Latest / Pod Save America / “Clarence Thomas’ Sügar Daddy.”

Transcript

“Clarence Thomas’ Sügar Daddy.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Plaid Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: On today's show, the Biden administration fights to keep abortion
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: medication legal. Clarence Thomas has a secret billionaire sugar daddy
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: with a thing for Nazi memorabilia. Strict Scrutiny's Leah Lippman
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: joins to break down the latest legal news. And Tennessee
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Democrats fight back after Republicans vote to expel two black
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: state representatives. Then we take on the kookiest new culture
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: wars in a quick round of One Line with Cocaine Bear.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: But first, before we start, it's Webby Award season. It's here.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Oh, it is. It is.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: I've got my dress all picked out.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Crooked has quite a few nominations.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: That we got.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Our own Love It or Leave It in the best
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: live podcast recording category.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Who am I up against? Does it say there?
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I don't have that information.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: I'm better than them. Vote for Love It or Leave It.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: World Corrupt, best partnership or collaboration category.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Best collab.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Our Pod Save America episode featuring Barack Obama.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: I didn't think that was a very good one.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Okay. This is a plug for all of us. In
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the featured guest category.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Which is really more about him than us. So I
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: don't care if we win that one.
• 1:23
  Speaker 5: It is. Yeah.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Notice Pod Save America did not get nominated for things
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: that Barack Obama wasn't in. Right.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: That we probably had the lowest word count in that
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: episode of any industry.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Let's send a message. I want it for Pod Save
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: the World. I want it for Love It or Leave It.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I want it for Pod Save America.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Did you see Al Franken was shit talking us?
• 1:40
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: That's when I decided I wanted to win. He was like,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: vote against Pod Save America and Barack Obama.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Not the first time he's gotten in trouble for reaching.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: What?
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: That's a funny joke.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: That was good. He would appreciate that.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Anyway, we have more. Keep It in television and film
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: podcast category. My Offline Episode with ContraPoints in the tech category.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: And The Wilderness Season 3 in news and politics.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: Look at you triple dipping.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Wilderness over positive America in news and politics?
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: Well, you know what?
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: That's what the people wanted. Public voting is set to
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: close in less than two weeks, so we're calling on
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: all friends of the pod to head over to, and
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: it's not a typo here, it's wbby.co slash vote. I
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: know that doesn't sound like Webby, but it's W-B-B-Y dot
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: C-O slash vote. They really made that easy for you.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Just Google vote in the Webby's. Vote in the Webby's.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Or you could Google vote in the Webby's or you
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: could ask chat GPT probably.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: So somebody else bought Webby dot C-O.
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: They weren't going to pay for it. Anyway.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I get it. Anyway, vote before April 20th. That's the
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: last one. URL squatters are a scourge.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Let's get to the news. An extreme right-wing Trump-appointed judge
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: in Amarillo, Texas, has put in jeopardy access to medication
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: that's responsible for over half of all abortions In the
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: United States, Judge Matthew Kazmarek's ruling invalidates the FDA's approval
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: 23 years ago of mifepristone, which would restrict the pill
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: all across the country, even in states where abortion remains legal.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: It could also invite legal challenges to other FDA approved
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: drugs and vaccines for purely political reasons. But almost immediately
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: after Kaczmarek's ruling, Obama appointed Judge Thomas Rice of Washington
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: state ruled in a separate case that the FDA must
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: maintain access to Miffy-Pristone in the states where Democratic attorneys
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: general brought the lawsuit. President Biden has promised to fight
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the Texas ruling and the Department of Justice has already
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: filed an appeal. Tommy, what happens next and what are
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the implications if the Texas ruling is upheld?
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: So as you noted, the Biden administration is appealing this
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, notoriously liberal, left-leaning,
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: or the opposite.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: A bunch of squishes.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: Extremely conservative. So the DOJ has asked for a response
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: to that appeal by Thursday at noon, at which point
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: they will either be working with the Fifth Circuit or
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: DOJ will go directly to the Supreme Court to appeal.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: So if the Texas ruling stands, it means that this
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: random judge in the middle of nowhere, Texas, has told
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: the FDA that a drug they approved 23 years ago
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: is no longer approved. It's no longer deemed safe, accordingly, apparently.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: And doctors may no longer be able to prescribe it.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: So this will be the biggest attack on abortion rights
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: in this country since Dobbs, a totally unprecedented intervention by
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: the courts into the approval of medication. And it could
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: have countless ramifications for other drugs in the future.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a mess. It's pretty terrible. And it's not
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the first time that right-wing groups have gone forum shopping
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: to Judge Kaczmarek, who's the one single federal judge in Amarillo, Texas.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: And they know they can go there and that they
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: will pull that judge and that he will issue a
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: extremely right-wing opinion, which is what they did here. You
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: mentioned the implications for other drugs beyond abortion medication. There's
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: 250 drug and biotech company executives sent a letter today,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: very alarmed by this because they basically said, if courts
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: can overturn drug approvals without regard for science or evidence,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: any medicine is at risk for the same outcome. So
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: you can all imagine like anti-vaxxers finding an extreme right-wing
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: judge or this one. Yeah, they go back to him.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you have any drug with any kind of ideological
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: dispute attached to it. COVID vaccines, HPV vaccines, uh, prep
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: drugs for gay people to prevent getting HIV. Just any
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: drug that has been controversial, you can go forum shopping,
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: find the worst person the Federalist Society could think of
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: to introduce to Donald Trump and get a bananas ruling
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: like this.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: And I know you're going to talk to Leah more
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: about this in the interview, but yeah, it is inevitable
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: this will end up at the Supreme Court one way
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: or the other, no matter how the Fifth Circuit rules,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: it will be appealed by either party. So we will
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: get a real test of whether the Dobbs decision, which
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court majority argued was to leave this up
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: to the states and let democracy take its course, will
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: now be applied when medication abortion could be restricted across
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: all 50 states.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: I also just can't stop thinking about back when the
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: Republican mantra was that they didn't want to appoint activist judges.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: They just wanted to call balls and strikes. And then
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: you have this judge telling the FDA that he is
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: the one who's going to dictate whether or not a
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: medication is safe and effective and not the food and
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: drug administration.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Which determined 20 years ago that it was incredibly safe
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: and has since been proven to be safer than aspirin
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: or Viagra.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Reaching back 23 years to undo an approval, right? I mean,
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: they can they can touch. And that's that is like
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: that is reexamining any decision the federal government has made
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: through the through through an agency. I mean, yes, obviously,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: there's huge implications for the FDA. But this is also
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: a broader attack on just the ability of our government
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: to function, the ability of Congress to create an agency,
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: to give that agency power, to have that agency using
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: the powers that's vested into it as a democratic power.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: organization to solve a problem at any time. Any federal
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: judge can come in and decide that they're going to
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: undo that at the behest of some right wing groups
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: that claim that they've been harmed.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: And Congress gave the FDA the authority to determine what
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: drugs are safe and effective. Back in 1938, they do
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: a bunch of tests. They do animal studies. They do
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: human studies. It takes years, millions of dollars to determine
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: the drug is safe or not safe. And this guy
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: came in and was like, look, I just did my
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: own research. I've been on YouTube for like two days
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: and I decided that this thing is not safe.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and someone also pointed out that it also jeopardizes
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: what kind of drugs and medications drug companies would even
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: consider bringing to market. Because if they have to think
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: about what a judge somewhere in politics might do, it
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: might shape which drugs they actually test and bring to
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: market in the first place.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Drugs that take a long time to develop, that are
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: expensive to produce, that they have to be able to
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: count on the ability to kind of sell over a
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: long period of time.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: You can't just like, yeah. It's horrible.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: So Democratic Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon and AOC both
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: said over the weekend that Biden should just ignore the
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Texas ruling, which is an option. The administration has basically
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: sort of sidestepped the question. HHS secretary this weekend basically
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: wouldn't take it off the table. Then the administration today said, no,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: we're not going to do that right now. We're not
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: going to ignore the ruling. Why do you think that is, Lovett?
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: So the most important thing that the administration can do
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: is pursue the absolute best strategy to force the Supreme
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Court to overturn this ruling, either on the substance or
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: on procedure, and to put to the Supreme Court the
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: challenge of saying, the courts are creating chaos in this country.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: We are the reasonable people coming to you to help
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: us stop the chaos that you have created at a
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: time when all of the political coverage, all of the
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: substantive news coverage is is about the amount of harm
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: and just mayhem that the Dobbs ruling has created at
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: a time when they are under scrutiny for corruption and
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: failing to recuse and failing to disclose. So the idea
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: is to create as much pressure on the Supreme Court
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: as possible to not uphold this ruling. And to me,
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: that would argue for not signaling to the Supreme Court
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: that they're going to do something like disregard a court's order. Now,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: I appreciate the idea of leaving it on the table because...
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: if for whatever reason we live in a world in
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: which the Supreme Court doesn't take it or somehow this
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: ruling is upheld, I think, you know, the moral calculus,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: the political calculus changes, but they're trying to do this
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: through the courts to force the courts to be the
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: ones to either uphold or not uphold this ruling.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I would also say that the, just using the word ignoring,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: I think is problematic here because, you know, like Playbook
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: this morning was like, This may be a political misstep
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: for Democrats to do this because it changes the debate
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: for one about abortion to one about democracy and the
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: rule of law and ignoring a court order. But I
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: don't know that it's really ignoring a ruling because ignoring
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: a ruling, for all the reasons you pointed, I think
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: would be bad. But, you know, there's a great piece
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: in Slate where a bunch of legal experts argue that
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: the judge's power here is limited because Congress is has
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: already passed a law that explicitly lays out the process
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: for the FDA withdrawing a drug. And at worst, they
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: say the judge could make them restart that approval process.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: But also the Supreme Court has decided unanimously in the
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: late 80s that the Supreme Court basically has already said
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: that the FDA has broad enforcement discretion in enforcing the law.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: So it wouldn't be ignoring the ruling, it would be
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: the FDA saying, We have certain enforcement priorities. We only
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: have so many resources and we're just not going to
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: enforce them.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: So this is where I think it all gets into
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: the kind of chaos that we live in now in
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: the sort of post-Ozworld. And again, there's a question I
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: want to talk to Leah about. But this is where
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: it's sort of like, OK, we are obviously not ignoring
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: the ruling, but we have limited enforcement resources. You know,
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: this is not about a dispensary in Boulder where some
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: freewheeling owner is like, fuck it, I'll take cash because
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: it's marijuana is legally murky. These are multinational corporations. with
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: massive legal departments. Walgreens has already shown that they were
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: unwilling to sort of step into these chaotic waters that
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: led to a huge fight with Gavin Newsom about their
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: ability to sell drugs that might be banned in states
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: like Texas. So how this all plays out, we really
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: don't know. But even if the administration in some way says, OK,
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: we are not ignoring this order, but we're not enforcing
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: the same way, it's not clear that that redounds to
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: drug companies continuing to distribute it or pharmacies continuing to
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: carry it. We just have no idea.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: And I think people need certainty. And ignoring this ruling
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: would not prevent states from prosecuting people potentially or imposing
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: their own restrictions, or a future Republican could just reverse
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: this decision and then prosecute people who sell the pill.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: Doctors might be freaked out to dispense it regardless. So
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: I think you need to get to an outcome that
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: provides some certainty to everyone involved here.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: And I certainly think to that point, it certainly doesn't
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: make any sense for the administration to do this now
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: before the appeals process has played out. Because The ideal outcome, obviously,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: would be the Supreme Court overturning the ruling because then
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: it avoids the problems that Tommy was just talking about
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: where Republican-controlled states impose their own restrictions, future Republican presidents
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: reverse the decisions. That all goes out the window if
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: we want an appeal. If we lose at the Supreme Court,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: then perhaps the administration can say, okay, the FDA has
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: discretional authority here and it's going to do its own thing.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: And the other point that I think a lot of
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: the abortion advocates have made is, first of all, right now,
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: this ruling is not in effect. But even if it
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: goes into effect, it's MIFI and MISO. Those are two
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: different drugs. They're usually given together. A medication of abortion
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: will still be available because this is only about one
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: of the two drugs that can be used. So it's
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: a sort of a more complicated situation for the administration.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: And I know you're going to talk to Leah about
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: what the Supreme Court may or may not do. We
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: can talk about the politics here. Conservatives just lost control
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a race where abortion
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: access was a central issue. They're now responsible for a
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: ruling that may restrict abortion medication in every state. And
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: this is making some Republicans and even anti-choice activists a
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: bit nervous about the politics. Ann Coulter, of all people, tweeted,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Please stop pushing strict limits on abortion or there will
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: be no Republicans left. John Schwepp, a right-wing think tank
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: guy who wants a full abortion ban, is now telling
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Republicans to, quote, suck it up and get behind Lindsey
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Graham's 15 week ban as a compromise because, quote, we're
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: getting killed by indie voters. Do you guys think that's
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: a plausible or effective political solution for Republicans? And what
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: does that tell Democrats about the politics of the issue, Tommy?
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: I don't think it's plausible because the extreme right religious
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: base wants an outright ban on abortion and they're not
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: going to stop. until they get it. So they can say,
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: they can all, you know, get on Twitter and tell
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: each other to chill out or at least be cool,
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: but it's not going to work. The reason they're all
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: saying this, though, is they know the politics of this
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: are terrible for them. Reuters tested support for courts overturning
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: access to Miffy, and it is wildly unpopular. 70% of
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: the country opposes it. Another poll looked at whether medication
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: abortion should remain legal in the U.S., and Americans said
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: yes by a 65 to 21 margin. with 49% of
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Republicans agreeing. They support letting people get these drugs in
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: the mail by 72%. The Dobbs decision itself was extremely unpopular.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: So they might be able to rally around a 15-week ban.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: There's some old polling, pre-Dobbs ruling polling that suggested the
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: 15-week ban is more popular than But I think the
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: dynamics have shifted in a big way since Dobbs. And regardless,
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: the religious conservatives do not want a 15 week ban.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: They're going to fight for what they're fighting for in
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: Florida right now, which is a six week ban, which
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: basically means before you even know you're pregnant, you are
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: no longer allowed to get an abortion.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: One one way in which the dynamic has shifted in
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: this debate is we are now living in a country
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: that has 15 week abortion brands and they are not
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: an abstraction and they are extreme. And they cause incredibly
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: harrowing and horrible consequences for people giving birth. There are
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: just multiple stories out of Florida about basically being tortured
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: by the state because of abortion bans that go into
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: effect at 15 weeks. So, you know, they can try
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: to describe a 15-week ban as not being extreme. And
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: it is less extreme than the six-week ban and some
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: of the other more extreme bans that have been already
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: put on the books. But a 15-week ban in practice
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: will ultimately be deeply unpopular and will be an albatross
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: around their neck. like any other ban that they're putting
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: in place.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The Post story talks about these two women in
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Florida who were friends who had life-threatening complications in their
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: pregnancies after 15 weeks and were basically told to stay
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: home and wait because it was after 15 weeks and
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: the healthcare providers didn't want to give them care because
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: of a 15-week ban. And to Tommy's point, Florida is
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: a great example of how 15 week ban is no
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: compromise in these people's minds. It is a stepping stone
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: to then get to a six week ban, which is
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: what Florida is already doing. And, you know, there was
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: an article right after Wisconsin that Republicans in just about
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: every state were barreling ahead with as many abortion restrictions
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: as they can. And then you have places like South
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Carolina where a couple of Republican legislators introduced legislation that
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: would have the death penalty for women who get abortions.
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: So like. It is, you're right, there may be a
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: few political strategists in the Republican Party who are thinking
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: that it's bad, but actual Republican legislators who have power,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: they are not listening to the results of these elections.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: They're barreling ahead.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: The base of the party, it's a bunch of right-wing zealots.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So we mentioned that the fight over abortion medication
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: will likely end up at the Supreme Court, which was
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: in the news last week, thanks to its most scandal-plagued right-winger.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: ProPublica broke the bombshell story that Justice Clarence Thomas and
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: his right-wing activist wife, Ginny, have been riding around on
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: private jets and luxury yachts free of charge, thanks to
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: a billionaire Republican donor who reportedly hates fascism so much
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: that he's decorated his home with Nazi memorabilia. That's how
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: I show that I hate fascism.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: Me too.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Thomas failed to disclose any of the trips in his
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: annual financial reports, even though the Ethics in Government Act
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: requires Supreme Court justices to report all gifts worth more
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: than $ 415, including transportation on private jets and super yachts.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: What did you guys think of the story? And what,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: if anything, can be done about this?
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: I just want to say, like, look, Crow's weird memorabilia,
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: that's not the biggest issue here.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: And if we focus on that and not the ethical concerns,
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: we're just stalling. There it is. We're not getting it.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: You can tell. He's still in the joke voice.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: Still in the joke voice. This is the best story
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: I've ever read. Everyone should give five bucks to ProPublica.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Joke was, I'm Paul Potkall in the kettle black, you know?
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: That's good. I'm not doing this.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. Come on. Come to our side.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Well, just give me some time.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: It's fun over here.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Now or never.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, now or never.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: So we should just talk about how much, like Clarence
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: Thomas has been accepting free trips. The one in 2019
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: is estimated to have cost it a half a million dollars.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: He's been taking these trips for 20 years. 20 years.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: They pointed this out on strict. And I really liked that.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: He's like, I've been friends with Harlan Crow for 25 years.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: You've been on the Supreme court for 30. You met
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: after you met after that's a benefactor. That's corrupt. And they,
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: and they try to.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Pretend that they don't talk business. They're just buds who
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: just hang out and have a good time. There was
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: a literal fucking painting, a portrait of, Of Crow with
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: Clarence Thomas, Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society,
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: and two other right-wing lawyers, one of whom was the
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: general counsel at OMB for Trump. A portrait of them
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: hanging out.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Look.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: You think they're not talking about issues before the Supreme Court?
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: They're not talking politics? Even if they were. Look, this
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: is fantastic reporting. It's stunning. Especially with all those details
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: and all the details they got.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Incredible. It involves his shirts.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: It's very simple and clear-cut. I don't care if they
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: were there or they were talking about. It says in
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: the law that you got to disclose gifts. And the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: personal exemption is for like lodging and family and stuff
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: like that. It's not for private jets. That's it.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Cut and dry.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: It's a clear ethical violation. But like when people like this,
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: when the Supreme Court When a justice of the Supreme
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: Court tries to lie to your face and say, we
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: never talk business. I mean, it's just incredible. It's so
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: insulting to the intelligence of everyone involved and all the
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: little right wing, you know, what do you call them?
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Love it. Ideological Zambonis. We're going to clean it up
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: after this. The Jonah Goldbergs of the world and others.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Well, the thing that like Nazi men aside, which is
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: a tough thing to put aside because some of it's sharp,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: but like this guy, Harlan Crow, this is a side point.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: He is one of these classic right-wing zealotess billionaire nepo babies.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: This is what the Koch brothers have done. This is
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: what Trump is like. There's something that happens to these
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: little boys with their super rich, super successful dads who
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: inherit these big fortunes. And then just like, they got
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: to seem like up by your bootstraps. He's such a
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Connor guy. He's like, everything you read about, he's collecting
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: these fucking- Connor seems nice, right? He seems like a,
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: he's just like collecting these sort of intellectuals around him,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: trying to use his wealth to give himself meaning and
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: purpose by buying influence with all these people.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: No one ever talks about how Scrooge was a wealth creator. Yeah.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: I can see Harlan Crowe saying that. I can see
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Harlan Crowe saying that at their Adirondack retreat.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: The other thing that's amazing about this is in 2004,
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: the Los Angeles Times reported on Clarence Thomas taking expensive
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: gifts in private trips from this guy, Crowe, including a $ 19, 000
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Bible and a $ 15, 000 bust of Lincoln. So what did
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: Clarence Thomas do? He just stopped disclosing them. Yeah.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: See, that to me is like the real He.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Just gave up.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: That's the smoking gun.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: He just stopped caring.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: The smoking memorabilia.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: The smoking gun is Hitler's gun.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, like, you know, there's a long tradition here
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: from Justice Scalia of going on all expense paid vacations
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: with political benefactors and connected people and not giving a
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: shit if anyone knows about it. Yeah, exactly.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: The other part of this, too, that I think is
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: just so galling is you really get the sense that, like,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: These are the right smart people that get together. They
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: should be left to do whatever they like. You know,
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Clarence Thomas and a bunch of these conservative judges, the
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: more power they've accrued, the more they've they've more they've
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: kind of skirted ethical rules, but also come to have
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: incredibly narrow views about the influence of money in politics,
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: when they need to recuse themselves from certain cases. They've
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: kind of created a whole kind of philosophical structure about how, like,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: we're just meant to be ruled by these people. They're
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: rich and smarter than us and better than us. They
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: deserve to just be free to gather and talk about
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: their cases and their issues and their philosophies. At the
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Bohemian Grove. At the all-male Bohemian Grove, the creepiest fucking gathering.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: This is the sort of Leo Strauss school of politics.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: There's so many good parts of this. Someone please explain
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: to me why his replica of Hagrid's hut from Harry Potter.
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: That's the lamest thing ever to have at your Adirondack mansion.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: But this is my favorite part. So there's this long
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: history of Clarence Thomas pretending to be a common man.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: And ProPublica sets this thing up so brilliantly. So here's
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: the quote from Clarence Thomas. I don't have any problem
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: And I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: Thomas said in a recent interview for a documentary about
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: his life, which Crow helped finance. Absolutely brilliant. He said,
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: lots to the beaches and things like that. You are
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: so funny. full of shit.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Did you stop there before you got on the
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: jet to Indonesia?
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: I also just like the, the idea, like I prefer
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: the Walmart parking lot to the beaches. It sounds like
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: chat GPT spit that out. No one prefers Walmart parking
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: lot to a beach.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: You might like shopping at Walmart, but you definitely don't
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: like being in the parking lot. But also like, who
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: wants to be in the parking lot of anywhere?
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: It is just telling.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: The parking lot at the beach.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: The beach is, what is the beach he's picturing in
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: his mind?
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Cause we have public beaches, you know, for now, I suppose.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: You ever been to a public beach?
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Anyway, what's going to happen to them?
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: It's the Walmart parking lot of vacation zones.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: What's going to happen to them? I'm going to give
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: you the answer here. Nothing.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: No, well, the Senate's going to hold a hearing.
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: Oh, good.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: Hey, you two stop. Take down the cynical meter. No,
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: the Senate's going to hold a hearing on ethical standards
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: of the Supreme Court.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: I hope Dianne Feinstein's staff tweets something really mean about this.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Dick Durbin called on Roberts to open an investigation into
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: his conduct. Some others probably wrote letters.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: You got derbed.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: One other memorable part of this, there's a description of
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: Crow's home. And some person who got a tour of
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: the house and was disturbed by it, I think, talked
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: to the Washingtonian or something back in the day. The
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: paintings would go, something done by George W. Bush next
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: to a Norman Rockwell next to one by Hitler. They're
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: all just laid out. Murderer's row right there.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: No, but look, they're going to hold an ethics hearing.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: They also said they're going to potentially introduce ethics reform legislation.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Which won't pass. And the hearing won't really do anything.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: And some folks said, well, maybe we can impeach him.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: But they can't because the House Republicans won't impeach him, obviously.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And then there was an argument that like perhaps, you know,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: AOC said he should be impeached perhaps by if you
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: could force a vote on impeachment in the House, you
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: could at least get the Republicans on record, which is
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: like great. But the way to change this is to
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: continue winning Senate seats, winning Senate seats everywhere and stop
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: complaining about conservative Democrats winning Senate seats because we have
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: a lot to win to make sure that we can
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: replace one of these guys with a Supreme Court justice
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: who is not Clarence Thomas or Brett Kavanaugh or Neil
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Gorsuch or any of these.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: I know I took a detour to take a shot
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: at Dianne Feinstein, but I do on a serious note
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: right now. Look, there's been a lot of reporting about
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Dianne Feinstein no longer being fit to serve in the
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Senate representing the biggest state in this country. She's currently out.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: for shingles. That is sad. That is obviously not her fault.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: But because she is not in the Judiciary Committee, Durbin
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: has said that it has made it basically impossible to
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: move a lot of these lower court nominees to the
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Senate for a vote, which means that Dianne Feinstein, who
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: should not be in the Senate, is now preventing us
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: from being able to confirm judges. And as sad as
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: it is to sort of see someone who's had an
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: incredibly storied and long and important career and has done
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: a lot of good for this state, I think what
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: the people around Dianne Feinstein are doing, allowing, you know,
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: being part of this farce of having a lack of
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: a senator in such an important job is really wrong.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: And Dianne Feinstein should no longer be in the Senate.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: She has to resign and more people should be calling
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: on her to resign.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: Congress could also just pass some sort of ethics rule
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: for the courts, right? I mean, members of Congress can't
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: take a gift worth more than 50 bucks and they
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: couldn't take a trip like this Indonesian vacation without pre-approval
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: from the ethics committee. Certainly we could pass some sort
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: of law. putting in place a little more stringent ethics
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: rules for the court. I think you'd have to count
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: the number of House Republicans who have been to that
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: Adirondack retreat. I bet it's more than five. I think
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: a Fifth Circuit judge was sworn in there. Does that help?
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: I think the whole thing is gross and clearly reeks
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: of corruption. I also think that if Clarence Thomas went
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: nowhere but the Walmart parking lot, he would still be
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: issuing all the horrible, horrendous rulings that we have seen
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: from him over.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: The last 25 years.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but that gives him the pass. Because he can
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: put one little sentence into a ruling that changes an
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: entire body of law under an area for a special interest.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: And I don't think we should put it past him.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: I think he'd do it anyway.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: But I know to do it.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: He's a stream right wing.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, but he also is ruling for businesses. He's also
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: ruling on campaign finance. He's making decisions about recusal. He's making.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: So he... He has the he's dissenting in crazy ethics
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: cases against justices.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: Other judges.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: And I think all of it, though, I think the
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: way these things tie together, it is it really is
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: part of a worldview that that these right wing judges
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: know better and that they are there to rule over
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: us and that their their ethical their ethical questions are
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: not for us to ask that they that they can
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: do as they please and rule as they please and
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: tell us how to live. And I do think that
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: genuinely connects philosophically. how he views his right to just
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: take these lavish trips and take this money as if
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: he's unassailable while telling people what they can and can't
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: do with their bodies. I do think that they're connected.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: I'm all for the most stringent ethic reform possible for
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: the Supreme Court. But I think we got to get
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: them out of there. I think we got to get justice.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: Careful what you're implying there.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, this is keep the Senate.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: I have an ethical reform. It's a pitchfork and a
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: bale of hay that I'm lighting on fire.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Here's something uncomfortable. You know what keeping the Senate means?
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Get Joe Manchin in there who's voting for all the
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: right judges. Get Jon Tester in there who might piss
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: you off on some of his issues. Get them all
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: in there.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: Who doesn't like Tester? He's got a good personality. I
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: like that guy.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: There's some stuff against an assault weapons ban.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: That's not very... Yeah, that sucks.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: I don't like that. I don't like that about him.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: We don't like that at all.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: But I'm hoping he gets back to the Senate because
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: he's voting right on judges. So the world is a
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: complicated place.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: Bob Casey had a.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: Really cringy Taylor Swift tweet, and I'm still going to
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: give him money and probably... Bob.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Casey had a much cringier position on abortion way back
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: when and has evolved, which is wonderful. So good for
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Bob Casey. And you have a cringy tweet, that's fine.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: He's a great guy. We can work on that.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: I don't really regret my swerve to remind everybody that
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: Dianne Feinstein should retire.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: You had a couple swerves. We went to sort of
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: a psychological couch, which I liked.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: I was going to go somewhere else, which is like, yeah,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: you can complain about Dianne Feinstein. I agree with your rant,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: but also the blue slip thing is stupid.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Oh my God. The blue slip thing, basically there's an
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: old rule in the Senate where basically a home state
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Senator Republican or Democrat can basically say, Hey, I don't approve.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: I don't want you to nominate this person. I don't
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: like them. I know them. They're from my community. They're,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: they seem okay, but they're shitty. Please don't nominate them.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: And so the idea is basically for, for judicial, for, for,
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: for digital seats in a state, those centers have some
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: say over it. It's supposed to be non-ideological and non-partisan,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: but obviously as the as the war for the courts
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: has become a war of attrition and completely partisan, blue
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: slips have been used to just basically stop judges that
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Republicans don't like.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know how that affects how Feinstein's contributing to
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: that problem.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: She's not. It's separate from that.
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, you said it in the
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: same- That's just.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: Senate Democrats being limp. Yeah, yeah.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: We're just separately. There's the blue slip problem. There's a
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Dianne Feinstein problem. There's the fact that we need all
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: of our senators there in voting.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: The Feinstein problem is going to be a little bit
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: less serious now that Fetterman's back.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: Well, no, but it's still stuck with the judiciary. We're
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: still stuck with the judiciary.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Because she's in the judiciary.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Because it's tied in the judiciary.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: And there's, I think, a broader problem that's fair is
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: that Congress has done some to better police themselves and
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: put better ethical standards on themselves, but not all the
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: things they need to do. And they could create political
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: pressure or if they would just do a little more,
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: like stock trading, for example. We should be smarter on that.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Wait, what's that point about?
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: Just they should be better.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: About what? We're talking about judicial nominations?
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: We should create better ethical standards for every part of
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: the U.S. government, including Fed officials, Congress, judges, everybody.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: I totally agree with that.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: Who doesn't agree with that?
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Judges, I guess. I think John doesn't agree with you.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: I just don't think it's going to do as much
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: as we hope. Listen.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: I hear that. I hear that.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Judge Kaczmarek wasn't, you know, it wasn't... the anti-abortion activist
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: paying him money that made him do this. He's a
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: fucking zealot. People are zealots without being corrupt.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: None of these recommendations are zero sum.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: No, I know.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: I know, but I'm just, yeah.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: You're just creating a straw man to push back on this.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I want 18 year terms for Supreme Court justices. Let's
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: fight for that.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, let's do that.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: That I like a lot. That's a good idea. Let's
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: do actual reforms that will get the power out of
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: these people's hands.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Let's add seven more too. Let's just, let's just, let's just,
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: let's just put, let's put two new wings on the
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: side of that fucking table of the Supreme Court.
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: You want a couple more?
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Like four more.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: Four more.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: All right, a quick update on what's happening in Tennessee.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: The legislature's Republican supermajority voted to expel State Representative Justin
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Pearson and his colleague, State Representative Justin Jones, for the
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: crime of speaking on the House floor without being recognized
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: during a gun control protest. Representative Gloria Johnson, who is white,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: also participated in the protest, but survived the expulsion attempt
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: by a single vote. The Nashville City Council has unanimously voted...
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: to return Jones as interim representative until he can run
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: in a special election to reclaim his seat. The Memphis,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: the Shelby County City Council is expected to do the
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: same for Justin Pearson as early as Wednesday until he
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: can run in a special election to reclaim his seat.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: But the shitty Republican supermajority remains, as it does in
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: many other red and purple states, which has a lot
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: of people asking, what can we do about that? What
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: do you guys think?
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Well, one thing that happened is I do think that
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: these Republicans got a lot more attention than they expected.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: I do not think they expected to have this level
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: of rebuke from all the way from the White House
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: to basically every elected Democratic official across the country. It's
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: great that these two guys are getting their seats back.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: And Voting of America, we raised, what, like $ 100, 000 to
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: help them in the Tennessee Dems? You want to give
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: the stats?
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: No, no. You have the latest stats?
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Well, so what happened is we originally at Vote Save
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: America asked to raise money for the two Justins and
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: for their special election that they'll probably both run for.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: You guys immediately donated a ton of money, which is great.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: But because they're just two state representative seats, they probably
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: had more money than they needed with all the other
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: organizations donating as well. And then we noticed a tweet
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: thread from Ben Wickler, who's the Democratic Party chair in Wisconsin.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: And he had just gotten off the phone with the
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: head of the Tennessee Democratic Party, who said that, you know,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: basically Democrats have received more than a third of the
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: vote in statewide elections in Tennessee recently. But they only
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: have 24 of 99 House seats and six of 33
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Senate seats. If they win a gerrymandering case that is
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: currently before the courts on April 17th, Democrats could win.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: They could flip at least 12 seats and break the supermajority.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: And also turnout in Tennessee last election last year was
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the lowest in the country. So now we have raised over,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: I believe, $ 150, 000 for the Tennessee Democratic Party so that
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: if that case goes the right way, there's a lot
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: of seats that could actually flip and we could break
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: that supermajority. And I think that is something to think
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: about all across the country. There's basically two ways to
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: break supermajorities that come from gerrymanders. One, elections, which are
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: obviously tough because of the gerrymander, though not impossible. You know,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: we almost... won the special election in a state Senate
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: seat in Wisconsin the same day as the Supreme Court
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: race that was extremely gerrymandered, but still the Democrat came
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: within a thousand votes. So it's possible. And the other
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: way is suing in court like they're doing in Tennessee
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: to break the gerrymander. But that only works if you
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: don't have an extreme right-wing court, which is why judicial
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: elections are so important. And in 2024, we'll have Supreme
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Court elections in Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, and Ohio.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: where there are some really important seats up. And it's
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: really important to sort of give to Democratic state parties
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and to focus on these judicial elections.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think what the Republicans did here is
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: outrageous and disgusting and despicable, but they also helped create
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: two incredibly influential national figures now in these Tennessee reps
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: and focus a lot of attention on what it's like
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: serving in a super gerrymandered state and state legislature like
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: the folks in Tennessee are doing. So it's a great
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: time to give a little money to the Tennessee Democratic
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: Party or any other activists doing great work in the state?
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: Think about it.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Please do.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Harlan Crowe wandering around his statues of fallen tyrants. What
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: happens to these people? His father unloaded boxcars, built a
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: real estate empire. He inherits it, given everything in his life.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: And he's like, I'm going to fund the club for growth.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: So you people pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I'm
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: a good person, according to the conservatives on the Twitter.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: I think it's just tax cuts, right? All right.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Sickos. When we come back, we'll have Strict Scrutiny's Leah
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Lippman talk to John Lovett about all of these legal developments.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: And we're back. A Trump goon out of Texas issues
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: a ruling that would stay the FDA's approval of Mifepristone.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: The Biden administration releases a plan to prohibit outright bans
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: on trans athletes, but would allow schools in limited cases
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: to block trans athletes from competing in sports. And Clarence
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: Thomas returns from a spa day in the Adirondacks to
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: find he's in the hot seat. To help us understand
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: all of this, she co-hosts Crooked's award-winning legal podcast, Strict Scrutiny.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: Leah Littman, welcome back to the pod.
• 35:51
  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: All right, we have a lot to get through. So
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: let's start with this ruling out of Texas. I want
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: to split this in half, if you don't mind. There
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: are the ways in which this ruling is substantively bonkers,
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: and then there's the ways in which it's procedurally bonkers.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: I just want to start Would you mind walking us
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: through what this judge ruled and what the legal rationale
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: is for staying in FDA approval that went into effect
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: the year Erin Brockovich was released in theaters?
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: So the judge had to clear a bunch of threshold
• 36:21
  Speaker 5: procedural issues before actually determining whether the FDA was right
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: or wrong to approve the use of mifepristone. So those
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: threshold procedural issues were all kind of crazy. I don't
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: know if you want me to talk about those. I'm
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: happy to. One of them rests on the theory that.
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: The judge uncovered a blog run by a group called
• 36:41
  Speaker 5: Abortion Changes You, and he divined from their survey of
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: anonymous blog posts that secretly women are injured by mifepristone.
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: This is unbeknownst to the FDA or any of the
• 36:52
  Speaker 5: 5 million women who have taken mifepristone over the last
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: two decades, but that went into the threshold procedural issues.
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: And then on the substance, the judge basically concluded two
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: different things. One is he said this 1873 statute, the
• 37:05
  Speaker 5: Comstock Act, that was passed during the Victorian era, actually
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: prohibited the distribution of medication abortion through the mail. And therefore,
• 37:13
  Speaker 5: the FDA couldn't approve the use of mifepristone. Why these
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: two things are related is unclear. And then second, the
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: judge concluded that the FDA was wrong to approve the
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: use of mifepristone. because there wasn't adequate evidence to do so.
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: Among other things, he faulted the FDA for, in 2000,
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: failing to consider the evidence from this blog post in 2021.
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: I think that's kind of the short story.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Wow. It's more bonkers than I realized. I'm sort of
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: just letting that sink in a little bit. So let's
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: actually talk about the procedural issues for a minute, because
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: I want to get to what the Supreme Court may
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: or may not do, but the procedural questions may be
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: a big part of it. So who brings a lawsuit
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: against a drug that's been on the market for 23 years?
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: And how could they claim to be kind of injured
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: by it?
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: So it's a group of doctors who oppose the use
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: of abortion. They have never themselves prescribed medication abortion. They
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: incorporated in Amarillo, Texas last summer, maybe because the only
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: judge in the Amarillo division of the Northern District of
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: Texas is Judge Kaczmarek, who, as it turns out, is
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: just completely bonkers and is willing to give these plaintiffs
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: anything they want. But this group of doctors claimed there
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: was some risk that they would someday have to treat
• 38:43
  Speaker 5: a patient who that experienced complications from medication abortion, even
• 38:48
  Speaker 5: though that has never happened once in the last 23 years,
• 38:52
  Speaker 5: and even though they themselves never prescribed medication abortion. So
• 38:57
  Speaker 5: this entire theory rests on the notion that somehow, somewhere,
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: some person is going to be prescribed medication abortion by
• 39:05
  Speaker 5: some other doctor, and then these People are somehow going
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: to find their way to these doctors who are part
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: of this organization, and these doctors don't want to have
• 39:13
  Speaker 5: to treat them. That's their main theory for why they've
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: been injured.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: And just in your experience, how flimsy is that on
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: the list of flimsiest arguments for why someone has the
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: right to claim they belong in the court in the
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: first place?
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: It's one of the dumbest things I've ever read. And honestly,
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: if any person who listened to strict scrutiny even thought
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: that was a plausible argument, I would feel as though
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: my co-host and I have all failed.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: At our jobs.
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: So you can compare it to a case like the
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: Supreme Court's decision in Clapper v. Amnesty International. In that case,
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: the Supreme Court said the plaintiffs in the case, who
• 39:58
  Speaker 5: were a group of lawyers, including people who represented family members,
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: a person detained at Guantanamo Bay, the court said, you
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: plaintiffs haven't established that it's sufficiently likely that that the
• 40:11
  Speaker 5: federal government was going to listen in on your communications
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: as part of a new national security apparatus. So I
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: guess I think if it's not sufficiently likely that the
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: federal government is going to use new national security tools
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: to listen in on conversations of family members of people
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: detained at Guantanamo Bay, I think it's certainly unlikely that
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: this random group of doctors is going to be called
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: upon to treat patients who are prescribed a medication that
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: is safer than penicillin and Viagra.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: One question I had just that I hadn't, this is
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: a stay, right? This is not, he didn't overturn it completely.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: He didn't throw out the approval. He said it's stay. Now,
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: obviously this is super strange because this has been in
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: effect for 23 years, but ordinarily a stay is something
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: that's done almost in an emergency, right? Because like we
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: have to get some more information before we make a decision.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: In the logic, in this wild funhouse mirror world of logic,
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: What is the goal of this stay? Is there some
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: future moment where the drug will be re-approved according to
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: the logic of this opinion?
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: No, according to the logic of this opinion, the FDA
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: can basically never re-approve the drug until Congress changes the
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: relevant federal statutes. Now, the reason why I think he
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: issued the stay is because it's not clear whether he
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: could actually order the FDA through something like an injunction
• 41:35
  Speaker 5: or to begin the process of reversing their own approval
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: of mifepristone. So what he did is use the remedy,
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: a stay, to essentially place on hold indefinitely and remove
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: any effect from the FDA's original approval of mifepristone. And
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: that's what a stay does. And I think that's why
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: he did it.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about what happens next. First, this is
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: one of two dueling rulings There was another ruling that
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: came out at roughly the same time out of Washington
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: that was brought by Democratic attorneys general to basically say, hey,
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Mifepristone has to stay available. What happens now that there
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: are these competing rulings?
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: So the federal government, the Biden administration, has filed a
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: motion in the District Court of about what its injunction means,
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: where it applies, and how it relates to the order
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: in the Texas case. So one thing is they're just
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: asking the courts to provide them with additional guidance. Second
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: is the administration is already asking the U.S. Court of
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to put on hold the
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: Texas order staying the approval of Mifepristone. And the Fifth
• 42:48
  Speaker 5: Circuit has ordered the plaintiffs in the case to respond.
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: And the federal government, the Biden administration, has asked that court,
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: the Fifth Circuit, to rule on the matter by Thursday,
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: which would be before the district court's stay of his
• 43:03
  Speaker 5: own stay expires. So that's kind of what's happening initially.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: So if that happens, then the order would be put
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: on hold until either the Fifth Circuit or the Supreme
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Court rules on it. Let's just talk about what happens
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: if it does go into effect. First, there's this debate
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: about whether the Biden administration can just ignore it. But
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: just even if you put that aside, what actually happens?
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is unprecedented in a lot of ways.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: A drug that's just been approved for 23 years is
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: suddenly unapproved. What does it even mean to say we're
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: going to not enforce or enforce this? Isn't it in
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: part up to the companies themselves to determine whether or
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: not they're going to follow the law?
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: So it is partially up to the companies. That is,
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: the companies will have to make their own assessment about
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: whether they feel sufficiently comfortable or whether they feel they
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: would be exposed to too much legal risk to continue manufacturing,
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: distributing and providing the drug. And once this drug becomes unauthorized,
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: I think the problem is then medication, abortion providers, distributors,
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: doctors who prescribe it are potentially more exposed to liability
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: under state laws that restrict abortion, including medication abortion, because
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: in the absence of mifepristone being an approved drug by
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: the federal government, there's not much stopping states from attempting
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: to enforce their own criminal abortion bans against providers of
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: medication abortion. And you add to that, nothing is going
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: to stop some future Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: administration from pursuing federal penalties against the distributors and manufacturers
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: of medication abortion, even if the Biden administration is unwilling
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: to do so.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: So whether or not the Biden administration says, OK, we're
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: going to enforce it fully or we're not going to
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: enforce it, the chaos around this is such that basically
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: it makes it much harder for Mifepristone to be available.
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: All of that chaos and legal uncertainty is just a
• 45:02
  Speaker 5: huge deterrent to doctors, to patients and anyone else who,
• 45:06
  Speaker 5: you know, thinks it's important to access Mifepristone.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: So this will lead to the Supreme Court. You had
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: a great conversation on strict trying to avoid predicting, but
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: trying to break down a little bit about what might
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: happen in the Supreme Court. Can you talk a little
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: bit about how the conservative majority views the substance and
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: how amenable they are? to a ban like this? And
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: then a little bit about the sort of coming back
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: to the procedural nonsense that might put them in a
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: position to overturn this ruling.
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: So I think on the substance, the conservative supermajority might
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: be partially sympathetic to some of what the district court did.
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: I don't know if all of the supermajority is on
• 45:51
  Speaker 5: board with the idea that this 1873 statute actually prohibits
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: the distribution of medication abortion. no matter its usage, including
• 46:00
  Speaker 5: if it's legal in certain states. I don't know if
• 46:03
  Speaker 5: they're actually behind that. I think what's less clear is
• 46:07
  Speaker 5: how they would feel about all of the threshold procedural
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: matters that the district court had to find in favor
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: of the plaintiffs before actually reaching the underlying substance about
• 46:16
  Speaker 5: whether the FDA's approval of mifepristone was legal. It's not
• 46:21
  Speaker 5: just The fact that these plaintiffs claim to injury is
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: somewhat ludicrous. It's also that they had to prove that
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: their challenge to this drug was timely. And I don't
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: know how a 23-year delay in challenging the approval of
• 46:35
  Speaker 5: a drug can possibly be timely. And the district court
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: had no sensible explanation for why it was remotely plausible
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: that the plaintiffs could bring this challenge now.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I felt this listening to you discuss it, and
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: I hear it now, which is you're sort of calmly
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: breaking down what could or could not happen in a
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: world where in any sensible, well-functioning, legitimate court, you wouldn't
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: have to worry. This would be thrown out as a
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: fucking joke. And the fact that you don't know for
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: sure that this will be thrown out for the joke
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: that it is, is kind of a terrifying thing. reminder
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: of just how far this court has gone, right? Regardless
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: of whether or not they step in on procedural grounds.
• 47:22
  Speaker 5: No, I think that that's exactly right. The fact that
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: there is even an outside chance that you could get
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: five votes for what the district court did here is
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: utterly terrifying. And the fact that it partially depends, you know,
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: what side of the bed Brett Kavanaugh woke up on
• 47:36
  Speaker 5: and whether he thinks you know, the Democrats have been
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: too mean to him or any of, you know, his
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: colleagues is also terrifying. But also more broadly, even if
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: the Supreme Court steps in and corrects this one ruling,
• 47:47
  Speaker 5: that's not going to stop the judicial attacks on access
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: to abortion. And the fact that anti-abortion groups can just
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: walk in to Judge Kaczmarek's courtroom and get basically whatever
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: they want and create a ton of uncertainty and chaos
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: is in the short term and medium term, as people
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: struggle to figure out, is the U.S. Supreme Court actually
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: going to put a stop to this latest attack on
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: access to abortion?
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: And if they didn't, obviously it wouldn't stop with abortion.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: We'd be talking about HIV medication. We'd be talking about vaccines,
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: whether it's for HPV or COVID. And we'd talk about
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: administrative rules that go beyond the FDA, right? Like this
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: would throw, this would give right-wing judges across the country
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: incredible power over the administrative state.
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: Absolutely. I mean, in addition to the medications you listed,
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: you know, it's also possible that people will challenge approval
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: of contraception, you know, for certain uses. And if these
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: federal courts can just review anything that administrative agencies do
• 48:49
  Speaker 5: that rests on core scientific technical expertise, I mean, nothing
• 48:53
  Speaker 5: is stopping Judge Kaczmarek from announcing that our national climate
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: policy is now going to be a bunch of space lasers. Like,
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: there's just nothing There's no logical stopping point to this.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Moving on to another topic. So the Biden administration put
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: out a proposed rule that would bar schools from enforcing
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: outright bans on trans athletes in school sports, saying it's
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: a violation of civil rights law under Title IX. Now,
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: that's really important. More than a dozen states have passed
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: bans and more are on the way. At the same time,
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: the proposal permits schools to create specific criteria to promote
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: fairness and competition that could be used to remove trans
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: athletes from sports, but those rules couldn't be aimed exclusively
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: at trans students. I spent an hour just figuring out
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: how to say that to understand what they're actually proposing
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: There was a lot of confusion and anger on social
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: media about this. A lot of people worrying that the
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: Biden administration is basically compromising at the expense of trans
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: students who deserve the right to play sports. What did
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: you make of this ruling overall?
• 49:55
  Speaker 5: I think it's right to be a little wary and
• 49:59
  Speaker 5: uncertain about how this regulation is going to play out.
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: That being said, I do think the initial reaction... was
• 50:06
  Speaker 5: overly negative and didn't exactly account for what this proposed
• 50:11
  Speaker 5: regulation would do. What the regulation said is any sex-based discrimination,
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: which includes excluding individuals on the basis of their gender identity,
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: schools have to demonstrate that any sex-based discrimination furthers an
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: important governmental objective and is substantially related to that important
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: governmental objective and that it minimizes any harm to transgender students.
• 50:36
  Speaker 5: That's a standard that courts use to assess sex discrimination
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: claims under the Constitution. So in theory, that's a very
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: demanding standard that schools would have to satisfy before they
• 50:50
  Speaker 5: can exclude students on the basis of their gender identity. Now,
• 50:54
  Speaker 5: the rule went on to say that, you know, among
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: other important governmental objectives are preventing injuries and preserving fair competition.
• 51:02
  Speaker 5: But it's not clear how different that is from the
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: 2016 Dear Colleague letter that the Obama administration sent out.
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: And again, applied seriously and according to its terms, it
• 51:14
  Speaker 5: would absolutely wipe away all of these overbroad rules that
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: just categorically exclude transgender student athletes and that are based
• 51:22
  Speaker 5: on just hurtful stereotypes and fear of transgender individuals.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: So can you talk a little bit about the legal
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: strategy here and what the Biden administration is trying to do? Because,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: you know, we have a bunch of these bans moving
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: through the courts. The Supreme Court actually just stepped in
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: to prevent a ban that would have excluded one trans
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: girl from playing sports in West Virginia, for example. Is
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: there a legal strategy that undergirds the decision to outright,
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: to say outright bans are clearly a civil rights violation,
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: but there are these tough thresholds to meet if you
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: want to have more targeted rules around trans participation.
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the legal standard is basically to apply
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: and incorporate existing law. So the legal standard that I
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: just recited is the legal standard that courts, including the
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: US Supreme Court, use to assess sex discrimination claims under
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: the Constitution. So what I think the Biden administration is
• 52:18
  Speaker 5: doing here is just saying, look, Title IX forbids sex discrimination,
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: and we're not asking courts to do anything more then
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: just apply the standard legal test you apply in any
• 52:29
  Speaker 5: sex discrimination case or challenge to cases or challenges that
• 52:34
  Speaker 5: involve transgender students. So I think that they are trying
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: to rely on established law as much as they can
• 52:39
  Speaker 5: and avoid a perception that they are creating a rule
• 52:41
  Speaker 5: that is specific or unique to cases involving discrimination on
• 52:44
  Speaker 5: the basis of gender identity.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very confusing. And on the one hand,
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: I saw it and I said, oh, is this just
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: going to allow schools that might have a more right-wing
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: administration to just put in place a local ban that
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: otherwise would have existed at the state level. But then
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: at the same time, the writing in the proposal being
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: somewhat vague creates a fear on the part of administrations
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: that they're going to get sued, like school administrations, right?
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: This could result in a lawsuit if they fail to
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: protect trans athletes' access to sports. And I didn't know
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: how to square those two things.
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: So I think the administration is trying to balance between
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: different goals. And it knows, I think it is litigating
• 53:25
  Speaker 5: in the backdrop of hostile federal courts. And that's why
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: I think it is doing its best to, again, incorporate
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: existing law and avoid a perception that it is adopting
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: a one size fits all approach while simultaneously ruling out
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: school districts or individual schools from adopting a one size
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: fits all approach that just excludes transgender students. And so
• 53:46
  Speaker 5: the rule demands that any, you know, exclusive policy be
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: calibrated to a specific sport, specific age, specific context. And
• 53:57
  Speaker 5: so these categorical bans aren't permitted. And even more particularized
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: ones have to satisfy the theoretically demanding standard for constitutional
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: sex discrimination.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: One last question on this. So this is a rule
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: that would say if you're a school that accepts any
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: federal funding and you can't have an outright ban, But
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: that school is in a state that just passed a ban.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: This is just bound for the courts. What happens?
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so it will be bound for the courts because
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: my guess is these states will say that this regulation
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: is not a permissible interpretation of Title IX. And that's
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: what happened in part with the challenge to the 2016
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: Dear Colleague letter. That Dear Colleague letter that protected transgender
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: students never actually went into effect because plaintiffs obtained an
• 54:43
  Speaker 5: injunction from another district court in Texas, this one from
• 54:46
  Speaker 5: Judge O'Connor. And my guess is you will see similar
• 54:49
  Speaker 5: litigation challenging this rule once it becomes final.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: Let's finally, at long last, let's talk about Clarence Thomas
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: and his wild ride. ProPublica has a fascinating investigative report
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: on Justice Thomas' many luxury vacations, private jet flights, and
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: yacht excursions with a wealthy conservative Nepo baby and benefactor
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: named Harlan Crow. Thomas had not disclosed any of these
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: trips or extravagances. There's been a lot of discussion about
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: Crow having Nazi memorabilia. Let's just say we don't like that.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: I don't like it. I don't like Nazi memorabilia.
• 55:24
  Speaker 5: But he's just commemorating the genocide and war crimes, or
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: so I hear.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: I want to focus with you just on one piece
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: of this, which is the corruption. One trend we've seen
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: in recent years is as conservatives have kind of garnered
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: greater control over the courts, they've felt quite comfortable spreading
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: their sort of ethical... legs on the Ottoman of our country.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
• 55:51
  Speaker 5: They're just manspreading all over the ethics is what you're
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: telling me?
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: They're ethically manspreading. That's what they're doing. Thomas has been
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: hostile to rules around ethics, around recusal, around disclosure. Can
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: you just talk a little bit about what this story
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: shows us about what light this shed on some of
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: the decisions and statements Thomas has been making in the
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: past few years about ethics.
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: Well, so decision-wise, it's impossible not to think of some
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: of the court's major decisions on political corruption. Justice Thomas
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: was among the justices who said that a local state
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: judge didn't have to recuse himself from a case involving
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: a litigant who had basically personally financed the judge's campaign
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: to get the judge to rule on that case. Thomas
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: is like, I don't see a problem here, right? Like,
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: this is just what close personal friends do.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: No big deal.
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: And does the Constitution prohibit having friends? No. There are
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: also cases where Justice Thomas, alongside other justices, has concluded
• 56:54
  Speaker 5: that federal public corruption statutes don't prohibit giving public officials
• 56:59
  Speaker 5: gifts in exchange for the public official setting up meetings
• 57:03
  Speaker 5: or making calls or holding events on that, you know,
• 57:07
  Speaker 5: donor's behalf. So, I think it's fair to say he
• 57:10
  Speaker 5: has a pretty capacious understanding about what the Constitution permits
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: by way of ethics and political corruption. And it also
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: seems as if he has been acting on that understanding.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: Do you believe that what he... Now, Thomas has claimed,
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: I didn't have to disclose because the rules weren't clear
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: that you needed to... I was on vacation with friends.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: I didn't have to tell you about that. And I
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: just took transportation with my friend and it was a
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: private jet flight, but the rules didn't say I had
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: to disclose it. And now that the rules say I
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: have to disclose it, I'm happy to tell you about it.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: But I've been following the rules all along. What do
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: you make of that argument?
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: I don't find it particularly persuasive because the rules that
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: he's saying he's going to comply with now, they actually
• 57:50
  Speaker 5: haven't changed. The only thing that's changed is the administrative
• 57:54
  Speaker 5: office of the U.S. courts offered specific guidance about what
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: those rules have always required. The operative rules haven't changed.
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: They allowed justices in some instances to receive hospitality from friends.
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: But hospitality is things like staying at someone's home, right?
• 58:15
  Speaker 5: Like being flown around the country on a private jet.
• 58:18
  Speaker 5: That's not hospitality. And that's why the rules, the administrative
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: office of the U.S. courts say hospitality. You have to
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: disclose that.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know.
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: I've never taken a personal jet. Maybe that's what rich
• 58:29
  Speaker 5: people call hospitality, but I don't think normal, ordinary people
• 58:32
  Speaker 5: say that.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: Seems pretty hospitable to me. Olivia, what do you think? Yeah,
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: we think it's hospitable.
• 58:38
  Speaker 5: Well, hospitable is different than hospitality.
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. Just saying, you know, I bet
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: he had a great time. I bet it felt, I
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: bet it, you know, I mean, so did the Hagrid hut.
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: That doesn't make it legal.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: I Does I don't understand that the Hagrid people are
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: just saying this like that's like what? He's also a
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: weird Harry Potter guy.
• 58:59
  Speaker 5: Well, Harlan Crowe is apparently a weird Harry Potter guy,
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: given that his resort has a life-size replica of Hagrid's
• 59:06
  Speaker 5: Hut from Harry Potter.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Listen, I just want you to know something, and I
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: know I'll get in trouble for saying this. I was
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: never on the Harry Potter bandwagon. I just simply wasn't.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: I don't like the idea of sorting children by personality
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: traits at a young age. I think the signs were there.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: That's all I'm saying. I think the signs were there.
• 59:23
  Speaker 5: Does it help that the children had some say in
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: where they were sorted?
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: Then don't they get a hat on their head and
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: the hat?
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: Well, yeah, but you can talk to the hat.
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: Okay, cool. So it's nice that these children get permanently sorted.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: They have some chance to say, this is like people
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: get mad when kids get put into, uh, you know,
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: they get, they get it tracked on math when they're
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: in third grade. This kid, you're sorted evil. Go to
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: the basement.
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: Well, I look forward to you developing a sorting hat
• 59:50
  Speaker 5: collection in your basement to commemorate this atrocity.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: Leah Lippman. Thank you so much. And thank you, uh,
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: for helping all of us understand what is going on.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: And other than the Gwyneth Paltrow ruling, we live in
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: a time in which the legal system is sometimes letting
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: us down. And thank you for taking us through it.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 5: I wish you well.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: Before we go, we've got the bear head back. Which
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: means it's time for another round of One Line with
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: Cocaine Bear. This is a culture war edition.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: Where's the roar? Where's the roar, Andy? I'll put.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: It in the roar.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: I believe this in, too.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: Good roar, Elijah. Good roar. Thank you. Love it. You
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: go first.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: Okay. It has landed on Princess Peach is Too Woke.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: There's an interesting dissensus between on the right, because on
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: the one hand, someone to claim that the Super Mario
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: movie is an anti-woke success because it's gonna be one
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: of the biggest movies of all time, but at the
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: same time, there are some who have noticed that the
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: minds behind this adaptation have decided that your princess is
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: in another castle is not enough of a character for
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: the princess, and so she's a hero in this film.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 6: Who's going to consume this content? Well, young kids, right?
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 6: It's a cartoon. Adults, unless you're a loser, you're probably
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 6: not going to want to watch that, right? Young women
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 6: see stuff like this, and it just brainwashes them to
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 6: be a feminist, to be a badass feminist, and it's
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 6: not realistic. Women are not as strong as men. Please
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 6: make her a helpless princess again, okay? That's a lot
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 6: more fitting for Princess Peach.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: Now, we should just be clear that it's an anti-woke
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: success because the film survived a boycott from John Leguizamo.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: John Leguizamo basically said that he was boycotting the movie
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: because the two... Because Mario and Luigi are played by
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: white men.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: And Charlie Kirk seized on that and decided it was
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: an anti-woke film now.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: It was a victory against wokeness. I'll tell you why.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Because it was a big opening weekend.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: They want to claim it. I'll tell you why it
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: was anti-woke. Because I almost fell asleep. Because the movie
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: doesn't have a great story. And listen, I want to
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: make a point here. Which is, this is the only
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: point I want to make about it.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: And Super Mario Brothers famously has a very complicated, interesting story.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: The point is, here's my problem, all right? There's two
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: movies out that you could see right now. One is
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: Dungeons and Dragons, and it fucking rules. And you know what?
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: It was amazing going to see Dungeons and Dragons because
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: you go see a big budget kind of potential franchise movie,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: and you know you're going to have some very funny
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: jokes because they're going to do great comedy writers come
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: in and make it funny. But you don't know if
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: there's going to be a beginning, a middle, and an
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: end that makes sense. In Act 1, in Act 2,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: in Act 3, it takes you back, kind of completes
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: the story that began in Act 1. You know, your
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: classic movie. You never know if there's going to be
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: just a complete calamity in the third act. Like, fuck,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: we ran out of time and we're shooting. No script. Whatever.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: Dungeons & Dragons, excellent. Super Mario, barely makes sense.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: But can you talk about what was the woke factor
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: in Dungeons & Dragons? Was it a victory against wokeness
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: or did it succumb to wokeness?
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: Know.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: I honestly, I think it's a little bit of both.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: But I really like Dungeons and Dragons. We need Dungeons
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: and Dragons to succeed so they make movies that make sense.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: Super Mario doesn't make any sense. In that sense, it
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: is an anti-war success. Stop saying Mario.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, I was going to ask about that. What's going
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: on with Mario? You're not the first to do that.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: Long Island hellhole.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of Marios around there. I grew up
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: with Super Mario Brothers. Listen, on Long Island, we say Mario.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: And that's not the most offensive part about growing up
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: on Long Island.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: But also not the least.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: I've read the news.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: You know what else succumbed to reality?
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: My congressman is... What? Alright, well you pick something out
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: of the fucking hat then.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Am I up? You're up, Tom.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: Anti-woke. Anti-woke Princess Peach. It should be more realistic. She
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: should rule over a kingdom of talking mushrooms.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, ridiculous. That was right wing commentator Anna Perez, by
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: the way. I had never heard of her before, but
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: we're we're now we're now.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know that she's heard of her.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: No, never after. OK, I got NPR is pro trans
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: dinosaurs and pushes tentacle porn. OK, so this comes from
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: a segment by, of course, Tucker Carlson, where he is
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: talking about Elon Musk's decision to label NPR as government
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: funded media. That is a ludicrous decision. Less than 1%
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: of NPR's funding comes from the U.S.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: Government.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: It kicked up a big fight on Twitter with, of course,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: Elon Musk, who is thinking about all these issues for
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: the very first time as he acts on them in
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: a capricious way.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: It's really amazing.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: It's wild.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: He's like Jimmy Carter with the tennis courts. It's like
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: your company's falling apart. You're relabeling NPR's Twitter handle.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: So here's a clip.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: Well, so it's tentacle porn. Okay, yeah, I mean, technically
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: it is tentacle porn, which is its own subgenre, and
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: we're not going to pollute your mind by telling you
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: any more about it than that. But what it really is,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: is narcissism. Transceratops. Transasaurus Rex. Now, a lot of people
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: say if the topic of NPR comes up in conversation, yeah,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: I'm all for national public radio and I'm happy to
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: work an extra day a year to pay for it.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: But I'm not a trans dinosaur.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: I'm not.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: So what's in it for me as a non-trans dinosaur?
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: That seems a little niche.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: What Tucker's done there is he went and found some
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: NPR stories, book reviews. People are talking about books they've read.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: One of them involves some sort of tentacle something or other. One's,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: I think, a kid's book for dinosaurs and decided to
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: hold that up as the example of why NPR is bad.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: If we were to take the same approach as Tucker Carlson,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: we might say that his show is constantly pushing the
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: concept of testicle tanning. Because it was something that he
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: discussed in his End of Men specials, if that was
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: somehow representative of all of his work. But it is
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: obviously not.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: I just want to say, I unfortunately watched the Tucker
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Carlson segment that led to this. And I thought I
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: was going to assign myself for like a two minute
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: video clip. He did 15 minutes about NPR at the
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: top of his show. I have not thought that, I mean.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: It's really just these people sitting in their homes, just
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: frothing at the mouth. Segment after segment, I hate NPR,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: I hate baseball now, I hate Nike, I hate them all.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: I hate everything.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: Even the dinosaur thing, even the way he explained it,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: it was literally like a segment of a story talking
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: about how there's groups of queer people who like dinosaurs.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: There's like, you go online and there's like a community
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: of queer people who are really into dinosaurs.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: You're talking to a member. That was it.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: There's nothing else to that. Suddenly he's talking about trans dinosaurs. Like,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: it's wild. That's what he gets from that.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: It's... Trans-ceratops.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: I think that was one of them.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: That was, yeah, that was one of them. All right,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: I'm up.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: I think it's cool. I think that's a cool dinosaur.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: Okay. This is switching genders is a power move. Oh,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: this is, here we go. Here's Don Jr.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: They're just going around impregnating all the female prisoners. What
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: the fuck?
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Power move.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: Hey, if they got me for treason, I'd probably be like,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: I'd consider it. Probably a lot more fun.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: Why does he sound like that?
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: So that's Don Jr. on his podcast saying that if
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: he were convicted of treason, he would consider switching genders
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: and going to a women's prison, which would probably be
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: a lot more fun.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, trans people.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: And the greatest move ever.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: Trans people famously treated well in prison, so it's a
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: smart thought.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: And he would impregnate all the female prisoners.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they'd have some say in the matter. That's good.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: I think he'd very quickly ask to be transferred. I
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: don't think this would go as well for him.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: As he thinks it would. Or everyone would. Yeah. The
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: only way to have Don Jr. in prison is he's
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: a case for solitary.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: He was on some podcast with some guy. It was
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: called the Full Send Podcast. I never heard of it,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: and I looked it up, and it had like 8
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: million subscribers on YouTube.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: That was this. That was the podcast he was on.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the one. And these guys were all
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: with him and his father at some UFC. This whole
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: other sort of ecosystem of hyper-masculine nonsense is out there.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: It's Ultimate Fighting, this show. The Don Jr. is somehow
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: gotten swept into. We have to break the UFC to
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: insurrection pipeline. It's going to be a tough one. It's
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: pretty direct.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: Does it make any of us feel bad that we
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: have the same profession as Don Jr.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: Now?
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But also Barack Obama.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: That's better.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: And Michelle Obama runs the gamut. And Bruce Springsteen. I mean,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: it's cool.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: It's a cool group.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: That makes me feel better.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: And are they up for Webby's?
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: I don't think so.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: We'll see.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: Vote.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: And don't forget to vote for us at the Webby's.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: Please, please. And remember the website. It's Google Webby's. Pick another.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: Should we pick another?
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go. We have time.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: We have time.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: There's no limit. That's why it's a good part of
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: being a podcast host. Boycott.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nothing to stop us. Boycott Bud Light.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: Hell yeah.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: Hell yeah.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: So we can all talk about this, but the gist
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: of it is that, first of all, it is amazing
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: how much of the right wing, every part of this
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: conversation is about the right wing obsession with trans people.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: So basically, Bud Light did like one promoted Instagram post
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: with Dylan Mulvaney, a trans person who is huge on TikTok,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: who has drawn an incredible amount of ire from the right.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: The New York Post has written at least a dozen
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: articles about this one fucking Instagram post. Anyway, this was
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: because of Bud Light, which led Kid Rock- to get
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: some sort of a gun.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: Machine gun, yeah.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: Machine, some sort of a gun. I'm not gonna, I don't,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: Maybe it's, I don't know what it is. AR-15? I'm
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: not sure.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: And shoot.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: AR-15.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: Shoot a bunch of Bud Lights with his gun to
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: send a message.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: These gun people are really, it's one note with the
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: move here. They're shooting things they don't like. People, guns.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: What do you want them to do with the gun?
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: Paint a picture?
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: It does one thing.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: Remember Joe Manchin shot a picture of the climate bill?
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: Wow, he's come a long way. Did you guys hear?
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: Shot that thing right into law.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: Did you hear Biden's response to this? Oh, no.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: That's why he wanted to do another.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: That is why he wanted, yeah. Hey, Kid Rock, it's
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden. Don't be such a ba-wa-da-ba-da-bang-da-dang-diggy-diggy-whiny-little-bitch-ass and just drink
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: your fucking beer.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, that was good.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: That was good. That was excellent. That was good. He
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: said that right after he talked about he's going to
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: run for president again in 2024. Or he plans to.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: I might run, maybe.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: He plans to, but I'm not going to tell you
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: if I am.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: That was a good quote.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: Shooting at Bud Light's.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: All right. Well, that's all the time we have. Thank
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: you to AI Joe Biden. Thank you to Leah Lippman.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: And we'll talk to you later. Pod Save America is
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producers are
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash podsaveamerica.