Receipts on the Senate Filibuster | Interview: Mike “Frags” Fragoso

Sarah Isgur and David French discuss the Trump administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court about its mail-in voting executive order. Then the two talk with ⁠Mike Fragoso⁠, former chief counsel to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and partner at Torridon Law, to discuss the food truck nature of Senate judicial nomination. The Agenda: – Judicial nominees and the filibuster – All about the Congressional Review Act Advisory Opinions is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Sarah Isgur is a senior editor at The Dispatch and is based in northern Virginia. Prior to joining the company in 2019, she had worked in every branch of the federal government and on three presidential campaigns. She’s also a ABC News contributor and the author of Last Branch Standing, a deep dive into the inner workings of the Supreme Court. When Sarah is not hosting podcasts or writing newsletters, she’s probably sending uplifting stories about spiders to Jonah, who only pretends to love all animals. David French is a columnist for the New York Times. He’s a former senior editor of The Dispatch. He’s the author most recently of Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. The podcast transcription below was generated using artificial intelligence and may include occasional errors or misspellings. Sarah Isgur 0:01 You ready? David French 0:02 I was born ready. Sarah Isgur 0:06 [upbeat music] Sarah Isgur 0:19 Welcome to Advisory Opinions. I'm Sarah Isgur. That's David French, a short conversation about the Trump administration's appeal to the Supreme Court about their mail-in voting executive order. It is sitting at 1 First Street as we speak. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Well, that was a different conversation we had. And then, David, we're gonna talk to the Mike Fragoso. He is the former chief counsel to s- then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, uh, but he also was legislative director to former Senator Mike Flake, chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. I mean, the man knows the Senate. And in particular, he is an expert, and he has the receipts, on the Senate filibuster. Sarah Isgur 1:10 Okay, David, before we get to the main event, I do wanna start with another interim emergency docket petition reaching the Supreme Court this week. On Monday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to allow it to fully implement an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that seeks to impose additional restrictions on mail-in voting. Trump signed the executive order at the center of this case titled, quote, "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections" on March 31st. Among other things, the order instructs the US Postal Service to propose rules for mail-in and absentee ballots, and it directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile state citizenship lists, lists of individuals in each state who are US citizens over the age of 18. Under the order, the rules issued by the Postal Service must provide that the Postal Service can only send mail-in ballots to voters whose name appear on the state citizenship lists. So 23 states and the District of Columbia sued about that. The district court enjoined it. The circuit court upheld the district court's injunction, hence the application to the Supreme Court for that stay. David, when this EO happened, I remember there was a lot of other stuff happening, and we mentioned it, and I was like, "This is such a non-starter. We don't need to spend much time on it." I actually only wanna [chuckles] spend time on it today, um, eh, because, okay, fine, it's at the Supreme Court, but I do think it's worth noting what is at the Supreme Court so that when the decision comes down, our listeners can read past the headlines. Um, so to read from the circuit court decision, Interactive transcripts are available to Premium members. Join to follow along with the audio. Join Now More We Think You’d Like