The Supreme Court: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

our main story tonight concerns the fact that last weekend ruth bader ginsburg died which was distressing enough but it's been compounded by the fact that just yesterday this happened good evening we begin with breaking news the president nominating amy coney barrett to the supreme court barrett is a favorite of religious conservatives for her strong anti-abortion rights views and if confirmed would move the court to the right for a generation right trump is about to replace a liberal icon with an extremely conservative justice who's been called the female antonin scalia and she could serve for a long time amy coney barrett is only 48 and i know that i make 43 look like 76 but trust me that is young for a supreme court justice and look if and almost certainly when barrett is confirmed to the supreme court the impact could be dire in recent years key cases have been decided by just one vote from upholding the affordable care act to preserving daca to striking down an incredibly restrictive abortion law should those issues come before the court again they could now easily go the other way and there is clearly no point holding on to hope that conservatives might choose to respect the president they set by refusing to even consider merrick garland in an election year because that was always in bad faith as was obvious at the time in fact ahead of the 2016 election senator richard burr even privately said this to a group of campaign volunteers if hillary clinton becomes president i'm going to do everything i can do to make sure that four years from now we've still got an opening on the supreme court yeah that's a republican senator committing to blocking a justice confirmation not just in an election year but for an entire presidential term and just think about how long four years is four years ago harvey weinstein was still producing movies in the past four years harry and megan began dating got engaged got married left the royal family and i think own netflix now and in the past four years leonardo dicaprio's girlfriend gains the right to legally drink alcohol two more years and she'll have no problem getting a rental car to move her belongings out of his house time is amazing and some republicans seem to rationalize their party's blatant hypocrisy by saying that should they confirm trump's nominee they'll simply be bringing the court closer to the will of the country i recognize that we we may have a court which has more of a conservative bent than it's had over the last few decades but my liberal friends have over many decades gotten very used to the idea of having a liberal court and that's not written in the stars it's also appropriate for nation which is if you will center right uh to have a court which reflects a center-right points of view what the hell are you talking about mitt set aside the notion that a court that gutted the voting rights act is a liberal court since when is this nation naturally center-right did we all take a buzzfeed quiz that i'm not remembering like choose your favorite fall lasagna ingredients and we'll tell you which direction the nation's electorate leans because for the record more americans say they align with the democratic party than the republicans plus poll after poll has shown americans favor abortion rights with support of roe v wade reaching record highs while a strong majority of the public also supports medicare for all oh and incidentally a solid majority say the winner of this presidential election should be the one to choose ginsburg's successor so our country isn't so much center-right as mitt romney is center wrong look this has been a very dark week for a lot of people the supreme court is about to lurch to the right for the foreseeable future and if things seem hopeless right now it's because to be completely honest they basically are this is a pivotal moment and what we got here a little bit by bad luck and bad timing we also got here through diligent effort by republican leadership and crucially some very big systemic problems which just have to be addressed so tonight let's talk about that specifically how the we got here and what the we can possibly do next and there are basically two major factors that brought us to this point the first is this man mitch mcconnell the only thing to come out of kentucky more shameless than the kfc menu how do you want your chicken regular crispy cheeto flavored in a warm slurry as bread because it's all on the table at kfc we promise maximum flavor for you maximum disrespect for a chicken's memory reconfiguring america's courts has been a single-minded focus for mcconnell trump wants marvel's to bob woodward that you know what mitch's biggest thing is in the whole world his judges and his obsession isn't just with the supreme court mcconnell's blockade of merrick garland justifiably got a lot of attention but he also made sure that trump could stack the lower courts with conservative judges something trump also explained to woodward i'm going to be up to 280 judges very soon nobody's ever had that 180. obama gave us 142 judges yeah when i came here yeah it never happened you never had one if you were a president you would never have any federal you know they're like golden nuggets right okay first it's weird to refer to anything as golden nuggets unless you're talking about actual golden nuggets or you're describing your husband's balls in the middle of his tiger-themed funeral while impersonating a priest those are the only two perfectly appropriate times but needless to say obama very much didn't deliberately leave those vacancies open for trump when republicans took the senate in 2014 mitch mcconnell began systematically blocking lower court appointees so a future republican president could fill the seats later so obama didn't give trump those judges any more than the national archives gave nicholas cage the declaration of independence in fact obama's only ever given trump two things a brief tour of the white house and a colossal inferiority complex that fueled trump's rise to power and made him so furious he decided to turn america into an apocalyptic hellscape and destroy democracy as we know it really just those two things and mcconnell's willingness to go to the map for judicial appointments was perhaps never more obvious than during the kavanaugh hearings because immediately after christine blasey ford's gut-wrenching testimony mcconnell apparently had this conversation with the president both of them were kind of testing each other a little bit where are you at on this you know how strong are you and mcconnell basically says to the president you don't worry about me i'm strong as mule piss that's his quote i'm strong as a mule piss in other words he's not gonna let up he's not gonna give up he's not gonna surrender wow that is extraordinary because it's easy to forget that after blasey ford's testimony kavanagh's confirmation felt a lot less certain and to react to what she said with don't worry i'm strong as mule piss is both horrendous and deeply weird quick side note i wasn't sure how strong mulepis actually is in the internet is surprisingly short of videos of mules urinating although we did manage to find this stock footage titled donkey who urine at sunset and i have to say that is an impressively strong stream so i do totally get it now and going forward every time i think of mitch mcconnell i will think of that donkey who you're in at sunset but as easy and fun as it is to blame mitch mcconnell and his mule piss for everything it is a mistake to focus just on the people involved here because there is a whole system underneath them that has enabled them to do what they have done and that brings us to the second major factor that got us to where we are now the deeply undemocratic nature of america's institutions because there is no doubt the republican party currently controls both the senate and the white house it's true and they will argue that this gives them a mandate to do exactly what they're doing chris the senate majority is performing our constitutional duty and fulfilling the mandate that the voter voters gave us voters have elected a republican president they've elected a republican senate and i think republicans need to keep their promises here and that's what i intend to do the american people elected president trump and a republican majority because we want the constitution and bill of rights protected and that is our job it's what we need to do i do not like that man ted cruz i do not like his backward views i do not like his stupid suits i do not like his cowboy boots i do not like him when he sneezes i do not like him eating cheeses i hate to see his dumb face smirking because his beard looks like a merkin but look let's talk about that mandate because neither the presidency nor the senate are nearly as reflective of the will of the american people as they are suggesting there first take the white house a democrat has won the national popular vote in four out of the last five elections but we've spent 12 of the last 20 years with a republican in office and that is because the electoral college with its winner-take-all approach in most states can distort the will of the majority on top of which it grants disproportionate power to less popular states which tend to be rural and more conservative something which is even more pronounced in the senate where there are 15 states representing 38 million people that have 30 republican senators even though that is less than the total population of california which has just two democratic ones and that's before you even get into the fact that places like puerto rico and washington dc where the populations are largely black or hispanic don't have representation in the senate at all in fact if you take all of this together the senate gives the average black american only 75 percent as much representation as the average white american and the average hispanic american only 55 as much and it's clearly not great when the best thing you can say about your representative democracy is hey at least black people got above three-fifths this time at this rate they could count as 100 of a white person as early as 2408 onwards and upwards black people you truly are an inspiration to hispanic half people everywhere so the fact is when barrett is confirmed a president who lost the popular vote will have picked a quarter of the federal judiciary and a third of the supreme court and his choices will have been rubber-stamped by a senate republican majority representing 15 million fewer people than the democratic minority and if that sounds absurd to you it's because it clearly is especially when those courts have allowed republicans to set wildly unpopular policy that wouldn't actually pass muster with voters and that brings us to our final question of what can now be done well for democrats the first priority is to try and take control of the white house and both chambers of congress this november which given everything we've just discussed is by no means a certainty not only could trump win the election outright even if he doesn't he could as he's repeatedly indicated refuse to concede and force the result into the courts and that possibility is clearly part of his haste to get a justice confirmed before the election because he's not even trying to hide it now we did nine justices you need that with the unsolicited millions of ballots that they're sending it's a scam it's a hoax everybody knows that and the democrats know it better than anybody else so you're going to need nine justices up there i think it's going to be very important okay there is a number of dark insinuations there including it's important for us to choose the next justice so they can decide what the american people choose and that makes it pretty clear that for trump having an additional supreme court appointment is absolutely crucial to his re-election as crucial say as angry white people wearing red hats facebook posts from undercover russian operatives and based on his campaign's online store selling trump coloring books that even the kids in the ad look bored by what is going on there the younger kid isn't even paying attention and the older one looks like he's trying to will the coloring book into becoming a nintendo switch with his eyes also why aren't they coloring in the coloring book the father seems to be reading it to his children which is objectively the one wrong way to enjoy a coloring book but look let's say for the sake of argument democrats do manage to sweep the upcoming election the biggest mistake would be to think that that has in itself fixed everything or indeed anything because there is no point getting power unless you're then willing to be bold enough to use it to make significant structural change we've argued before that the filibuster should be abolished that would allow legislation to get passed with a simple majority it is admittedly risky especially for a party that again for structural reasons can expect to be in the minority more often than it should but those very factors make it extremely hard for democrats to win a filibuster-proof supermajority and do anything meaningful what is frustrating is that some centrist democrats like joe manchin honestly seem to think that even if they somehow significantly get more power the best way forward is to try and return to a more civilized moderate era in american politics i will make every decision i can that keeps the senate bipartisan right simply so we've got to fight for basically who we are as a senate can we represent the people in a bipartisan way democrats and republicans oh i've got an answer to that question for you joe no you can't it seems the message manchin would take from america surging to the left against the odds would be i think they want us to work with the republicans and that is not just dumb that's dumb on the level of james cameron going you know what people want four more avatar movies and to both of those men i say this no one wants that stop talking about it and just give us what we do want one more good terminator movie and a green new deal i don't care which of you does which just get it the done although i will say even if the democrats sweep the election and even if they then get rid of the filibuster and then have the courage to pass major legislation those laws are now increasingly vulnerable to a more conservative supreme court striking them down and that has led some to suggest taking the more dramatic step of expanding the supreme court by adding justices it is possible the constitution doesn't specify how many seats there should be and it can and has been done in the past through a simple act of congress although there are real concerns about what the eventual blowback to that would be because it doesn't take a genius to imagine what republicans would do next time they took control of the government seriously it doesn't take a genius they want to pack the court you know that means they want to put on a lot of justices these are things that are just horrible i guess we could do that too right we could do that too yeah he's right he could absolutely do that which is undeniably chilling expanding the court is a bit like doing yoga naked one way to dampen your enthusiasm for the idea is to picture donald trump doing it too court expansion could open the door to a never-ending cycle of both parties doing it which could permanently destabilize one of the bedrock institutions of american governments now does that outweigh the potential for a court with barrett on it undoing or blocking years of protections for our climate health care and civil and women's rights that is definitely worth considering nothing should be taken lightly here though i will say there are some other steps we could take that should be impossible to argue with at this point steps that would make both the senate and white house more representative of the electorate on the senate side you could grant statehood to washington dc and if voters there wanted puerto rico that would not only help balance out the senate's bias toward white rural voters it's also the right thing to do for the almost four million americans who currently have no senatorial representation whatsoever which is just astonishing that's roughly the population of rhode island maine montana and wyoming combined now as for the presidency we have to get rid of the electoral college which might sound radical but it really isn't it's not even a new idea in fact in the late 60s it very nearly happened here's birch bai the senator who spearheaded those efforts making what is in retrospect a pretty convincing case there is a great danger with the present electoral college system of electing a minority or a non-plurality president of electing a president who has fewer votes than the fellow he's running against when we have an electoral college system which threatens to elect a man who has fewer votes than his opponent we tend to erode the confidence in the people of this country and their president and in their form of government right and as someone who has lived through the exact hypothetical he just described and twice i can report that our confidence in government hasn't so much been eroded erosion is a slow dignified process as much as it's been hit by an asteroid full of sentient nuclear jackhammers until it collapsed in on itself like a star inside a black hole back then the idea of abolishing the electoral college had bipartisan support then president nixon even urged congress to go through with it writing every four years the american democracy places a large unacceptable and unnecessary wager that the electoral college will work one more time which does make sense because if there's one thing we know nixon was not a fan of it's leaving elections up to chance and if there are six things we know he wasn't a fan of it's jews blacks hippies snitches living vietnamese people and then leaving elections up to chance miss you dick but obviously we didn't end up doing away with the electoral college in 1970 because the legislation was ultimately blocked by you guessed it a filibuster and even today the idea has widespread support with 61 percent of americans saying we should abolish the electoral college but republicans will fiercely defend it in fact when a movement to switch to a national popular vote began picking up steam a decade ago mitch mcconnell said republicans need to kill it in the cradle before it grows up but the beauty is the movement mcconnell was talking about there doesn't necessarily require his cooperation or indeed an act of congress at all because a group of states have quietly signed on to an interesting potential workaround recently 15 states and the district of columbia joined the national popular vote interstate compact they're pledging to give their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote rather than the person who wins the popular vote in their state but this won't take effect until enough states adopt it which so far hasn't happened yeah it's kind of amazing very basically if enough states just pretend the electoral college doesn't exist it could functionally disappear it's the same approach every harry potter fan is currently trying to take towards jk rowling obliviate you go the books stay now for this idea to take effect setting aside the legal hurdles it would almost certainly face it would need states representing 270 electoral votes to sign on it currently has 196 which is a lot but need 74 more which would be increasingly hard to get and obviously the better way to abolish the electoral college would be to do it through a constitutional amendment but that is even harder and i will say there are other ideas for significant reforms such as setting term limits for supreme court justices which we've argued before we should absolutely do the point here is it is past time for big change and perhaps that is why republicans like kevin mccarthy already seem to be freaking out the democrats believe it has to be their way or no way but now it's a new extreme they want to expand the court they want to bring new states into the union anything that rigs the system on their behalf instead of believing in the rule of law okay first of all you kevin if there is one group of people who don't get to complain about their opponents going to extremes to get what they want it's congressional republicans and secondly we've expanded the court before and we've added states before we added two states in 1959 we didn't fight world war ii with 50 stars on the flag america is constantly shifting and granting dc and puerto rico statehood or ending the electoral college would actually make our system more democratic rather than less because the unavoidable truth here is that the system is already rigged and it's rigged in a way that has allowed a party without popular support to drastically reshape an entire branch of government for the foreseeable future by appealing almost exclusively to white voters in some of the least populous regions of the country that is not a mandate and it's not democracy it's a travesty we're at the end of a generational battle and the heartbreaking thing is we lost and that hurts it's going to hurt for a long time for a lot of people in ways that could take a while to fully comprehend but the next battle has to start right now and it will be long we didn't get here overnight and we won't get out of here overnight but we must be willing to fight tirelessly and with every tool and tactic at our disposal because sometimes fighting fire with fire is not enough you have to fight mule piss with mule piss

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 7,444,266

Rating: 4.7149611 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: pkpfFuiZkcs

Length: 21min 12sec (1272 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/CaspianRoach]

It's crazy how much of american government relies on the government acting in good faith and how many things break once the acting government stops giving a flying fuck.

[u/WigglestonTheFourth]

This might be the most joke-free segment I've seen on Last Week Tonight.

[u/cdncbn]

I want a Mirror!
I'm holding on for a mirror til the end of the night..
It's got to be strong and it's got to be fast and it's got to get me to the site..
I need a Mirror!

[u/AFlaccoSeagulls]

It's crazy that, to me, the biggest thing about Barrett's nomination is the blatant hypocrisy Republicans are showing after many of them went on record, such as Lindsay Graham, in 2016 saying they would uphold the precedent they set with not allowing Merrick Garland to be voted on. I mean, it's just absolutely crazy to me that something like that could happen and people just....don't care about it! Kentucky voters are like "HELL YEAH, MITCH! GET EM!".

It's just so helpless as a citizen watching that unfold and knowing there's nothing I can do about it. I live in a Liberal state, my representatives and Senators are Democrats. I cannot do anything about Senate Republicans just saying "lol, get fucked. You thought we meant what we said 3 years ago?!?" and their voters not caring. I'm still going to vote this election, and it's the first election that I'll be voting Blue the entire way down the ticket because this year quite frankly I do not care how "moderate" you claim to be as a Republican, I will not take a single chance of putting these people back in office until the entire problem has been uprooted and purged.

And for the record, when Barrett does get confirmed to the court, I absolutely do hope the next time the Democrats take the Senate they abolish the filibuster and start playing by Republicans' rules, because apparently having ethics and morals has no place in the Senate when Republicans are in power. They will do anything to gain the maximum amount of power as possible.

[u/westpiece]

“We lost”

Damn this got me

[u/Sisiwakanamaru]

Chris Evans even tweeted this segment.

[u/930419]

Elections have consequences.

[u/MrCaul]

I don't really want any more Terminator movies John.

[u/firefly328]

Ironic to see an anti-abortion senator use the phrase “we’ve got to kill it in the cradle before it grows up”