And again, it's like, do we understand what are the core irreducible principles that hold us together as lawyers and as a profession? And to the extent we don't, this leads to the unraveling and the timidity that you were referring to. Because if you believe in the rule of law, then it hardly matters which side. It's that there are some things that are just unconscionable. Again, it's one of the things that I just don't understand about, you know, the criticisms of the court. Do people think it's OK for people to give millions of dollars in gifts to Supreme Court justices and have them not be reported? I don't. I mean, what does that have to do with a partisan? If that were true of Justice Kagan, I would think it was wrong. I mean, I don't I don't understand how that's a partisan issue, except that it seems to be the Republican appointed justices who have most likely been the recipients. Like, what's going on? And this is where our profession fails. I'm very happy to sit on this, you know, ABA committee co-chaired by Jay Johnson and Judge Ludig on democracy, right? Because I do think that it's so important for our profession to grab hold of core principles of democracy that are not defined in partisan terms and to believe that there are principles that are not defined in partisan terms. the rules were supposed to be the same for both sides. And if you just tell me what the rules are, then I'm going to work the rules and I'm going to make my case. And then I cannot get in chambers with the judge and make the judge decide my way. But what I can do in open court is present my case in such a way, what I can do is write my briefs in such a way that when the judge takes them back into chambers, that I have the best shot at that case, at winning that case. And these are the irreducible principles that we should be fighting for. And I just think that we apparently are not ready in our profession for that hardy discussion. And that Federalist Society panel was an example for me, where you had a federal judge who is speaking in a way that was completely intemperate, a kind of poorly sourced argument against someone who I think everyone recognizes as a responsible scholar, you know, in a room full of people who's kind of attacking him with the recognition that he cannot respond in kind. Why? Because one of the irreducible principles is how we talk to judges, right? Is that I'm not going to, you know, drag, first of all, Steve Vladek wouldn't, but I'm not going to drag a federal judge, you know, a federal appellate judge at a legal conference. So I just think part of what I saw there was just like, that was so over the line. And our conservative colleagues should have lined up to say that as well. Right. And I've heard conservative colleagues say that she didn't do a great job of making the case, you know, which is true, but that's very different than saying that was completely unacceptable and over the line. So I think part of what we're facing, Dahlia, you know, is as we recover from the body blows of the next few months is how to engage with our colleagues around what is appropriate and what is not, what is right and what is wrong. What is your obligation as a lawyer and what is not your obligation? What are you allowed to ignore and what are you not allowed to ignore? And I try to remind lawyers that, you know, we've had injustice in our profession before that lawyers and judges did not speak out about, you know, and we have injustice running through our legal system. I say all the time, you know, every week you open the paper, someone's been released from jail after 20, 30, 40 years for a crime they didn't commit. Like we got a lot of problems in our legal system. So we're standing up on some soapbox saying that we don't have any obligation to say anything is to me just a non-starter. So we know all of that is true. That is within the context of our unhealthy democracy. But to the extent we have real fresh threats to the remnants of the democracy that we do have, the idea that lawyers are going to play no role or that we're going to figure out how to profit from this chaos, I think is very, very frightening. And so I think we have to push. That's why I think we have to be talking and we have to set a standard and our colleagues have to understand what we expect of them. Our colleagues in this profession have to understand what we expect of them. We're going to take a short break. It's time for another

round. May you live in interesting times. Well, I don't think we have a choice, Mary. Trump's back. And this time, he's got way fewer restraints and a literal playbook for magnifying the United States. For

most of human history, people have lived under kings and queens, and not everybody believes that there's anything wrong with that. All

this can be overwhelming, but you can't afford to not pay attention. That's where What Next comes in. We are a new kind of daily news podcast, fast enough to keep up and careful enough to take a step back and think. Homocracy

is not a thing that we did and now have to protect and dust off. It's a thing that we still have it within ourselves to accomplish. The

next four years are going to be a roller coaster. You need someone there to help And we are back with Sherilyn Eiffel. I feel like as we're sort of rounding third on our irreducible principles, I also think one of the places you always take us back to, and I'm going to ask you to do it again, is facts. it's not just the primacy of the rules. It's the facts. And, you know, one of the refrains that we cite to constantly is the Sherrilyn Eiffel rule that says, is this how we practice law now? I mean, this is the thing that you keep raising. And I think facts are a place as much as rules, as much as, you know, the conduct, that everything felt like it started sliding away when facts became preferences, negotiable, debatable. And I would just love for you to give a quick, quick precie of a really strong piece you actually posted in Slate recently about Justice Alito and the ways that he was using and distorting the factual record in the gender affirming care case. was just heard at the court because until you wrote it, I confess, I listened to arguments, didn't quite catch the degree to which that's just become standard operating procedure for him. Yeah,

it's really disturbing. So again, you know, I always say I love procedure because the rules are protection or can be protection. And you know as well as I do, you know that we have a system where you move up and down the ladder, right? You start out in your trial court, you go to your court of appeals, you maybe go to the Supreme Court. And there are rules that bind the scope of conduct and responsibility of judges at each of those levels, right? And that the trial judge is where you make the factual arguments and the court makes factual findings. And that's kind of, you know, especially for civil rights litigators who are bringing cases that are often disfavored, not believed, right? We have to actually prove our case. So that's why trials are so important to us, right? We have the chance to actually prove that this thing that our clients experience that they said happened, happened. And we put forth the witnesses and we put forth the documents, we put forth the photographs and the testimony and everything to prove that that's true. A judge, trial judge, then issues findings of fact and conclusions of law. And when the case gets to the court of appeals, the court of appeals doesn't have to defer to the trial court on the law because the Court of Appeals judges are perceived as knowing the law better than trial court judges. But on fact, they have to defer because the trial judge was there and that's their expertise is hearing facts and sifting the evidence and judging the credibility of witnesses. And of course, when the case gets to the Supreme Court, it comes with the record. The record is the trial court record, right? And of course, the appellate court decision and briefs and so on and so forth. But the Supreme Court is not a trial court. It is not a court that receives factual information. It is bound by the record that was created below.