SCOTUS Avoids CATASTROPHE In High-Stakes Elections Decision

The Supreme Court of the United States has fortunately decided to protect America's system of checks and balances in a case involving Trump-backed election law theory. Now the situation or the case itself centered on electoral maps in the state of North Carolina. Republican lawmakers in North Carolina were asking the justices to adopt a long dormant legal theory and hold that state's courts and other state entities have

the system of checks and balances as it pertains to elections in the state of North Carolina. Well, North Carolina's Supreme Court actually struck down the state's 2022 congressional map, citing it an illegal partisan gerrymander that overwhelmingly favored the Republican Party. The state's highest court then replaced that map with another map of congressional map that favored Democrats. Republican lawmakers were furious about it and so they decided

to challenge this all the way to the Supreme Court. And so the Supreme Court heard the case and here's what we know. Okay. They relied upon the elections clause of the Constitution that provides that rules governing the manner of holding elections for senators and representatives must be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof under the independent state legislature. The legislature theory, the lawmakers argued, the

Republican lawmakers, state legislature should be able to set rules with little to no interference from the state courts. But after the case was argued to the Supreme Court, there was a little bit of a mix up. Okay. So what ended up happening was the state Supreme Court was then replaced by conservative justices who decided to overturn the previous state's Supreme Court ruling. And luckily since the

United States Supreme Court had already heard oral arguments in this case, they decided, regardless of what the current state's Supreme Court has ruled, we are going to decide that what the Republican lawmakers are asking for here is unconstitutional. Justice Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion here and I'm going to give you their reasoning for their opinion in just a moment, but Jenga want you

to jump in. Guys, this is a giant case. This is like a mini Marbury versus Madison. So if you know any legal history that was the most important case in the Supreme Court history, and there's a little bit of that here. So it's super important on two grounds. Number one, if they had voted the other way, it could have quite literally ended our democracy. Absolutely. So

number one, it would give the state legislature as the power to gerrymandor to oblivion. So they could, you know, they have already gerrymandered like crazy. They already have those drag in districts, etc. These absurdly shaped districts. But in this case, if there's no checks at all from the courts, they could just drop any map they like. It doesn't matter how absurd it is. They could just

100% pick their own voters. That's point one point two, they could end all ballot measures questioning any part of elections. So the people themselves, even if they got frustrated with the legislature's doing, could not overrule them. Not only could they, the ballot measures on gerrymandering not be able to pass. But what if there was a ballot measure saying that politicians can't take bribes. Sorry, can't do

it. It's related to elections. Only the state legislature can be involved there. But most importantly, this arose because of the fake electors scheme. So the Republicans had a plan that, hey, it doesn't matter the Trump lost. Instead of having the electors, the real electors go to the electoral college, will have state legislatures, which are Republican, even in some blue states, and certainly in some swing states,

will have them say, no, those electors are not going. Trump's electors are going. Well, the courts couldn't review it if they won in this case. And so they could literally wipe away our votes and just say, no, we don't care how you voted. We're going to pick the Republican as president no matter what. So this was a monumental case. Now I'm going to explain the Marbury

V. Madison angle and how the courts protected themselves here. And I'm going to, we're going to talk about how some of the, the conservative Supreme Court Justice did the right thing. And that's like, yeah, seriously shocking. But let's give you more details. So first, let's show you how the justices ruled in this case. As I mentioned, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the six to three majority

opinion. The dissenting justices included Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito. And in his writing, Chief Justice John Roberts says that the state courts retained the authority to apply state constitutional restraints when legislatures act under the power conferred upon them by the elections clause. He also writes that when state legislatures act pursuant to their elections clause authority, they engage in lawmaking subject to the typical constraints on the exercise

of such power. In some, our precedents have long rejected the view that legislative actions under the elections clause is purely federal and character governed only by restraints found in the federal constitution. Further, the ruling noted that the court allowed that federal courts can have some role in supervising state courts in certain circumstances. With Roberts writing that state courts do not have free reign, federal courts Roberts

said must not abandon their duty to exercise judicial review. Jank. So that's what gets to basically the deal that Roberts is making here. So in Marbury V. Madison, basically, the court decided to exchange their political advantage based on the political composition of the court at the time. For the ability to say the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of what is constitutional. And that's why it's

the most important Supreme Court case. And then the politicians accepted that because it was to their advantage. In this case, they're doing something similar here. Most of the Justices are Republican. And this would massively help Republicans. It would allow them to cheat on a grand scale. They're trading that in for more power for the courts. Because now they're establishing this ruling. No, you cannot circumvent state

courts. State courts decide what is constitutional and not constitutional in that state. And you cannot circumvent federal courts. Federal courts can still override the state courts and the state legislature. So they are accruing more power for themselves. But I think they are correct. I think they're correct legally. But don't get a twist to this to why they're doing it. But I'll take this victory anyway that

I can get it. And even so I agree with their legal principles anyway. So it's a double win. And look, give credit where credit is due. Judge Roberts is doing the right thing here. And it's a statesman like ruling and exchange. Amy Coney Barrett doing the right thing. Brett Kavanaugh doing the right thing. But it also gives you a sense of how radical this proposal was.

It was really like, and this is the cherry on top. So Alito and Gorsuch, right? An opinion, Alito, I'm sorry, not Alito, Thomas. Thomas writes the opinion. Gorsuch joins it where they said, look, this case shouldn't even be decided. The lower courts are reversed the ruling anyway. This case was already over. That's a normal legal argument, right? But they add on top, but we would have

ruled other way. Alito does not join that part of the opinion. Alito is maximum radical. He is as radical as Clarece Thomas, if not more so. And even he was like, I don't know that I would have ruled the other way. Like this is this kind of ends democracy. No, we can't do this. So it was, we dodged an enormous bullet there, guys. So this is

the most important news story of the day, even with the Trump audio tape and all of that. Right. Right. This is gigantic. Does this give you a little bit of peace of mind when it comes to the future of our democratic process? No, I'm not joking or exaggerating 1% when I say, it gave me huge peace of mind. There was a couple of hurdles that we

had to get past. One hurdle was this, because if you have this at any moment in the future, they can steal any election, right? And it's not like they haven't shown a perclivity to do that. They tried to do it in the last election and spectacularly so, right? The second bullet is Trump himself. Trump slash Tucker Carlson, anyone who's willing to say, I don't care, I'm

staying even if I lose, right? So I don't think the Santos would do that. I know others disagree. I don't think any of the other Republicans would do that. I hate their policies, but I don't think that they're crazy enough, and demagoguering enough to say, no, I'm ripping up the constitution. It's basically a coup, and there's no more democracy. Trump would definitely do that. He already

tried to do that. And there's a couple others like Bannon, et cetera, that are in that category, but not that many. So once we get past Trump, that's the second hurdle. Then the corporate guys, whether it's the Santos on the right or Biden on the left, will beat those guys. That's just a matter of demographics. Young voters will come in and will win. It gives me,

we clear those two obstacles in this election. And even though it looks like we're in a bad spot, no, we're actually almost home free after that. Thanks for watching the young Turks. So really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You got emojis of me, Anna, John, JR. So those are

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