There’s a bit of post-2016 election PTSD among American political strategists, where any slight uptick in Trump’s polling numbers is perceived as an emergency situation for the Biden campaign. But despite the almost constant news cycle turbulence in American politics that would have caused big swings in a normal presidential election, the polls have remained relatively stable over the past few months. Biden remains in a clear and comfortable lead over Trump on practically every policy issue except for the economy. Why? According to Sarah, “It’s because of the referendum effect, and it’s because of the wild partisanship moment we’re in right now.” How stable are these divisions that have emerged? Hyper-partisanship isn’t going anywhere as we approach the presidential election, and as David reminds us in today’s episode, “these identities are cementing at the state level as well.” After going deep into the weeds on the latest presidential polls, our podcast hosts delve into the temperamental differences between city life and suburbia, the president’s memorandum on combating lawlessness in America’s cities, and a primer on time, place, and manner restrictions on the First Amendment.

Show Notes:

Violent riots escalated quicky in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the police shooting of Jacob Blake. . On Wednesday, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was charged with first-degree homicide for the shooting deaths of two people in Kenosha on Tuesday evening. Sarah and David break down what we know and don’t know about the Jacob Blake shooting on today’s episode of Advisory Opinions and talk through the legality of vigilante justice during times of unrest. “These really traumatic events are playing out in front of all of us,” David says on today’s episode. In one sense they’re playing out in a way that’s quite transparent because you can see the actual shootings on tape. “But there’s still a disturbing amount of fog around all of the incidents,” he adds. As Sarah explains, “We’re never talking about black and white cases but then everyone treats them like they’re black and white cases.” From a legal standpoint, law enforcement officials will have to fill in those gaps before they can render a clear legal judgment in all of these shootings. Sarah and David also take a walk down memory lane by revisiting Bush v. Gore, while also diving into the recent TikTok lawsuit and a fun conversation about our podcast hosts’ favorite parts of adulthood.

Show Notes:

Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon was arrested Thursday—along with Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea—after federal prosecutors discovered they defrauded donors involved with the “We Build the Wall” campaign, a GoFundMe that shored up $25 million in donations since its inception in 2018. The unsealed federal indictment is damning, and even shows evidence of the grifters’ amusement with scamming their donors and misappropriating the funds for personal use. The grift looks a lot like what happened recently with the NRA with Wayne LaPierre, and reminds us that scamming donors is an ever-present problem on the Right. As David says on today’s pod, “Right-wing institutions are bilking from angry grandpas and grandmas—their extra dollars—to fight for the people, when they’re really conning the people.” Catch the latest episode for some highlights (and lowlights) of the Democratic Convention, a primer on employment law in relation to the Goodyear diversity slideshow, Facebook’s strike against QAnon and Antifa, and an answer to a listener question from about the citizenship of a tv show character.

Show Notes:

In 2017, an anonymous individual named “Q” began posting on a public messaging board called 4chan about “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory alleging that a restaurant called Comet Ping Pong was really an underground child sex trafficking ring run by deep state political elites. Q quickly gained acclaim online after he continued posting unsubstantiated clues—what QAnon followers call “bread crumbs”—about a prophetic “Great Awakening” that is in store, when deep state Democrats will supposedly be held accountable for their “crimes.” On Tuesday, avowed QAnon sympathizer Marjorie Taylor Greene won a Republican congressional primary in Georgia. Beyond her avowal of QAnon, she is a 9/11 truther, has called black people “slaves” to the Democratic Party, and has characterized the 2018 House midterms “an Islamic invasion of our government.” What’s worse, the president congratulated her win on Twitter after her victory. Given Georgia’s 14th District is a reliably red district, she’s almost certainly headed toward Congress. What does this mean for the future of the GOP? David and Sarah have some thoughts.

Be sure to listen to today’s episode to hear our podcast hosts discuss the new police officer body camera footage leading up to George Floyd’s killing, as well as the constitutional underpinnings of John Eastman’s Newsweek piece questioning Kamala Harris’ eligibility for office on birtherist grounds.

People who watch and comment on politics do so very differently than campaign operatives do. Campaigns use voter scores and voter modeling—which is essentially “Moneyball” for politics—to gauge which voters are worth spending money on. As Sarah explains: “It’s a quadrant: on the y axis you have who you’re going to vote for, and on the x axis, you have your likelihood to vote. So you may be the most Trump-y Trump person ever.” But here’s the kicker: “If I go and look back and you haven’t voted since Jimmy Carter, your propensity to vote is so low, that how much money we’re going to spend on reaching you as a voter is going to actually be pretty low.” Be sure to listen to this episode so our podcast hosts can get more into the weeds about how those voter scores are being used behind the scenes in future episodes.

The country is still mourning the death of Breonna Taylor, an African American woman who was shot and killed by police officers in her Kentucky home during a no-knock raid in March. For years, no-knock warrants have withstood the test of time, given their alleged capacity to protect police and preserve evidence. But as David says, “there’s evidence that no-knock warrants are constitutionally deficient,” and “as a practical matter, castle doctrine and no-knock warrants are incompatible.” Sarah, on the other hand, doesn’t believe the castle doctrine should apply to police. Are no knock raids worth preserving? Why are they so broadly granted to police officers? Sarah and David have answers. Catch up on the latest episode for an update on the Michael Flynn case, subpoenas for Trump’s financial records, and the Hatch Act.