[SCOTT WALTER] Thanks for tuning in I'm Scott Walter [MIKE WATSON] and I'm Michael Watson [SCOTT WALTER] In this episode we look behind the battle over president Trump's judicial nominations, this is the influence watch podcast. If everything goes according to script the US Senate will confirm three of President Donald Trump's nominees to the federal appeals courts this week that means in total the Senate will have confirmed 12 of the president's nominees at that level more than former President Barack Obama saw confirmed in his first year in office but behind the pomp circumstance and talking points are many advocacy groups on the left and right seeking to influence the direction of the courts potentially for decades the White House has consulted with Leonard Leo of the conservative-leaning Federalist Society and also taken support from judicial crisis Network an advocacy group to find candidates whose judicial philosophies stress the need to follow the original meaning of legislative texts. Meanwhile, on the other side of the political spectrum groups like the American Constitution Society, and the Alliance for Justice, which believe in a so-called living Constitution that changes over time, are encouraging Senate Democrats to Stonewall Trump's nominees. That's ironic because the same group supported former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid's so-called nuclear option, which abolished the Senate's ability to filibuster debates over lower court nominees the stonewalling effort has also received support from the American Bar Association which is accused by conservatives of partisan bias in its ratings of judges Mike tell us a little bit about these competing philosophies. [MIKE WATSON] sure so there are generally two major schools of judicial thought there's the living Constitution which is often called loose constructionism which is generally the view of liberals and judges on the Left what their core principle of a living constant of the living Constitution view of the loose constructionist view is that the Constitution has a sort of social meaning beyond the text and that that social meaning changes over time and that judges should use the changing social meaning over time in their interpretation of the law and of the Constitution judges can use the views of contemporary society when they're interpreting what was meant by laws and constitutional texts that were written many many years ago The kind of most clumsy way of expressing this was when Vox media Ezra Klein many a couple years ago tweeted about the Constitution being a hundred years old, and therefore it's silly. Obviously this is generally the view of liberals who generally want to change things more so than the same he's an example and how obvious how constructionism works in practice these things a lot of these sort of what conservatives to ride is an example new rights that are created by judicial activism obstructionism are ready to ride it's written back just after the civil war passed in an attempt to ensure that slaves the new freedmen the new citizens who had been liberated by the Civil War and by the 13th amendment would have political rights obviously that did not occur in practice because of very many things that are an entirely different conversation but what the loose constructionist does is sees that there are more groups in society that are supposed to be treated identically and therefore equal protection of thinking equal the equal protection clause should be expanded to cover them and then, on the other hand, you have the originalist or the strict constructionist view which is generally the view of conservatives. Now there are many different schools of originalism if you pull aside a conservative lawyer he could go into much more detail than I can but the general idea is that when an example of this is the second amendment the the right to keep the right to keep and bear arms conservatives believe originalist strict skin' strict constructionists believe that because there's a whole bunch of evidence that at the time of the passage of the amendment and that the right of the people to keep and bear arms clearly and without real question meant the citizens and not some organized government created militia then that's what it means and that you can't change that understanding unless you actually go through the process laid out in the Constitution to amend the Constitution [SCOTT WALTER] Now the folks who believe in the living Constitution even take that so far as to say that other countries laws should influence the way that we interpret our Constitution is that right? [MIKE WATSON] Some do. Some do there are there is a debate among among liberal legal scholars about to what extent other countries laws inform that social meaning inform that contemporary thinking that can modify the meaning of the legislative texts over time the extent you know there are enough originalist that that isn't a super common view in the law at least so far as I am aware. [SCOTT WALTER] yeah I think some Supreme Court justices sitting occasionally do that but of course they then have been slammed by the other side for pointing out that okay does that mean that we're going to have the far more restrictive of abortion laws that Sweden, for instance, has or are we going to decide that homosexuality should be should receive the death penalty as still other countries have so it's that's that's quite a picking and choosing thing but I guess the bottom line is the question of are judges supposed to keep the Constitution in tune with the times or are they supposed to try to keep the times in tune with the Constitution [MIKE WATSON] that's not an unreasonable short way of short way of thinking about it [SCOTT WALTER] Well let's talk a bit about some of the folks who are up before the Senate for consideration this week tell us about that [MIKE WATSON Sure so the Senate calendar which controlled by Majority Leader Mitch. McConnell brought up three of the president's nominees who had made it to the floor on the floor today is a gentleman by the name of James Howe of Texas who has nominated Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals he is the former Solicitor General of Texas under Greg Abbott who is now the governor but was Attorney General at the time he is a former law clerk for Associate Justice Clarence Thomas he is 44 we will get to why ages are important in our later conversations and interestingly he was born in Taiwan and is the second prominent taiwanese-born person nominated by Donald Trump. Of course the other is Elaine Chao the Secretary of Transportation. Yesterday too much rejoicing among conservative Washington DC Twitter because he is a Twitter personality of note another Texan Don Willett was confirmed by 50 to 47 vote he is or you know effective until he is sworn in a justice of the Texas Supreme Court he is 51 and a lot of the sort of libertarian especially on the libertarian side of originalism and of the right really like his jurisprudence. [SCOTT WALTER] But Senator Al Franken and he, on the other hand, have not been as friendly I know senator Al Franken soon to be not senator Al Franken soon well soon if you believe him during will its confirmation [MIKE WATSON] confirmation hearing both outgoing we think senator Al Franken and senator from Vermont Patrick Leahy blasted then justice now judge will it for a couple of jokes that he made on Twitter which or maybe a little intemperate but you know not evidence of actual they were trying to make it out that these were actual evidence of discrimination which many people who has worked with have come out and said is absolute bunk and then of course Al Franken it was revealed was caught up in the perv-nado as we mentioned last week yes. [SCOTT WALTER] So and what about Steve Grasz? [MIKE WATSON] So on Tuesday of the Senate-confirmed Steven Grasz a former Chief Deputy Attorney General of the State of Nebraska notable for arguing in a case before the Supreme Court, Stenberg v. Carhart which attempted to defend Nebraska's ban on partial-birth abortion. He lost that case. However, a later case on federal law which currently prohibits the practice was upheld. The Supreme Court did say that that was okay so there was some technical difference between the laws and also a change in the composition of the court. [SCOTT WALTER] Yeah, now the Grasz nomination takes us into our specialty here which is the groups trying to influence this public policy process in this case the American Bar Association has played an important role. Can you tell us a bit about that? [MIKE WATSON] Sure, Grasz has been found unanimously not-qualified by the American Bar Association and the only reason that people mentioned why they did that was because he wrote a law review article in 1999 in which he argued that it was not the responsibility of lower court judges to get ahead of the Supreme Court's precedents especially on abortion. The American Bar Association took that to mean that he would rule against precedent, that he would rule against precedent even when he is bound by precedent as a lower court justice. What do I mean by that? Well, the Supreme Court said when it makes a decision that decision and that reasoning is binding on every court in the nation. The appeals courts, if they make a decision that's binding on all the district courts in their region. So if it's the DC Circuit Court, it's binding on the DC district courts. If it's the Second Circuit, it's binding on New York and a couple of other states, but it's not necessarily binding on the Ninth Circuit which is in California. So as a lower court judge you can't overturn the Supreme Court. You can set a precedent where the Supreme Court precedent is unclear which is why circuit courts are important. But where the Supreme Court precedent is clear the most you can say is I think the Supreme Court precedent is wrong but I must rule in favor of the Supreme Court precedent because it is my job. So Grasz said that if the Supreme Court says that I have to rule in a certain way about that, then a judge has to rule in a certain way about an abortion-related precedent--I just have to apply the letter of the law, not go beyond it and expand on already what many originalists argue over is the expanded line of cases on abortion. Anyway, the American Bar Association argued that that was an example of bias and lack of open-mindedness. Now, what is the American Bar Association? It is a voluntary membership organization of lawyers, and it is primarily funded by the dues paid by lawyers. Lawyers tend to lean pretty liberal. A study by Verdant Labs found that people in the legal industry broke about three-to-one Democrat versus Republican. And this gives it an incentive to represent its members who are mostly liberal, and it represents them in fairly liberal ways. The resolutions that the American Bar Association passes at its convention tend to be fairly liberal. [SCOTT WALTER] There's also an element of self-interest here, right? Conservatives are generally thought of as preferring less government liberals as preferring more government, and of course, the way the government grows is through laws and regulations which can only be dealt with by paying good sums of money to attend to attorneys there [MIKE WATSON] Yeah, there's certainly an element of that the more the government does, the more compliance and who runs a compliance department - attorneys. In its assessments of judges which the ABA insists are very neutral, they have long been suspected of having a bias in favor of Democratic nominees in rating their qualifications. There's a 2012 study of nominations from 1977 to 2008, and it found, and I'm quoting directly from the abstract evidence of bias against Republican nominees in the ABA ratings you know there's clearly evidence of bias here. [SCOTT WALTER] Yeah, the other thing that I would want our viewers to know about is there is an even more obscure way that the ABA wields enormous power and that is on the level of higher education. The ABA is the only accreditor of law schools in the country, and every part of higher education is always nervous and easily swayable by its accreditors because if you're not accredited your students can't get federal loans, you can't get various other types of federal funding.Accreditation is a huge shtick. [MIKE WATSON] And in addition to that if your degree is not accredited then the state will not recognize it. [SCOTT WALTER] Yes, money in most states in the country you're right. Most states in the country won't let you even apply to join the bar in their state if you don't have a degree from an ABA-accredited law school and when I was in the past administration and worked a bit with the department education. The higher ed part of the department was very disturbed about the way that the ABA would lean on schools to have what many considered reverse racial discrimination in both hiring and in admissions so the ABA was and it was arguably the worst actor of the various groups that have this kind of accreditation control. And, I would just throw out as well that it this is a power that the ABA is not in our lifetime ever likely to lose because the laws doubtless written by mostly law since the vast majority of members of Congress are lawyers but the laws governing Accreditation state that a law school or any other school can't be accredited by two creditors. So if you wanted to be an entrepreneur and start your own counter to the ABA accreditation, no law school could actually allow you to accredit it along with the ABA. So it's the public for the economists who like public choice theory it's sort of their worst kind of nightmare. [MIKE WATSON] Sure, absolutely you get that the government is working on behalf of private interests in this case even though it's an ostensibly not-for-profit organization many of the private interests are not-for-profit organizations. But so once they the Senate Republicans saw the ABA s rating they blasted the group and in it was blasting from all fronts of the party. Jeff Flake, no friend of the President, called it blatantly political. Ben Sasse, also not a particular fan of the President but also from GraszÕs home state of Nebraska went on quite the rant quote Òthe ABA is a liberal advocacy organization. That's not a bad thing you can be a liberal advocacy organization what's not okay is being a liberal advocacy organization and be masquerading as a neutral, objective evaluator of these judicial candidates.Ó [SCOTT WALTER] That's a great quote for our show because of course one of the central things that we're trying to do here is to show how there are groups fighting on both sides and one of the unfair advantages I think the left sometimes has is groups advocating on the left side of the spectrum get to pretend that their mainstream and non ideological and have no axe to grind, whereas the conservative groups are funded by some bad funder, or they're trying to influence policy. And the answer is this is Washington everybody's trying to influence policy, and there's always groups on both sides. [MIKE WATSON] This is a game it's played, everybody plays the game everybody's fine. For a long time, the groups on the left especially have gotten away with being able to say that we don't we represent the public interests we represent the little guy when actually they have established interests - in this case, the trial bar [SCOTT WALTER] or to be mean about it the ambulance chasers [MIKE WATSON] To be mean about it, yes the ambulance chasers. So Republicans of course then moved on GraszÕs nomination anyway. John Cornyn, the Majority Whip, said when they've got an ax to grind politically or ideologically I don't think we should give that any weight and they didn't. Mr. Grasz is now Judge Grasz. [SCOTT WALTER] Yes, well that's that's the latest news on this front but let's let's pull back for a second and tell us a bit about the history behind the advocacy on both sides here [MIKE WATSON] Sure, so advocacy on the judicial in the judicial space goes back at least to the 70s. The Alliance for Justice we will get to in a little bit was formed in 1979 and led attacks on Republican judicial nominees and continues to do that to this day which will which we'll get into. And the Trump administration is not unusual in using nonprofit advocacy to build support for and to look into that its judicial nominees. The Obama administration when conservative Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, entities aligned with the Obama Administration created a non-profit which they call the constitutional responsibility project to get the senate Republican majority at the time to hold hearings and then ultimately confirm District of Columbia Circuit Court judge Merrick Garland whom President Obama had nominated for the Supreme Court. And that constitutional responsibility project was headed by Obama's 2012 campaign manager whom by the name of Steph Cutter. Obviously, it didn't work. That seat was left was left open. Donald Trump ended up winning the 2016 presidential election Garland's nomination was allowed to lapse. [SCOTT WALTER] I remember a quick incident some years back when the veil was pulled back on the way the Democrats dealt with nominations because a Republican staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee discovered that he could easily get into the Democrat staffs computer files on their shared Network and whatever you think of the ethics of that what he found was that nobody was nominated at any level without a poll of all of the left-wing advocacy groups in this area [MIKE WATSON] Sure, so what the what the left has been trying to make a big stink up big stink out of is the influence of the Federalist Society which is principally a membership organization of conservative and libertarian-leaning lawyers and legal scholar types they claim something on the order of 60,000 members I believe. They receive some of their funding from member dues and conference fees and the like, but quite a bit of it comes from your traditional conservative foundation supporters Mercer Family Foundation, the Xeriscape Foundation, Bernie Marcus who was the longtime chairman of Home Depot, his foundation Visceral Freedom Trusts, the Charles Koch Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation all have provided support to the Federalist Society because of how important the judicial policy space is. For a long time conservatives have believed that you know who cares if we win elections because liberal judges, loose constructionists, living constitutionalists will simply concoct out of the zeitgeist in the spirit of the times that our law is invalid and that in the 2016 election played a major role in how Donald Trump ended up winning. In the exit polling, he won decisively people who said that a key determinant of their vote was judges and who would especially fill Antonin Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court which is now Neal GorsuchÕs seat on the Supreme Court. The Federalist Society is a big advocate for originalist judicial theory, and the left and media have focused on the involvement of longtime executive vice president of the Federalist Society. Leonard Leo who is an advisor to or is an informal consultant to President Trump on nomination and selection in the judicial space; US News ominously called him the judicial puppetmaster. Business Insider called him the most powerful recruiter in the world. You know in practice he's just a guy who he's a guy who knows stuff about the law and about what to look for in a good lawyer and what to look for in a good perspective judge. [SCOTT WALTER] Yep, well I confess I have some friends at the Federalist Society and there's a reason that they that they have such a large membership and and get taken seriously anybody who went to their website and looked at the conference's that they hold around the country at law schools and elsewhere would see that they are scrupulous about having the very highest level of debate that says if you go to Federalist conference if you didn't know it was a conservative group you might not figure it out because you would see vigorous advocates on both sides of the political spectrum fighting over every issue that is in the court. [MIKE WATSON] I believe it came out that in during the confirmation hearings over now Associate Justice Gorsuch that now Associate Justice Elena Kagan who was appointed by President Obama and is a pretty liberal justice with a fairly consistent living constitutionalist view. She participated in a debate that was sponsored by the Federalist Society. The Democrats are of course trying to say that these are these are extremists who want to you know make women barefoot and pregnant and all that nonsense that they spew about anybody on the right but and that was brought up as evidence that no this is a serious intellectual society a serious intellectual program that wishes to grapple with the important philosophical and practical debates about the Constitution and about American law and policy. [SCOTT WALTER] Yeah I would say to pull back the broader point given a lot of the craziness that we now see on college campuses and elsewhere in America that the capacity to sit down with somebody with whom you profoundly disagree and have a thoughtful argument rather than a shouting match or violence is perhaps a very good thing that needs to be encouraged but let's switch to the other side of the spectrum now tell us a bit more about the left-wing groups that are pushing back against the conservative nominees that people like Leonard Leo helped to the President to select [MIKE WATSON] Sure, so the liberal groups find themselves in an unpleasant in an unpleasant scenario because they have taken away the strongest manner to quote-unquote resist and it was mostly their own doing. During the second term of President Barack Obama a lot of these groups really pushed hard for what was called the nuclear option. Then Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid who was the majority leader from 23rd from 2007 to 2015 basically used a parliamentary trick to rule that actually, you can change the rules of the Senate with a simple majority even though there are rules in the Senate that call for more than a majority to change the rule - yeah they call for more than a more than majority to change the rules more than majority to do something most importantly and as a result he made it that instead of needing 60 votes to cut off debate and proceed to a vote on a judge you only needed 51 or 50 and the Vice President. As a result, because Republicans have more than 50 in the vice-president right now the Democrats ability to block Republican nominees either because they don't think they're qualifiedÐyeah nobody really gets denied for that or because they profoundly distribute their judicial philosophy or because oh oh boy that guy might be a Supreme Court nominee nominee here the federal society types will wave the bloody shirt of George W Bush nominee Miguel Estrada who was denied a vote on a filibuster to a seat I think it was on the DC Circuit it was yeah and Democrats were terrified of him because he was a he was an immigrant from Latin America and was widely seen as a short lister for a potential Supreme Court vacancy if he got his seat on the DC Circuit, and the prospect of voting against the first Hispanic nominee to the High Court was something that gave them the shivers something [SCOTT WALTER] Is something they gave that gave them the shivers [MIKE WATSON] In the short run it paid off they got to nominate, President Obama got to nominate Sonia Sotomayor the first Hispanic nominee to the Supreme Court Democrats thought they had won that but unfortunately by burning everything down they cleared the way now because they never you know the Democrats for a long time believed they would never lose another election made many short-sighted many short-sighted decisionsÐnone potentially more short-sighted than clearing away the filibuster allowing a Republican president and Republican Senate majority to appoint essentially at will. [SCOTT WALTER] There's also, talk a bit about the Alliance for Justice? They are another one of the powerful groups. [MIKE WATSON] Sure, they're the sort of principled group that pushed this. They are the longest left of center living constitutionalist advocacy group they go back to the Reagan and HW Bush Supreme Court fights they were one of the groups that led the attack the ultimately successful effort to block the nomination of originalist Judge Robert Bork who was appointed to the vacancy that would later be filled by Anthony Kennedy and then also dug up the highly suspectÐI think we can call the attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas those were not successful as Thomas has now sat successfully as a justice of the Supreme Court for 26 years and they continue to do this. This opposition sort of shoddy opposition research on Republican nominees. Earlier this year, I believe she was Notre Dame law professor, Amy Coney Barrett, was appointed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and the Democrats dug up this attack based on a law review article that she had written that they had misinterpreted claiming about where she ruminated on what happens if a judge is bound by precedent to rule contrary to his or her religion. And she ruled ultimately that ultimately the law is a sufficient good, and that you must rule as you must rule. The Alliance for Justice took a sentence she wrote there, completely out of context and that ended up in the hands of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who then suggested that quote, Òthe dogma lives loudly in youÓ in what appeared for all the world to see to be an attack on now Judge Barrett's Catholic faith. [SCOTT WALTER] Yes, Scalia was asked occasionally about the same sort of issue and what he said was Ôif I felt that I could not be a good Catholic and follow a precedent I would resign that is to say I would I would not take it upon myself to change the law because I don't like it or agree with it if I had such a dreadful conflict I would simply resign.Õ So that I would not put make the law a plaything of mine but I also would respect the demands of my conscience. So the Alliance for Justice has also accused Trump and the Republicans of packing the federal courts can you say a little about that? [MIKE WATSON] Sure, so the number of judges that there are from the Supreme Court on down is set by just laws it's not set by the Constitution the nine justices was established shortly after the Civil War it's just stayed that way by convention and by long-standing practice. In the 1930s, the Supreme Court was ruling against some of Franklin Roosevelt's later New Deal programs most notably the National Recovery Act, which was a pretty statist central planning plan for the national economy. Supreme Court struck it down after a business owner challenged it. This made FDR very very angry, and after he was re-elected, he proposed adding justices to the Supreme Court which naturally he would appoint. That made people not happy. Arguably contributed to the New Deal coalition, even the Democrats retained the nominal control of the House of Representatives, the New Deal coalition's majority was strongly reduced and the conservative coalition of Republicans and the sort of dissident Southern Democrats, which kind of put the brakes on the New Deal programs ended up taking the majority in the 1938 congressional elections because the public opposed the idea that Roosevelt was gonna add all these justices for his partisan political interests. This came to be known as court packing. And so whenever someone proposes that the courts should be expanded or contracted for what appears to be a partisan interest the opponents of the maneuver will call it court packing. What the Liberals and Alliance for Justice have taken to doing there are currently over a hundred I believe vacancies in the federal court system many of them were facilitated by Senate Republicans. In the second term, the second half of a President Obama's second term by leaving a lot of seats vacant. So liberals have taken to calling when President Trump nominates originalist conservatives to the already existing vacancies on already existing courts have taken to calling it court packing as just a partisan political cheap-shot. [SCOTT WALTER] Yep, now of course whereas court packing ought to mean adding seats and the rest of the way [MIKE WATSON] Right, manipulating the structure of the courts rather than just appointing justices who follow your broad judicial philosophy. [SCOTT WALTER] Yeah, although it's worth pointing out that while FDR failed to add justices because the whole country rebelled against that that kind of excess of power, on the other hand there was the famous switch in time that saved nine where one of the sitting justices who had been striking down New Deal legislation for violating the ConstitutionÐwhich I think there was a pretty strong argument for saying it didÐhe switched his vote on one of these crucial major cases and that greatly lessened the president's desire because he realized okay I now have a working majority of Supreme Court. [SCOTT WALTER] Right, the urgency for the political injury that he was taking had gone away. [MIKE WATSON] Yes you know in the words of Michael Barone all process arguments are insincere including this one. [SCOTT WALTER] Yes, well before we turn to another group, the last thing about the Alliance for Justice I should ask you about is who funds them? Because of course when conservative funders fund a group, that supposedly taints the group so who are tainting our Alliance for Justice friends? [MIKE WATSON] Big liberal foundations like the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named in honor of investor Warren Buffett's now I believe deceased wife, the Ford Foundation which is a left-wing philanthropy that has existed for a very long time. They go century-old old? [SCOTT WALTER] No, but they're there probably I think they would round up to a century. [MIKE WATSON] Round up to close to a century. The network of philanthropies associated with liberal billionaire financier, George Soros, the Open Society Foundations, the foundation to promote open society, NEO philanthropy which is a big liberal convening of funders and donor-advised fund, and then you also have other liberal policy groups. You have labor unions, SEIU, National Education Association, Communications Workers of America, and then you also have the the sort of policy groups Natural Resources Defense Council has handed them small sums, but you know tens of thousands of dollars. [SCOTT WALTER] Why would unions, you're one of our top Union experts, why would unions be keenly interested in judges? [MIKE WATSON] Well, they will find out in January when a case is argued before the Supreme Court over the ability of unions to charge non-members who do not agree with the union's political programs mandatory representational fees. There's the case is Janice the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the public employee union or the current president of Supreme Court is that a public employee union even though it's negotiating with the government, so it's very hard to disentangle these two categories, can charge non members of the Union who are represented by the Union as part of the unions exclusive representation privilegeÐwhich the Union asked forÐthat the costs germane to collective bargaining, the costs of adjudicating grievances negotiating the contract, representingthe bargaining unit is the group of employees that the union represents, representing the bargaining unit in litigation that that can be charged that all that kind of stuff can all be charged to non-members. But there are explicitly political activities lobbying on legislation for instance that cannot be charged to these non-member employees. [SCOTT WALTER] And this harkens back to Thomas Jefferson when the Constitution at the time of the Constitution being written arguing that to compel a man to furnish money to support opinions with which he disagrees is tyranny and I suspect that is exactly what the Supreme Court is likely to rule. [MIKE WATSON] There was a previous case that was heard in 2015-2016 on almost exactly the same grounds that split four-four with the ninth being the vacancy created by Antonin Scalia's death. So this is almost a rehearing, and it is widely suspected that Justice Gorsuch will find that there is no way to disentangleÐas among other people Franklin Delano Roosevelt no enemy of American the American working man, not traditionally thought of as an enemy of the American working man once wrote to a Federal Employees Association that to collectively bargain with the government is impossible because everything the government does is a sense of we controlled by the electorate which is electoral which is political. [SCOTT WALTER] Yep, well we've been talking about the Federalist Society on the conservative side of the spectrum tell us a bit about the American Constitution Society which is sort of its counterpart. [MIKE WATSON] Sure, the American Constitution Society is the liberal counterpart the more direct liberal counterpart to the Federalist Society. It has a membership of law students and of young lawyers who are liberals. It was reportedly created in response to the success that the Federalist Society had at getting conservative lawyers and conservative legal thinking legal thinking types together. To consider the ramifications of judicial policy and to think through their judicial philosophy and to think through what they think the law should be. The American Constitution Society (ACS) is heavily funded by the Soros Network by the Open Society Foundations. It's also funded by the Sandler foundation of her Bavarian SandlerÉ [SCOTT WALTER] Notorious for their role in the mortgage crisis some years back. [MIKE WATSON] Right, they are they have they have been implicated in contributing to that. Also, a lot of dark money. The dark money that the Liberals complain about where a donor contributes to one of these donors advised funds run by fidelity investments vanguard where a donor or a donor Foundation can contribute to the donor-advised fund and then the donor-advised fund passes the money on to whatever organization, like the American Constitution Society is the ultimate recipient. And this allows the donor an extra level of anonymity. [SCOTT WALTER] Yep, what about unions have Unions supported ACS? [MIKE WATSON yep, they have received money from the American Federation of Teachers for certain, and they have also been funded by liberal policy advocacy groups like NEO philanthropy. [SCOTT WALTER] Yep, well the we should we should start wrapping up I think, but the but let's let's pull back again for the big picture here of this is going to be one of Donald Trump's greatest legacies no matter what exactly happens and you made a point earlier about how the ages of the people being nominated and confirmed make a difference. [MIKE WATSON] A federal Article 3 Judge which a Circuit Court of Appeals judge a District Court Judge has life tenure, under the Constitution. Now they can retire and take senior status, but these judges who are being nominated will be ruling on cases for decades, and one of the things that President Trump and the Federalist Societies guys helping him make these nominations have have done is they have focused on nominating relatively younger justices. Now they've gotten into a little trouble because of this. They had to withdraw a District Court nominee who who had not argued a case, but Trump's nominees his first his first batch of ten from earlier this year their average age was forty eight which was eight years younger than President Obama's first batch of nominees which means that they'll be ruling even if you lay aside that President Obama is 56-year-olds or now 64-year-olds they'll be ruling on cases they'll have eight more years on the bench than Obama's first batch will have had. And then the other issue is stated judges. The left through a group known as Justice at Stake which has received money from some of the bigger liberal foundations also the American Board of trial advocates, which that's the ambulance chasers lobby. [SCOTT WALTER] Yes. [MIKE WATSON] When you think of, you know nasty trial lawyers that's those guys. They are trying to change how states appoint judges to give more control to the legal industry to the American Bar Association through what's known as merit selection, to give the lawyers lobby more of an opportunity to through ostensibly talking about qualifications to veto judges who may not comport with thee three to one, left living constitution more things for lawyers to interpret, more things, more compliance for lawyers to do vision of the legal community. [SCOTT WALTER] Yep, there also are fights you're talking about the state level, but of course, the kind of influence groups and the kind of heavy-duty left-wing donors that we so often talk about on this show they are even getting down to the local level in the judicial selections aren't they? [MIKE WATSON] Uh, not so much judicial but certainly the law. The Democracy Alliance which is the big convening of liberal donors just to throw out some names you have Rob McKay who is the heir to the Taco Bell fortune, you have early Google multi-millionaire David desJardines, a couple of Hollywood some Hollywood figures Rob Reiner, Norman Lear, obviously finance billionaire George Soros again his network. They're trying to elect very left-wing district attorneys in a lot of the left-wing cities. Their big win thus far was in Philadelphia where in the Democratic primary and in the general election Soros himself contributed something in the order of two million dollars to elect this city official. [SCOTT WALTER] And in elect an election for which probably many candidates were lucky to get five figures into their budget maybe the beginnings of six figures not seven. [MIKE WATSON] Two million for a city election in a state, in a city that is not New York, is almost unprecedented. Especially for a nonmayoral election, but these district attorneys can have a real serious impact on the policies of crime and punishment, and that is making those policies more, more lenient is a big goal of the Democracy Alliance and the groups that it has supported. [SCOTT WALTER] Yeah, well thank you so much, so we have in this show we have gone from the local level to the highest court in the land, and if you want more information, there's always lots more at InfluenceWatch.org. That's our show for this week, if you're listening to this on iTunes or stitcher know that we broadcast a live video version of this podcast at 10:00 a.m. on Thursdays on Facebook live and on YouTube, and you can find our pages by searching Capital Research Center. If you're watching the video version, we encourage you to subscribe to the audio on your preferred podcast platform. See you next week