if the law requires citizenship, a state can require documentary proof of citizenship. But the National Voter Registration Act specifies a form for federal elections that only requires voters to attest that they are citizens; it doesn't require proof. Must Arizona accept the form even for state elections? Can it ask for proof?

Your hosts — Kathryn Johnson and law professors Ilan Wurman and Joshua Kleinfeld — break down the issues and ask the bigger question as well: Why do such seemingly simple questions turn into 156-page legal labyrinths? What does that complexity say about American democracy, popular self-government, and the legal system?

This is the rational — and based — discussion of voting and citizenship that you won’t find anywhere else.

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The Second Amendment revival of the last 15 years has not yet answered a question that affects at least 1 in every 20 American adults: do Americans have a constitutional right to possess AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles? The Supreme Court will finally answer that question this term in Viramontes v. Cook County.

Professor Joel Alicea – who is part of the litigation team taking Viramontes to the Supreme Court! – joins hosts Ilan Wurman and Joshua Kleinfeld to break down the issues.

Joel, Josh, and Ilan trace the development of Second Amendment doctrine from Heller to the present and dig into the case's real fault line: Does the Second Amendment contain an exception for “dangerous and unusual weapons” (as Blackstone put it before the American Founding) – and, if so, does that exception encompass AR-15s and similar rifles? Is Cook County right that both history and public safety justify treating AR-15s as “military-grade” weapons and distinguishing them from ordinary weapons used for self-defense?

The hosts dig into broader questions as well. For decades before the recent revival, the Supreme Court treated the Second Amendment as a constitutional embarrassment and a nullity. What does that teach us about judicial power and the abuse of the judicial role? And what can the Second Amendment cases teach us about the "tiers of scrutiny" — the century-old framework courts use to balance rights against the public interest? Is it real law or judicial improvisation dressed up as doctrine? Do the gun rights cases present an alternative?

And – by the way – why are AR-15s called “assault weapons”? Is that a technical term or the political equivalent of calling some knives “murder knives”?

This is the rational — and based — preview of the Supreme Court's next major gun case that you won't hear anywhere else.

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"Due process of law" is emerging as THE central legal battleground for immigration reform in 2026-27. In this episode, Kathryn Johnson and law professors Joshua Kleinfeld and Ilan Wurman break down the three biggest new cases — and confront the deeper question: What is "due process" anyway?

First is Genalo v. Black, which the Supreme Court will hear this October. The statute requires that immigrants convicted of major crimes be detained pending their deportation hearings. But what if those hearings are delayed for years? Does prolonged detention eventually violate due process? Ilan argues that plaintiffs' claim is a weak substantive due process argument (and obviously so), while Josh argues that it's a mistaken but reasonable procedural due process claim.

Second is the Fifth Circuit case of Rodriguez v. Ortega, involving illegal immigrants held in mandatory detention pending deportation proceedings. Does mandatory detention violate due process? Does prolonged detention? The issue has caused high drama at the Fifth Circuit and our hosts ask: Is "due process" becoming little more than a fig leaf for judicial political fights over immigration?

Third is the D.C. Circuit case of Make the Road New York v. Mullin, challenging the Trump Administration's use of expedited procedures for recently arrived aliens. Under those procedures, an interview with an ICE official — no judge, no counsel — can lead to rapid deportation. Does that violate due process?

If you want to understand the legal fights that will shape immigration policy in the year ahead, this is the rational — and based — discussion you won’t hear anywhere else.

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Parent proxy voting for children is in the news and it's gone viral!

On Ross Douthat's podcast, Yale Law professor Samuel Moyn proposed giving 20-somethings extra votes, rather than parents, because “young people — not people who are raising families — will have the best insight into the interests of children” and “Part of our goal as a society is trying to make sure that children aren’t the hostages of their parents." Douthat responded: "I think that’s daft. I think it’s absurd to imagine that a 24-year-old recent college graduate has a better assessment of the interests of my own children than I do." And a meme was born!

It happens that THE leading article on this subject -- "Give Parents the Vote" -- was written by Rationally Based’s very own Joshua Kleinfeld! So in this episode, Josh and co-hosts Kathryn Johnson and Ilan Wurman examine the proposal that parents should be able to vote on behalf of their minor children — and why the Left wants to give that power to anyone BUT parents.

Some highlights:

• Children are nearly a QUARTER of the citizenry, and parents and children together are nearly half of the citizenry — but have just 19% of the vote. Adults without children are just over half the citizenry but have about THREE-QUARTERS of the vote. The result is policies — like COVID school closures, debt-financed entitlements, and more — that systematically shortchange the young.
• Children ALREADY count for apportionment: they determine each state’s seats in Congress, electoral votes for the President, and the drawing of legislative districts. But because they can’t vote and their parents can’t vote for them, their voting power is simply redistributed to all the adults in their districts. The most powerful voter in America is a childless adult in a district with plenty of children.
• Parent proxy voting is purely a matter of state law. Any state could independently adopt it tomorrow for both federal and state elections without violating the Constitution or any federal statute. It is also feasible. And it is consistent with the role parents have in every other context — defending their children’s interests in contexts from the schools to hospitals to courtrooms.
• The world-historic fall in the birth rate means that, for the first time in American history, most adults are not parents. The collapse in the birth rate has made the political divergence between parents and the childless newly consequential. Arguably there is NO other intervention that would have more far-reaching effects on American politics than giving parents the vote.

This is the rational — and based — discussion of who should speak for the next generation that you won’t hear anywhere else.

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