SCOTUS Ruling Breakdown, Trump's Housing Block, and the Crockett Distraction

What happens when the Supreme Court, electoral politics, and the future of democracy collide?

In this episode of Fearless Politics, Dr. Avis breaks down a series of major Supreme Court rulings that could fundamentally reshape voting rights, campaign finance, immigration policy, and the balance of political power in America.

From the court's birthright citizenship decision to rulings affecting Temporary Protected Status, voting rights enforcement, campaign spending, and civil service protections, Dr. Avis examines what these developments reveal about the current political moment and where the country may be headed next.

The episode also explores the controversy surrounding Rep. Jasmine Crockett's comments on the Texas Senate race, the strategic importance of Senate control, and why future Supreme Court appointments could affect American politics for generations.

With her signature fearless commentary, Dr. Avis explains why these legal and political battles matter far beyond today's headlines.

In this episode:

• The Supreme Court's latest rulings

• Birthright citizenship and demographic change

• Immigration and Temporary Protected Status

• Voting rights and democratic participation

• Campaign finance and political spending

• The growing power of the Supreme Court

• Jasmine Crockett and the Texas Senate race

• Why Senate control matters

• Future Supreme Court appointments

• The long-term fight for democracy

Sometimes politics is about personalities.

Sometimes politics is about policy.

And sometimes politics is about who gets to shape the future of democracy itself.

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Transcript

Dr Avis 0:00

What's gonna happen to my children? What's gonna happen to their children as a result of a Supreme Court that clearly has no problem overturning precedent that goes back a hundred years? We need to be mature enough as a people that we think from a multi-generational standpoint. It's unfortunate what happened with Jasmine, but right now, my main concern is making sure that the Senate is captured. In a political world that is defined by unending chaos, crisis, and unprecedented action, politics as usual is no longer an option. Instead, this is a moment that requires bold, fearless, and fierce truth telling. And that's exactly what you'll find right here on Fearless Politics. I'm your host, Dr. Avis. Buckle up, it's time to be fearless. Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Fearless Politics. I have to say, this has been an eventful week, has it not? The Supreme Court came to a climax, ending its season per se with several different rulings that went on both sides of the aisle in terms of how people are perceiving whether or not they won. We're gonna break that down today, along with the housing bill hell that we're now finding ourselves in, now that we've had the Speaker of the House go ahead and just wave the white flag and release the House early, while Trump, in his little obstinate way, is refusing to sign the bill that could lead to much more affordable housing costs, potentially for millions across this country. And at the same time, we are still dealing with Iran. We're not talking about that much anymore, but whatever happened to that Iran deal, it seems to be going the way of the dinosaur. And finally, yet another thing that they are doing in order to chip away at our voting rights and to undermine democracy. And I want to say this there are a lot of surveys that suggest that, particularly around black folk, when you talk about saving democracy, it's something that really does not resonate with us. It's something that we don't really seemingly care that much about. It doesn't really move the needle. Let me make a quick argument about why this is important. Because I have to say, I understand. I understand. I understand that democracy hadn't very been very democratic for us for a whole hell of a long time. For most of our time here in this nation, democracy hadn't been shit to us. We are at a point right now we're about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of this nation. Let's be real, to me, this nation is only about 50, 60 years old, right? Because this nation really wasn't a full multiracial democracy until the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It wasn't a true democracy until my people got the opportunity to participate in it after spending centuries in this shit building it up. So we are nowhere near a 250th anniversary, in my view. But I will also say that now that we are here, now that we are here and we have this power and we are strategically located in key states that typically decide presidential elections. I find it very interesting that now that we're at this point, you have folk who are trying to undermine democracy. I went very deep into this issue on a recent episode where I talked about how research has shown us that those people who have racist views are more likely to want to have an autocratic system. They're more likely to want to have a dictator instead of having a democracy. And it's because they want to be able to tell black folk what to do. They don't want us to have any say-so in the matter. I want you to understand this is why we have to be very powerful and strong on fighting against that specific realm of individuals in this nation because we want to have say-so over our own futures. We want to be able to have say-so over opportunities that our children will have. And the power that we would need to be able to make that happen is democratic power, particularly now that our proportion in the population is growing. Now that the white majority is becoming a white minority, this is why they want to get rid of democracy. And this is why they want to undermine our voting power. And this is why they want to pull every trick in the book to try to rig elections. All of this is connected. It's connected to their dwindling proportion in the population. And so I want you to understand that now is the time. If in the past, I get it, I understand, I know why. You haven't really been all that keen on this democratic system, but I want you to know now we are coming into a space where we will have the say-so in terms of voting power if we keep it. So we cannot let these people finagle us out of positioning ourselves to make the most of the system just at the moment in which we are going to have more power over that system. This is why it's important. Now, other cases that came down with the Supreme Court that also are very concerning this week has to do with another thing having to do with voting rights. The Supreme Court has now allowed for unlimited party spending in elections. This is extremely concerning. Extremely concerning. Because if you thought that money had a big influence on elections in the past, you just wait. It's about to be supercharged right now. It's going to be even worse. And particularly to come down with this ruling right now, right before the election, is specifically an assist to the Republican Party. How do I know that? Because they are big balling, shock calling when it comes to the money that they have in their coffers at the Republican National Committee. Compare that to the DNC, which is literally in debt. They are literally upside down. They are in the red over there at the DNC. Okay, it is ridiculous. So, for example, at the Republican National Committee right now, according to the latest FEC data, the RNC has literally $125.5 million in their bank account, zero debt. Okay, Republicans are a big balling, shot calling over there with all that money that they can now use in an unlimited manner in order to support political spending and campaigns. Compare that to the Democratic Party's DNC, and they only have 14.9 million.5 million that the Republicans have. And to make it worse, though the DNC has 14.9 million in the bank, they are 18.3 million in debt. Yeah, they're upside down, y'all. They got 14.9 million in the bank, they're 18.3 million in debt. So who do you think that this Supreme Court ruling is going to actually help disproportionately? Clearly, it's going to help the Republicans. They're going to be able to carpet bomb certain elections that they know they have to win. I predict that whatever they were spending in Texas before is about to go up tenfold now. They will do anything they can to hold on to Texas. They will do anything they can to hold on because they need to keep that Senate seat in order to hold the Senate. And right now, according to the latest polls, the Texas Senate race is literally tied, neck and neck. And so they're going to do everything they can to keep it. We need to do everything we can to take the Senate. That leads me to this issue of Jasmine Crockett. So you remember this video that went a little viral last week with Jasmine Crockett? Take a look. I hadn't been. Yet somehow I'm always in the conversation about it. Read my lips. My priority is going to be down ballot races. Because last time I checked, no matter how much I end up being a part of the conversation, there is one person that is guaranteed not to become the next senator in the state of Texas. And that's Jasmine Felicia Crockett. Lord have mercy. When that video came out, black folk were out here mad, okay? Mad uh. And I understand it. A lot of folk were lying on her about her past association with APAC. A lot were saying very demeaning, very insulting things during the primary season. A lot were just acting a fool. I would just say that during the primary. And as a result of that, quite frankly, there are a lot of hurt feelings. I also am someone who can relate to this belief that, hey, black women shouldn't work for free. Okay. That now you're out here, you see you're in trouble, you see you need us. She don't need to go out there to help your ass. I can understand why people might have that reflexive idea because of lingering feelings of being wronged during the primary season. I get that. But here's what I want to say. We got to think beyond Jasmine Crockett. I feel bad for Jasmine Crockett that she didn't get the primary. If I was in Texas, I would have voted for Jasmine Crockett. But here's the bottom line. 80 years from now, ain't nobody gonna know who the fuck Jasmine Crockett is. But 80 years from now, we could still be dealing with the shit that this Supreme Court will do if we do not take the power away from the Senate for Trump to be able to appoint more people or at least younger people to the Supreme Court. You just had this week NPR leak out a report that Alito is about to retire, and then they were forced to rescind it. It's already been rumblings that Clarence Thomas may be retiring. And now, who knows? It might be both of them maybe retiring within the next two years. This would give Trump the opportunity to replace both of them with younger versions of themselves. These are lifetime appointments. Lifetime appointments. If Jasmine really wanted this race, why the hell would you be running for U.S. Senate and have plenty of money, but still decide that you know better, therefore, you don't need to hire a campaign manager for your own damn campaign. This is true. Received from two very different but also very reliable sources who both have stated to me that she refused to hire a campaign manager, that they strongly suggested that she hire a campaign manager, that she believed she didn't need a campaign manager. She wanted to run this unconventional campaign. Well, congratulations. You ran an unconventional campaign, but you lost very conventionally. Okay. And so now here we are. And what I'm concerned about is what's going to happen to my children. What's going to happen to their children as a result of a Supreme Court that clearly has no problem overturning a precedent that goes back a hundred years. It's unfortunate that her opponents supporters were out here acting a damn fool. But right now, my main concern is making sure that the Senate is captured. Because here is the reality of how this government works. Supreme Court appointees go through the Senate. The Senate has the power to say yay or nay to Supreme Court appointees. The Senate is why we have such a disproportionate leaning on the Supreme Court right now. It is the Senate when Mitch McConnell was the head of the majority party at that time, when the Republicans once again controlled the Senate, that stole a seat away from Obama. It is the Senate. We need to think beyond that. We need to understand that one person is not worth us giving up our power for generations. And if you think they're going to stop at Calais, you should have another thing coming. You know, I I hate to say it, but when Dobbs happened and they eliminated the right to choose for women, I said back then, this is not the end of what they're going to do. It's just the beginning. And here we are, and we're seeing it in real time. They've eliminated now section two of the Voting Rights Act. We're already losing black districts. And you just wait until they're able to replace Alito and Thomas with 40-year-olds who could be on the bench for another 30 or 40 years. Come on, people. Come on. I love Jasmine, but she ain't worth it. She is not worth it. We need to wake up, be realistic, be strategic, think about the game in a chess standpoint and not a checker standpoint. We have to think two, three, four, five moves ahead. I refuse to give up the power that could impact the lives of my grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren that aren't even here yet because we all in our feelings about Jasmine Crockett, who didn't care enough about our own damn campaign, to hire a damn campaign manager. Absolutely not. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. One last thing I will say about that, and this is a good point. I hear a lot of people saying he needs to earn our vote. Absolutely, he does. But you know how that happens? You have power. You go to his campaign and say, This is what I want. Every time I hear people saying, Well, he needs to earn our vote, I'm waiting for, okay, what does he need to do to earn your vote? It just kind of ends with, he needs to earn our vote. Listen, let me give you some game here. You don't wait for him to come to you and say, please vote for me. And honestly, let's just be honest, too. A lot of people who are saying that is because they have a monetary desire to get him to invest in whatever it is they are doing. They could be an influencer, they could be somebody in media. And black media should be paid. But let me just say, you also have to think, what do they really mean by that? He needs to own our vote. He needs to earn our vote by paying me money so I can talk about him. What I want you to understand here is that how that happens is that you go to his campaign and say, we want A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Have we done that yet? I am not aware of it. So, what I'm telling you, those of you in Texas, figure out what you most want from your Texas senator. Go to him, tell him that's what he needs to do in order to earn your vote. And then that's how it happens. Just sitting back saying he needs to earn our vote, but you don't have any specifics about exactly what that means, besides, I don't know, maybe giving some influencers some money so they can talk about them. What does that even mean? What are your policy priorities in Texas as black people in Texas? Give it to his campaign, have him commit to that, and hold him to that winning if he wins. That's how this game works. We need to develop a level of maturity when it comes to our politics so that we can play the game to win, not just play the game to complain. Period. All right. That is not all. I want to talk about one more thing when it comes to what the Supreme Court has done. Another ruling came down this week that basically got civil service protections. So it's basically saying, hey, Trump can go into major entities within the federal government and put his cronies in. He can fire people at will. There are no civil service protections. Why should you care about that? A couple of different reasons. You need to care about that because what it does is it drains the federal government from actual people who are experts in that space, regarding whatever department that they work in. And instead, it puts cronies in there that are only interested in perpetuating the ideals of the person in power. You want to know what that looks like? It looks like what we're going through right now. This is why Trump has all over the federal government as we speak right now. They have been gutting out the federal government, firing people writ large. Remember Doge? If you thought Doge was a bad thing, wait to see what's going to happen now. Because they're going to put it on blast as a result of this ruling because they can. Because they can. And then what they're going to do is they're going to put in there loyalists to Trump, who are then going to go in there and gut it of other professionals or gut it of people who are not aligned with them and then put in place policies that are only in line with his specific worldview. We are seeing it right now, most notably and most glaringly, for example, uh, in the Department of Defense with Hegzith, going in there, gutting out the Department of Defense, getting rid of black officers, women officers, for no damn good reason, only because he's a white supremacist and he only wants those opportunities to go to white men. You can see that happening just most recently with the shift over in intelligence, where you have a temporary. This is the thing that gets me. The interim lead that Trump appointed over there, who has no experience, just like Hexaf, very unqualified for that position. Now, basically, he's done the same thing over in intelligence. He's also done the same thing over in Homeland Security. You see the drill. They put in place unqualified people, but people who are yes men. So now when they get over there, they do exactly what Trump wants him to do. That's going to be magnified with this ruling. And what's really interesting is that both this ruling and the ruling around campaign finance, both of them were to counter laws that were put in place on the heels of Watergate. They were put in place by Congress after Watergate in order to reduce the chance of corruption in the future. And what is happening right now? We're having a Supreme Court eliminate those things, which makes it easier for corruption to occur. We know that this is the most corrupt administration that we've ever seen in recent history, at minimum. Perhaps at all. But now they have the green light to be even more corrupt. Now, what was unusual about this ruling also is that you had Justice Sotomayor read aloud her dissent. And I just want to share with you some of the things that she pointed out about this specific ruling that I think are very powerful and very important for you to know. Number one, she warned that this ruling hands Trump authority, no one ever granted him, not voters, not lawmakers, not the documents that built this government itself, specifically the Constitution. This ruling is a file of all of those things. She also warned that roughly two dozen agencies that regulate things like Wall Street for fraud, workplace discrimination, union elections, and product safety, all of those things are going to be impacted and can be packed with Trump loyalists instead of experts. And you know what they're gonna let them do? They're gonna let them run amok. They're gonna let criminality run amok as a result. And who pays the price? You and me. I want you to also know that this impacts the Federal Election Commission. Woo wee. This is a theme, isn't it? If you are a regular listener to Fearless Politics, just about every episode we talk about something else he is doing to undermine voting and fair elections. Well, this is going to impact the Federal Elections Commission, which is currently split evenly between both parties. As a result of this ruling, they can literally get rid of all of the Democratic representatives and only put Republicans there. That's exactly what they are looking to do. But on the very same day that they came down with this ruling, they came down with another ruling to say, hey, uh-uh-uh, you cannot do that when it comes to the Federal Trade Commission. Huh, interesting. So when it comes to the Federal Reserve, and really about the money, you can't do that. Now, that did help our sister, who Trump tried to fire, but he's gonna try to fire her under other means. However, it shows you the illogic nature of this court, the political nature of this court. They want to protect the money in that sense. But when it comes to our voting rights, when it comes to our safety, when it comes to things like that, they are allowing this administration and all future administrations to run among. But I feel like they are especially not caring about future administrations because they believe, honestly, that the Democrats don't have the balls to do anything like this, that they run it fairly, and frankly, unfortunately, probably would. There needs to be some energy matching here. Which is why I believe you've had the Democratic Socialists have such a good run here recently, because people are saying we're not seeing enough fight out of you. What we need are people that are ready to fight back and fight back hard. One last thing I will say about this particular ruling and allowing people to just be fired willy-nilly. There was a piece in the Washington Post of the weekend that was so powerful. It profiled four black women who among them had nine degrees and not one steady paycheck. So I have a question for Trump. Where are the black jobs? Where are the black jobs? Where are the black jobs? Here's the reality. And for all those black Trump supporters, he don't give a damn about you. He don't. There was an analysis by the Washington Post reported on in this story where they looked at the number of times that Trump mentioned anything about black unemployment since he's been president. Back in 2018, he mentioned it in 27% of his speeches. Okay. That's a pretty good representation. Back in 2019, it had gone down to 18% of his speeches. Okay, it had gone down, but he's still talking about it. All right. Guess how many times he mentioned black unemployment in 2025? Out of 422 speeches, not once. Not once. While black people are out here experiencing unemployment rates that have only been exceeded by the pandemic and the Great Recession. He don't give a damn about you. And lastly, I want to talk about this housing bill hell that we are in right now. Or maybe it's housing bill purgatory. But I'll call it housing bill hell. So the Republicans were all excited they were going to have this big hullabaloo showing Trump signing this housing bill, which is actually a bipartisan housing bill that was co-sponsored by Senator Tim Scott out of South Carolina, as well as Elizabeth Warren. And this bill had some really good qualities, right? Some of the core features. It was going to curtail corporate buying so that you couldn't have big corporations buying up large schwares of homes only to then rent them back at exorbitant rates to people. It was going to speed up construction to increase the number of houses on the market, including allowing for alternative housing sources like manufactured homes. And as you increase the supply of housing, it would then make housing more affordable. It would also expand opportunities for more small-dollar mortgages, once again, allowing for more portable housing and for greater opportunities to repair public housing so that it could be in better conditions. They went to Trump about to sign it, and he's like, No, I'm not going to sign it until we get the Save Act put in there. Well, of course, that scuttled everything. You have Speaker Johnson now, who has called an early end to the House. He's released them for the next couple of weeks. You have Trump who is literally on tape saying, Oh, I don't really care, in essence, about housing. He calls it a yawn. Don't believe me? Check this out. What are your plans for the housing bill, Mr. President? Are you? I don't know. I think it's so unimportant to me compared to the Save America Act. Just about everything is a big yawn. And then here's what's interesting to me. Do you remember this? During the foreclosure crisis, I took on the big banks who exploited people in the housing market. And today, corporate landlords buy hundreds of houses and apartments, then turn them around and rent them out at extremely high prices. I will fight for a law that cracks down on these practices. We will end America's housing shortage by building three million new homes and rentals. We should be doing everything we can to make it more affordable to buy a home.

Speaker 3 28:21

If only we had a president Kamala Harris, this would have been law. Many of the things that were included in this bill, she had already proposed to do during the campaign. She had also proposed to give first-time homeowners $25,000 in down payment support. This would have been a done deal. Now it's in housing bill purgatory at minimum, potentially housing bill hell, because it may never get signed. I know a lot of people are saying, well, you know, since it's passed both the House and Senate with a veto-proof majority, he probably just doesn't want to veto it because he doesn't want to go through the humiliation of getting his veto overwritten. Because of the rules of the situation, typically, when you send a bill to the president, and if he doesn't act on it within 10 days, then it automatically becomes law. So people are saying, oh, it'll probably just become law anyway without him doing that. And therefore he doesn't have to go through the humiliation of having his veto overwritten. But what if Johnson never officially sent the bill over to the White House? What happens then? And I think that's a big possibility because Johnson, his little Milly mouth, he'll do whatever he tells him to do. Trump does not want to sign this bill. He does not want it to go into effect. He has said as much before. Hell, who's to say he doesn't have interest in those big corporations that buy up thousands of homes at a time? If Johnson did not send over that bill and you have the House in recess and/or the Senate in recess or both in recess, you would have something called a pocket veto. Meaning that even if you have the overwhelming majority of the House and Senate that vote in favor of a bill, if that bill is never officially sent over to the White House in its official form, and the president doesn't sign it, that bill dies. The Republicans desperately wanted it. They wanted something that they could run on that had something to do with affordability. This was their only chance. It's interesting that the Democrats allowed them to get this chance to run on something, but they did because they want to be good governors. And I ain't even mad because it would help people. But I will tell you this I wouldn't be surprised if Trump completely undermines it by initiating a pocket veto by not signing it at all. And I think that that would likely be the case because I truly believe that little Mike Johnson will do everything and anything that Trump tells him to do. And if Trump says he wants it to die, he will put in place what needs to be put in place to make sure that it dies. And that would be the procedure to do it. So here we are once again at the end of a Supreme Court season that has been completely destructive to black political power. We're here at a time in which our economic power is still under assault from this administration. And in fact, the Supreme Court has given an assist to make that reality even more true in the future, especially given the fact that black people make up a fifth of the federal workforce, or at least did before the doging happened. And here we are at a moment in which we have this one bill that could be very helpful for folks being undermined. No wonder we are in a moment in which voters out there are saying that we want fighters and we need fighters. And that's exactly what we're seeing in terms of all the shifts in the Democratic primaries. With that said, I have so much more to talk about, but we'll have to get into it on the next episode of Fearless Politics. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of Fearless Politics. And while you're here, don't forget to subscribe, follow, and leave that five-star rating that you and I both know we deserve. Also, feel free to leave a review so more people can find out about us and become members of the Fearless Politics crew. And finally, if you want to go further down the rabbit hole with us, then be sure to check us out at FearlessPoliticspodcast.com. Or connect with me personally on Instagram at FearlessDr.Avis. With that said, we'll see you next time. And don't forget, it's time to be fearless. See you soon.