A new recipe that's SO GOOD and a story about my friend Brett.
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Hey Reader, In this week's musings, I talk about a friend from my lawyering days, Brett. You'll see why. But, if you're not into storytime, I got you: just scroll on down to This Week's Recipe Inspo: Cashew Nut Tofu. If you're really only ever interested in the recipes, I get that. Click here and from this point forward, you will ONLY get the recipes on Thursdays, with my Weekly Recipe Roundups! Otherwise, read more for a short story on my buddy, Brett. "So, there's this Korean place not too far from here, wanna try it out for dinner?" We were sitting in a conference room in one of our client's buildings on either side of those long tables--the ones you see in boardrooms. Between us sat multiple bankers boxes full of documents. We'd started the day at the crack of dawn, driving from our hotel to the client, stopping at the client's cafeteria to pick up some coffee, before diving into and combing through records and deposition transcripts for the rest of the day. By the time Brett made the restaurant suggestion, the lamps lining the parking lot were lit and I could see the bright lights of Memphis commuters heading home through the floor-to-ceiling windows of our workroom. Brett was a self-professed foodie, but I still appreciated that he'd looked for a Korean restaurant in Memphis for my sake, even though I never asked him to. He and I were both away from home. I was away from my husband and dogs, he was away from his wife and kids and dog. We'd spent all day "lawyering" through an endless amount of data while consuming excessive amounts of caffeine. Concluding the day at a local restaurant eating Korean food sounded positively revitalizing. Notwithstanding our mutual love of Korean food and mutual distaste for document review, from the outside looking in, Brett and I didn't have a lot in common. He was white, of German descent, and older than me by a decade. I was, at that time, a mid-level associate in our Chicago office and he was a partner in our Milwaukee office, which made him my "supervisor." But as is wont to happen at large law firms, Brett instantly assumed the role of informal mentor, too, and we became fast friends. He told me about what to expect if/when I made partner. He furnished specific advice on how to achieve that elusive milestone in my career. We also discovered we both loved sports (we spent hours talking about our favorite 30 for 30 episodes). He was a demanding partner, for sure, but Brett was one of those persons who couldn't be anything but himself--around the client, around his colleagues, around his friends. Thus, he was one of those persons around whom you felt at ease being yourself. I liked his no-bullshit directness. I related to his impatience for stupidity. I loved his sense of humor. He soon became one of my closest friends at the firm. In 2016, though, our differences came under microscopic scrutiny. I have no idea who Brett voted for in 2016 election, but suffice it to say, I learned that friendship didn't necessarily guarantee political alignment. For better or worse, my experience as a woman of color has always and will always inform the way I vote. I wish I could vote without having to think about whether or not the president is, himself, racist or sympathetic to racists, but that is not the world I live in nor one I can afford. Of course, what we know today about our President (and the people who support him) dwarfs what we knew back in 2016 and many people have since been forced to reckon with the privilege that permitted them to ignore the red flags that others of us could see with dazzling clarity. In the end, I concluded I didn't need to know who Brett voted for in that election. I would continue to let his actions towards me determine to what degree I would trust him with my affection. Yes, we argued about things but we did so like we were bulls in a China shop, carefully steering clear of delicate subjects altogether in order to maintain our working relationship, but more importantly, our friendship. And it was because of the strength of that friendship that I lent my full-throated support to his appointment as a federal bankruptcy judge under Trump's first administration (I was a reference and thus had to speak with the head of the selection committee). I had lunch with him on one of my work trips to Milwaukee shortly after he was sworn in. While showing off the city's burgeoning "foodie scene," I noticed how my friend's cheeks glowed, how his mouth remained relaxed, his jaws loosened by a job he loved. He told me his favorite thing, thus far, about being a judge was the naturalization ceremonies he administered for hundreds of people who came to the U.S. to build upon their American dreams. Brett regularly emailed me openings for judgeships, and I'm not gonna lie--he made it look really really fun. Brett was also really really good at his job. This wasn't surprising to me. The autonomy he could exercise over his docket gave him the latitude to be as meticulous as he never could be in the fast-paced, billable-hour driven environment of Big Law. As a judge, his primary job was to get it right and he channeled all of his pent up punctiliousness into that effort. In three years, towards the end of his administration, Trump nominated Brett to be a federal judge in the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Once more, Brett put me down as one of his references, and I was very proud to support him. No sooner was he sworn in as a newly minted federal judge of the Eastern District of Wisconsin that his loyalty was tested. Shortly after the 2020 election, Trump et al. began rolling out their election fraud lawsuits and Brett was the recipient of a massive one. Specifically, in Trump v. The Wisconsin Elections Commission, Trump claimed, among other things, that the Wisconsin electors were unlawfully chosen in violation of the Electors Clause of the constitution. The vast majority of judges administering these election fraud lawsuits dismissed them for technical reasons (lack of jurisdiction, deference to other state court proceedings, etc.). Trump repeatedly complained that he wasn't being given his "day in court," but was, instead, spurned by the bench without a chance to put on any evidence. Brett, too, was urged by defendants (i.e., the party opposing Trump's lawsuit) to do just that: dismiss the case on a legal technicality (abstention doctrine). But, Brett refused: "[g]iven the importance of the federal issue and the limited timeline available, it would be inappropriate" to defer and abstain from ruling on the merits. And so, Brett did something rather extraordinary himself, given that he had only a few days to render a decision: he gave Trump his day in court. Specifically, he allowed a full evidentiary hearing (a "trial") to proceed. Just ten days after the lawsuit was filed, on December 12, 2020, Brett published his 23 page opinion. As I read through it, I could imagine Brett, then. His judge's robes hanging behind him as he sat at his desk, the same way he sat at the conference room table in Memphis--his back straight, his elbows at 45° angles as his neatly trimmed fingers clipped away at the keyboard. Every once in a while, the sound of his writing would be interrupted as he bent down to confer with a stack of annotated case law or a treatise. "This is an extraordinary case, he begins. Plaintiff's requests for relief are even more extraordinary, he continues. He seeks declarations that defendants violated his Constitutional rights and that the violations 'likely' tainted more than 50,000 ballots." In law school and certainly as a practicing attorney, I often skipped to the end of an opinion, the punchline, if you will, right after reading the facts of a case. I was tempted to do so with Brett's written ruling, but there was a part of me that was also afraid of what I'd find at the end of it. And so, I read it like I would a novel, forcing myself to consume each word, each turn of phrase, to admire Brett's skill as a rhetorician as much as a legal scholar, to smile at how there wasn't so much as a comma out of place in all 23 pages. I was admittedly dismayed at Brett's refusal to listen to the defendants' pleas for abstention. The sooner this case was over, the sooner we, as a nation, could move forward. Why did he need to give Trump a platform to continue spewing his lies? Was he doing this because he felt he owed Trump? And if so, how far was Brett willing to go to pay off that debt? On page 22 of 23, Brett answered that question in his final paragraph: "This is an extraordinary case. A sitting president who did not prevail in his bid for reelection has asked for federal court help in setting aside the popular vote based on disputed issues of election administration, issues he plainly could have raised before the vote occurred. This Court has allowed plaintiff the chance to make his case and he has lost on the merits. In his reply brief, plaintiff 'asks that the Rule of Law be followed.' It has been. It is hereby ordered that Plaintiff's complaint is DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE." This Week's Recipe Inspo. Cashew Nut Tofu.
What I'm... Parting Thoughts. Several weeks ago, over dinner, Anthony and some friends began lamenting the state of things, the chaos erupting from Trump's pen as he signed yet another executive order. As I listened to them, I thought to myself, we are only 45 days into this 4-year term. We will never survive if we give up on our government while giving into hysteria. So, I piped up, "But that's why we have judges. A lot of those orders are going nowhere, because of the judges." "Who says Trump and Elon Musk are going to follow a judge's orders?" came Anthony's immediate rebuttal. And I could see the Tweet Anthony was thinking of, the one wherein the President of the United States published for all the world to see: "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” And so, over the next two days, I researched, What happens when presidents don't obey the law? How do judges enforce their orders? Can the U.S. Marshall's office detain the president? Elon Musk? WILL the U.S. Marshall's office throw the President in jail if it comes to that? Sadly, the answer is: Nobody knows. Why? Because, up until this point, we didn't need to know. Yesterday, I read an article that reported Elon Musk is pushing for the impeachment of all the judges that aren't willing to bend their knees to King Trump and his South African puppeteer. The journalist suggested impeachment would almost never happen, since it requires a 2/3 majority in the Senate. But of course, the real question: Why are we even having this discussion in the first place??? I never in a million years thought I would be spending my free time going back to legal treatises and statutes so I could get a handle on the fragility of our democracy. I need to know precisely how strong our bulwark remains and what loopholes might be exploited to dismantle it. And every time I get discouraged or run into a yet another a series of "nobody knows," I think of Brett. His love of Korean food. The way his voice trembled, almost indiscernibly, when he described his first naturalization ceremony. The gentle clicking of his keyboard as he wrote, Plaintiff asks that the Rule of Law be followed. It has been. Wishing you all the best,
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