Federal Courts & Eric Adams: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver | Transcript

[Music]

John Oliver: Welcome, welcome, welcome to Last Week Tonight. Thank you so much for joining us. It has been a busy week. Hurricane Helen caused devastation across the Southeast, Israel killed the leader of Hezbollah, dramatically escalating tensions in the region, and here in New York, an anchor on New York 1 had the moment everyone there dreams of.

Cuts to a clip of the news anchor:

We have breaking news for you here on New York 1. According to multiple reports, including the New York Times, Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted by federal prosecutors.

John Oliver: I love that delivery. He finally got his big breaking news moment, and he was justifiably savoring it. If I keep talking like this, I can make this moment last forever. Sorry, Jamie with the weather—this is my time. But it is true: Eric Adams was indicted this week for, among other things, allegedly taking bribes for political favors. He’s accused of receiving more than $100,000 in luxury travel benefits, including free international flights and opulent hotel rooms.

And not just that, he’s also accused of knowingly accepting illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors, some of which helped him qualify for more than $10 million in matching public campaign funds. The indictment focuses primarily on gifts and donations from Turkey, which is interesting enough, but honestly, every detail in it is incredible.

According to the indictment, when the mayor’s staff member once asked a Turkish Airlines official where Adams could stay while visiting Turkey, the official replied, ‘Four Seasons is too expensive.’ The staffer responded, ‘What does he care?’ The official said, ‘He’s not going to pay. His name will not be on anything either.’ The staffer replied, ‘Super wow, buzz.’ Maybe don’t assure someone that nothing will be in writing in writing.

But I love the airline official getting a little bit sassy with the ‘Why does he care?’ there. It’s a bribe. There’s not going to be a receipt. Relax.

Adams allegedly got so used to getting preferential treatment on Turkish Airlines that he flew on it even when doing so was otherwise inconvenient. During one flight from New York to France, he somehow ended up in Turkey. When his partner asked why, he said, ‘Transferring here. You know, first stop is always Istanbul,’ which is stupid but also a pretty good tourism slogan for Istanbul. I’d say Eric Adams gave that to them for free, but they clearly very much paid him for it.

Adams also apparently once asked whether Turkish Airlines could fly him to Easter Island, forcing the airline to confirm that they did not have routes between New York and Chile—because of, you know, how a globe works.

He did seem to know what he was doing was shady, given an aide once reminded him to ‘please delete all text messages you send me,’ to which Adams responded, ‘Always do.’ And that was clearly a foolproof plan, given that I am reading those texts to you right now.

If you happen to be unfamiliar with Eric Adams, first, I wish I lived inside your mind. But you should know he’s an ex-cop, longtime resident of New Jersey, and arguably the weirdest mayor in this city’s history. And we’re no stranger to weird mayors. In recent years, we’ve had Goober, Slender Man, Billionaire Lawn Gnome, and a man who was disparaged in DC this week for his efforts to overturn a presidential election.

But Eric Adams takes the cake, and while there is no single clip that can truly capture his chaotic essence, if I had to pick one, it would be this moment from last December, which starts with the softest of softball questions and goes somewhere I guarantee you’re not expecting.

Cuts to a clip of Eric Adams:

So, when you look at the totality of the year, if you had to describe it—and it’s tough to do—in one word, what would that word be, and tell me why.

Eric Adams: Uh… New York. Uh… This is a place where every day you wake up, uh… you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our Trade Center to a… person who’s celebrating a new business that’s open.

John Oliver: He is, sadly, unspeakably funny. His two answers for what makes New York special—which was, and I cannot stress this enough, not the question he was asked—were, one, 9/11, the terrorist attack, and two, a person who’s celebrating a new business that’s open. A thing that could happen in literally any city at any moment.

What the f*ck is he talking about? It feels like his brain is just a version of ChatGPT that was trained on Citibank ads and Osama bin Laden’s vision board. Even Giuliani is like, ‘I don’t know if I’d have shoehorned 9/11 in there.’

Adams and his inner circle have actually been under multiple investigations for nearly a year now. This month alone has brought the resignations of his chief of police, schools chancellor, and chief counsel. So this indictment wasn’t a surprise—it’s been anticipated since last November when federal agents seized Adams‘s phone and iPad.

And look, it is not like the FBI has never investigated anyone for reasons. Adams is entitled to due process like anyone else, but he has not been helping himself. Last year, Adams said he’d be shocked if anyone on his campaign had acted illegally because, quote, ‘I cannot tell you how much I start the day with telling my team we’ve got to follow the law.’ And I’m not convinced you have a ton of respect for the law if every day you have to hype yourself up into obeying it.

Adams‘s coziness with Turkey has always seemed a little bit weird. Back when he was borough president, he even appeared in a Turkish romcom in which two supporting characters had a pretty telling conversation with him.

Cuts to a clip of the Turkish romcom:

Before you guys are from Turkey? Brooklyn loves Turkey. Brooklyn is the Istanbul of America. We love your food. We love your music. But I don’t understand Turkish. We can take a selfie though.

John Oliver: It’s not a great sign when even the fictional version of yourself is being approached for political favors. But also, ‘Brooklyn is the Istanbul of America’—that is a stretch. I wouldn’t call Brooklyn’s climate Mediterranean so much as landfill that just hit puberty.

But while that clip has aged poorly, I’d argue not as badly as this one from just a year ago.

Cuts to another clip:

He finally has the key to the city. The bad boy of entertainment is getting the key to the city from the bad boy of politics.

John Oliver:
Hey, hey, hey, you might not want to associate with that guy ‘cause things aren’t looking great for him right now. And if you’re wondering which one I’m talking to, the answer is yes.

We’ll see how this story unfolds, but as of taping on Saturday, Adams has pled not guilty and is insisting he won’t step down. Which, okay. But that is in keeping with his general philosophy, which is summed up like this:

Cuts to a clip of Eric Adams:

I am the pilot, folks, and you are all passengers. Stop praying for me to crash the plane, pray for me to land the plane, ‘cause there’s no parachutes on this plane. We’re all going down together.

John Oliver: Look, obviously, prayer doesn’t land planes. Competence does. Even in your analogy, you sound like a bad pilot—the bad boy of air travel, if you will.

While all of this is very funny, it’s worth remembering: Adams has done real damage to this city. He’s been a terrible mayor even before his indictment. He proposed slashing funding for libraries and preschools, blocked a law banning solitary confinement, and appointed a Rat Czar who was unforgivably not a rat in a top hat.

So despite what Adams claims, the answer is not to pray for him to succeed—it’s to insist that he leaves because New York deserves better.

And I, for one, cannot wait for the day when we finally get to hear the most electrifying news broadcaster in the city tell us:

Mayor Eric Adams has resigned.

[Music]

John Oliver: And now, moving on—our main story tonight concerns judges, the only government workers whose official dress code is goth poncho… Judges rule on matters big and small, but they’re also human beings, as we got reminded early in the pandemic when someone didn’t mute their microphone during this remote Supreme Court hearing.

Cuts to a clip of a remote Supreme Court hearing:

And what the FCC has said is that when the subject matter of the call ranges to the… to… then the call is transformed…

[Toilet flushing sound]

John Oliver: It’s true, someone flushed a toilet during oral arguments, which, to be fair, isn’t the most embarrassing Zoom mishap from back then. On a scale of zero to Jeffrey Toobin, it probably falls somewhere in the middle. But I love that that lawyer just kept going. Who among us didn’t sit on the toilet during work hours back then? You remember when I was in the void—I was on a toilet the whole time. I was dressed, I’m not a pervert, but I was on a toilet.

What do you mean that’s even more confusing? Don’t worry about it. Shut up.

The Supreme Court’s last term was, to put it mildly, eventful. They issued rulings on everything from gun rights to social media censorship to gerrymandering. And they also kind of made the president a king, holding 6-3 in Trump vs. The U.S. that presidents are completely immune from prosecution for things they did through core constitutional powers of the presidency. Adding that they’re at least presumed to be immune and potentially are always immune for all official acts of their presidency, but leaving open interpretation as to what constitutes a core power and an official act.

Which is not ideal, because there are pretty obvious reasons why you’d want to be more precise there, as Sonia Sotomayor tried pointing out to Trump’s lawyer.

Cuts to a clip of Sonia Sotomayor questioning Trump’s lawyer:

If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military, or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts, that for which he can get immunity?

Trump’s lawyer: It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act.

John Oliver: Holy sh*t! That is Trump’s attorney arguing the president could be shielded from prosecution for assassinating a political rival. That is terrifying. Honestly, this is the oral argument that should have featured bathroom noises, as it seems they just flushed the rule of law down the toilet.

But extremity seems to be the standard now for this court, which has been aggressive in applying hardline conservative views to reverse established law. In 2022, they overturned Roe v. Wade. Last year, their decision on affirmative action reversed 45 years of legal precedent. And this June, they discarded the Chevron Doctrine, which, as we’ll get into later, is a critical four-decade-old precedent concerning how regulatory agencies work.

And all this fulfilled a promise that Trump repeatedly made on the campaign trail eight years ago to try and get hard conservatives to support him.

Cuts to a clip of Donald Trump:

We have to win, and one of the biggest reasons we have to do this—for United States Supreme Court justices. You gotta go for Trump, Supreme Court justices. And remember—justices of the Supreme Court.

John Oliver: That turned out to be a pretty successful argument. If Trump had promised to throw paper towels at hurricane victims, or molest a flag, or decorate the White House for Christmas like it’s an A24 horror movie, it might have been a less compelling message, though to be fair, no less true.

Because Trump delivered on that promise, and not just at the Supreme Court level. He’s reshaped the judiciary from top to bottom in ways that are only starting to be felt. So, given that, tonight let’s look at the federal courts, what Trump’s done to them, and, if elected again, what he could do next.

Let’s start with how our court system is actually structured. Generally speaking, lawsuits involving federal law start in one of 94 district courts around the country. There’s at least one in every state, and this is where trials take place. If a case is appealed, it goes up to the Courts of Appeals. There are 13 of those, dividing the country into regional circuits. And if it’s appealed from there, the Supreme Court could choose to hear it.

There’s some little stuff that I’m leaving out, including an extra layer at the bottom called ‘Judge Steve Harvey gets a crack at it,’ but that is basically it.

The Supreme Court hears around 100 cases a year, but the circuit courts beneath it handle around 40,000, with the district courts below them handling over 300,000 cases. So, the decisions of those lower courts are, in most cases, final. And Trump was able to reshape a lot of them. There are around 900 active federal judges in total, and as president, he appointed 234 of them—rivaling the numbers of presidents who held office for twice as long as he did.

And irritatingly, he tends to frame this as a stroke of tremendous luck.

Cuts to a clip of Donald Trump:

You know what? I got in, we had over a hundred federal judges that weren’t appointed. Now, I don’t know why Obama left that… it was like a big, beautiful present to all of us.

John Oliver: Yeah, but was it though? Because the actual reason he got that ‘big, beautiful present’ was because Senate Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, stonewalled Obama’s judicial nominees for years. Those vacancies weren’t gifted so much as stolen, which is clearly different.

Oprah’s car giveaway wouldn’t have seemed nearly as fun if she spent the previous night carjacking everyone in Chicago.

McConnell himself has admitted that once he had a president to his liking, filling court seats was his top priority.

Cuts to a clip of Mitch McConnell: If I have a choice between taking up a particular bill or taking up a circuit court judge, I take up a circuit court judge, because I think it makes the longest-lasting contribution to making this the kind of country it ought to be.

John Oliver: He’s not lying there. During the Trump years, you couldn’t whisper the words ‘court vacancy’ anywhere in Congress without McConnell excitedly bursting through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man.

And it wasn’t just him. Right-wing groups have been focused on getting judges onto the bench for years now, with perhaps no one playing a larger role than this man: Leonard Leo. He’s been called the man behind the conservative effort to move the judiciary to the right.

John Oliver: One primary way that he’s done this has been through his leadership at the Federalist Society, an organization that he turned from a student club into an incubator and pipeline for conservative lawyers to become public officials and judges.

Leonard Leo is also a hugely successful fundraiser and has built a dark money network to funnel cash to conservative causes, groups, and politicians. And he’s used a number of tactics over the years to conceal the movement of that money, in terms of where it ends up. He’s recently been using what are called donor-advised funds, which make it practically impossible to trace where the money goes. And, in terms of where it comes from—this does feel important—many entities he’s been linked to haven’t been required to disclose their donors.

And as you’ll see here, when asked about that, he can get cagey fast.

Cuts to a clip of Leonard Leo testifying:

Could you describe to us what the purpose of the BH Fund is?

Leonard Leo: Um, BH Fund is a charitable organization. You can look it up. I’m sure its statement of purpose is listed.

Testifying Representative: We did, and its tax document says its mission is to promote the rule of law and limited constitutional government. And it received $24 million from an anonymous donor in 2017.

Leonard Leo: I have a very simple rule, which is I’m engaged in the battle of ideas, yes, and I care very deeply about our Constitution and the role of courts in our society. And I don’t waste my time on stories that involve money and politics because what I care about is ideas.

John Oliver: Oh, come on! I know this is so obvious it barely needs to be said, but where things come from does matter—for the same reason that Lunchables can’t just list its ingredients as ‘Mind your business.’

But even if it can be hard to say who all of Leo’s backers are, it is clear what both he and they want: judges on the bench who are against regulation and deeply socially conservative. Although Leo will sometimes try and put a more moderate face on that.

In the early days of Trump’s term, Leo helped supply him with 25 names of potential Supreme Court nominees, and watch him shrug off questions about whether any of those names might one day impact the right to an abortion.

Cuts to a clip of Leonard Leo being interviewed:

Is the fear on the left justified that this means that Roe v. Wade is in jeopardy if one of the 25 gets through the process?

Leonard Leo: The left has been using the Roe v. Wade scare tactic since 1982 when Sandra Day O’Connor was nominated. And over 30 years later, nothing’s happened to Roe v. Wade. So, I think the abortion issue is really very much a scare tactic.

John Oliver: As I think we all know, it played out a bit differently. Shortly afterward, Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh from Leo‘s list, and he, along with Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett—two other picks Leo recommended—wound up overturning Roe.

So clearly, it wasn’t just a scare tactic at all. It’s honestly hard to imagine how that clip could have aged worse, other than if he’d continued: ‘No one needs to prepare for any sort of novel coronavirus in the future. And don’t worry about Armie Hammer’s career—that thing’s going to keep going great!’

The point is, Leonard Leo has had a huge amount of success in implanting hard-right judges throughout the federal court system, and that has enabled conservative groups—some of which he funds—to effectively go judge shopping. What that means is they’re able to write a lawsuit designed to achieve a specific policy end, bring it before a district court judge who came up through the Federalist Society, appeal it up through circuit courts increasingly stocked with Federalist Society alumni, and maybe even get it in front of the Supreme Court—a full third of whose members came off a list from the Federalist Society’s own Leonard Leo.

He’s putting out new conservative judges the way Apple puts out new TV shows—constantly and basically silently. And while testing the law through the courts is something both liberal and conservative groups have long used as a tactic, it’s now much easier for conservatives to do it, even with incredibly weak cases.

Take last year’s fight over mifepristone, a drug used in most abortions. The lawsuit that precipitated that fight was clearly crafted to restrict abortion access. It began with activists creating a brand new group called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine just months before it filed the lawsuit. And they chose Amarillo for a very specific reason.

Cuts to a news clip:

By filing its lawsuit in Amarillo, the Alliance Defending Freedom was almost guaranteed to draw a judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee who worked in the conservative Christian legal movement.

John Oliver: Exactly. By filing in Amarillo, they knew their case was likely to get assigned to Kacsmaryk, seen here shortly after asking his barber for the ‘wet marine.’ That is the reason they—and so many conservative groups—are going to Amarillo. It’s not for the historic tour of Route 66, or the canyon horseback ride, or even the huge pair of legs, which are apparently number 30 on TripAdvisor’s list of things to do in Amarillo, even though I’ve never seen a more obvious number one in my entire life.

Cuts to a visual of the large pair of legs in Amarillo.

They have absolutely glowing reviews, such as: ‘It’s a huge pair of legs standing in a pasture next to the road. What a unique statue!’ and ‘Tall legs out in a field, and I figured while here, why not go find them? They’re interesting and big!’

Amen to that, brother. They sure are.

John Oliver: Kacsmaryk is incredibly conservative. He said being transgender is a delusion, has argued against contraception and same-sex marriage, and criticized the legal foundations of Roe v. Wade. So, he was always likely to be incredibly sympathetic to the plaintiffs in the mifepristone case, which was lucky for them, because their arguments were laughably weak.

Basically, some of the plaintiffs were pro-life doctors who argued the FDA’s approval of mifepristone—which has been used safely for over 20 years—should be withdrawn, in part because it could harm the doctors themselves. They argued that treating patients who suffered adverse health effects from the drug—which, again, rarely happens—could cause them hardship and subject them to ‘enormous stress and pressure.’

There are a few things about that. First, none of those doctors were required to prescribe the drug or regularly treat abortion patients. They couldn’t identify a single case where any of them had been forced to provide such care. And there’s already a federal law that protects them from having to do so.

Basically, their argument did not have a leg to stand on—which is a little ironic, considering Amarillo has two of them that are just hanging around for some reason.

John Oliver: But Kacsmaryk sided with the plaintiffs anyway, striking down the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. The government appealed his ruling, but it was then upheld by the notoriously conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a third of the judges are Trump appointees.

Now, the good news here is that the Supreme Court ultimately reversed the ruling, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue because they hadn’t convincingly proven that they were being harmed. Because, you know, they weren’t.

The bad news is, this was by no means a full-throated rejection, as in Kavanaugh’s drafting of the opinion, he explicitly left the door open to try again in the future, saying that it is ‘not clear that no one else would have standing to challenge the FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone,’ a hint so broad it might as well have had a winking emoji at the end of it.

The point is, the courts are now incredibly amenable to lawsuits that conservatives bring. And while the mifepristone and Trump immunity rulings have been pretty widely discussed, one of the biggest conservative victories this year has actually flown under the radar a bit, even though for most of Leonard Leo’s big corporate backers, it’s probably the most important reason to support him.

John Oliver: It concerns regulation. Companies famously hate regulation, an attitude shared by certain members of the Supreme Court, especially Neil Gorsuch, who always looks like the man in every Sealy’s commercial.

Gorsuch released a book this year called Overruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law about how, in his view, regulatory agencies are out of control and basically making up new laws left and right. For years now, he’s delivered a spiel about how federal agencies, which fall under the executive branch, have usurped the power that rightly belongs to the legislative one. It’s an argument he delivers with his trademark electric personality, like this:

Cuts to a clip of Neil Gorsuch speaking:

The executive branch has made up so many new criminal laws that people have stopped counting at over 300,000. If your ketchup is too runny, you get in trouble for that because a federal agency said so. I’m not making it up. What if you sell mattresses and you tear off that tag? You’re probably a federal criminal. And if you import lobster in a plastic bag instead of a cardboard box, that’s a problem because a bureaucrat says so. And what do you know, Woodsy the Owl—some of you remember Woodsy the Owl—don’t give a hoot, don’t pollute. Remember him? Some of you remember him. Well, if you misuse his likeness, you might be a federal felon.

John Oliver: Okay, I know this is beside the point, but that was some deafening silence after he asked if anyone remembers Woodsy the Owl. Which does make sense—he’s not exactly a top-tier owl anymore. Your current A-list is probably Owl from Winnie the Pooh, Hedwig from Harry Potter, the Duolingo mascot, and of course, this soggy little guy who went viral for looking like he’s going through his third divorce.

Image of a sad owl pops up on screen.

But while I’m sure Gorsuch worked hard to cherry-pick those regulations to dunk on, he’s actually mischaracterized a lot of those rules in ways that feel pretty revealing.

For instance, a few of the things he just cited as evidence of an out-of-control executive branch actually came from the legislative one. The Woodsy the Owl thing was this law passed by Congress. As for his example about lobsters, that’s him shanding a case involving the Lacey Act, which was—as its name might suggest—also an act of Congress.

As for the others, those were all cases where Congress very clearly wanted specific things to be regulated. When it comes to ketchup, Congress passed this law directing the FDA to prevent mislabeling of foods, which the agency then did—only after extensive review and public comment periods.

Also, these kinds of regulations don’t generally get enforced unless the violations are egregious. In one recent 10-year period, the FDA only managed to obtain two court injunctions against food products on account of misleading labeling, so it’s not like prisons are filled with people who sold runny ketchup.

If they were, you’d know about it—probably because we’d have already done a story called ‘Ketchup Incarceration’ that would be 26 minutes long, feature videos of two separate people crying, and end with Steve Buscemi dressed like a giant tomato for reasons that would make sense in context.

And finally, when it comes to Gorsuch making fun of mattress tags, just so you know, Congress passed this law directing a federal agency to set flammability standards to ensure the safety of products like mattresses, including labeling them.

And I know there is a certain hack comedy appeal to going ‘What’s the deal with mattress tags?’ After all, why would you need a tag saying who made a mattress and when? When is that information ever really going to be useful to you, right?

Cuts to a news clip:

A foam crib mattress by Storkcraft has been recalled for failing to meet federal standards for flammability. Affected mattresses were made between August 2014 and January 2015. Consumers should stop using the mattress and contact Storkcraft for a free barrier cover.

John Oliver: Oh yeah, that does make a lot more sense now. Among other things, those mattress tags might help you figure out if your mattress has been recalled. So I guess the answer to Gorsuch’s question, ‘Why is the government issuing rules about mattress tags?’ is so a baby’s crib doesn’t turn into a miniature wicker man, you idiot.

And look, I’ve got plenty of issues with regulations, but it is disingenuous to suggest they’re all being issued arbitrarily at random, when on the whole, they’re being carefully crafted by career experts to keep us safe.

And that work is now going to be significantly harder due to the case that I mentioned at the start of this story—the one overturning what’s known as the Chevron defense.

We discussed Chevron a bit in our first show of this year, but it’s a long-standing legal doctrine arising from this 1984 Supreme Court ruling. Very basically, Chevron said that when there is a lawsuit over a regulation, judges should give a lot of leeway to agencies. So let’s say Congress writes a law saying, ‘I want mercury out of drinking water.’ Under Chevron, the EPA would decide how to do exactly that, and then their decisions would be hard to overturn.

Citing Chevron is one of the most-cited precedents in American law. It’s mentioned in more than 18,000 federal court decisions and was the deciding factor in approximately 70 Supreme Court decisions. It’s essentially one of the foundations current American law has been built on. Getting rid of Chevron isn’t just removing the bottom Jenga block, it’s removing the entire table underneath it.

And companies have unsurprisingly long wanted Chevron gone, and in June, they got their wish thanks to a ruling in a couple of cases that were consolidated into one called Loper Bright vs. Raimondo.

And frustratingly, like the mifepristone case, it’s built on quite a bit of nonsense. It involves a group of fishermen trying to overturn a regulation requiring them to pay for federal monitors to prevent overfishing. They complained it could have made it impossible for them to make a living.

And I say ‘could have’ because the regulation was not being enforced, and even if it had been, the fishermen didn’t identify a single fishing trip for which they would have been required to pay for monitoring services under that rule.

Nevertheless, the fishermen were represented by two conservative groups, one of which—this one—is backed by entities linked to—you’ll never guess—Leonard Leo.

At this point, finding out Leonard Leo had a role in a major conservative court case is like finding out a ventriloquist dummy has a hand up its ass. It’s basically assumed.

And I do think it’s telling that some major industries suddenly seem very interested in the outcome of this obscure fishing case, with dozens writing amicus briefs, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the North American Meat Institute, and a trade organization representing e-cigarette companies.

And unless fish are vaping now, I don’t really see why that group should be involved. Although if they are, that is also cool as hell because look at that! That is sick! I don’t mean to be pro-tobacco, but that’s pure sex appeal right there.

Image of a fish vaping appears on screen.

John Oliver: And those interests got their way because the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to overturn the Chevron defense entirely, making it much easier for companies to challenge a regulatory agency’s decision in the future.

And when you put that in tandem with all these other recent rulings, the power of regulatory agencies has now been sharply limited, and conservatives are understandably very, very happy about all of this.

Cuts to a clip of Jim Jordan speaking:

The fundamental question is: who decides? The quote-unquote ‘experts,’ the technocracy, as Mr. Bishop described, or the elected officials? I may not know—we may not know—how many parts per billion is necessary, but I do know one thing: regulations and rules that impact the economy to the tune of millions and millions of dollars and impact the 800,000 folks I get to represent—that’s important. We have deferred to the quote-unquote ‘experts’—experts who think they can run our lives and never be held accountable.

John Oliver: Look, I’ll give him this: when Jim Jordan says ‘I may not know how many parts per billion is necessary,’ he is absolutely right. After all, he is a man who prides himself on not knowing things, whether it’s science, technology, or indeed the alleged sexual abuse happening to college wrestlers on a team he coached. Jim Jordan has built a personal brand on not knowing what’s going on.

But there are a few problems with his reasoning there. First, Congress can’t pass sh*t right now, but even if it was functional, you wouldn’t necessarily want it writing technical rules on everything. Legislators can be good at many things: delivering speeches, raising campaign money, getting uncontrollably horny during Beetlejuice: The Musical, escaping to Mexico when their constituents need them the most, but they don’t possess universal expertise in technology, medicine, or food safety.

The point is, every part of a regulator’s job is now going to be much harder. As one commentator wrote, Loper Bright has opened the door so that the worst judges

John Oliver: As one commentator wrote, Loper Bright has opened the door so that the worst judges will issue nationwide injunctions, effectively one-man vetoes of entire agencies in real time, based on personal opinion. Which is just fully not how the government is supposed to work. There’s a reason that Schoolhouse Rock video doesn’t end with some random judge in Mississippi suddenly wiping his ass with that bill.

And unfortunately, it’s already begun. One analysis found that Loper Bright has already been cited in 116 cases since the Supreme Court decision. In fact, less than a week after it was issued, three judges in different states published decisions on the same day citing Loper Bright as they blocked implementation of a new rule that would prohibit discrimination in healthcare based on gender identity.

And at the same time, judges are making it clear they’re not much better equipped than Congress to answer highly technical questions. In one decision this term, Neil Gorsuch repeatedly confused nitrous oxide, often known as laughing gas, with nitrogen oxides, the class of compounds that help form smog. That’s a mistake you get to make at dental school exactly once.

And when you take all this together, you can understand why one of the justices on the losing end of all these recent 6-3 decisions has been going around saying stuff like this:

Cuts to a clip of Justice Elena Kagan:

There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried. There have been those days.

John Oliver: Well, that doesn’t feel great. You know things are bad when Supreme Court justices are crying alone in their office instead of where they usually cry: on national TV, while getting credibly accused of sexual assault.

So, what can we do? Well, members of Congress have introduced bills to try and undo some of these decisions, but given that Republicans currently control the House, those bills have gone nowhere. And that actually brings us to the key point here.

Because the only way of undoing some of the harm that’s been done, and preventing even more from happening, is by keeping Trump out of the White House and Republicans out of Congress in November. Because, like in 2016, Trump’s intentions here are very clear. The oldest justices are currently Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and many believe one or both of them could step down due to age in the next four years, potentially giving Trump the chance to cement the Court’s conservative supermajority for a generation. He’s openly promising his base as much.

Cuts to a clip of Donald Trump: I will once again appoint rock-solid conservative judges in the mold of Justice Scalia, Justice Samuel Alito—who’s done a fantastic job—and the great Clarence Thomas. He’s been fantastic.

John Oliver: First, no, he has not been fantastic. He’s been a nightmare. Eagle-eyed viewers will remember that I nearly obliterated my personal finances to encourage him to retire, which honestly would have been worth it. But it also would have put me in such a hole, I’d have probably had to go full cancel culture warrior to dig myself out of it. I’d have a two-hour Netflix stand-up special called They Won’t Let Me Do Stand-Up Anymore, and a stadium tour called They Won’t Let Me Tour Either.

The point is, that is a man who knows that that is the promise that can get him elected, and have people willing to ignore literally everything else about him.

The remaking of America’s judiciary is the culmination of a plan that’s been going on for decades. And while a lot of the judges that have been put in place aren’t going anywhere for a while, that doesn’t mean the change has to be permanent. Securing the White House and Congress is our best shot at starting to slowly undo that change.

And I know it can feel extremely depressing—I mean, sad owl level depressing—to live in a world where rich, anonymous interests can install friendly judges to hand them whatever rulings they want, and where the government’s ability to keep us safe is hamstrung by some deeply minor stand-up routine. But that situation only persists if we let it. If we can elect people who value an independent judiciary and the rule of law, then Leonard Leo and his backers won’t be able to so easily buy the justice system.

Meaning he’ll probably need something else to spend all that money on. And may I suggest a trip to the most spectacular legs in Texas? I don’t want to oversell them, but I hear they’re both ‘interesting and big.’

And now, this.

Cuts to a humorous compilation:

[Music]

People on TV learn that Gen Z doesn’t like to show their feet.

Clips of various TV hosts talking about Gen Z’s footwear preferences:

You wanted to know the biggest difference between Gen Z and the rest of us? Gen Z kids don’t like to show their feet. There you go, Robin.

They like thick, chunky sneakers. They like Crocs with socks. They don’t want people to see their feet.

So they’re wearing those with socks? Socks with sandals? Crocs with socks? That’s what all the kids are wearing.

Why? They’re embarrassed to show off their tootsies and are offended by the ugly feet of others.

John Oliver: That is our show! Thank you so much for watching. We’ll see you next week. Good night!

[Applause] [Music]