 So, while he was on the stump for Matt Bevin in Kentucky with Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell bragged about what the Republican Party has been able to accomplish with Donald Trump as president, specifically with respect to the federal judiciary. And I don't care if you are on the left, the center left, the center, it doesn't matter. This is something that should be of great importance to all of us because this has implications that are lasting, right? Even if we're able to successfully defeat Donald Trump in 2020, well, the way that he has remade the judiciary, that will have a lasting impact for decades to come. So this is what Mitch McConnell said. And keep in mind that what he's saying is accurate. Well, thank you, Mr. President, for making America great again. And Matt Bevin is making Kentucky great again thanks to your help tonight. And working together, we're changing the federal courts forever. Nobody's done more to change the court system in the history of our country than Donald Trump. And Mr. President, we're going to keep on doing it. My motto is leave no vacancy behind. Now keep in mind that what he's referring to are federal judges with lifetime appointments. So that means that even if we are successful at getting rid of Donald Trump in 2020, well, his legacy will persist through the federal judiciary. And I don't think that people really recognize the scope of this and like how many judges Donald Trump has appointed. Looking at this bar chart from Pew Research as of July of 2018, Donald Trump appointed double the amount of federal appeals court judges as Obama, Clinton and Bush at the same point in tenure. Now as of September of 2019, he's confirmed a total of 150 judges, again, all of which will serve lifetime appointments. And he's been so effective at remaking the federal judiciary that now one in four judges, one in four federal appeals court judges have been appointed by Donald J. Trump. Think about that. These are judges who are far right extremists likely recommended to Donald Trump by the federal society. They advocate for textualism, which means that their interpretation of the Constitution is more rigid. It's more antiquated. So in short, what that means for you and I, when it comes to civil rights, civil liberties, when it comes to large multinational corporations, they're going to rule against us. They're going to rule in favor of large multinational corporations. They're going to chip away at our civil rights and civil liberties. So this is potentially devastating. I need you to think about this. Even if we get a Bernie Sanders presidency, if Bernie Sanders is elected and we get the best case scenario. Well, let's say Bernie Sanders passes Medicare for all. Trump's lackeys now in the federal courts, all of which that he appointed throughout the country, they can easily chip away at Medicare for all if we actually are successful at getting that passed, if they don't just outright overturn it. Now we got a taste of this with the Affordable Care Act, because if you'll recall, when the ACA was initially passed, that Medicaid expansion was mandatory. States had to accept it, although the Supreme Court upheld the ACA overall. They struck down that mandate, right? So now states can choose to opt out of the Medicaid expansion. So they can do things like that to undermine Medicare for all. And that's if they don't just outright strike it down. Again, these are far right extremists. They don't care about the people. They don't care about objectively interpreting the Constitution. They care about making sure that oligarchy reigns supreme in America. So this is something that people need to be talking about and paying attention to because the implications of this are broad and this is devastating. Now I want to play a clip of MSNBC from Chris Hayes. He interviewed Senator Jeff Merkley and he talks through the implications of this, but also he explains how Republicans have been so successful at stacking the courts. They have changed the rules in terms of how these nominees happen. There used to be the system called the blue slip process, which sort of granted to home state senators a kind of veto, particularly district court nominees. That's gone now. It existed under Obama and under Democratic rule. McConnell's gotten rid of it. What are the implications of that? Well, it's being left in place on district, but not on circuit. I'm sorry, yes, right. And but what they did is they changed the number of hours for deliberation from 30 hours to two hours so they can just put through so many judges so quickly, taking away any ability to create real opposition. So McConnell is looking at the fact that between his partnership with Trump, they've put through about a hundred district judges and a quarter of the active appeal judges, which have far more decision making ability than the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court takes just a limited number of cases. So they are reshaping the judiciary and they're doing it for the powerful. The whole federal society approach is let's supersize the first amendment so the powerful can spend hundreds of millions of dollars and take control of the government by and for the privileged and powerful. This is the exact evisceration of the we the people vision of our Constitution. That's what Mitch McConnell is doing. That's what Trump is doing. It's not for ordinary Americans. It's for the rich and powerful. And we have to find a way to stop them. And that's going to be the elections next year. So I agree with most of what Jeff Merkley says. It's on point, although I disagree with his solution. Defeating Donald Trump. That's not enough because again, you defeat Donald Trump. Well, his legacy will persist in the form of a federal judiciary. I mean, it is these lifetime appointments that he put on the courts. They're not just going to vanish if he loses office. That's not the way that this works. So you actually do need a real solution. Now there is, thankfully, a solution. And the only solution that I've heard thus far that seems plausible is from Farron Cousins of Ring of Fire. And when he talked about this, he floated term limits for all federal judges. It doesn't matter which court they're on. If you are a federal judge, you no longer serve a lifetime appointment. We limit that. Now, how long you want to make that, that's debatable. But what matters is that they are not lifetime appointments. And this issue is so important that it really should be a 2020 issue, like a top 2020 issue. And if you care about getting money out of politics, you should also advocate simultaneously for term limits for all federal judges because this really is important if we truly want real structural reform in this country. So the only way that we can undo this is to pass term limits for all federal judges. Otherwise, whatever we pass, it can easily be undermined by one of Trump's goons on these federal courts. And think about this, we're already undergoing a Lochner era when it comes to the Supreme Court. Like, let me remind you that the Lochner era was when the Supreme Court was so extreme that they were striking down any and all social and economic reforms, which is why we started to talk about court packing plans to begin with because FDR was getting tired of this Lochner court who was striking down everything. So he threatened them with the court packing plan. Well, we're already beyond that conversation. Like, we are in a Lochner era now, but it's not just the Supreme Court that we have to focus on. It's all of the federal courts because, again, what Donald Trump has done is he's been so effective at appointing all of these judges, mostly due to the help of Mitch McConnell, that now his legacy will last for decades. These are lifetime appointments. They will be dictating U.S. law and interpreting the Constitution for decades to come for most of our lives. So if this isn't of the utmost concern to you, then you need to raise the salience of this issue fast. More people need to be talking about this because for Donald Trump to have appointed 25% of all federal appeals court judges, that is devastating. Anything we want, again, not to sound redundant, but anything we want past, Medicare for all, a Green New Deal, a federal minimum wage increase, this can all be undone by these far-right Federalist Society judges that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are appointing. Now, you'd think that, you know, the opposition party Democrats would be sounding the alarm, but I mean, Chuck Schumer is part of the problem. He basically fast-tracked a lot of judges in 2018 so Democrats can get back to campaigning. But if you're not going to fight for us, then you're giving people less of a reason to support you. So the situation, it's just all around, it's devastating because we have this situation where, you know, Republicans are incredibly effective and the opposition Democrats are incredibly ineffectual and it's led to the current situation. It's unsustainable. Their rulings cannot be the law of the land for the next 20 or 30 years because, I mean, if you truly want to save the planet, if you want to ameliorate a lot of these crises that plague the American population, you know, healthcare, student loan debt, you've got to get rid of them. So, I mean, I don't know what else to say. The outlook is grim unless we do something about this, unless we actually start talking seriously about term limits for all Federal judges. Okay.