Lovett or Leave It - A Justice League of Their Own

Episode Date: March 20, 2021

The incredibly funny Fortune Feimster is back to break down the week's news. Chase Strangio from the ACLU on the fight to stop anti-trans laws and change public opinion. We quiz a listener after a lot of fear mongering about vaccine safety. And we release OUR cut of Justice League AT LONG LAST. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/lovettorleaveit. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include which podcast you would like.

Welcome to Love It or Leave It, Vaxxed to the Future. scribbling bars for Barack, so when Lovett speaks, y'all already know how hard it'll knock. Make a parliament stop in its tracks, he's the smarter and sexier John of the pack, please. Let's spin the red wheel, it's landed on Washington hacks, and their bad faith constant attacks. Geez, you wanna try some governing, Mitch? This body's in worse shape than when I subsist on chips. Who wouldn't want their senators thinking less of tax schemes and how a good rollout can sling effective vaccines? That's the straight shooter. That's the straight shooter. Back to the future.

Back to the future. Okay, stop. Fox News, conspiracy theories are not views it's obtuse. Pick a swing stage, John will adopt you. Phone bank, drop jewels and turn all the blocks blue. They tried to give the news cycle a spin. We

needed a blue wave, it was time for a rinse. So he packed Radio City all night for the win. Like take that, big blue recycling bin. When senators told lies he aired up the dirty laundry respected on both sides we cherish him so fondly oh yeah and he got a wicked impression of tommy patriots bridgerton alexia nabalny that's the straight That song was sent in by Louis Dorley. It was quite a journey.

Incredible work. If you want to make a Vax to the Future theme song, please send it to us at leaveitatcrooked.com. Leaveitatcrooked.com. Before we get to the show, obviously we've all been following the terrible news, the mass shootings out of Atlanta, the targeted women of Asian descent

coming after a year in which we've seen a rise in anti-Asian bigotry and hate crimes fomented by politicians, including the former president. So we wanted to point you to resources if you're looking to help out. As always, you can head to our social channels on both Twitter and Instagram with the handle atcrookedmedia for a comprehensive. As always, you can head to our social channels on both Twitter and Instagram with the handle at Crooked Media for a comprehensive list

of ways that you can contribute. You can also go straight to the website for Asian Americans Advancing Justice at advancingjustice-aajc.org. Advancingjustice-aajc.org. That is a great organization doing important work if you want to do your part in the wake of this tragedy. Also this week, Crooked launches Take Line, our new sports podcast. It was sadly a fitting conversation. Jeremy Lin joined Jason and Renee to talk about anti-Asian hate that he faced in his career and that we face as a society. It was a fascinating conversation. I love the episode.

I love Take Line. And obviously, if you're listening to this podcast, you know that I am was a fascinating conversation. I love the episode. I love Take Line. And obviously, if you're listening to this podcast, you know that I am not a sports person. And I feel like the Jason conversation, it's an incredibly entertaining and hilarious show. But what was incredible about that conversation with Jeremy is that I learned a lot just about the way that somebody like Jeremy Lin, who's experienced incredible fame in his life, how that changed him, how it changed the way he thought about himself. It was an incredible conversation and it's an incredible show. Take Line's a hit, so check it the fuck out. Not going to keep haranguing you people. Also, Dan Pfeiffer's on it for you Pfeiffer heads. So subscribe to Take Line on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your

podcast. I'm telling you, put it in your rotation. And one more thing. We have a bunch of new merch in the Crooked store. There's new shirts, including an Abolish the Filibuster t-shirt that I'm very excited about. As always, Crooked donates from every order to VoteRiders, a leading organization helping to protect voting rights. So please check out the store, crooked.com slash store. On the show today, I'm joined by Chase Strangio from the ACLU to talk about Chan's rights. And we had a really great conversation about the implications for some of these fights and what it says about how the country is changing and how it's changing its relationship with gender itself. I was really glad I got the chance to

talk to him. And we quizzed a listener about risk after there's been some fear mongering about some of the vaccines in Europe. But first, she's a comedian and she has a new docu feature, Hysterical, premiering on April 2nd on FX. Welcome back. Returning champion, Fortune Feimster. John, so good to see you. So good to see you, too. Thanks for being here. Anytime.

So here's how it works. I'm going to read you a bunch of jokes. Yeah. You can like them. You can hate them. You can comment on them. You can be dead silent. It's entirely up to you.

Okay. You can't go wrong. I love it. Already. Let's get into it. What a week. Coca-Cola announced their opposition to Republican voter suppression bills in Georgia. It's the coolest thing they could have done short of putting cocaine back in there.

Wouldn't that be fun? Just some of it has it. And you don't know which one. Yeah. So you could either get a little sugar boost or a little sugar booger boost. Yeah, you can either be like, oh, that was the pep i needed or i have 15 very bad product ideas the federal reserve suggested given the economic conditions in the country it might keep interest rates low for years call me for advice whenever chairman powell i know how to keep

interest low braces and sweatpants with no pockets. That worked for me for a decade. No interest whatsoever. No one showed any interest in me for a long time. It was before people could really appreciate like being unique. Right? That's what they used to tell me when I first got to Hollywood. You're very unique. Right? That's what they used to tell me when I first got to Hollywood. You're very unique. And I'm like, so I don't have the job. They're like, right.

No, in that sense, you're not unique. There's one unique person who gets the job. You're the unique kind of person that does not get the job. Yeah, so I get it. When I was in middle school, there was one popular kid who took pity on me for one reason or another. In hindsight, I think it might have been an unspoken, maybe even unknown gay code. Oh, right. I've had that. I remember that there was this popular kid. I'd just gotten picked on for something. And this popular kid kind of looked me up and down. And he said this with a kind of pity. And it wasn't disgust it was frustration on my behalf it was

like okay anger that i wasn't even willing to do the small things to help myself and he said john at least get the sweatpants with pockets oh yeah he's like at the bare minimum john come on he's like i wanna i wanna like you but you're making you're embarrassing me john and it's like, I want to like you, but you're embarrassing me, John. And it's like, look, as with all things, I was a late bloomer. Some kids moved to the wallet phase. I was still on the Velcro thing around the ankle phase. You know what I mean? Wow.

Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? I mean, I remember those. I never had one. Oh, that's cool. You were a cool kid, huh? You had a wallet? I wasn't cool, but I did manage to have friends because I made people laugh.

That was my kryptonite. I should have tried that. I should have tried that. Now you're making people laugh. In other news related to government and money, I guess, the IRS has delayed tax day from April 15th to May 17th. So take that time to gather all your receipts that will show you just how sad the last year really was.

Is that dominoes deductible? Maybe, maybe it's deductible. I just did my taxes and I used to have fun dinners and stuff that I could write off for work. No, I was like, I basically was like,

I literally can't write off any dinners this last year because then they would know that i was full of crap meanwhile in congress 12 house republicans voted against the resolution to avoid congressional gold medals to the police who protected them during the mob attack on the capitol representative louis gomert justified his vote by saying if those officers saved my life why do i look like I've been dead for months? And who votes no, by the way? Such a sick vote. I mean, you have to really be bummed out

that they saved your life to vote no. It's also just like, you see them every day. Yeah, I know. These are the people you walk by. And they're all like, yeah, man, I know how you voted. Not gonna work as hard in the next insurrection and tell you that much. Good luck next time, buddy. That was stupid on their part.

And plus when you know that a bunch of people are voting yes, at some point you should just be like, all right, put a yes for me too. Yeah, put a yes. It's a gold medal. It's not expensive. No. It's not like expanding Medicare. No.

How much could these gold medals cost? Yeah. Al at the trophy shop needs the business. Yeah. Come on. Trophies. They give them out to kids. One of the men charged with assaulting Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick during the Capitol

siege owns an infamous West Virginia restaurant called Sandwich University. I guess I'll have to stop eating there. And I was two sandwiches short of tenure. I was this close to tenure at Sandwich University. That's a good one. I didn't know where you were going with that. And then you came back around and reminded me that it was Sandwich University.

You were so close to getting the punch card. Problem with that school is their degrees are baloney, you know? Oh man, now I need a sandwich joke. I tell you, you know, I tried to apply to a job, and a lot of the employers say that a degree from Sandwich University doesn't cut the mustard, you know? See, I was just trying to think of a mustard joke. Also this week, a Capitol Police officer was suspended

after a congressional aide spotted a copy of the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion on his desk. I got a protocol for you, all right? No reading at work, all right? You're on the job. Yeah. You read your racist literature at home. You keep your Nazi propaganda on your bedside table, pal.

Show him. I mean, I guess I should be impressed. He was reading. It's hard to find time to read these days. Just terrible books. Like, try John Grissom. And also, there's not a podcast? Right, if he had just done...

I guess it's probably not available on Audible. Yeah. I hope not. Because he could have, like, snuck an earpiece. What are they called? Airbuds? Air Hitler buds, you know? Hitler buds.

There you go. Keep that book out of there. Also this week, the House voted to renew the Violence Against Women Act while Senate Republicans objected to new provisions that would make it harder for domestic abusers to buy guns. What's worse than a domestic abuser buying a gun? My fucking wife, said one senator. Oh, dark. It's dark.

It's dark. Speaking of Republicans not caring if we live or die, in a CBS poll, a third of Republicans responded that they would not be vaccinated, no doubt in part to the vaccine skepticism being offered by people like Tucker Tarleson and Laura Ingraham. So hopefully that number goes down. But in the meantime, I would just steer clear of Under Armour outlet stores and pristine F-150 Raptors that look like they never go off-road and only go to the golf course.

We want to stay away from under-armor shirted men in very expensive pickups that look like they have been nowhere near real work. That, to me, is the core group of people to be careful around. That aren't getting vaccines. Yeah, they're not going near those places. people that aren't getting vaccines yeah they're not going near those if they're not going off road and that f-150 they ain't driving to cbs for a vaccine yeah you can't that underarm armor shirt is um a republican trump supporter badge at this point to me i didn't even know that i it may not be true i was like about to check my shirt to make sure it's not underarmored. Just kidding.

It's like all of a sudden you're like oh should I not be wearing these wraparound Oakleys in this underarmored shirt? My bad. With boat shoes. The Boston Globe reports that while police officers were among the first to be offered the coronavirus vaccine, many

including 30% of Massachusetts officers refused to get it, which is a strange development because it's strange to see police officers fucking up society by not taking the shot. That's another dark one. That's a dark one. That's a dark one. Listen, I'm in a dark place. They like to take that shot. They do. They really do. Why are they turning these down? There's still more people who want it that can get it, right? There's still a lot of places where there's no appointments, whatever. But we're about to get to the place pretty quickly where all of a sudden,

anybody who wants it can get it at any time. Right. And now we're trying to figure out how to get tens of millions of people who are resistant to do it. Sell it at that sandwich university. Yeah, put it in that sandwich. Sorry. No, put it in that sandwich. Sorry. No, they should.

It should come with it. You know, like at Subway, sometimes they throw in a cookie. But at sandwich university, just be like, here you go. Here's your Italian sandwich. And a little boop. That's it. A little boop boop there you go we gotta think of in ways to incentivize it it should come like basically the vaccine should

come in the mail with if you order any of those six banned Dr. Seuss books that's right or you know get one with your Under Armour shirt I'm thinking outside the box. I'll tell you what happened on Mulberry Street. Some Republicans got vaccinated. Just got to add it in. Conservative lawmakers in Utah are demanding that cell phones and tablets sold in the state automatically block porn. Good luck with that. Because there's one thing I know about human beings and pornography. You cannot keep them apart.

All right. Life finds a way. Especially when they've been stuck in their homes for a long time. There's one thing I know about human beings and pornography. You cannot keep them apart. You cannot. Life finds a way. Especially when they've been stuck in their homes for a long time. You think gay Mormons are going to accept this ban? I don't think so. Absolutely not. Gay Mormons know where the dark web is. I've met a lot of gay Mormons.

They know what's up. They're going to snowden the fuck out of this problem. You can't keep gay Mormons away from pornography. VPNs. VPN pornography. VPNs. Can you just sign in from somewhere else? I'm trying to beat the system. We gotta beat the system. I think VPN

stands for victory. Pornography now. Now. Yes. I think we cracked that. New York andrew cuomo has dodged questions from reporters and more and more democrats called for his resignation his current plan seems to be just to kind of like hide right right which would mean he's sort of it's the um it's the memento principle like the idea is right now we're focused on it he sucks yeah he made up you know he's a

harasser he's a bully uh he a harasser. He's a bully. He lied about nursing home deaths, but like that scene towards the end of Memento, he's kind of figured out that if we just lose our train of thought for even 30 seconds, we're, we're done. He's free. We'll have no idea what the controversy was.

It works in some regards. It really does. I mean, people, the news changes like so quickly that you're just like everyone then is hyper focused on something else. Maybe that's why he's been walking around Albany. Remember he had that like blanket around him on the phone? That's how he's hiding.

Accountability does make you cold. It makes you cold and to dress like a grandma he's like no one's gonna recognize me it's like um yeah that's funny it's like a monty python character i can't be bad look i'm cold like an old woman i've got a pashmina i don't know i don't know obviously the right thing to do in many cases is for a politician generally speaking to like to resign like you did the wrong thing it's creating a huge controversy uh you should step down but I feel like a lot of time the lesson is never resign ever for you like for you as the person right why do I get what how do I win by resigning? If he resigns now, he's disgraced forever.

If he can just keep his hands on power and not get impeached, he's still the governor. It worked for, maybe he's taking a page out of the Republicans playbook. It worked for some of those guys. You know, people get called on to resign all the time. They don't go. Governor of Virginia, people called on him to resign after those photos turned up. He's like, I'm going to hide. He's like, I'm going to hide. He's like, I'm going to put that blanket on.

He's just like, I'm going to just stand here. I'm going to work. If I can't see you, you can't see me. Here's the thing. The media is like a Tyrannosaurus rex in Jurassic Park. Its vision is based on movement. You stay very still, all right? And then you send Jeff Goldblum out there with a flare.

That's right. All right? And you're free. You're in the clear. That's why he was trying to throw de Blasio under the bus. Look at that guy. Look at that tall fuck. Look at him.

I know you hate me, but don't you also hate him? Can you hate him again? That was fun. We all hate him. Can we just agree that he shouldn't have put out that book? Like, do you think people would be as mad at him? I mean, he did some bad things for sure. I'm not discrediting that.

But he definitely should not have put out that book no once you start patting yourself down the back while the pandemic's still going on it's tough there's that video of that uh cyclist approaching the finish line and just like raises his arms up in celebration and then falls off the bike and then gets passed. I think that is what writing a book about your pandemic leadership did for a state mid-pandemic. That is the equivalent of that. No, you should, of course, you don't take a... Victory lap. It was gilding the lily.

It was like, you can't write a book about how good you are. No. When you got these scandals cooking. No, for sure not. You got so many scandals in the oven. Because I felt like there were already a lot of scandals in the oven, and they were ready to just come, and then that book came out, and people were like, okay, now he's patting himself on the back with that book.

Here we go. So it was like the beginning of the just like, all right, enough of this. It's like Lance Armstrong couldn't have written a book called How I Won the Tour de France Without Any Help. Right. I didn't do steroids, I promise. In lighter news, nominations for the 93rd Academy Awards were announced this week,

and Mank was at the front of the pack with 10 nominations. For those unfamiliar, Mank is a historical drama that tells the story of how an ordinary man became Mank, the figure we all know and love. Mank. I never even saw it. I never watched it. I will watch Mank. It is an inevitability. Basically, in this moment in which there's so little else, I will ultimately see everything. I'm confident about that. And I will at some point watch Mank. I'll probably go through all the Oscar nominees nominees it's in my nature i'm a completionist right but it really did turn me off that manc's wife in real life was manc's age but in the movie is played by someone much much younger because that means the movie about manc is more is more like kind of inherently sexist than Mank,

who is a real figure from another earlier, far more misogynist and sexist time. Wow. Mank, the man, had more evolved notions, at least in this one respect, than Mank, the character. And that to me was, it's tough for me to get past. Holly was like, ugh, get that old gal out of here let's bring some fresh young blood in here i don't want to see someone manx age with manc

that's not what people are paying what are they gonna kiss we what are we gonna watch him kiss someone his own age that's hollywood disgusting it's Look, people do not pay to stream Mank wherever it may be available. I don't know which streaming platform. People are not putting $7.99 on the line monthly for various services to man kiss a woman his own age. No, we'll have none of that. None of that, Hollywood says. I like it when Hollywood sticks to what it does best, having Angelina Jolie play Colin Farrell's mom even though they are the same age.

Oh my God. That's what I like. That was crazy. I forgot about that. That rules. Wow. Some creepy stuff. She's like, absolutely not.

Wait, how much does it pay? Okay. Yeah, that should be the rule. If a woman is cast to play an older man's like, absolutely not. Wait, how much does it pay? Okay. Yeah, that should be the rule. If a woman is cast to play an older man's wife, then they should make a million dollars per year in age difference. I agree. And if a woman is cast to be someone's mother, we should somehow reverse that with a formula.

It's going to involve a formula. You work that formula out. 18 minus. We'll get it done. formula. You work that formula out. 18 minus. We'll get it done. Okay. I'm not great with math. So you just let me know what the final thing is. Scientists grew mouse embryos inside an artificial womb, raising

the possibility that other animals, even humans, could someday be cultured outside a living uterus, bringing us one step closer to gay men reproducing without any of the rest of you creeps. Yeah, like you women. I'm not going to need you. I saw this mouse story.

It looked like they were made in a Coke can. I think it's cool. With cocaine. The largest dust storm in a decade swept across northern China, grounding flights and closing schools. The second largest dust storm of the decade happened when I opened the drawer where I keep all my nice clothes.

Aww. Because I don't go in there. John's not going to leave his house. I don't go anywhere. I don't have nice pants. Yeah, what are you going to wear? A blazer to Popeye's? No.

To get food to go? I don't even put on buttonable pants. No. There's a button on the top of my pants. It's inconceivable to me. I have sweatpants on right now. I was wearing pajamas up until right before we recorded because there's always a risk that you'll kind of catch a little

knee, you know, when they zoom. And I'm open to... I try to create a little bit of professionalism, you know? Right, right. We put on a nice t-shirt. This is new. This is new. I mean yeah new in the sense that it's newly cleaned this is newly cleaned too with dog hair on it practically a wedding the gays have really come out looking sharp and president biden announced he supports reforming

the senate filibuster so that senators are required to physically stay on the floor and keep talking if they hope to hold up legislation. Biden explained, if we can't have meaningful climate policy, at least we might see Ted Cruz pee in his pants. Oh, wouldn't that be great? That'd be something. Keep him from going to Cancun.

You're not going anywhere, bud. We're staying here on the floor. Yeah. So you can meet your wife out there. Yeah. You can read the lyrics to uh margaritaville you son of a bitch yeah and finally a pensacola high school homecoming queen and her mom were arrested for three felonies after the pair got into the school's voting system to cast

fraudulent votes to steal the election the voting voting system? Dominion. These people can't catch a break. Man, they better watch out. They might get sued again. As of now, while there are suspicions, there is no actual evidence to doubt the election of the homecoming king, Rudy Giuliani. That's right. Pensacola high schoolers elected 76-year-old

former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani as the homecoming king. This is rigged. That's crazy, though, that a mom would go to that great of a length for homecoming. Look, I'm not sure what the legal—I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer, unfortunately. But I will say, I feel like scamming the homecoming vote is an embarrassing thing and should definitely be frowned upon. It doesn't seem like a felony. I don't know.

Can we have a little bit of like, that's embarrassing. It's more like she should be fired from the school. Maybe the daughter gets suspended for like a week. But I don't think you should go to jail. I mean, the punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime. I mean, I think she's now been punished enough. That is so fucking embarrassing. It's so embarrassing to know your mom.

I don't know if the daughter was in on it, but what if the mom did it? Oh, she was in on it. She wasn't in on it? Because half the votes were from the mom's phone, and the other half were from the daughter's phone. Wow. They Bonnie and Clyde-ed the fuck out of this. Wow.

And I just, I love it. I love it. And the other thing I want to know, which is not clear from the daughter's phone. It was, they Bonnie and Clyde-ed the fuck out of this. Wow. And I just, I love it. I love it. And the other thing I want to know, which is not clear from the article. That's a movie right there. It is a movie. And based on the laws of Hollywood,

we now have the rights. Fortune and I have the rights. We said, it's a movie right there. The rights are ours. That's the law. But here's what I want to know. Just don't make the mom old. Yeah.

The mom should be played by a 25-year-old. Yeah. Who's that? The star Euphoria. That's who's the mom. There you go. So here's what I want to know, having now read the story, which I couldn't tell from the time story about it,

is were the other kids surprised? In other words, was this a popular homecoming queen who could have won the old-fashioned way right through um sleeping with everyone heteronormative looks competition uh or or through a through a despicable popularity contest or was this like a kind of thing like was this to be like if I won Homecoming King and everyone was like, something's not right here. Something's amiss. I know.

It's hard to say. Like if she was like, it's going to be a tight race. I don't want to take any chances. Or if they're all like, Rebecca. Whatever her name is. We can go with Rebecca. Forgin, thank you so much for being here. Before we let you go, one last piece of news.

The Zack Snyder cut of Justice League is out this weekend. That is where he is finally given the chance to re-edit and take all the disparate pieces and put together his master version of what he intended Justice League to be. I have not seen it yet because it's 1,000 hours long. I heard. It's also in 4-3 aspect ratio, which is pissing me off. Everyone's been talking about that.

So that means it's smaller? It's smaller. Yeah. It's narrow. Because it was for IMAX, I guess, or maybe it was imax shaped i see but we you know we're watching it at home man yeah what are you doing i mean what are you doing get the get the sandwich university sandwiches and uh buckle in and your sweat

pants and watch it what is it six hours i think that's hours i don't know how long it is but i will tell you my partner partner Ronan was like, we probably need to watch the Snyder Cut, but if we're going to watch the Snyder Cut, we probably need to watch the Ultimate Edition Batman vs. Superman first, just to understand the full vision, which is very frustrating,

but we're halfway through Batman vs. Superman Ultimate Edition, and it is better than the original release. It is. It is better. You guys are dedicated. It still pisses me off that Batman's using guns. Right, right.

Batman doesn't use guns. He doesn't need them. He doesn't need them. Batman is killing people left and right in Batman vs. Superman. That is morally not what Batman does.

It's the rule. It's the rule. He doesn't use guns and he doesn't kill people. He's blowing people up left and right in this movie. I'm upset. It pisses me off.

But, but, now a lot of people don't know this there is another cut of the snyder cut yeah so there's obviously there's this there's the old cut there's the snyder cut yeah but there is now a new cut um and uh this is called uh people are calling it the love it cut because uh well it weaves a different sort of story uh using the footage that was available and so we just have a very short clip. And so can we roll just a clip of the love it cut?

The truest darkness is not the absence of light. It is the conviction that the light will never return. This time, the light shone on the heroes. He's confused. He doesn't know who he is. Yeah, I do competitive ice dancing. I do very competitive ice dancing. Where do you even have the time?

I make the time. Get in, get one out. I'll try to keep up. Nine out of ten men will let you get away with anything. We gotta pull these things apart. A couple more seconds, you'll see your opening.

Recognize that smell? Ride ain't over yet. I'm mad. He said that you were the thirstiest... Attractive Jewish boy. He comes in the winter. Jesus. He is tall.

Bruce said something about you having to take us all to brunch. Those are very big guns. So you're fast. I'm sure you are. You won't last three minutes. Just keep your little man-man away from you while I work. No, it's not like a macho measuring thing. So, it seems

based on this leaked footage that there was an artist intent to make them all gay and fuck each other. And I do think that it's high time they release that full cut. Release it on Sunday. Because as I've said many times on this show, all right,

I don't want to hear that there's a version of a gay character somewhere deep within the universe. All right. I want blockbuster action where two hot guys with superpowers make out. Yes. All right? It's time. It's time.

I want that too. And I'm a lesbian. I want it. Hey, we can get some lesbian action in there too. I'm not going to fight as hard for it, but I recognize it's just as good on a moral, intellectual level. It's not what I'm fighting for. Let me get the gay guys in first.

Then we'll focus on lesbians. And on that note, Fortune, thank you so much for joining. Everybody go watch Hysterical on April 2nd on FX. You're the best. Thank you so much. When we come back, I had a great conversation with Chase Strangio of the ACLU. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

And we're back. He is an attorney for the ACLU and transgender rights activist. Please welcome back Chase Strangio. Hey, thanks for having me. the Equality Act moving to the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the same time, we have 82 anti-trans bills now moving through state legislatures. Can you talk a little bit about what the Equality Act would do and what protections it would offer to trans kids from these efforts to deny medical care and the right to just play sports? Like how much of a difference would the Equality Act make if we could pass it? So what the Equality Act is, is a piece of legislation that's pending in Congress. It's passed through the House. It's a huge sweeping civil rights bill that would add explicit protections for LGBTQ people,

add sex protections inclusive of LGBT people to Title II of the Civil Rights Act, which is the public accommodations provision and Title VI, which is the government funding provision. Neither of those currently have prohibitions on sex discrimination. It would also expand protections in public accommodations for everyone. Massive piece of civil rights legislation now pending in the Senate. It was heard in the Judiciary Committee this week. It would be a critical piece of civil rights reform in general. And I think it's really important that it passes because we know that people are experiencing discrimination in so many facets of life. Unfortunately, I think that it wouldn't be self-executing with respect to all

of these anti-trans bills that are pending. And in many ways, you know, we already have legal protections that should prohibit these bills. Title IX would remain unamended with the Equality Act. It prohibits sex discrimination in education. As far as I read all of these anti-trans sports bills, they violate Title IX in the Constitution. But unfortunately, lawmakers in state legislatures don't necessarily care if their bills are illegal or unconstitutional. And as to the healthcare provisions, they also violate the Constitution, multiple provisions, as well as 1557, which is the non-discrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act. So in one sense, we have the legal

protections at the federal level. It's just that lawmakers are pushing them regardless. And then the reality is, is that in order to, you know, sort of realize those protections, we will have to bring, you know, challenges to these bills that they pass in an incredibly hostile federal judiciary. So, you know, in that sense, it's precarious. I think the Equality Act would do a lot of normative things. It would send the message of sort of a federalized set of protections for LGBTQ people, as well as, you know, shoring up the protections that exist. But I think we absolutely need to confront the attacks at the state level

as we continue to push the Equality Act through Congress. So one example, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey is likely to sign a bill that would block trans youth from accessing gender-affirming care, would make it a felony for a doctor to even recommend that kind of care, punishable by 10 years in prison. The bill also requires school officials to effectively out students to their parents if a child is known to be struggling with gender identity, for example. Just one example of these laws. So these are unconstitutional, as you said. They violate a host of rights. There is a way in which this seems like it's kind of two old strategies at once. One is the anti-gay strategy

of the 90s and 2000s to kind of, just as we're winning the public relations fight, just as public opinion is shifting, enshrine a bunch of bigotry to win elections and get some of these things on the books for as long as you can. The other piece of it is anti-choice legislation, just to test the courts. How much of this do you think is willfully trying to put on the books, bills that will end up in the courts just to see how far they can go? Yeah, I mean, I think it's all of those things at once. I mean, I think you can trace it to sort of the marriage amendment conversations that were happening in the mid-2000s that were funneling, you know, voters for the Republican

Party at a time, like you said, when you had public opinion shifting in the direction of marriage, you know, to support marriage equality. Definitely, it's looking a lot like the backlash to Roe v. Wade and the ways in which anti-abortion and, you know, anti-reproductive justice legislation has continued to chip away at the constitutional rights that were established by the Supreme Court. And you can see this attack on trans kids as being a backlash to Obergefell, which is the decision from the Supreme Court allowing for marriage equality nationwide, as well as this past summer's decision in Bostock, you know, making clear that LGBT people are protected

under federal civil rights laws. So I think it's partly that, you know, there's definitely a desire to bring these into the courts, to bring them into hostile courts, to challenge anything affirmative that the Biden-Harris administration does in a judiciary that was, you know, significantly transformed under the Trump administration. But I think the roots actually go back much farther than all of that. I mean, this is like sort of the quintessential sort of panic over anything that sort of disrupts the patriarchal, you know, nuclear family structure. It's like the Phyllis Schaafly, it's Anita Bryant. Like this is like a moral panic that we see sort of throughout U.S. legal history reemerging time and time again as a way to expand state control over the family, over bodies, over anything that looks like it would disrupt the power structures as we sort of see and

understand them. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because I saw there were these two polls that I thought I think captured the fluid moment we are in. It's a gender fluid, fluid moment. And fluid, gender fluid moment. Yeah, like, hello, here we are. But which is that, so Politico and Morning Consult do this poll, and the numbers are atrocious. It basically, people oppose allowing trans athletes to play sports when they are asked, and it was bad for, obviously, Republicans and older voters were against it. But it was, And it was bad for obviously Republicans and older voters were against it.

But it was I was surprised to see that Democrats were even on the question. Gen Z was even on the question. Millennials supported these these bans in it. And then Human Rights Campaign puts out another poll that had somewhat similar results until you start giving people information, until you say to them, here's how it would make sure that the playing field is level for all kids. Here's why it's not going to be harmful. And then all of a sudden, you not only have, you know, above 70% support for the Equality Act, you have above 70% support for letting trans kids play, letting them be part of school, part of life, including a majority of Republicans. And so what I see there is people are trying. They're open. They don't know enough.

How do you think about the, put the legal piece of this aside, the public conversation about trans youth? Yeah, I mean, I think this is the key, right? Like this was the key with marriage equality. This is always the key that, you know, we're ultimately going to win when we have a bigger, more robust public conversation. And I think that, you know, in 2016, we saw the proliferation of the anti-trans bathroom bills, most of them targeting kids in schools.

You know, the polling wasn't great then. There was a huge, you know, sort of backlash among, you know, even sort of people who would identify themselves as liberals saying, well, you know, I have some privacy concerns. And then it just took an influx in public education and sort of allowing trans people to be seen and speak for ourselves that, you know, we start to shift the tide on the hyper panic about bathrooms.

And I think where we are with sports is a little bit more complicated in some ways because we are dealing with a moment of sort of this global anti-trans discourse that is incredibly powerful with a lot of people who have, you know, incredibly large microphones, and it's sort of coinciding with the rise of sort of fascism globally. You know, we saw this, like, idea of gender ideology rising in Brazil and in Eastern Europe and, you know, in the UK and in the US alongside sort of far-right leaders. And so there is a way in which it's deeply connected to sort of changing structures of political power and the ways in which social media and other forms of media are operating in this moment, that it's going to be harder to counteract the sort of polemics that we're hearing. That said, I think that once we get more, you know, young people out there and are able to protect them, and part of the challenge

in this moment is the kids that are speaking out are experiencing such significant backlash that we're not able to foreground them in the conversation. And the irony, of course, in all these states pushing these anti-trans sports bills is they can't point to a single trans kid even playing sports. Right. There's no. There's nobody. And that's a tragedy, you know, but it's like the fact of the discrimination has already so demoralized the population that they're being pushed out of schools. So there's no one to speak to the issue. And so we can't create that same counter discourse because people are already experiencing so much

discrimination that we don't even have any trans kids in sports, zero. And so that's so frustrating and difficult. It does seem that there's like this pervasive, unexamined, like common sense notion, right? That like people on the right or sort of kind of people with big platforms put out there's like, well, of course this doesn't make sense. Of course you can't allow trans women to compete against women. They will dominate, right? There's that piece of it. And then there's another thing politicians are using to stoke fear, which is like, if you make this the rule, yeah, they're not playing now, but all these guys will cheat. That there will be this influx of pretend trans people coming in to destroy women's sports. And that's even something that like Donald Trump talks about.

Yes. And that was the same thing with the restroom, but it's totally and completely disingenuous, right? Like we know that no one is going to be like, yes, I am going to transition for the sake of like winning a high school basketball trophy. That is just preposterous. I mean, look at the conditions that trans people are living under, like nobody is going to do that. So there's that, that's just an incredibly disingenuous line of questioning that argumentation. That's exactly what we saw with the restrooms, the people pushing it, admitted it was holy and completely contrived. There, I think that when we look at the actual anti-trans, like admitting that it's about trans people playing sports and the sort of efforts to pit cis women and trans women against each other, which again, who does

that serve? It serves the patriarchal power structures and cisgender men, of course. And, you know, since 1976, when Renee Richards competed in the U.S. Open, we have heard that the domination of women who are trans in women's sports is just around the corner. 45 years later, we have no trans Olympians. We have no trans athletes getting athletic scholarships to compete in women's sports and college in the United States, despite inclusive policies. It is a completely fear-driven myth that is used to, you know, stoke fear of trans people and then open the door to a range of anti-trans bills. Because as you noted at the beginning, we have these sports bills,

but they're being pushed alongside these criminal bans on healthcare. So the goal and the animating discourse behind both of these sets of bills is that it is inherently harmful to be trans. The state should step in and police trans people, police all bodies to enforce a binary notion of sex. And that ultimately what we're seeing are bills

like HB 1217, which is currently on the South Dakota governor's desk. And she only has until March 26 to veto it, which would require all student athletes to submit genetic information as well as their reproductive anatomy before being able to participate in sports. And then you have Alabama, you know, getting ready to send parents and doctors to prison for 10 years for following the medical standards set by the American Academy of Pediatrics. And so I think that this is all really a lot of fear mongering, but the consequences are going to be quite significant for a lot of people. Something that you've talked about before is these efforts, they harm everybody because all of a sudden it introduced a kind of invasive

measuring. When we don't have one and have never needed one. We've never really had a problem of who uses which restroom. People use the bathroom that they want to use. And if you're going to have a regime of denying trans athletes the right to play sports, you're saying we are going to have an invasive system of monitoring of gender, whatever they decide gender means to them, to decide who gets to play and who doesn't get to play. Yeah, exactly. Once you decide that you're going to regulate a subclass of women out of the category of women, then the state or some entity is going to come in and police that line. And in order to police that line, you start intruding upon the bodies of a lot of people.

And because we already know that trans people are already pushed out of sport, the reality is, is that the people who are going to be policed the most are gender nonconforming cisgender women, people who already have their bodies scrutinized. And that's disproportionately black and brown women. That's, you know, the Serena Williamses. That's the, you know, Castor Semenyas. That's the people whose bodies are already subject of so much policing and state control. That's who's going to be harmed by this most. And trans people, of course, we are the intended targets. But the consequences are going to stretch far beyond that because they're implementing a regime of policing that didn't exist before. Well, it seems like the intended target is keeping up the wall between men and women, the kind of definitional. I mean, that's where I think the conservative amygdala is going off, right? Because there is some sense in which acceptance

of gay people and now the acceptance of trans people is introducing a conversation about the salience and borders of gender that makes a lot of people really uncomfortable, right? Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, I think that the intended sort of broader target is entrenching, enforcing and policing the sex binary through law, through political discourse, through social discourse. And that when, you know, someone comes in and the visibility of trans people is a threat to that, you know, and when our bodies complicate the simple narrative that people want to have, then the impulse is to exert massive amounts of control and invest a lot of panic and political capital, reinforcing and re-entrenching in that binary. But again, you can sort of trace it back. You know, there's many iterations of this over the

last century. And I think we're at a particularly heightened moment. But what concerns me is that if not enough people are speaking out, if not enough people are opposing this, then we are going to end up in sort of the reality where these bills pass, then they go into conservative courts. And a lot of these things are legitimized and we set ourselves back, you know, 50, 60, 70 years. I think about the fights that we're having now

for trans rights. I think about the way in which the fight for marriage equality played out and some of the earlier fights played out. And so much of the effort was devoted to demonstrating that gay people weren't a threat, that marriage equality, of course, wasn't a threat. We did it. We're fine. Here we are, society.

Well, it's not functioning right now, but you can't put that on us. No, that's not our fault. I'm taking that one. Not our fault. You know, that leaves so little space for a conversation about what gay people offer, about what they contribute, about what they not just contribute in diversity, but what they show straight people about their own identities, about their own gender, about their own notion of masculinity and femininity. What is the version of that conversation we need to be having about not just the fact that trans people deserve to be protected,

but that trans people deserve to be embraced because what they will do when they are fully part of our national debate and conversation, the world will be a better place. Yeah, I think that's such a good point. And I think one of the risks of sort of leading with law reform in any social movement is you sort of end up sort of entrenching the conservative paradigm into,

you know, beyond recognition, right? With marriage, it was like the salience of civil marriage as the centerpiece of civilization. It's like, we didn't want that.

Like, you know, in the marriage opinion, Justice Kennedy is like, you know, writing about how horrible it would be to die alone without, you know, a marital spouse. And be to die alone without, you know, a marital spouse. And that's why gay people should get married.

My mother won't leave me alone. Yeah, exactly. Like we're supposed to be like creating the radical family structures. And so and here it's like, are we going to entrench the sex binary beyond recognition by saying over and over again, you know, women who are trans are women and men who are trans are men? And yes, of course, that's true. And I think that, you know, if we're able to sort of step back and not be in constant defensive mode, that we might be able to lead with more creative strategies to talk about sort of, well, if you look through time, there's just so many examples of trans and gender expansive people sort of creating incredibly important interventions in society generally, and that perhaps what we don't just need is inclusion in what there already is,

but a transformation in what, you know, could be, and sort of breaking down our reliance on the sex binary, breaking down the ways in which we assume sex characteristics and identities based on, you know, the genitals that the doctor observes at birth. Like, let's do more than simply, you know, include us within the paradigms that are deeply harmful in many ways, whether they be marriage or the, you know, sex binary. And I think that's the challenge of being a law reform person. It's like you want to utilize the tool to increase access to, you know, social, political, and economic goods. And you want to transform the system and not entrench these problematic structures. And so I think we have to do both things. We have to push back on the violence, create more space for people to survive. We have to stop Alabama from making

it a felony for trans kids to live. And we also have to give trans people room to show, as we have forever, that we are here and that we are creating positive contributions to society and that not just in the ways that society is currently structured, but in the potential for what it could be in a more transformative sense, which also just quickly yesterday or in the Senate Judiciary hearing, Senator Cotton was talking about how trans people emerged yesterday. Part of it too is sort of reclaiming the history that, you know, queer and trans people have. Nobody emerged yesterday. And that actually sort of being more robust and fulsome about the storytelling that we do is also part of what I think the imperative for the next, you know, few years of this movement demands. To that point, you know, in the fight for gay rights,

maybe it was in some sense intentional. I think in some sense it was not to separate the conversation about orientation from gender, right? Like I am a cisgender gay man because we have decided that same-sex attraction is not included in the notion of gender stereotypes, gender archetypes. So we made that separate. And so I am a cisgender gay man. There's no real inherent logic to that. We could just as easily have included sexual attraction as being core to this notion of gender

as we think about it. And I wonder sometimes if that's not some of the reluctance of some older gay male activists who are like, wait a second, wait a second. I fought very, very hard to be a gay man. I'm not ready to give up these categories that you're trying to kind of make less salient. How do you think about it in the legal fight between fighting for access to these categories, right?

And how much of your fight is to get rid of these categories, right? And how much of your fight is to get rid of these categories, right? The legal fight seems to me geared around allowing people the freedom to choose a different part of the binary, at least legally, while culturally creating the space to get rid of it altogether. Yeah, I think that's an excellent point.

And I think there's lots of trans people who would say, we can't get rid of the categories. I haven't even been seen in the category yet. I want the category. And I think that, you know, there's so many ways to sort of theorize rights in general and the ways in which sort of in a law-based structure, rights are so often constituted around injury, injury, you know, from the dominant paradigm. And then you sort of, for political coherence, constitute yourself around that. But then in so doing, you're allowing

the dominant structure to define who you are because you have to be legible for it, for the inclusion, you know, and that's so much of advocacy is the sort of construction of identity characteristics for coherence under the law. And I think that's really challenging when you also believe those, you know, sort of core structures to themselves be problematic. Again, it's sort of this dynamic process whereby, yes, we're utilizing the law as a tool, but it can't be our only tool. Again, it's sort of this dynamic process whereby, yes, we're utilizing the law as a tool, but it can't be our only tool. And we have to sort of contend with its limitations. Talking about access to the category and self-determination is critical to

that. But if we lead with not just norms of equality, but also norms of sort of self-determination and norms of sort of bodily autonomy and desire, that then allows us sort of a more robust conversation. And U.S. law is not great when it comes to self-determination or autonomy, you know, but there are international norms that are better. And I think there are conversations to be had in the sort of cultural discourse that allow us to think about our, like, desires in terms of attraction as being constituting our understandings of our sex identity too. And that, you know, we're all part of this process whereby we're resisting the imposition of a set of norms that don't allow us to be fully realized.

The more we allow people to be fully realized and recognize that that can change over time when there are more possibilities available to us, the more we're going to see, I think, people expanding all of our notions of what we believe to be possible. And that's then going to be reflected're going to see, I think, people expanding all of our notions of what we believe to be possible. And that's then going to be reflected in our legal advocacy, I hope. The courts being what they are, the Congress being what it is, that's a serious set of limitations that we're working within. But I think we keep pushing against it and

utilizing different tools. And ironically, declaring certain aspects immutable or central, Ironically, declaring certain aspects immutable or central, unchangeable, that's the only means by which we assert in our system that we need protection because, not meaning this, but in some sense, it's, quote, not our fault. Right. Completely. Right. Yeah. And we can blame constitutional law for that, for sort of the idea that you get more protection if you can show that the characteristic you're seeking protection from discrimination based on is immutable. And I think we sort of shifted, we tried to do a little more with it is sort of the sexual orientation, discrimination litigation progressed in the marriage equality years. But there's a lot of problematic norms in the sort of recognition paradigm of legal advocacy. Yeah. And you see, I think, surprising kind of reluctance, I think, from people who really internalized the centrality and the identity and the mutability of what they were

fighting for to secure those rights and to feel that challenge is, I think, it's hard for people who we would expect to ultimately be on the right side. Yeah. It's really hard to let it go. And it makes sense. It's like, we know who we are. That's the relevant thing. It doesn't matter if we're, you know, quote unquote, born this way. We are sure of who we are. And the source of that surety is irrelevant. We should have protections regardless. Chase Strangio, it's always so good to talk to you. See you again soon. Yeah, good to see you, John. Thanks for everything. Thank you so much to Chase for joining us. When we come back, I quiz a listener about risk and some of this fear mongering about vaccines.

Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. And we're back. Odds. Human beings are very bad at assessing them. It's why we take our shoes off at the airport but don't wear helmets in cars. It's why there are people who refuse to eat non-organic food while taking Molly they got from a dude their sleaziest work friend knew in college. It's also, in a way, tangentially, sort of why, when you think about it, Superman

stops bank robberies when really he should be transporting stroke victims to the hospital. Banks are insured, and no, it's not as fun, but it's probably going to help more people because it's far more likely. Joining us today to play the game, we have Annie, listener. Hello, Annie. Hello. What part of the world are you in right now, Annie? I'm in Sacramento, California. Sacramento. Cool.

It's raining and my dog's in heat, so it's a party. Your dog's in heat. Yeah. Ew, You know, my 12 does recording, put this on the air. My 12 year old love it. My 12 year old is like, is that what happens when you have your period? It's like, we'll see. Let's put, you know what, let's put all this in the show. Why not? Um, cool. Well, uh, feel like we got a lot of information there to process as we play the game. So obviously, we're bad at understanding statistics of correlation versus causation,

and that leads to real world consequences. Last week, Denmark and Norway stopped administering the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine after a few isolated cases of blood clots. Germany and France followed. Then came Ireland and the Netherlands, Italy and Austria. Public health officials were emphatic that there's no reason to think these illnesses were caused by the vaccine and that these illnesses are more common in the greater unvaccinated population. And either way, the vaccines are smarter and safer than taking your chances with the disease currently ravaging planet Earth, Annie. Agreed. The European. So on Thursday, the European Union declared that the vaccine is safe, currently ravaging planet Earth, Annie. Agreed. So on Thursday, the European Union declared that the vaccine is safe,

but many fear that the damage has been done. So we wanted to talk about risk and risk assessment in a game we call you read one story about a guy getting decapitated by an elevator somewhere and you think about it every time you get into an elevator for like a year. All right, here's how it works. I'm going to read you a list of lightning round questions, all right, and it'll be self-explanatory. I'm just going to start. You ready?

Yes. Here we go. Are you more likely to get a blood clot from the AstraZeneca vaccine or die walking? Die walking. Yes, pedestrian death, 6,590 per year. There have been 22 reports of pulmonary embolism, a kind of blood clot among the more than

17 million people across Europe who received the AstraZeneca vaccine. Is that more or less than the annual number of pulmonary embolism events you'd find among 17 million Europeans chosen at random? Less. Less. 22 versus an estimated 16,000. What kills more people in the UK? All of the COVID-19 vaccines combined or hot tap water? Oh, hot tap water. Hot tap water. It's gruesome, but 20 people a year. I'm going to Google that now. Yeah, you make a note. We can Google it after. Are you more likely to be injured by a toilet

or to win an Oscar? Toilet. Toilet, but it's pretty close. It's pretty close. 1 in 10,000 versus 1 in 11,500. Are you more likely to die from a fall or from an elevator? Fall. Fall, that's right. It's 40,000 versus 30 per year in the U.S. Do you have a bigger risk of getting a blood clot from a COVID vaccine

or from going on an airplane? Airplane. Airplane. Long-haul flights. Annual risk of venous thromboembolism is increased by 12% in those taking one long-haul flight each year. Are you more likely to die from the COVID vaccine or drown in a barrel of wine? Uh, ooh. What do you think, Annie?

Well, COVID vax... No, that was your answer. You got it wrong. You saw my face. I don't have a poker face. I'm not. I don't host Jeopardy. They won't let me because I'm gay. So Annie, that's why I think they won't let me.

It's what it is. But no, actually it's wine because there's no evidence anyone has been killed by the COVID vaccine, but George Plantagenet, the first Duke of Clarence, allegedly died by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey after choosing that method of execution. Well, good way to go, I suppose, if you're a wine person.

I'm not really a wine person. I never understood wine. Annie, do you understand wine? I am a recovering alcoholic. I really understood wine. So you get it. You got it too well. It made too much sense.

I could die in a wine barrel. Right, for sure. For sure. What's more deadly, lawnmowers or sharks? Lawnmowers. That's right. 60 people killed by lawnmowers annually. What's more deadly dogs or trees? Trees. 94 people fall from trees versus 35 people killed or struck by dogs. You know, nobody's asking in the briefing room if they're going to cut down all the trees at the White House. But poor Major is on the block, you know, or Major. I feel really bad for Major. We've talked a lot about Major in our house lately.

Have you? Well, yes. You know, we support Major. It was strange that President Joseph Robinette Biden said that Major has an 85% approval rating in the White House because it's like, what's going on there? What's happening with that other 15%? It actually is like one of those things like, it sounds good, but then you think about it and you're like, that number should be 100%. He bit someone. He did, but it didn't even break the skin. Annie, you've won the game.

Yay! All right, you're great at assessing risk. And so you know that these vaccines are safe and that- I'm vaccinated. I'm so happy for you. Thanks. J&J, Moderna, or Pfizer? What's your-

J&J. J&J, one and done. It's what they gave me, so it's what I took. No, it's great. I would have taken anything. Well, I'm very happy for you. Thank you. Enjoy bobbing for apples or whatever it is you'll start to do again in this post-COVID world. Nothing, because I am a middle-aged Jewish mom. I am staying at home forever and doing nothing. Excuse me. Excuse me. I reject the idea that Jewish moms can't have their own, you know, eat, pray, love kind of adventures with hamantashen and what have you. I'm paying for a bat mitzvah this year. That's my travel. That's my eat, pray, love.

Okay. This is now, now we're just at my own Passover. Annie, thank you so much for joining us. When it comes to, I can't travel because I'm paying for a bat mitzvah, that's when I know the segment is over. Thank you so much. You've won the game. When we come back, we'll end on a high note. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

And we're back. Because we all need it this week, here it the high note hi love it this is megan from orlando calling in with my high note of the week i started listening to crooked media in 2017 and decided i wanted to do more i started applying to law schools and this week i got into my third law school including one that offered me a full-ride scholarship so i will be in law school, including one that offered me a Fulbright scholarship. So I will be in law school in the fall. Also, this past October, I was unfortunately laid off from my job at a very large company in Orlando. And this week, they called and offered me my job back. And I got to say no, because I now have a better paying job where I work from home and love what I'm doing. So overall, it's been a great week.

Thank you for all that you guys do. Have a great day. Hey, Lovett. This is Jonathan in McAllen, Texas. My couple of things for high notes this week that have given me a lot of hope. I finally got my appointment for my first shot for the vaccine next Wednesday. And the other one, my little boy, he is autistic, and we've had to make a lot of sacrifices to be able to pay for his therapy, including me having to work out of town a lot.

Last week when I got home, he saw me at the door and said, oh, shit, it's popped. So my son's finally becoming verbal. I, beside myself, happy. Love you, man. Thanks for everything that you guys do and for keeping us sane in this crazy world. Hi, love it. My name is Julia Allen.

My very high point for this week is that I hit five years sober. I've been trying since 2009 with a lot of fits and starts, and now I've put five years together. So I'm very hopeful about that. Thank you. Have a great day. Hey, Love It. My name is Erica, and my high note for this week is that I just submitted my senior thesis.

It's 176 pages long, and it's on the topic of voter suppression. It was actually inspired by a live taping of Love It or Leave It that I attended at Radio City Music Hall when Stacey Abrams was a special guest back in 2019. I'm so happy that my thesis is done, but I can't wait to keep fighting for voting access for all Americans. Thanks so much for all that you do. Hi there, Love It crew.

This is Bob in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I've got a wonderful high note for myself and my wife this week. We were able to actually schedule and get our first COVID-19 shot, and our second one will be in time for us to be able to go on a little fifth and sixth anniversary celebration in early May. We're really excited about that. Happy news. Love the show. Thanks. Thanks to everybody who called in.

If you want to leave us a message about something that gave you hope, you can call us at 323-521-9455. Thank you to Fortune Feimster, Chase Strangio, and everybody who called in. There are 598 days until the 2022 midterm elections. So, you know, TikTok on that. And have a great weekend. Love It or Leave It is a Crooked Media production. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett, Lee Eisenberg, Jocelyn Kaufman, Pallavi Gunalan, and Peter Miller are the writers. Our assistant producer is Sydney Rapp. Bill Lance is our editor, and Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.

Our theme song is written and performed by Sure Sure. Thanks to our designers, Jesse McClain and Jamie Skeel, for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast. Thank you.