Pod Save America - “America’s Next Top MAGA.”

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

Republicans compete to out-crazy each other over Lauren Boebert and vaccine requirements, Law Professor Leah Litman joins to talk about the Supreme Court case that may overturn Roe v. Wade, and Dr. Mehmet Oz shakes up the 2022 midterms by carpetbagging his way into the Pennsylvania Senate race.

The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun restrictions in states, overturning Roe v. Wade, and severely threatening our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Lippman, and each week on Strict Scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes of Strict Scrutiny every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Democrats try to govern while Republicans fight each other over Lauren Boebert and vaccine requirements. Law professor Leah Littman joins to talk about the Supreme Court case that may end Roe versus Wade as we know it. And Dr. Mehmet Oz shakes up the 2022 midterms by carpetbagging his way into the Pennsylvania Senate race. But first, if you're in the market for a quick, smart, hilariously written rundown of the news every night, subscribe to Crooked's What A Day newsletter at crooked.com slash newsletters. And if you're binging movies, television, and comic books over your holiday break, then don't miss out on new episodes of X-Ray Vision with Jason Concepcion.

This month, Jason will revisit the Spider-Man franchise ahead of the release of the much-buzzed-about Spider-Man No Way Home. You can catch episodes of X-Ray Vision every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to the news. We talked on Tuesday's pod about what President Biden and Democrats in Congress are focused on right now, avoiding a government shutdown and a catastrophic default, passing an economic plan that would lower costs for most people, and bringing an end to the pandemic, which Joe Biden just gave a speech about this morning, talked about providing more cheap at-home testing, more vaccinations, more boosters, etc. But today we thought we'd check in on what Republicans are up to, which is doing their

best to fuck this all up and fight culture wars so they can win the midterms. To wit, House Republicans are fighting with each other over what to do about Congresswoman Lauren Boebert suggesting that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is a terrorist because she's Muslim. And Senate Republicans are fighting with each other over whether to shut down the government unless Joe Biden stops trying to get people vaccinated. Let's start with Boebert's hateful garbage and Congresswoman Omar's response. Here's a clip. And there she is, Wilhan Omar. And I said, well, she doesn't have a backpack. We should be fine. So we only had one floor to go. And I was like, do I say it or not?

And I said, oh look, the Jihad Squad decided to show up for work today. But the most pervasive is the constant suggestion that all Muslims are terrorists and should be feared. of Congress calls a colleague member of the jihad squad and falsifies a story to suggest that I will blow up the Capitol. It is not just attack on me, but on millions of American Muslims across this country. So that was the first clip was, of course, from a fundraiser that Boebert had attended in September. She's also reportedly said it a few other times. This is something she enjoys saying because she's fucking nuts and an awful person. Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar have both been kicked off all House committees for promoting violence against Democrats. You think the same thing should happen to Boebert here?

for promoting violence against Democrats. You think the same thing should happen to Boebert here? I think we should just start out by saying how dangerous this rhetoric is, right? The Republican Party is a political party that has normalized violence as a legitimate political solution. That's what happened in the Capitol in January. That is what happened when, and we know,

and I would say, and we know that people take the words from Republican politicians and right-wing media figures and act on them. It's what happened in Texas where someone took an assault rifle to a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood because they were afraid of replacement theory, something that a lot of – that a number of Republicans, including but primarily Tucker Carlson, talk about. We saw that with the pipe bombs that a Trump supporter mailed to a group of people who also happened to be the exact same group of people that, including reporters, that Donald Trump attacks all the time. And so this is dangerous. And this is putting someone at risk. And not just Ilhan Omar, every Muslim, right? This idea that she points out that a Muslim is a terrorist is very, very dangerous and has gotten many people already hurt and killed in this country.

I think the question about the committees is complex. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have any option other than to kick her off her committees because you simply cannot allow a member of Congress to direct violence at another member of Congress without sanction. The system cannot work. And in a normal world with a normal Republican Party, this would be an overwhelmingly bipartisan move. It was only a couple of years ago that they all kicked, Republicans included, kicked Steve King, the white supremacist congressman from Iowa, off his committees. Now, a decade too late and only when he became a political problem, not because they had a moral opposition to what he was saying. But here we are. The problem – even though it's the right thing to do, I think there's a – here's the rub, which is Lauren Robert isn't a relevant human being,

but she is the picture of relevancy. In a normal world, she's just a, she's, there's something interesting about her. She's got no idea, no platform, no story. She is just a junior member of Congress. And in a normal world, she would wander the halls of Congress for a decade in anonymity until one day she was fortunate enough to chair a subcommittee, right? Like That's what her life would be. But that's not the world we live in anymore. We live in an attention economy. And what she has figured out is the way to have relevance, to have importance, have political powers to gain attention. How do you gain attention? In right-wing circles,

you do horribly outrageous and offensive things, and you're doing it for the specific purpose of provoking a response. And the harsher that response, the greater validation your action is of your importance and your relevance. And so while I think Democrats absolutely should kick her off her committees, we should do that knowing, I think knowing full well that it's not a deterrence. It's going to mean that more Republicans do what she did because this is their only path to power. And this is I mean, this is I mean, it's a sad statement about our media ecosystem, the Republican Party, but this is sort of where we are. the best way to prevent Republican politicians, Republican pundits, more and more people in the Republican Party from inciting violence against Democrats. That's what we're talking about here. And I do think that as we're trying to figure out, okay, if we're going to kick people off committees, what's a fair standard? I don't think it's calling people names or just purely

offensive language. And I don't think that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about language that incites violence. That's Marjorie Taylor Greene has uttered that kind of language. Paul Gosar, by posting an image, has tried to incite violence. And I think that the Lauren Boebert situation falls into that category as well. You know, another thing that Ilhan Omar did this week at her press conference is she played a voicemail of a death threat that she received just about an hour or two after these comments from Boebert surfaced. And when you listen to that, you realize how scary it must be for her and how scary it must be for Muslims across the country when they hear a member of Congress who has some position of

authority, even if she's quite junior, saying that all Muslims are terrorists because they're Muslim, because of their religion, which is the most anti-American thing that I can think of. And so you're right. Like, here's the thing. Republicans take the House. Are they going to kick Democrats off their committees yeah probably probably a lot more than just a few democrats they might kick them all off their committees i mean it who knows who the fuck knows but like i don't know that we can sort of change our behavior or base our behavior on what they might do i do think it's important for us to have a fair standard i think if members of congress are calling each other fucking assholes, that's probably not enough

to get them kicked off the committee. I really do. I think that we can't take it too far, but incitements of violence, yeah, that should fucking qualify. That should qualify. I mean, John, Republicans are trying to kick members of their own party off the committees for the mortal sin of supporting a bill that Mitch McConnell supports. Roads. Yeah, roads. So I'm getting the sense they're probably going to kick some Democrats off. I think you're exactly- Yeah, inciting violence by supporting roads.

Roads and bridges. Like right beneath inciting violence is supporting bipartisan roads and bridges. Those are the two things that can get you cut from your committees. So there is exhaustingly another angle to the story, which is the intra-party feud that erupted when Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace called Boebert's comments disgusting. Marjorie Taylor Greene then tweeted that Nancy Mace is trash. And Nancy Mace then called Greene batshit crazy by tweeting a bat emoji, a emoji and a clown emoji this is i'm can't i'm saying these words i can't believe i'm saying this here we are 2021 there's your political analysis for

the day it of course went on from there i believe there were some twitter dunks over a misspelling of the word your which is always a sign that you really fucking nailed someone on twitter if you're getting them over the grammatical error about your, that's always the best dunk. Kevin McCarthy met with both Republicans in a failed attempt to stop the fight, but of course still refuses to say anything publicly about Boebert's comments because he needs the support of every deranged monster in his caucus in order to become speaker.

Dan, do you have a reaction to either the emojis, the grammar mishap, or what this entire fight says about the internal dynamics of the Republican Party? Well, I would like to give you some credit first, which is because our lives are so boring. At a period, I'm sure before 6 a.m. recently, I texted you the Marjorie Taylor Greene tweet, Sure, before 6 a.m. recently, I texted you the Marjorie Taylor Greene tweet, and you said, haven't been on Twitter yet. Has everyone started dunking on her for confusing your with an apostrophe and Y-O-U-R? And then lo and behold, then we all had a good chuckle at how annoying people can be. And lo and behold, here comes Nancy Mace in her response, which I'm sure there was a whole committee of Republican staffers who worked on this to dunk on her for grammar.

And now you got her, you got her. That's it. There's nothing on this planet that would make me side with Marjorie Taylor green. If I had been in a desert for a month, I would not accept a glass of water from her. But Nancy Mace, you almost put me there by responding with the grammar dunk.

Was there something bigger here than that? There's the Kevin McCarthy of it all. Yeah, he's an impotent loser. He has no control. And this has been his... The way this played out for Kevin McCarthy is the product of how Republican leaders in the House have been doing this

since the Tea Party folks showed up in 2010. John Boehner catered to these people. Paul Ryan catered to these people. Kevin McCarthy became Speaker only because he proved himself the most willing to appease the most extreme flank of the party. And so this is why the tail always wags the dog of the party. Kevin McCarthy is a caretaker of this crazy caucus. Nothing more, nothing less. You know, Marjorie Taylor green said the other day,

um, we're not the fringe of the party. We're the base. And she's right. Yeah. Totally agree with Marjorie Taylor green. My God, this is almost,

this is one and a half agreement with Marjorie Taylor green, but it's like, I do think not to dive back into the Virginia results. We're not going to do that, but like I have that later. So it's good. I do think not to dive back into the Virginia results. We're not going to do that. But like, I have that for later. So it's good. Okay, good. What Glenn Young can pulled off there, I do not think will be easy for the party as a

whole. Like, and look, voting is different than internal Republican Party dynamics within the house, of course. But like, Kevin McCarthy is going to do whatever it takes to keep these people happy. The Marjorie Taylor Greene's and the Lauren Boebert's and all and the Paul Gosar's and all the crazy in his caucus, because otherwise he will lose his job or he'll lose his chance to become speaker if Republicans take the House. And you know what that means? That means we'll get an even crazier leader. We've been saying this for a while. We lost John Boehner. We got

Paul Ryan, who was further right. We lost Paul Ryan. We got Kevin McCarthy, who was further right. We lose Kevin McCarthy. I mean're just we're we're on an inevitable path until Marjorie Taylor Greene is fucking speaker here or Trump so can't forget that right and so I think what it says about that is like you see people like Nancy Mace and and good for Nancy Mace for going after Lauren Boebert on this and standing her ground like I applaud that but what does that mean it probably means Nancy Mace is going to get a primary challenge. And if she doesn't, she's still probably going to be, you know, marginalized within the caucus, much like Liz Cheney has been or Adam Kinzinger, who's now retiring, right? Like this is just,

you might get a few exceptions here and there that stand up to these people, but they're going to be marginalized or they're going to be beaten in a primary eventually. It's just, that's not, that's not where the party is headed. Yeah. In the Republican Party, you're either siding with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump or you're auditioning for a cable job on MSNBC. Those are the two things. How should Democrats handle these divisions aside from watching with a mix of amusement and horror? Well, it's been a long year john 2021 has not been great is it 2021 i thought it was still 2020 i feel like we've been stuck in 2020 for five years now i mean whatever year it

is it's not an awesome year it's almost over which i can't really believe can we just like have some fun here do we have to like spin this into some bigger strategic conversation and just we definitely don't no we definitely don't. I mean, but I mean, that's probably people probably don't tune in for us to just have our own personal therapy. But ultimately, what Democrats have to do with this and what and I'm sure everyone wants to do with it is to use all like all of these things, a series of data points of Republicans being out of the mainstream, irresponsible, extreme, dishonest, crazy, whatever it is you want to use to paint a picture of a party that cannot be allowed anywhere near control of government again. And sort of one way to think about it is we have been living for a long time now in a state of chaos. All the Trump presidency was was chaos then we had a pandemic

and now it feels like we're just swerving from crisis to crisis and some of that is real like we're like before we started recording this you and i were talking about like the latest tweets we've read about omicron or omicron or however you pronounce it and we're just gonna keep we're just gonna keep mispronouncing it just despite the variant. Yeah, that's right. That'll show it. Your. Your. Yeah. Cool. And Biden won in part because he was seen as a person to manage that crisis, right? And I think there is a way to which you can probably, this has to be fine-tuned, but you can, if you want normalcy and steadiness and end of the pandemic and an end to inflation and end to whatever else, that this group of people is not the people are going to help you get that.

I think that there's a chance to at least use some of these things to tell that story. Also, if you look back at 2020, we had the conversation that we always talked about how Trump was different than the Republican Party and that he was much worse. And one of the things that might have done is given some voters permission to say, OK, I want to vote against Trump, but I want to vote again. I want to vote for Republicans in Congress. And I do think that holding up more of these Republicans in Congress and elsewhere in the country, other elected officials that are Republicans, some of the crazier ones as proof points as to why it's not just Trump, but it's the entire party and actually

showing what Boebert and Green and Gosar are doing and making them the faces of the Republican Party, which, as Marjorie Taylor Greene said, they're the base, not the fringe. Like, let's show people why that is. And I do think that's probably important to communicate to voters in the in the next few years. to communicate to voters in the next few years. Meanwhile, in the Senate, Republicans Mike Lee, Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson want to shut down the government unless Democrats agree to defund President Biden's vaccine requirement. All 50 Republican senators oppose the vaccine requirement, but most of them don't think it's worth a shutdown. Some of them telling Politico it would,

quote, reflect poorly on their party. They all fought about this during their caucus lunch on Wednesday. Louisiana Senator John Kennedy told reporters Mitch did not say a word. He ate his chicken. He ate two pieces. Why do you think Mitch was so quiet and not that hungry? I do not believe this story. You think he had more than two bites? No, I think he was a real.

You think he really went after that chicken? No, I think he drank the chicken's blood. two bites. No, I think he was a real, you think he really went after that chicken? No, I think he drank the chicken's blood. I'm just going to beat these Mitch McConnell vampire of democracy jokes into the ground for at least the rest of 2021. Again. Yeah. He was a turtle. Then he was an old crow. Now he's a vet. We're just sort of all over the place. I can't even, we can't even fucking get a message on Mitch McConnell, let alone the Republican Party. Why do you think we can't win elections against a party personified by Marjorie Jelligreen? I mean, Mitch McConnell obviously knows that this is a doomed effort. They would make, obviously make the party look bad because vaccine mandates are popular.

The Politico Morning Consult poll, which tracks this, the support for vaccine mandates has, they test a whole series of them about where people would accept mandates. Government employees, majority support. Employers, majority support. Businesses, majority support. It has majority support. And so shutting down the government over something that is not popular is never a great idea. And it's not going to end with the end of the vaccine mandate. It's just going to end with Republicans looking bad over a period of time. And so he's trying to avoid a bunch of Ted Cruz types from forcing that situation from happening. The last morning consult poll that asked voters about this question, it was November 10th.

So it wasn't that long ago. Only 39% of voters do not think that vaccines should be required for employees of businesses with at least 100 workers, federal contractors or health care workers. 30% of Republicans support it. So I will say, you know, by the time you're all listening to this, either Thursday evening or Friday, Biden just told reporters that he talked to Schumer and McConnell and there will be no shutdown over this quote unless somebody decides to act totally erratic

hey man have you met the Senate Republican caucus you got fucking Ted Cruz in there Mike Lee who knows so I don't know I mean it looks like they may avoid it but all it takes is one loony tune Republican senator to gum up the works there are a handful of those

so there are a handful of those so There are a handful of those, so we will see what happens. We'd be remiss if we didn't mention the story from yesterday here that former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows' upcoming memoir reveals that Donald Trump tested positive for COVID three days before his debate with Joe Biden, a time period in which he exposed his staff, reporters, gold star families, and everyone at the debate to a deadly illness. What a cool guy. What a cool guy.

This story has outraged many people, rightly so, myself included. What do we even do with this information? We write it down. We pin it on a board. We put it on the mirror, we get it tattooed somewhere, memento style. And we remember that every time we're annoyed at Joe Manchin or Joe Biden hasn't delivered on this promise or that, or we're frustrated and sick of politics, that this guy is looming in the wings to be the next president of the United States in a few years. We never forget that. He's a frontrunner. Frontrunner for the nomination. He's almost a lock.

It's not about looking backwards. It's not about what happened in the past. This is the guy who wants to be the next president. Yeah. Most likely. And what he did was knowingly expose people to a deadly disease is what he did including his his political opponent and and and gold star military families who he blamed for potentially giving him covet yeah that's the underwritten part was he knew he already had covet when he met with them and

blamed them anyway because they wanted to hug and kiss me. And he had fucking COVID. The man is, I don't think he's a good person. I don't think he's a good person. I do not think so. Well, we've talked a lot about how Democrats should focus on defining the Republican Party head of the midterms. How would you weave everything we've just covered

from Boebert to Green to Mace to the vaccine requirements to trump giving people is there any way to weave that into some kind of coherent narrative about the republican party aside from the fact that they're all fucking nuts which i don't know if uh maybe that yeah i mean that is super coherent it's believable i don't know if disengaged swing voters will buy that but i think you know it's a start maybe If you expose them to this information, they just might. I mean, I think we talked many years ago about potential frames for running against Trump pre-pandemic. And one of the ones that we talked about was chaos and corruption.

Because we looked at a lot of focus groups, which showed that what drove people crazy was the constant chaos, the tweeting. He was always in our face. And then when that was magnified by a deadly pandemic and a historic, gigantic, immediate recession that brought the cost of that before us. And I think there is something about chaos in the Republican Party. And maybe it's not we need this like super snappy paragraph tested message that focused on one of them, more just the idea of Republicans have branded Democrats not with some specific slogan, a way in which they, you know, the sort of, they've just thrown a bunch of stuff out there that buttressed a narrative that made some voters think Democrats were out of touch and not American.

And so is there something we can do that is chaotic, incompetent, and dangerous? Something like that. That sort of, we're going to just constantly see these data points because people aren't reading the stories, watching the long segment on CNN or the NBC News. They're just seeing a bunch of stuff. And do we have the capacity to elevate enough things that give people this broader emotional response to the Republican Party that is negative? Yeah. One of the challenges, I think, is the chaos in these last couple years, or ever since Joe Biden has become president, is not necessarily only from the Republican Party.

It's from sort of external circumstances in the world, the pandemic, the economic challenges, inflation, et cetera, not caused by Biden and the Democrats, but it's out there. And I wonder if, I mean, what is true? We talked about this a little on Tuesday's pod, but what is true about the Republicans? What's true about them right now is that they hate Democrats more than they care about the country, that they only want to fight for themselves and their own power and not fight for the actual people who they're supposed to represent in this country, be them Democrats or Republicans. And they're wasting time, you know, in fights, yelling at people, inciting violence. They're trying to like stop people from being protected by vaccines. All of this shit just so that they can like hold on to power and own the libs.

That's basically why it seems like they want to have power as opposed to what Joe Biden and the Democrats are doing, which is fighting as hard as they can to fix all of these problems. And they aren't fixed yet, and nothing's perfect, and we're not there yet. But at least voters can know that Biden and Democrats are focused on these problems and focused on fixing them, while the Republicans are only focused on trying to win. So, you know, there are two ways in which this plays out. One is inflation gets better, economy strengthens even more, pandemic gets behind us by the time people start voting next fall. And then it is, do you want normalcy or do you want to be taken back to what we had before? Do you want to take the car out, put the car back in the ditch?

Please don't start. Please don't start. Something that is relevant to no one. Or things are still bumpy and tumultuous and turbulent. Maybe that's some pandemic. Maybe it's some other thing that's happening in the world. And if the world is on fire, do you want to hire a bunch of arsonists to be in charge? Right? That's sort of how you're thinking about it. That's right.

And I think we don't – like these are all – these aren't knowable propositions, but there's a lot more information we can learn based on changing circumstances on the ground and talking to voters about what they're actually looking for. And ultimately, all of this is about trying to make it some sort more of a choice and less of a referendum when people go to the polls, which is actually more possible than people think because of polarization. We could certainly benefit here from some quantitative data, polling, qualitative data, focus groups qualitative data, focus groups. Again, focus groups are different than polls. They just get you, they give you a little more context,

a little more richness to what people are actually talking about, and then you match them up. I'm going to use my gut in Twitter to substitute for those things. Yeah, that's fine too. That's fine too. It's either the best social science we have available,

even though it's not perfect and can be wrong, or your gut in the Twitter comments. Either one, totally. They're both the same. They're both the same. When we come back, Dan will talk to Professor Leah Lippman about the Supreme Court oral arguments in the Mississippi abortion case that happened this week. Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a major case that will determine the future of abortion rights in the United States. Joining us now to break down what happened

is Michigan Law School professor and co-host of the podcast, Strict Scrutiny, Leah Littman. Leah, welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me. So a lot of the commentary and reporting from folks who observed the arguments yesterday was quite pessimistic about the future of Roe. What was your take on what happened? Roe is going to end. The only question is when and how. There's no question that the Supreme Court is going to uphold the Mississippi statute, which prohibits abortions more than 15 weeks after a person's last period. And if and when they uphold that statute, they will be eviscerating the core of the protections in Roe versus Wade. Roe held that states cannot prohibit women before viability, before the point

at which a fetus is viable outside of the womb from deciding to have an abortion. And Mississippi's statute concededly prohibits abortions before viability. So no matter whether the Supreme Court issues the words Roe versus Wade is overruled, they will be eviscerating the protections of that decision when they uphold the Mississippi statute. Now, I think a lot of people thought the Supreme Court was going to try to avoid issuing the words Roe versus Wade is overruled because they didn't want to provoke backlash. But it's not clear that the conservative justices actually care about that. I think they are comfortable enough with their position of power that five of them might pull the trigger in this case.

So because there had been, as you point out, there's been a lot of discussion about a world in which Roe is eviscerated but not overturned, much as they have done with the Voting Rights Act over a long period now. Were they to go the route of eviscerating but not overturned, much as they have done with the Voting Rights Act over a long period now. Were they to go the route of eviscerated but not overturning, what would that look like? How could you even have the pretext of upholding Mississippi and claiming that that is consistent with Roe or Casey? So Sam Alito et al. have said a lot of ridiculous things. So they could certainly issue an opinion under the pretense of we're upholding Roe while also invalidating the Mississippi statute. And here's what that would look like.

They would say we're not formally overruling Roe versus Wade and saying that women have no liberty interest whatsoever in deciding to obtain an abortion. But what they would do is erase what is called the viability line. And the viability line was the core of the protection in Roe that the Supreme Court reaffirmed in 1992 in Planned Parenthood versus Casey. And what those decisions said was before viability, before the point at which the fetus is viable outside the womb, the woman must have the ultimate decision about whether to end her pregnancy via an abortion. And if the Supreme Court erases the viability line, then it would be opening the floodgates for states to prohibit

abortions earlier and earlier because they would be removing the clear line that they had established in previous cases beyond which states couldn't go. And so then all of a sudden the question would be, well, at what point before 15 weeks can states prohibit abortion? And states have tried to prohibit abortions after 10 weeks from a person's last period, 12 weeks, eight weeks, six weeks in the case of Texas. And once the Supreme Court erases the viability line and says states can prohibit some number of abortions before viability, then all of a sudden, we don't know at what point states can prohibit abortions. And so it would just be open season

on abortion access. And so let's say Roe is either overturned or this case is upheld, And so let's say Roe is either overturned or this case is upheld and the viability line is erased. What is that? How does that go into effect? How are people affected around the country? Who is impacted immediately? Does it matter where you live? Help explain sort of, it's been 50 years we've been living under this reality. How does that change theoretically potentially the day after this ruling? So there are two ways in which this will immediately affect people. One is many states have on the books what are called trigger laws, laws that say if and when Roe versus Wade is overruled, we criminalize abortion with limited exceptions. So if the Supreme Court issues an opinion that overrules Roe versus Wade, all of a sudden those laws would go into effect and abortion access would be dramatically curbed. And second, even if they don't formally overrule Roe, but they say states

can prohibit abortions at some points before viability, then all of the laws that had previously been invalidated because they prohibited abortions before viability, all of a sudden states would seek to try and reopen those cases and get courts to say, maybe you can enforce those laws after all. So this would be a problem in red states, but it would also be a problem in purple states where you have heavily gerrymandered state legislatures. And so those legislatures aren't going to repeal the trigger laws that are on the books or the restrictive abortion laws that would all of a sudden possibly be allowed to come back. And so many, many people in many different states will be immediately affected. Obviously, the people who will be most in danger are poor women who lack the socioeconomic resources to, on a dime, just go to

another state where abortion is legalized, and younger women who might not know they are pregnant, people who are using contraception for the first time and contraception fails. I mean, all of these groups who are historically disadvantaged and have fewer resources are going to be the ones who immediately feel the effects of this decision. And just to make sure I understood this correctly, if a state had passed a law that had been struck down, do they have to pass it again? So it's actually unclear. There will be litigation about whether states would be allowed to enforce a law that had been effectively what's called enjoined or the states were prohibited from enforcing for a long period of time.

And if that law hadn't been enforced, you know, had been laying dormant for, let's say, 50 years since Roe was decided, there will be some arguments that it would be unfair or potentially violate due process for states to all of a sudden bring it back and start prosecuting people. But formally, states could seek to enforce those laws without actually reenacting them. In both in the discussions around the changes in Supreme Court, the Texas law, the Mississippi law, there has been a push at the federal level to try to pass a federal law that would be, as I think is sometimes, I believe, incorrectly described as enshrining the principles of Roe. I reckon, just I want to stipulate for our listeners that there are a lot of problems

that mostly involve Joe Manchin and the filibuster to get such a law passed. But just from a theoretical perspective, is that now out the window as a solution if Roe is overturned or eviscerated? How would that law interact with this, if at all? So formally, overruling Roe would not eliminate Congress's ability to enact some protections for abortion access. Realistically, however, if this court is actually willing to overrule Roe versus Wade, I think people need to be prepared for the possibility that they are also more than willing to invalidate any federal legislation that a Democratic Congress and Democratic president would sign that would try to safeguard abortion access. So the arguments that the conservative justices were throwing around at argument yesterday were so outlandish and so outrageous. It kind of suggests that basic

logic, basic precedent, basic respect for institutional legitimacy are not really constraining them. And they feel emboldened to pursue the conservative anti-abortion agenda, law, reason, facts, women's health, dignity, notwithstanding. So formally, overruling Roe wouldn't limit Congress's ability to enact abortion protections, but realistically, this court will find other legal avenues to limit Congress's ability to safeguard abortion access, whether that's limiting Congress's power to enact legislation under the 14th Amendment or other constitutional provisions. Was there anything in particular that stood out to you from the arguments or the lines of questioning from the justices that you found particularly outrageous or alarming or interesting?

drop off children at police stations or firehouses actually eliminated the need for Roe versus Wade because they could, you know, remove the obligations of parenting and, you know, undergoing the emotionally and like physically grueling processes of childbirth and pregnancy were somehow not meaningful to her if they could just put the children up for adoption. were somehow not meaningful to her if they could just put the children up for adoption. She seemed to envision a world in which, you know, every kind of adoption ended like the ending of Juno, you know, singing happy songs with Michael Cera and that the pregnancy was just not significant. And, you know, that moment was, I think, very astonishing, especially given that women in Mississippi face something like over 70 times greater a medical or health risk from delivering a child than from having a pre-viability abortion. You know, those medical risks seem to be meaningless to her. And, you know, many women will lack health insurance coverage

for the medical costs associated with pregnancy that too seem to be meaningless. Women are not entitled to paid family leave either at the federal level nor in Mississippi specifically so they could lose their jobs while they complete an unwanted pregnancy and undergo forced childbirth

and all of these costs seem to be completely de minimis to her. In fact, in her question, she equated those interests and women's interests in bodily autonomy with the bodily autonomy for not getting a vaccine. The idea that it's an equal infringement to have a life-saving shot, you know, jabbed into your arm that it is to undergo, you know, nine months of unwanted pregnancy, it was astonishing. And she did that not once, but twice. So that was definitely one, I think, very alarming moment. And then there were other moments when some of the justices suggested that maybe they should and would regard fetuses as persons or people, in which case Congress would definitely

lack the authority to protect abortion rights. But it wasn't clear five justices were on board with that notion. Leah, thank you so much for joining us and helping us understand this very disturbing hearing in the very scary future that may be before us. Of course. All right, before we go, we want to talk about some developments in the 2022 Senate map. Gerrymandering has made holding the House quite a challenge for Democrats. But if the political environment improves, we may not just hold our Senate majority. We may actually be able to grow it by flipping some Republican-held seats, the most likely of which is the one held by retiring Senator Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania. This week, the race to replace him got a bit more crowded when celebrity physician and longtime New Jersey resident Dr. Oz announced

that he's running in the Republican primary. Dr. Oz spent years pushing phony weight loss supplements on his television show before pivoting to COVID quackery as a Fox News contributor, where he pushed hydroxychloroquine and said things like this. First, we need our mojo back. Let's start with things that are really critical to the nation where we think we might be able to open without getting into a lot of trouble. I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing that the opening of schools may only cost us two to three percent in terms of total mortality. And, you know, that's any life is a life lost. But to get every child back into a school where they're safely being educated, being fed

and making the most out of their lives with a theoretical risk on the back side it might be a trade-off some folks would consider you know the best way to get our mojo back kill some kids that'll do it dr ross i mean that i listened to that a couple times and i was like what did he really he apparently apologized for that later did you remember this i Twitter outrage? I remember this very well. Look, there's 25 Twitter outrages a day. I can't keep track of all of them. That was 2020. It was the heyday of Twitter.

We were outraged about everything all the time. Not that it's improved. But yeah, that was bad. That was bad. And by the way, we have talked about COVID in schools here. This was not like, okay, cases are down we have vaccines we have good ventilation we have great testing and now we'll be able to open schools safely for kids to make sure that they're in class and not just remote it was not that debate this was like height of

the pandemic let's open up the schools and see what happens. Two to three percent mortality. What? So he announced his candidacy with a statement in the Washington Examiner, as one does, where he focused mostly on the pandemic, writing, quote, elites with yards told those without yards to stay inside where the virus was more likely to spread. And the arrogant, closed minded people in charge closed our parks, shuttered our schools, shut down our businesses, and took away our freedom. What do you think of Dr. Oz as a primary candidate and a potential general election candidate in Pennsylvania? I would note that you could summarize his entry in this race as celebrity New Jersey resident announces for Pennsylvania Senate in Washington, D.C. paper. Yeah, there is that. I think I really have no idea how this will play out in the Republican primary. That field is still shaping up a little bit now that Sean Parnell, Trump's chosen candidate, is out of it. It's very hard to predict what Republican voters will do. But I think as a general election

matter, Democrats should absolutely not dismiss this candidacy. He is incredibly famous. And famous in a Trump-like way, where he is famous for- In the good way, the politically beneficial way for him and for Trump. Yeah, the way of Trump before this, which is he is associated in the minds of millions and millions of Americans who have been watching him for years with expertise, medical expertise, while running for Senate in a pandemic. That is going to be a very powerful thing. And lots – sometimes we look at these things and we're like celebrity candidates tend to flame out, right? candidates tend to flame out, right? And you look at General Wes Clark, who ran for president, an array of people like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina and others who were – but being – there is a special kind of famous person who was very good at running for president. And those are

famous people who are famous largely for being famous. That is what Donald Trump was. People who were good at being famous, because being a person whose business and livelihood is based on maintaining their fame is someone who is very skilled at maintaining the public attention. And that's really what politics is in this day and age. I'm not saying he's going to win. There are some very good candidates on the Democratic side. Being from New Jersey is definitely not an asset when running for Pennsylvania, for Senate Pennsylvania. But I think we shouldn't dismiss it because he comes into this with a real brand and name ID that could, you know, could give it, particularly in what is likely to be a good Republican year, a very, very legitimate shot at this. I think we have learned by now that there is a rather large constituency for con men,

TV hosts who rage against the establishment, which is what he does. I mean, like you said, people are going to remember him from he became famous first on the Oprah Winfrey show. People trust Oprah quite a bit. He's on a lot of mainstream like morning shows before, aside from his own television show. So there is probably a level of trust that a lot of Americans have in him. I mean, it does give me a lot of Donald Trump on The Apprentice vibes. Yeah. Where much of the country were big fans of The Apprentice and that's how they knew Donald Trump. And Donald Trump did not seem extreme to them. He seemed like maybe an asshole, but he didn't seem extreme to them while he was

the host of the apprentice right and i think people probably see a good chunk of people probably see dr oz that way and i will also say that he has a message about the pandemic that may unfortunately resonate with a lot of people who are tired of the pandemic and i wish people weren't and And but like, you know, talking about closures and what's done to people as we head into year two of the pandemic with potentially another variant that's going to cause us trouble. And you have him running around there talking about pretending to be an expert, talking about why this or that, you know, non-pharmaceutical intervention is wrong or this or that vaccine is wrong or whatever else it may be.

Like, you know, I totally agree that Democrats should take it seriously. I do wonder, like, how a Democrat would approach Dr. Oz and his message in this race. Do you have any thoughts on that? I mean, it's going to depend a little bit on who the nominee is and how they do it. I think Carpetbagger is a has always been a relatively successful strategy. Oftentimes it's not work as well on famous people. Robert Kennedy, New York, Hillary Clinton in New York. Maybe it's New York specific.

I don't know. Um, but I think you're going to want to make him seem not serious, not, um, in it for the right reasons. And it's going to like almost in some ways, your best candidate is going to be someone like he's not running against Bob Casey, but Bob Casey would sort of be the perfect person to run against Dr. Oz because it is someone who is serious and can run counter to that sort of celebrity. And you could, it's going to be interesting to see. I imagine a, the immediate instinct of a lot of democratic operatives is going to be to try to say he's just like Trump. And I think that's going to

be a lot harder to do than people think. Um, I think that's correct. I think you have to look, he, one of the times we've seen him in the public eye before COVID was in 2014 in front of a Senate committee when he got a lot of criticism, you know, as he should have for pushing't really make you lose weight. And I think working to, at least at the beginning, expose him as someone who's put his own financial gain before the public's health is important. Exposing him as a fraud, exposing him as a con man is probably going to be, especially a con man from out of state, you know, a con man from out of state who like that's going to be probably, I think, easier to do and maybe more effective than just calling him a Trumpy extremist. Yeah. I think calling people Trumpy extremists is not going to be probably, I think, easier to do and maybe more effective than just calling him a Trumpy extremist. Yeah. I think calling people a Trumpy extremist is not going to be a particularly successful message. Unless they are, unless it's like Lauren Bovert, unless it's Marjorie Taylor Greene, right? Like it might work for some people, but you just have to

know who the person is and you can't over-exaggerate the traits of the person that you're running again. I think that's been the problem. Yeah, there's something that I dug into in the message box a few weeks ago that I think is a longer conversation we can have is, it is really interesting to compare how Gavin Newsom used Trump against Larry Elder and how Terry McAuliffe used Trump against Glenn Youngkin. Now, Elder and Youngkin are very different, but- But that's the point. Right. I mean, it is the point, but they're also, and obviously it's going to work better on someone

like Larry Elder than Glenn Youngkin. But there was more nuance to the message, which was they used Trump as an example to show that Larry Elder was extreme, not to just say he is Trump, right? Glenn, like it's a difference between using Trumpism as an effort of using the, making them part of this extreme thing you're comfortable with and just saying you are the person, right? Just Glenn Trump game, right?

Nuance and subtlety, while lost arts in our political debate today are still important for political campaigns. Yeah, don't treat voters like they're idiots. And no, and Terry McAuliffe has never been accused of uh subtlety subtlety nor has many of the clinton campaigns to be frank okay then just just saying that's sort of what they do it's a tough rapid it's a tough rapid response world over there and they just sort of hit everything with the hammer it's just something to be something to be mindful of something to be mindful of. Trump hasn't made an endorsement in Pennsylvania since the last candidate he backed dropped out

over allegations of child abuse. That was Sean Parnell that you mentioned. But he has endorsed a slew of Trumpy Senate candidates with so far mixed results. Herschel Walker is currently leading in Georgia by a wide margin and he's leading in fundraising. But in Alabama, Congressman Mo Brooks is being outraised by Katie Britt. In Alaska, Kelly Chewbacca is nearly 20 points behind Lisa Murkowski. Ted Budd is polling behind Pat McGrory in North Carolina. And Blake Masters is polling behind Mark Brnovich in Arizona. Those are all Trump backed candidates. What's your take on this? Too early, or is it possible that the Republican Party is not as enamored with Trump as we think?

A little bit of both, probably. I think the takeaway you can have from this and from some of the other special elections we've had, where either Trump's candidate has performed less well than you thought or not won the primary, is that as it stands and sort of contrary to the public wisdom is Trump is neither kingmaker nor kingbreaker. His endorsement is not enough to give someone, no matter how bad a candidate they are, to sort of push them in office as it was when he was president. He destroyed candidacies by endorsing people's opponents. He put Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis in office by endorsing them. But I think he is less influenced now. And that's impartially related to he's out of office, but also he's out of the even, you know, maybe for the like if you're a Fox viewer, you only see a little bit about Trump. You have to be like deep in OAN and Newsmax to get a lot of Trump in your life. So for the broader Republican Party electorate, Trump is not really, he is also in the

background. Even if they want him to come back to the foreground, he is not dominating their lives and perhaps their decision-making process here. Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. He's just, it's too early and Trump's been too, I don't want to say he's been too quiet because he can't shut up, but people haven't heard from him as much because of his, the lack of Twitter account there and the fact that he's just not out there enough. So a lot of Republican primary voters probably don't know which candidate Trump has backed if you get a call from a pollster right now. Some of these races are, of course, a proxy battle between Trump's preferred candidates and McConnell's preferred candidates. Who are we supposed to root for there? I think there is a natural sense from a lot of people that we would much prefer

the MAGA Fox News candidate to win the primary because they will be therefore easier to beat. And I don't think that is always the case. In some cases, it very well may be. Depends on the candidate. Depends on the place. And because one of the things we have to recognize is sort of look at this, you're like, well, Glenn Youngkin won and he was not a quote unquote Trumpy candidate. What Glenn Youngkin was, in addition, I think being a relatively skilled candidate and a very adept liar in a lot of ways, is he was an outsider. And in many cases, and he was an outsider running

against the ultimate insider in Terry McAuliffe. And so in some cases, the Trump-backed MAGA candidate is going to be so out of the mainstream that it's going to be harder for them to win. In some cases, the person you're going to run against is the person who is more closely associated with Mitch McConnell and the Republican establishment, because Mitch McConnell, less popular than Trump. Not popular. Republican Party, less popular than Trump. And people who have been associated with mainstream Republican policies for cutting, been voting to cut taxes for the rich and pay for it by cutting Medicare and Social Security, those people may be in some cases easier to beat.

Just because there's this thing as we see these like super MAGA friendly, like Ted Budd has one that we did on Campaign Experts React a while back, like intro videos where they, when they announce their candidacy or like these people are nuts because they're packing guns and they're driving pickup trucks and they're you know, they're smashing a TV with CNN on it or whatever, right? All this insane. And we're like, these people are nuts, run against them. But that may, we should, it may be that that is a better message than we think, or that it is, that person may be a little bit harder to beat than the other person in that state who's a more traditional Republican politician. I think I agree with that.

And I'll just add to go back to what we said about Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's not really about who you're rooting for. It's about making the most, again, highlighting the most extreme people in their party and making them the face of the Republican Party. And that it's important that voters know who the Republican Party is in 2021. And it's not just Trump that they may dislike, but a lot of other people who have equally abhorrent positions as Trump. All politics is national. That's right. Last question. One of the key Senate races we have to win is in Georgia, where Reverend Raphael Warnock will run for

reelection. This week, Stacey Abrams jumped into the race for governor. Here's a clip from her announcement video. Leadership that knows how to do the job. Leadership that doesn't take credit without also taking responsibility. Leadership that understands the true pain folks are feeling and has real plans. That's the job of governor, to fight for one Georgia, our Georgia. And now it's time to get the job done. Man, it's nice to get some good political news, huh? Do you think it helps Warnock to be on the ticket with Abrams? And in general, what do you think about her chances and her announcement video? It absolutely helps to be on the ballot with Stacey Abrams. Like that's sort of a question

that answers itself, but it's going to, you're taking both, I mean, Warnock and Abrams, who ran incredible races, one in 2018 and one in 2020, and did an amazing job in not just turning out Democratic voters, but actually having more broad-based appeal than people would suspect, and doing it across the state of Georgia, right? Reducing some of the margins or increasing Democratic turnout in rural parts of the state. So absolutely, having them both on the ballot is going to help both of them. I think that is great. I thought that that intro video was incredibly interesting, and it made me think about something that our old friend David Axelrod used to say back in 2008. Remember when things would be – we'd be flying high and –

I knew you were going to say that. Low to the ground. Yeah. I mean that's what Axelrod would always say. Sometimes we would do these big rallies and huge iconic videos and ads and Axelrod would say we have to get low to the ground because people vote ran this grassroots, no frills campaign and since then has become an icon in Democratic. So she was a resistant celebrity. She is supported by Oprah and she was rightly credited along with a lot of other really important organizers who helped win Georgia and make Joe Biden president and do all of these things. I mean, she has written a number one bestselling crime novel in the period. And so how do you get back to your roots? How do you swerve against that celebrity,

which anyone who has talked to Stacey Abrams knows she's not super comfortable with? That's not who she is. And this video went very far out of the way to be Stacey Abrams, the person, Stacey Abrams, the organizer, Stacey Abrams, the state legislator, and not Stacey Abrams, the liberal icon or Democratic icon, I guess. I thought it was a masterclass in what Democratic messaging should be, that video. I think, you know, in one scene, she's saying a prayer. In another, she's talking about rural Georgia. She's talking about one georgia she's talking about one georgia and unifying people and these are messages that you would not necessarily associate with liberals on

twitter or resistance heroes but it's not that it's not just that she has sort of she hasn't i don't think she's reframed a message just for this race no when you talk to tase abrams this is her style of politics and has been forever. And it's one of the reasons that I've always really admired progressive politicians who've come up in red states. Because they understand that to win in those states or even to come close to winning in those states, you do have to spend most of your time talking about how you're going to materially improve people's lives. That's what they care about. They don't actually care about all the fucking things that we fight about on Twitter or talk about in the national discourse

all the time. They care about how are you going to improve my life? And she has always been squarely focused on that and not just in her voter registration efforts that she's been leading for the last several years. But the other thing she's done is, you know, she's been out in Georgia trying to get people vaccinated and trying to fight against vaccine hesitancy by going like door to door and making sure that people who are hesitant to take the vaccine are getting vaccinated, not yelling about it, not screaming about it, just like trying to improve that situation, improve people's lives. And I think if she can sort of detach herself from the national debate as much as possible and really focus on Georgia and Georgians and how she's going to improve their lives, she'll do quite well in what is going to be, as we know, an incredibly difficult environment. Do I wish she was running in 2018 again? Yeah, of course. Like she's facing a lot of headwinds in 2022, just like most Democrats are. So I think it's going to be harder than when she ran in 2018, even though she's more experienced. But I'm glad that she's doing it. Absolutely. All right. Well, that is all the time we have

for today. Thank you to Professor Leah Lippman for joining us And everyone have a great weekend and we'll talk to you next week. Bye, everyone. is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse, and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerard,

Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montooth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.