Pod Save America - “Elder Abuse.”

Episode Date: September 9, 2021

An awful August gives way to a shitshow of a September in Washington, NYU Law Professor Melissa Murray is back to talk about what’s next in the legal battle for reproductive rights, and with just a few days left until the California recall, the stakes are enormous in the race between Governor Gavin Newsom and right-wing radio host Larry Elder.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, an awful August gives way to a shit show of a September in Washington. NYU law professor Melissa Murray is back to talk about what's next in a legal battle for abortion rights. And with just a few days left until the California recall, we'll talk about what might happen if Gavin Newsom is replaced with the founding and only member of the Stephen Miller fan club, right-wing radio host Larry Elder. Only member of the Stephen Miller fan club, right wing radio host Larry Elder. And just a reminder for all you California voters before we get started. The only way to block a Republican takeover of California is to vote no on question one. Should Governor Newsom be recalled? If you're registered, you should have received your ballot in the mail. You can mail it back or drop it off at a drop box before 8 p.m. on Election Day, which is Tuesday, September 14th.

Make your plan to do it ASAP and tell your friends. You can also vote in person early or on Election Day and register the same day to vote in certain locations. Just visit votesaveamerica.com slash California to learn more. just visit votesaveamerica.com slash california to learn more as always the law requires me to let you know that what i just said was not authorized by a candidate or a committee controlled by a candidate it was authorized by me john favreau political has-been that's it that's the only person who authorized that all right let's um let's get to the news after a peaceful relaxing august where the white house got to kick back and enjoy the final days of summer. Here's what's on tap for the fall. A pandemic that's still raging, an economy that's still recovering, a climate that's drowning and burning cities all over the country.

Thousands of Afghan refugees who need our help, a government that may run out of money and breach a debt ceiling that could trigger a global economic meltdown, a Republican Party that's becoming more fascist by the day, and a Democratic Party that can't do much of anything without approval from a houseboat resident who represents a state that's about half the size of Los Angeles. Did I miss anything? Did I get it all? You missed something. What is that? The eviction moratorium.

And the unemployment benefits, too, that have expired. Yeah. OK. It's even worse than you thought. Even worse than you thought. Which would be the name of my solo podcast if i had one a september to remember um all right let's start with the guy who apparently can only communicate with his colleagues via op-ed joe mansion wrote in last thursday's wall street journal the congress should quote hit a strategic pause on joe biden's economic plan because he's worried about the effects on inflation and the national debt. Axios then

reported on Wednesday that Manchin won't support a plan that costs more than $1.5 trillion. The current plan costs $3.5 trillion over 10 years. And Manchin also has specific concerns about home care for the elderly and disabled, affordable child care, universal community college, universal community college, universal preschool, and the monthly child tax credit checks that have already lifted 3 million children out of poverty in July.

Dan, why did Joe Manchin torture us with this op-ed? And what do you make of his argument about debt and inflation? The question of why does Joe Manchin torture us is a question that answers itself. It is why he exists. He has served no other purpose other than just making our lives so much harder than they need to be. I would just make one suggestion to the Senate Democratic Caucus. Chuck Schumer, maybe Joe Biden, give Joe Manchin your cell phone number. He could call you,

he could text you, he would not need to communicate with you through a Rupert Murdoch owned media property. I don't know. But let's just. Can I just expand? Can I expand that, by the way? Yes, please. Just one more thing. My advice to all the Democrats in the Senate, in the House and their staffs.

When the reporter calls you, hang up the fucking phone. Stop talking to all of these Hill reporters. It will not guarantee that this plan will pass, but it's going to make your lives a lot easier. Talk to each other. Talk to each other. Debate with each other. Negotiate with each other. When reporters ask about this or that thing, you can just walk away.

It's fine. You know how I know this works? Because every time we say this, you know who gets really mad? Reporters. They get really mad and they tweet us and say, talking to us don't stop talking to us so we don't need 50,000 fucking stories in politico and the post and the times about all the machinations of democrats trying to pass this plan because it's messy of course it's messy and the messier it is in public the worse it's going to be for you so just shut the fuck up and talk to each other about passing

the plan. As I think we've said before, the failure of the Democratic Party to develop an inner monologue is one of our greatest challenges. Greatest challenges. But we've gone down a rabbit hole and it's a rabbit hole I enjoy, so we'll stay here for a second.

When they had, when Manchin published this op-ed, many people on Twitter made the point that we just made about like, why can't he just call Schumer and say, hey, I'm thinking maybe a little less than 3.5 trillion. They have a conversation. They resolve it like colleagues, right? Adults who work together.

People who have been to dinner on the same houseboat. They could have done it that way. People pointed out correctly, I think, that part of being a Republican from a Democratic state or vice versa is you have to do this performative dance about how you're sticking it to your party in some way or another. But I would just say the flaw in that argument in this case, which sort of speaks to kind of the big Manchin problem, is if Joe Manchin wanted to communicate with his very Republican West Virginia constituents, which I am very sympathetic to his political position. But if he wanted to communicate with them, I can think of about 1 trillion ways, to use his number, that is more efficient than writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that will sit behind a very expensive paywall. Could you do a West Virginia

newspaper? How about a town hall, my friend? How about going to West Virginia? Not just sending an email to a Rupert Murdoch-funded company from your houseboat. Like, there are ways to do this. Okay, I will stop now. Well, it also shows that perhaps Joe Manchin's performative centrism

is directed towards a center-right establishment in Washington and not necessarily the voters in West Virginia, which is something that I've always suspected. But who am I to divine Joe Manchin's motivations?

Can we get to the substance of his argument? Substance of the op-ed. Go for it. The substance is... The debt's out of control. Inflation is out of control. We must hit a pause. What do you think?

Idiocy. Pure idiocy. It's no labels, mad lips. It makes no sense. Let's just do both parts of this. Okay, let's start with the inflation. When we had Austin Goolsbee, our friend, the former chief Obama economist on a few weeks ago, he pointed out that it's not $3.5 trillion today. Tomorrow, this year, it's over a decade. $350 million a year on average. Look at that math. And, sorry, $350 billion.

Leave that in. $350 billion a year on average. That is, I think Austin said something like an 8% increase in federal budget. There is nothing to suggest that that would have a real effect on inflation. Second, and this is a point that the Biden, Austin and I talked about this as well, but the Biden economists have pointed out, which is, you know what's one way to deal with rising costs, particularly when a lot of inflation is in things like food? Give people who can't afford food more money so they can eat. Right?

There's a response to, like, think about this. Man, the cost of food is going up. So what I think we should do is we should take the most vulnerable Americans and cut them off from their child tax credit. And make sure that the richest Americans get to keep the tax breaks they got from Donald Trump. Yes.

So we are going to starve our way out of this inflation thing. Then let's talk about the debt issue. Do you know how much what this bill as currently constructed

would add to the debt? Now we're in a time machine. Now we're taking things back to 2011. Here we go. I'm not even going to mention bending the cost curve. It will cost zero, right? Around zero, depending on how the congressional budget scores it, it is paid for. We have to stop talking about investments in minimum working class people in our country

this way. Because Catherine Ramphel, The Washington Post, made this point this morning on Twitter, and it's so smart. Democrats talk, we talk about spending in terms of gross cost, right? 3.5 trillion dollars. We never talk about how we're paying for it, right? We're not saying it's going to add zero dollars to deficit. It's just 3.5 trillion dollars.

And part of, this is the fault of Democrats who have been leaning into the size and scope of our progressive agenda. It's 3.5 trillion, not 3 trillion. That's $3.5 trillion, not $3 trillion. That's inherently better. Point is, it's a bunch of really smart investments paid for by asking rich people and corporations to pay more money in taxes. That simple. But when you talk about tax cuts, like when you say Donald Trump's $2 trillion tax cut,

that's not the gross cost, as Catherine pointed out. That's the net cost. That's just what it costs when you've already subtracted the things they did to raise revenue, like eliminating the state and local tax deduction, things like that. So we talk about something really popular and important in the worst possible way and something that is unpopular and pretty harmful to economic inequality in the most favorable way. And it's insane. Yeah. I mean, not only is talking about 3.5 trillion dollars is the cost intellectually dishonest it's politically stupid we are we are paying for investments in families and small businesses by asking the wealthiest people in this country to

give up the tax breaks they got under donald trump that's sort of very good message. Much better than, hey, I got it up to three point five trillion. And like, look, I know, you know, Democrats, even if they wanted to be on message, political reporters are going to write about it this way because their job is not to be on message for Democrats. So they're going to keep it. But that doesn't mean that Democrats have to buy into that and start talking about it. And you're right that it's some of this is our fault for like trumpeting the fact that we got three point five. And, you know, when we first did this, which is again, it is not about the size of it is not just about the dollar amount on the package. It is about what investments are inside the plan and what they would do for people to improve their lives. That is the fundamental point of passing this economic plan in the first place.

President Biden was asked about all this on Tuesday night, and he said, quote, Joe at the end has always been there. I think we can work something out. Chuck Schumer seems equally optimistic. What do they know that we don't? That's a great question. Either one of them should come on this podcast. What are they smoking? Give me some of that. I think they are correct in making an assessment. Maybe they do know something, right?

Maybe Joe Manchin – like this Axios report is not correct. I suspect someone would have corrected it if it wasn't from the Manchin side. I've had real success, at least on the American Rescue Package and some other things in this era, and frankly, even in the Obama era with Manchin, of keeping him on board by moving him along in a positive and slow direction. And I assume that's what they're trying to do here. I think the challenge of this is I do think we need some expectations management of what's going to happen, right? Just for the press narrative of what's achieved.

Because if we end up with $2 trillion in really progressive, important investments in our country and in our people, and that seems a disappointment because it's not $3.5 trillion, that's a huge messaging failing on our part. So I understand the micro-legislative strategy, but from a macro level, I think we do need to level set expectations for where we think we're going to end up and then exceed that. And look, that's the messaging political challenge. Substantively, I'm sure a lot of progressives will argue that it isn't great if we don't get all we wanted in the original budget resolution, which is $3.5 trillion. Of course, that's a disappointment. But we also live in a world, as we have now since Joe Biden took office, where Joe Manchin gets a fucking vote, you know,

and there's nothing we can do about the fact that Joe Manchin gets a vote and we need all 50 Democrats in the Senate, including him, to pass anything at all. There's just there's literally nothing to be done about that, at least until 2022. And I think in the world of ordinary politics, getting one trillion dollars, 1.5 trillion dollars, two trillion dollars for the sorts of things that are being talked about in being in this bill is a gigantic victory. It's something that would have seen, if you had said, told us a year ago that after passing the American Rescue Act with a 50-50 Senate, a tiny House majority, that you would pass

a bill like this, people would have thought you were crazy. But this is, the other way to think about this that is so important is that in the context of the fact that this might be the last bill we have for an extended period of time to do anything legislatively to arrest the scourge of climate change, then $3.5 trillion is not enough, right? And I think that we the, it's like, we should never lose sight of the fact that this is the most, that this is happening in a context of forest fires, hurricanes, dangerous climate change. And we don't want to just get sort of pulled into the art of the possible here without understanding what is actually necessary to address the big challenge.

So, you know, there's also been reporting that Manchin staff has been talking to the committee staff of the various senators who are in charge of different committees that are writing this legislation. So that might be one reason for the optimism from Biden, from Schumer, from others. I think the big question now is how do progressives and mainstream Democrats get the best deal possible out of Joe Manchin. How do you bring him to your side as much as you can? You know, Bernie Sanders said $3.5 trillion was already the result of a major, major compromise. AOC said last night that she'd tank the bipartisan infrastructure bill without a good build back better plan, good economic plan from Joe Biden. How much leverage do progressives have here and how should they use it? Well, technically they have the exact the same amount of leverage as Joe Manchin, right? Bernie Sanders walks away, then his vote is worth

the same as Joe Manchin's. That gets lost in the conversation all the time because progressives are always expected to come in line and moderates have a freedom to do incredibly self-destructive things if need be. The challenge in the Senate at least is the BIF has already passed, right? So Bernie doesn't have the same ability to tank Joe Manchin's pride and joy in the bipartisan infrastructure framework or whatever you still call it. But yeah, I mean if – the question – the leverage depends on how much Joe Manchin cares about passing the BIF. Exactly. I mean, I assume he does, but I don't know that he cares so much that he would swallow $3.5 trillion just to get the BIF passed. So that we just don't know.

What keeps me up at night is Joe Manchin saying like, yeah, I loved the bipartisan infrastructure bill, but if we end up passing nothing because everyone yelled at me and progressives demanded this and that and the other thing, then maybe I'm fine with it. And I can just say, I can go back home and say, hey, I tried. I tried to pass some bipartisan package. I had all these Republicans on board. And unfortunately, my Democratic colleagues were too far to the left and wanted too much spending. And that's why Washington is broken. And I'm trying to fix it. You know, he could do that at the end of the day. But, you know, I also think that when Joe Biden first became president, I remember there was a quote from Joe Manchin where he said, I'm going to do everything I possibly can to make Joe Biden a successful president. If this doesn't pass, that's not going to make Joe Biden a successful

president. And so then Joe Manchin did not do what he said he wanted to do. Now, I know taking Joe Manchin at his word is a is an exercise and potentially an exercise in futility. But there we go. Yeah. Joe Manchin speaks in a way in which he is always completely correct and always completely incorrect. It's fucking infuriating. What are some of the big policy fights in this plan that we can expect in the coming weeks? And how do you think they get resolved just to get into the substance of it? This is a really hard thing to even talk about without knowing what the top line number is, right? Because that determines everything, right? Are we making the

child tax credit permanent or are they going to do it not at all? Are you going to do it for like five years, which is probably a very good solution because then you're like, you would rather just make these things permanent. But creating a cliff generally means that the policy will get continued because no one really wants to raise taxes in that situation. You know, big fight about are we going to expand? You know, big fight about are we going to expand – fight's not the right word because it's really – we're trying to allocate a pie of indeterminate size among various things. There are some who are very focused on adding dental and hearing and vision benefits to Medicare, which is – as someone who spent a lot of time this summer trying to help my father-in-law find a hearing aid, the fact that hearing aids are absurdly expensive and not covered by Medicare is insane, really insane.

Others are very focused on making permanent the policies that strengthen the Affordable Care Act that were put into the American Rescue Plan to increase the size of subsidies. That would put the law on very firm footing going forward. There's some talk about closing the Medicaid gap to help the people who are in almost entirely Republican Southern states that have refused to expand Medicaid and are therefore not getting affordable care. It sort of goes on and on and on about these big decisions here. There are some things in there that cost no money, like having, which Biden's, which HHS Secretary Javier Becerra endorsed today, which is having the federal government negotiate pharmaceutical prices, which would save money and allow us to spend more. Which is not only a fantastic policy substantively, but maybe one of the most popular policies in polling for like 10 years straight. We are one of the only major developed countries in the world who do not do this, which also speaks to how broken our political and campaign finance system is that pharma has

been able to prevent us from doing something that everyone wants for decades. Yeah. I would also say in the healthcare bucket, there's funding for home care for elderly and Americans with disabilities. Our good friend Adi Barkin was tweeting about this today as well. This is so that people who are older or who have disabilities can get the care they need at home and not have to leave their families and be in a hospital or another institution. So that's very important as well. And look, it's really tough. If you ask me about all these different health care fights, whether it's expanding Medicare to include dental, vision, and hearing,

home care, shoring up the Affordable Care Act with Medicaid and better subsidies, kind of want it all. I don't know how to choose between all those things because all those things are really, really important to help people. And we should have all of them, you know, and I don't know if I don't I don't know how they're going to get resolved. I mean, we should also talk about, you know, mansions proposing potentially, at least reporting is saying means testing for some of the universal education programs like universal pre-K or community college so that, you so that they don't go to everyone,

but just middle class and poorer people. There's, of course, the proposal to lower the child tax credit. So it's a little... And then there's the climate. We haven't even talked about the climate part of the bill, which is huge. And there's some reporting that Manchin is nervous about some of the more aggressive climate proposals. I still think that the most important provision here

is going to be some kind of a clean energy standard. And, you know, he's been for some kind of clean energy standard in the past, though probably not the one that would do the most good. So that remains to be seen. But, you know, I can't tell if they're going to actually just give up on some of these provisions or everything's just going to cost a little bit less? Like if they're just going to cut back on all of them so that they get a little bit of everything.

And I can't tell what's better. I mean, it sort of depends because you can do, there's a point at which it is more symbolic than substantive, but you've started the policy, right? And then the other issue here is that as we speak, Senator Durbin and the senators are trying to convince the parliamentarian about whether you can include a path to citizenship and immigration reform in the bill. Yes. Right. Which actually I think would which actually I think nets revenue based on the way CBO has scored it. Yeah. The cost of that is not a problem at all.

It's just going to be whether the parliamentarian says yes or no. And there's a lot. It's a lot at stake here in this september to remember a lot at stake and while democrats are trying to pass a few decades worth of progressive policies in a single bill uh they also have to figure out a way to avoid a government shutdown on september 30th and a debt ceiling breach in october or november that could lead to what one top economist calls financial Armageddon. And if that's still not tricky enough, the White House has asked Congress to pass an additional $14 billion of relief for wildfires and storms, at least $10 billion to deal with the aftermath

of Hurricane Ida, and $6.5 billion to help resettle Afghan refugees. How the hell are they going to get all that done, Dan? It is quite challenging. It was challenging before you added the supplemental funding request. Speaker Pelosi reiterated the other day that they would not include the debt ceiling in budget reconciliation, which means to avoid financial Armageddon, you're going to need 10 Senate Republicans. Already enough Senate Republicans have said they will not do that. Now, there is obviously some sort of reason for this that exists because Speaker Pelosi, Senator Schumer, Joe Biden himself, Joe Biden's economic team are all around and intimately involved in the 2011-2013 debt ceiling fights. And I do sort of think the way they're setting this up, where if it is funding to keep the government running, the debt ceiling, the funding for disasters that are in many cases

happening in Republican states, it becomes much harder for Republicans to engage in some sort of performative, dangerous brinksmanship around their desire to cut Social Security and Medicare under those circumstances. So I do think Biden and the Democrats can win this fight. I think it could be quite hard. It could be quite damaging. It really depends on Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema not sort of bailing and ending up with a bunch of Republicans as part of some sort of Social Security cutting commission or something that you can very easily see happening. What I worry about here is not just this fight. We're just passing up the opportunity to solve the debt ceiling issue for the balance of

Joe Biden's first term. Because the thing that keeps me up at night, I said this before on this podcast, but is Speaker Kevin McCarthy and maybe Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell controlling the debt limit in 2023 or 2024 as Joe Biden is preparing for reelection and potentially tanking the economy. Can you just imagine the demands that Speaker McCarthy would want? Like, Joe Biden, resign. Put Donald Trump on the $20 bill. Deliver us Hunter Biden in cuffs. The sort of things would be so insane.

And we just have this opportunity here that shouldn't be that hard to just take that weapon away from a bunch of lunatics. I just worry about any strategy that is predicated on the idea that Republicans in Congress are worried that they may lose some political fight because they have not shown any fear whatsoever in losing political fights or being on the fucking 80-20, being on the 20 side of an 80-20 issue. They just haven't. They take hostages. They blow up the economy. You know, they're protecting insurrectionists. They love Donald Trump. They're voting to overturn elections.

But now they're going to be like, oh, we don't want to get blamed for shutting down the economy or breaching the debt ceiling. That's too far for us. I just I do not see how they're going to blink on this one. I don't see it. I'd love to be wrong. I'd love to be wrong. Maybe there is like a, you know, an escape valve here where if they go forward with their threat to not blink and not raise the debt ceiling, then Joe Biden's economic plan will not have passed yet. And the Democrats will still have an opportunity to stick the debt ceiling increase in the budget bill if it comes down to that. That's the only thing I can see. I mean, maybe that's what's in their back pocket, but who knows? And then, you know, an additional problem with the supplemental to C plus Santa Monica fascist Stephen Miller has already started to demagogue the refugee aid in the supplemental request, saying that Biden is holding relief for American storm victims hostage to his radical migration agenda.

How do you think Democrats should respond to that garbage? I am very worried about the politics of refugee resettlement. It's easy to look at the polls and see, you know, there's a CBS poll. It's like 80, 20 people support bringing Afghan allies here. Like, I hope to be wrong about the bulk of the Republican Party and sort of inherent racism in swaths of the American public. But it, you know, what haunts me is that many months ago, Morning Consult did a poll where they looked at all of Joe Biden's initial executive orders. All of them are incredibly popular with one glaring exception.

Simply raising the refugee cap was unpopular across the board, including with Democrats. And so right now, in the heart of talking about our Afghan allies, I don't think it seems like we should definitely do this, but there is just this inherent racist race-based nimbyism when it comes to refugees. It's like, yes, bring them here. Oh, I didn't mean here. I meant somewhere over there, not in my neighborhood, not in my school. And I think when Stephen Miller, who is a terrible messenger, but when he says radical migration agenda, that means shit to average people, right? Those are some keywords that get the MAGA base, the alt-right world fired up. But this is what Stephen Miller said on Laura Ingraham, right as this was all happening a few weeks ago. He said,

it is extraordinarily expensive to resettle a refugee in the United States. They get free health care, free education, free housing, free food, and they get cash welfare. That argument has unfortunately, and it speaks very poorly of America, been very powerful over a long time. I hope to be wrong here, but there's power here. I would say just a couple of things that the way to win this fight is, one, take it big, make it about the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan,

where Joe Biden and Democrats are on the high side of that argument. Two, use veterans as spokespeople here. The most powerful people, and I think it's what has driven some of those numbers and actually hurt Biden in sort of the coverage of the withdrawal was veterans talking about the people who were being left behind by this, right? People who fought with Americans, people who saved American lives, people who were putting their lives at risk to fight for democracy or as interpreters or in civil society or whatever else. And then when these Afghan families get to these communities, and this was a suggestion that Ben and Tommy had on Pod Save the World, which is do a whole bunch of local media around it or social media around it. Tell

those individual stories so that people know who they are. No one loves to fill a vacuum like right-wing propaganda. And so we have to fill it with very strong, proactive messaging about this. And there should be hopefully some paid efforts where you're advertising about who these people are and how bringing these people who fought with us, who saved American lives to our country enriches all of us. And because otherwise we will lose this argument. Yeah. And the, and the other reason that's important is if you look at, if you look at polls, people are Democrats, independents, and Republicans far more supportive of resettling Afghan refugees here than they were of even resettling Syrian refugees back in 2015 when that was a big issue.

And so you say, OK, why is there more support for Afghan refugees? Perhaps it's because they haven't, you know, effectively demagogued it just yet. It's also because the coverage of the last few weeks of Afghanistan, there were a lot of Republicans criticizing Joe Biden for abandoning our Afghan allies and that broke through. And so some of these same Republicans and independents are saying, yes, we want Afghan allies to be who helped us to be resettled. I think where Republicans like Stephen Miller are going to go next is they're going to start saying these refugees that we're resettling, they weren't helping us. They weren't translators. These were random, unvetted Afghans who just got on the plane and came here and they didn't help us in the war effort. In fact, maybe some of them

were against us. And it's going to maybe not be based in reality at all, or maybe some of it will be because just it was very chaotic and a lot of people got on planes. Who knows? But that's that's where they're going to go. And so I do think that's why it's so important for what Ben and Tommy suggested that that when we resettle Afghan refugees, that we tell their stories, that we have veterans tell those stories as well for how these people help them in battle, because I think that because Republicans are going to have a narrative about this that's going to be a lot trickier and a lot tougher than it has been so far, at least in the mainstream Republican Party. One last thing we should talk about before we bring in Melissa to talk about Texas. President Biden will be diving into this month of fun with the worst poll numbers of his presidency.

Five thirty eight has his average approval rating at forty five percent, with forty nine percent disapproving. That's underwater for the first time since he took office. What specifically do you think is driving those poll numbers? And how could they affect what will happen in Congress this September? Well, Joe Biden has been in a absolutely miserable bad news vortex, right? Which is, it's not like, obviously the news about Afghanistan has been just, and the coverage has been very anti-Biden, right? But it's chaos. You have hurricanes, you have forest fires, and perhaps most importantly of all, you have

sort of resurgence of pandemic politics as kids, just as kids are returning to school, the Delta variant, people canceling summer plans. It's all bad. the Delta variant, people canceling summer plans. It's all bad. And so just imagine, and in a world of social media, Facebook in particular, people no longer opt into bad news. It used to be you have to choose in the old days to watch your local news or read your newspaper and get all the bad news. Now, you're just looking at your phone, you're trying to check out your cousin's new baby or find out what your high school friends are up to. And it's like, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news. And it is just, it is compounding. And so then a pollster calls you

and is like, hey, do you approve of the job Joe Biden's doing? And you're like, the fuck are you talking about? Look at this, right? And so he's like this, like, I mean, the, the, and the way I, and so the way this could affect legislation is he has less political capital with Democrats. He is less feared by Republicans. And it makes a very hard situation harder. And the American Action Network, which is a pretty gross right-wing super PAC affiliated with Kevin McCarthy, they put out a poll which showed that in seven battleground districts, Joe Biden is underwater, which is also like, it's a poll, skeptical. The people doing the poll,

pretty sketchy. But if Joe Biden is underwater nationally, he's underwater in battleground districts. It's just math, right? And so then sometimes those members start to get a little iffy and they're like, oh my goodness, I got to find a way to distance myself from Joe Biden. I hear he's unpopular and maybe I will follow Joe Manchin off a cliff or something like that. And that's where this thing gets really, really precarious. Well, you made a case in Messagebox this week that Democrats with tough midterm races should run towards Biden and not away from him. Why do you think that is? I mean, it's pretty, it seems pretty simple, although it runs counter to all political conventional wisdom of the last few decades. Midterm performance is correlated with presidential

approval. So if Joe Biden is popular, Democrats have a better chance of keeping their majorities. If Joe Biden is unpopular, then we're more likely to lose. And so how do we make Joe Biden more popular? I don't know. What if we passed a really popular agenda? That would be good. And you look at some of this polling, while there's definitely been Biden's taken hit with independents, and I think getting some of those people back is going to be somewhat complicated, but he's also taken a hit with Democrats, 14 points in a recent Navigator poll. You know how you get those people back? Pass a bunch of things that Democrats like. But you know what would be so we way sort of political

narratives have so much power now is that when Democrats start shitting on the president, it's compounding. So it's like, you have bad news, bad news affects the polls. Now there are a bunch of stories about those bad polls. That's more bad news. And then there's a bunch of stories about how Democrats are running from Biden. That's more bad news. And it compounds and compounds and compounds. So we have to sort of find a circuit breaker and embrace them. Like every strategy that every vulnerable Democrat should have is how can I make Joe Biden more popular? Because if I make Joe Biden more popular, I have a better chance of winning. What would you be doing to help turn these numbers around if you were in the White House? Obviously, we substantively, right, I think the

strategy from the get go in this administration was fix the pandemic, fix the economy, and that's our best chance to be politically successful. I still think that holds. So one way to help fix the economy is to pass this economic plan, right? It's a long-term economic plan, but it will still have effects, you know, in the next few years. So that's super important. From a communication standpoint, is there anything you'd be doing differently? I don't know if it's differently,

but before I get to like what Jen Psaki or Kate Bedingfield or Ron Klain should be doing right now, or Joe Biden himself, there is like, we all have agency here too, right? Joe Biden's in a bad news vortex. There's really a lot of good news out there. We can all be sharing that news, right? Like Joe Biden today in a bad news vortex. There's really a lot of good news out there. We could all be sharing that news.

Like Joe Biden today gave a really important speech on the vaccine. Yeah, but would that get as many likes and retweets? Well, that's the... We're not looking... I'm looking for some retweets there. Looking for the RTs. It depends. Are you trying to

persuade your social network? No, I'm just trying to be angry online. Just trying to yell at reporters to be angry online. Yeah, Twitter fame. I'm looking for clout. Yes. I'm looking for clout. Yes.

Are you trying to be a neo-Crescentine or are you just trying to help Joe Biden? Try to help Joe Biden share some positive news. But I think for the White House, Joe Biden always used to say, compare me. Don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. So what I would do, and that's maybe what is leading into this debt ceiling strategy is, go pick a big fight with Republicans. Go paint a picture about, yeah, you may not love how the pandemic's going. You may not be super happy with Afghanistan. But you know what? Look at these people over here, right?

Abortion bans, vaccine disinfo and COVID truthing, insurrection. Oh, they also want to sink the economy so they can cut Medicare and Social Security pay for tax cuts for the rich. Look at those people. I don't look so bad right now either, do I? Right? So I think there's maybe time to, like, obviously that comes at the expense of some unity messaging, but it might be time to take the gloves off and start having a more contrastive message. I think it's, it's, it's about a contrast and it's also about a choice,

right? Like I think, I think that as we're recording, you know, the, the president's going to give a speech about COVID, uh, later today on Thursday. I think that's a great start. You know, he should fight for a plan that gives some people some hope that this can end. There hasn't been a lot of that, especially even public health experts, even some in the administration haven't been so hopeful about that. I think the president's job is to show some hope here. Boosters, vaccine requirements, mask requirements, thresholds for when and how we get back to normal normal and again that should be contrasted with republicans who want to keep the country sick and poor by infecting everyone and holding back the economy i think he has to make an argument for his economic plan that puts democrats on the side of

families and small businesses and republicans on the side of the one percent and big corporations there for spending more money and sacrificing more lives on forever wars. We're for ending those wars so that we can invest in American families and jobs and small businesses. They want to create a country where only right wing extremists get to vote and actually get to enforce the law. And, you know, we're for a country where everyone has a voice and everyone's protected under the law. Right. Like everything has to be here's what we're going to do. Here's what they're going to do. And I do think there's a way while doing that to sort of make sure that you can still talk. You don't have to be like just attacking Republicans all the time.

It's a choice. There are two different directions for the country. This is where Joe Biden and the Democrats want to take the country. And this is where Republicans want to take the country. And that has to be every day, that message. And this is where the majority of the people want, right? That's the thing, right? Yeah. It's like, oh, it's 50-50. No, it's 60-40, right? And Joe Biden is fighting it like and Republicans are representing a shrinking minority. These are extreme positions are out of touch with with the American public and with American values.

positions are out of touch with the American public and with American values. And again, we were in this position in the summer of 2011. And when Barack Obama was dealing with the debt ceiling and he had horrible poll numbers and the way he got out of it was to start delivering a message that contrasted what he was doing for the country versus what the Republicans and then ultimately Mitt Romney wanted to do to the country. And by having that message and having a sharp economic message that divided, here's what the Democrats want to do and here's what the Republicans want to do. That's when he started get his poll number started going back up and he started getting back in the game. So it's, you know. The one last thing I'd say about this is the place where there are two places to

have this fight. And I imagine, I'm sure this has been on a whiteboard somewhere in Ron Klain's office for a very long time. And he's like, thank you, Captain Obvious saves America over here. But it is that he can tweet it out to the public. He tweets tweets. Show us what's on the whiteboard, Ron. That's right.

Is one is on the debt ceiling and the CR and the supplemental. That's going to be a fight because you need Republicans for it. The problem with the budget bill is it's all about Democrats. The press has already baked in Republican opposition. And I'm not even saying they're wrong about this, but it's just in the coverage about fights between Democrats over specific policies, Joe Manchin, et cetera. And the other one, I think legitimately, and I've become more and more sort of radicalized this idea is that Democrats should run aggressively on vaccine mandates. Yeah, for sure. Right. You know, as we started recording, news broke that one of the things that Biden's going to announce today is that any hospital that receives Medicare or Medicaid funding is going to have to

have to vaccinate their staff. There's going to be a vaccine requirement for their staff, which is most hospitals in the country. So that's great news. Okay. When we come back, NYU law professor Melissa Murray joins to talk about the Supreme Court's decision that has allowed the state of Texas to effectively ban abortion. All right. Let's talk about what's next in the legal battle to protect reproductive rights. Last week, the Supreme Court released a 5-4 decision at around midnight in which the conservative majority refused to block a Texas law that effectively bans abortion by allowing any citizen to sue any other citizen for $10,000 if they're found aiding or abetting an abortion after six weeks, with no exception for rape or incest. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Biden administration's Justice Department is preparing to sue Texas over the law as early as today. Here to help us make sense of this madness and talk about what can be done is Melissa Murray,

a law professor at NYU, co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, and a good friend of this podcast. Thanks for coming back. Thanks for having me. So the Texas law essentially places a bounty on any medical provider, friend, family member, even Uber driver who helps someone get an abortion.

And aside from being both cruel and crazy, it seems as if the law was written this way specifically to avoid getting struck down as unconstitutional. Melissa, can you talk about the legal strategy behind the Texas law and how the majority's decision basically rewarded that strategy? Yes. So this law is both incredibly cynical and incredibly canny. So technically, when you have an abortion restriction, generally it is the state that enforces it. And so Roe versus Wade, for example, involved Jane Roe, the petitioner, the woman who is seeking an abortion. And Wade was Henry Wade, the Dallas district attorney who was charged with enforcing the

law. And that's typically how most laws work. If you want to challenge their constitutionality, you will file suit against the state actor who's charged with administering it or enforcing it. Here, however, though, the state is absolutely prohibited from enforcing this law. It actually says that in the text of the law. No state official can enforce it. And instead, what Texas has done is deputized private citizens to enforce it. So it gives each private citizen, anyone in Texas, a private right of action to file into effect. Generally, when you have these abortion restrictions, and there are lots of these heartbeat laws that have been tried and they failed,

they failed because reproductive rights groups and abortion providers immediately file suit challenging the constitutionality of the law. And a federal court will typically enjoin the state from enforcing the law while that litigation on the constitutionality of the statute is pending. Here, however, because you don't have a state official charged with enforcing it to sue, you can't get a pre-enforcement challenge or a pre-enforcement injunction. And that's basically what happened at the Supreme Court last Wednesday when the court finally weighed in saying that there were procedural idiosyncrasies here that were better to be resolved going forward by allowing the law to go into effect, having someone file suit against some other person and then letting it play out. So it doesn't mean we will

not get a challenge to the constitutionality of this law, but it means that the law goes into effect in Texas. And that actually is a victory for Texas legislators, because once those clinics shut down because they fear violating this law and risking the bankrupting bounty that is placed on those who are found to be in violation of this law, they're unlikely to reopen again, even if the law is later invalidated by the Supreme Court or any federal court going forward. And we saw that in 2016 with Whole Women's Health versus Hellerstedt. There, there was an admitting privileges law that was allowed to go into effect in 2013, although the law three years later was declared unconstitutional. Texas went from having 42

abortion provider clinics to having just 19 and they did not reopen again so the five justices uh in the majority in an unsigned opinion basically said uh the texas gambit worked we we can't do anything about this we're you know there's serious issues of constitutionality there's some i think a sentence like that in there but we're not going to do anything about this if uh the four the the four justices who oppose this, including the three liberals and Roberts, somehow got Kavanaugh on board or Barrett on board, what would the best legal argument have been for the court to say we're actually going to block this? one legal argument would have been just the irregularity of allowing a law with such obvious substantive implications and such clear constitutional questions from going into effect and issuing a decision on the shadow docket. So the Chief Justice laid this out. As you know, he is no friend of abortion rights. I think it is fair to say he is incredibly skeptical of

abortion rights, but he is very much concerned with the court's institutional legitimacy and perhaps is the most stalwart steward of the court's legitimacy. And he proposed simply keeping in place the status quo. You can have this law, you can have a challenge on the constitutionality of this law. And just as we would in almost any other circumstance, we would stay the enforcement of this law. We would block the law from going into effect while that challenge to its constitutionality proceeded. That's what we typically did in all of these other cases. But the majority here said, well, there are all of these procedural irregularities. We don't have a state official enforcing this law, so there's no state defendant here that we can enjoin. Instead,

we're probably going to have to wait and see if some private citizen sues some other person for violating this law. And then we can actually get to the bones of litigating its constitutionality. But the chief justice said we can just do this the way we've always done it. And I think that's probably right. Dan, the reaction from Republican politicians to the ruling has been either non-existent or uncharacteristically muted. Does that suggest to you that maybe they don't think turning their voters into vigilante bounty hunters is the best political move? I guess you would say muted if you don't count the seven Republican states looking to pass

copycat laws, which all happen to be helmed by, or most of them happen to be helmed by Republicans with their eye on the 2024 nomination. Look, I think Democrats should be very aggressive about this. And that is not, although it's changed recently, that has not been the natural state of being for Democrats on the issue of abortion. I think in sort of the collective Democratic mind, we think this is a 50-50 issue and that the anti-choice arguments animate their base more than the pro-choice arguments animate ours. That is completely not true and not supported by any measure of polling. Support for Roe v. Wade has been growing over time, and support for overturning has been shrinking. In the Gallup poll taken this year, it's 58 for keeping it, 32 for eliminating it.

So think about that. The Republicans have chosen the 32-side issue of the 58-32 issue. And what I think we have to do here is make every single Republican in the country own the Texas law. This is the future that Republicans want. Not just Texas Republicans, all Republicans. And that is evidenced by potential presidential candidates supporting it. It's evidenced by their silence on this matter. And if Republicans can make Democrats, with a pretty disturbing amount of effectiveness, own, defund the police, a relatively ambiguous slogan adopted by activists that almost no Democrat in the country ran on, then we have to be able to make Republicans own a law passed by the largest Republican state in the country. And so I think we should be super

aggressive about it. We need to ascribe this position to every Republican, because if we do not, the only way that we are going to, Democrats can be able to protect reproductive rights, voting rights, civil rights, all rights, in a world in which we do not feel that the Supreme Court can play that role, is through brute political forces, to making them pay a political price for doing these things. And that will only happen if we're aggressive about it. I would also say that that 32% that wants to ban abortion, that's, you know, wanting a law that bans abortion, nevermind turning voters into bounty hunters. I would imagine that would test even lower than 32%.

So can I inject something? I think the point about the political polarization is really spot on. But let me add a little historical context to this. Like Roe versus Wade is decided in 1973 by a 7-2 majority of the Supreme Court with Harry Blackmun, a Republican nominee, writing the majority opinion. And a number of Republicans joined that opinion. Roe wasn't immediately controversial. Reproductive rights were not immediately controversial with Republicans. I mean, I can go back and tell you that Ronald Reagan, the Republican god, was the person who, as governor of California, passed California's Therapeutic Abortion Act, which liberalized abortion access in that state. Is this your king? And then there's George H.W. Bush, who, as a congressman from Midland, championed the expansion of family planning, so much so that he was known on the floor of the House as Rubber's Bush because he was so supportive of reproductive rights. His father, Senator Prescott Bush, was a chairman of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. So

this idea that Republicans have always been against reproductive rights, that is not the case at all. There was bipartisan support for reproductive rights. Abortion becomes a wedge issue in the late 1970s, early 1980s, as sort of a mirror of the Southern strategy, whereby segregation becomes a way to peel off Democrats in the South. They look to abortion to do that same thing in the upper Midwest with Catholics and then in the South with Christian evangelicals. And it's incredibly effective. It's incredibly canny. It is a strategy of Lee Atwater. And so do not let anyone tell you that there has always been this widespread Republican antipathy for reproductive rights. That is not the case.

Title 10 was expanded by Richard Nixon, the most Republican of Republican presidents. Yes. One more issue where the Republican Party has gone completely extreme to even its own traditions. Melissa, can you talk about the Justice Department's legal options here? On Monday, Merrick Garland said they'd continue to protect those seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services. I mentioned the reporting from The Wall Street Journal that the DOJ will sue Texas. Could any of this work?

So the first thing that they've announced is that they're going to do more rigorous enforcement of the FACE Act, which allows individuals seeking abortion services free access to clinic entrances. And it provides for enforcement of criminal and civil penalties against those who harass them. It's been spottily enforced in the past, so it's great that the administration is taking a more robust position on its enforcement. But getting into a clinic is not really the issue here. I mean, the issue is that clinics are not providing abortion services because they can't, because they would risk being found in violation of this law and being sued and having to pay the $10,000 bounty plus the attorney's fee.

So it is a symbolic gesture, I think, but one that ultimately is not incredibly consequential for reviving or resuscitating abortion access in Texas at this point. Lawrence Tribe, I think, proposed a really novel proposal of using the Ku Klux Klan Act, which was a Reconstruction-era statute that was intended to provide penalties against private actors who, under color of state law, tried to abridge the civil rights of newly freed African Americans. And you could expand that perhaps to apply to those private vigilantes in Texas who are restricting the rights of Texas women and those who try to help them. So that's, I think, a novel approach. The administration has said that they will have

a press conference where they'll lay out their strategy. I'm really eager to hear what this looks like because I think a lot of the legal strategy is really going to have to deal with the incredibly devilish enforcement mechanism and the way that they have crafted this law purposefully to avoid federal court review and indeed any kind of review by delegating the enforcement of the statute to private citizens. So I am absolutely on tenor hooks waiting to hear what they have to say, because I think this is going to have to be a really novel solution. And maybe it should be. Texas has clearly shown that it's willing to push the envelope here to restrict abortion. And maybe that requires a commensurate response from the administration. Well, so what would DOJ suing Texas look like? What would the argument there be? Unclear. And they've been very cagey about what the particulars of that might be. They can obviously do things like withhold federal funding. Perhaps they might figure out a way for

federal properties like Air Force bases or military hospitals or whatnot to provide abortion services. Although that raises the question of the Hyde Amendment, which is an appropriations rider that prevents the use of federal monies for abortion. So it may not necessarily be the case that they are funding in clear dollars abortion, but even the use, I think, of federal property might be considered a way of subsidizing abortion, and that might be deemed a violation of the Hyde Amendment. So it's not clear. But I think there's, again, I think this is an opportunity to lawyer in the most fearless and innovative way possible. And I think those who are against abortion have certainly taken it to the mattresses. And, you know, maybe it's time for those who favor reproductive rights

to do the same. Dan, what are the chances that Congress can pass a legislative remedy here? Well, Speaker Pelosi has said that she will hold a vote on the Women's Health Protection Act, which would, you know, I think as described, you know, it's talked about as codifying Roe. I think it's a little more complicated than that, but it would certainly limit the ability of states like Texas to infringe upon the rights that are identified in Roe and in another Supreme Court decision, Casey v. Planned Parenthood. The challenge here, as with all things, is it's subject to a filibuster. I know, like all things. But even if we could get the filibuster overturned, there are very real questions about

whether there are 50 Democratic votes for this in the Senate. And it's not just Joe Manchin, it's also potentially Bob Casey, the senator from Pennsylvania, whose father is the Casey in the Casey v. Planned Parenthood case that I mentioned earlier. And so I absolutely think Democrats, even if it is a no, we know we're going to lose this vote, I think Democrats should vote on it. There are also two Republican senators in Susan Collins, I know also Ugg, Lisa Murkowski, who could potentially be yeses on this, but we should call the issue, have the vote, and raise the salience of the issue nationally and show that Democrats are doing everything they can to protect reproductive rights. I think it's the right thing to do morally and the right thing to do politically. Melissa?

So I think that's exactly right as a political strategy. I think it's likely to be successful as a legal strategy. So yes, if you could get through the filibuster, if you could get this through the Senate, then you're clearly going to have someone challenge this as an impermissible use of Congress's authority under the Commerce Clause, which is probably the most likely avenue of constitutional authority for passing a law like this. And where does that go? It goes right to your six to three majority on the Supreme Court, where you have Samuel Alito, who's been very clear about his antipathy for reproductive rights, Clarence Thomas, who doesn't believe that the right to reproductive freedom exists in the Constitution.

who doesn't believe that the right to reproductive freedom exists in the Constitution. Neil Gorsuch, also a skeptic. And then Brett Kavanaugh, not clear, but seems skeptical. Amy Coney Barrett, her writings as a law professor suggest skepticism, if not antipathy. And Chief Justice Roberts, who we're the only way to kind of reel him in is in whether or not this law makes the court look bad. And they don't even need his vote to have a majority here. So yes, as a political matter, that makes a lot of sense. And if it gets people to the polls and thinking about the Supreme Court and reproductive rights

and how all of these things are intertwined with voting rights and everything else, then I say go for it. But if that law is passed, it is going to be a dead letter at the six to three conservative supermajority at the court. Ah, but, but, but what if we expand the court and add four justices? Would that help matters? Okay, now you've just blown my mind. I don't even I don't even know what to say to that. So back to the back to the mansion filibuster question. Yeah, I'm not saying it's an easy path, John, but I just want to I want to widen the aperture of possibility here. We're always back to the cul-de-sac, the mansion cul-de-sac. Melissa, I was going to ask if you just sort of raise this, you know, sort of what

what's next in terms of the Supreme Court's role? Like, is there a chance they'll revisit the Texas law and finally weigh in on the constitutionality? Can this tell us anything about what they'll do about the Mississippi ban when they hear the case next term? Like, I guess what I'm trying to ask is, do you think there is any chance or hope that the decision where they said, OK, we don't want to weigh in on the constitutionality here and this is all procedural morphs into something later where they say, OK, now we're going to weigh in on the constitutionality. And in fact, it is not constitutional. where they say, OK, now we're going to weigh in on the constitutionality. And in fact, it is not constitutional. So I think you need to get to the point where you have a lawsuit brought by a private individual against someone who has performed an abortion or has helped someone to

obtain an abortion or perform an abortion. And then that will begin the process of wending this through either the state courts, probably, and then on to the Supreme Court. That could take a long time. They will most likely get to the current abortion challenge that's before them, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which is going to be argued in this upcoming term, October term 2021. And it is a challenge to Mississippi's heartbeat law, which prohibits abortion at 15 weeks. So really bad, but less bad than the Texas law in a lot of ways. And I think what we saw in the court's opinion, although it was just a procedural opinion, quote unquote, is a harbinger of what we're likely to see. I mean, the fact that a majority of the court allowed a law that clearly violates existing constitutional precedents and includes Roe, includes Planned Parenthood versus Casey to go into effect suggests that there is not a great

deal of respect for the idea of a right to an abortion on this court. So, you know, I don't know what will happen in Dobbs. It could be the case that the chief justice joins the conservatives to make six, but joins them for the purpose of being able to keep the opinion for himself to write. And he writes a much narrower opinion than the rest of the conservatives might like. But but one that perhaps does away with the whole question of viability as a salient marker in the court's abortion jurisprudence, which then kicks the question of these heartbeat laws back to the states. And then we're dealing again with is 15 weeks OK? Is 12 weeks OK? Six weeks OK? And maybe that is when you get this Texas law percolating up to the court at that point. But it might take a long time. And the idea that the liberals and Roberts might get Kavanaugh on their side is remote.

So, I mean, unclear. What we know statistically is that Justice Kavanaugh is more likely to vote with the chief justice than any other justice. You know, this is someone who before his confirmation hearing went off the rails with questions of sexual assault was getting a lot of fire, including for me, on his stance on abortion. So maybe he wants to take a wider view of this, focus on a narrower opinion. You could see something like that. But again, I think this is a question to Dan's point that really has to be kicked back to politics. The courts are not going to save you here. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, on that note, for both of you, last question, are there any other legal or political strategies we haven't talked about that could help protect reproductive rights in Texas and in other red states that will certainly try to pass similar laws? So, again, Congress has the power of the purse.

purse. You know, at least one, you may not necessarily tie this to liberalizing abortion access, but you could say like all of these states that are so exercised to restrict abortion in the name of promoting women's health also have some of the worst maternal mortality and morbidity rates and infant mortality rates in the country. So, you know, maybe as part of it, if you're going to restrict abortion, you also have to channel some of the federal dollars that you get into programs that actually ameliorate and provide prenatal care to pregnant women. I mean, if you're going to be pro-life, be pro-life for the whole life. And the whole life starts with the woman who is bearing the child. And then once the child is born, expanding Medicaid to include the child

members of that child's family. I mean, that could be something that is done. I mean, if you just want to sort of address this as an issue that is about health, because that's what they talk about. They talk about these restrictions as health measures. They're clearly not. But the government, I think the federal government could think about these as like, let's tie this actually to proving better health outcomes. Like you don't get this if you just restrict abortion. You have to do these other things too. Interesting. Dan? I mean, none of these things are particularly satisfying, but I would at least first note that as we think about the midterms, our friends at Data for Progress did a poll which showed that the context of the Texas abortion ban increased enthusiasm among Democratic voters by 8%.

So that's a further argument for talking about it. But in the long run, the reason these laws exist, despite the fact that they're incredibly unpopular, even in the states and when they're being passed, is because Republicans have done the hard, monotonous work of building political power at the state level. the hard, monotonous work of building political power at the state level. This is why we have to invest in, train, and run pro-choice women candidates at these state levels and win these offices because we had an actual chance to take the Texas House in 2020. Had we done that, this law could not have passed. Dan, can I add to that? Part of the reason they've been able to consolidate political power at the state level is because they have run the table on redistricting. So that's a huge part of this too. And so this is all inextricably linked to the same fights that you all have been covering over voting rights. And there's no daylight between any of this.

covering overvoting rights. And like there is there's no daylight between any of this. Yeah, it sounds like the the best hope here is to get out into the streets and get to the polls and continue to organize and continue to fight for this, because if everyone in the midterms decides, you know, they're annoyed or they're tired or, you know, they're not sure they want to work as hard as they did in 2020, then it will be a guarantee that there will be no abortion access in Texas and potentially many, many other states that are controlled by Republicans. So something for everyone to keep in mind. Professor Melissa Murray, thank you as always for joining us. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me. One more thing. You can donate to abortion funds in Texas, which help Texans pay

for their procedure and get logistical help like a ride to a clinic out of state. Visit actblue.com slash donate slash TX funds to donate. Again, that's actblue.com slash donate slash TX funds to donate. And you can also find the link in this episode's show notes. All right. Before we go, we wanted to give you all one last reminder about the California recall on September 14th. I'm sure all of you California listeners have already sent in your ballots or at least plan to. But even if you're voting, we're asking you to get at least five other people to vote as well. And if you happen to run into any of those friends who say, why does it matter if Newsom loses? We got you covered. Republican frontrunner Larry Elder has said and done a lot of wacky shit during his years as a right wing radio host and even during this campaign. So to help you keep track of it all, we've put together his top five worst quotes in a segment we're calling Elder Abuse.

All right. Here is number five. You're on record as calling for the end to the minimum wage saying, quote, the correct minimum wage ought to be zero. How do you think California voters currently earning the minimum wage, which is $13 to $14 an hour, would react to that? Well, given the indoctrination that people have about the minimum wage, they probably wouldn't react to it well. Dan, do you think Californians would react to a $0 minimum wage well? And do you think Californians would react to a $0 minimum wage well?

Given the indoctrination that people have about getting paid barely enough to live. What is this propaganda that's forcing people to want a livable wage? What is wrong with them? That's one that, by the way, I didn't know he said that this is just a great example of how much shit larry and i've been paying attention to this race i had no idea he said that about the minimum wage i knew he was like against a minimum wage i didn't know that he said that the correct one was zero dollars that's i guess we know who what percentage of the people currently hosting this podcast did not read my message box on the recall i think i did read your message box in the

recall it's in there but i think you're also on vacation i'm not you write a lot you write a lot these days you're prolific i know all right number four you know when you look at all these women that have marched something like two million women donald trump has probably gotten more obese woman off the couch and in the streets working out than michelle obama did in eight years what the fuck was that quote uh just fuck off fuck off like just disgusting believe it or not that's just one of the many horrifically sexist things that elder has said about women uh in a 2000 column for capitalism magazine great magazine uh elder said women know less than men about political issues economics and current events.

He said that! He reposted an article on his website comparing single mothers on welfare to stray cats. According to the LA Times, he deleted a tweet that implied women taking part in the Women's March were too unattractive to be sexually assaulted. And according to Media Matters, he endorsed pregnancy discrimination in his book, suggesting that working mothers aren't, quote, dedicated and available for, quote, all hands on deck commitment to work. What a guy. He also likes to refer, has in the past referred to PMS, premenstrual syndrome, as, quote, punish my spouse. Just real charmer all the way around here. What a what a joke. What a great joke. All right. Number three. I'm going to follow the science. I'm going to I don't believe the science suggests that young people should be vaccinated. I don't believe the science suggests that young people should have to

wear a mask at school. I'm not sure the science is settled on that at all. Not sure that's not sure that's correct. It's actually the opposite of what he said. But now this is something that Elder could actually enforce as governor, right? Yes, he could on his first day and has promised if he wins his recall, could repeal the vaccine and mask mandates that Newsom put in place earlier this summer. Absolutely. So for all the people saying, oh, there's a Democratic supermajority. It's only for, you know, all about a year. Who cares?

This will send a message establishment. This would have dramatic effects on schoolchildren, right? That's where this place, the first place where the masks and vaccine mandates have been most important had been in California public schools. He could undo that. Are there other things he could do on his own without the legislature? Because some people are saying, well, if he gets in, at least we have a Democratic supermajority in the legislature and he can't do that much and blah, blah, blah. But he can do a lot of damage, right? Oh, didn't we just go through this for four years? You can do tremendous damage without ever touching the legislature, right? So yes, Democrats- That's exactly the point that Senator Padilla made to me and Tommy when he was here.

Think about the difference between the types of people that Joe Biden has brought in to manage the pandemic and who Trump had. People he was literally taking off of Newsmax to be an influential position. So we could fire important people. The state, we are dealing

with forest fires. He is deeply misguided, if you will, views about climate change and forest management. He can fire a bunch of people he can appoint judges yeah right and we see that's something like people like we they're like there's a very recent relevant example of the danger of putting an inexperienced celebrity with uh extreme views in a position of power like full full stop. We know what happens. Yeah. Try to remember like just yesterday. Just try to remember. Okay. Number two. By the way, when you mentioned that the UK

was ahead of us, they were. Do you know that the slave owners were compensated? After they lost their quote unquote property, the government compensated slave owners. I didn't know that. Yeah. And so when people talk about reparations, do they really want to have that conversation? Because like it or not, slavery was legal. And so their property, their legal property was taken away from them after the Civil War. So you can make an argument that the people that are owed reparations are not only just black people, but also the people whose, quote, property, close quote, was taken away after the end of the Civil War. Now, look, that may sound crazy, but I assume it'll be part of Trump's platform in 2024 when he runs again.

When you say Trump, do you mean the guy who put out the statement in support of Robert E. Lee yesterday? Yeah, no, I think that's, yeah, he was laying down a marker there that he's doing reparations for slave owners when he, yeah, they'll be in the RNC platform in 2024. So, all right. And the number one, maybe most damaging thing that Larry Elder has said.

Let's listen. And God forbid Governor Elder should replace Dianne Feinstein that nobody's seen in weeks. And I'm told she's in worse mental condition than Joe Biden. They're afraid I'm going to replace her with a Republican, which I most certainly would do. And that would be an earthquake in Washington, D.C. Dan is promising that you intend to throw control of the U.S. Senate to Republicans if you get the chance. The wisest political strategy in a state with the most Democrats anywhere in the country. On paper, no, it does not seem. I imagine Gavin Newsom and everyone in his campaign saw that quote and just started jumping up and down celebrating.

I cannot imagine. I cannot imagine a dumber thing to say in fucking California than promising people that you'll throw control of the Senate to the Republicans. Like Trump, I don't want to ascribe strategy to things that people who just sort of vomit up stupid sayings do. But like there is something like this does get to the core of the whole thing, which is they're trying to fire up Republicans, the small Republican minority in the state at, because they're betting on Democratic complacency, right? So yeah, Republicans, like the odds that you get to take the Senate back is going to get a bunch of Republicans off the couch. And we say off the couch, we mean walking off the couch to the place where they keep their mail,

because we mail them the ballot, filling it out and putting it back. So I do like there is, this sort of speaks to the whole thing, which is about who can do a better job of firing up their base. Ours is much larger than theirs, but if we don't do anything, if people don't vote, then this will work. Yeah. And the trouble with the fire up the Republican base strategy is the more you say to fire up the Republican base, the more it does to then hopefully fire up the Democratic base as well. And in a state where the Democrats have a 22 point voter registration advantage, it's not the greatest strategy, but we will see. Last question before we go, how are you feeling about this race right now?

I saw that question on the outline and I really debated how to answer it. And here's what I've decided. How I feel doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Like this is... People should vote like it's a tie race. Well, I mean, that's the important... What possible good is you and I, based on polling,

make a prediction about an election. That seems like a terrible idea. But what is actually, I think driven the, cause the polls have changed relatively dramatically in Newsom's favor or against the recall. And what I think has driven a lot of that is the recognition that elder could win and lose and Newsom could lose. So the last thing I want to do is come on here and say, you got it. It's going to be good to me. No, I guess the only, the last thing I want to do is come on here and say, you got it's going to be good to me. No, I guess the only thing I'll say is, and this has nothing to do with the prediction about this race, or I feel about this race in particular, but I am finding it interesting that the strategy that the Newsom campaign has used over the last few weeks, which is, look how absolutely radical and extreme these Republicans are and would be,

is at least over the last couple of weeks, redounding to their benefit. Whether it's enough for them to win, we'll see on Tuesday. But to the extent that there has been some movement, it has really been about them sharpening this message about how dangerous a Republican takeover of California would be. And I do wonder if that's a lesson for Democrats nationally as we head into the midterms in

2022. Yeah. Hard to say, given this is a state that. This is an easy playing field to try that, right? This is an easy laboratory for that, for sure. Yeah. And when you say we'll find out on Tuesday, you mean starting Tuesday night, we will just wait for Dave Wasserman to tweet what happened?

Yeah, that's exactly right. Could be hours. Could be days. Could be weeks. Just remember how long California took to count votes in the presidential election, guys. Weeks. Weeks.

So we shall see. Anyway, VoteSaveAmerica.com slash California. Make sure that you vote. Go get five friends, colleagues, family members to vote. Call up everyone you can. It is extremely important. I'm kicking off a phone bank this afternoon on this. Everyone has to work as hard as possible to make sure that Democrats are fired up and go vote in this election to stop the Republican recall. And that is all we have for today. Thanks again to Melissa Murray for joining us as always.

And I hope everyone has a good weekend. And make sure you turn those ballots in and get some friends to turn the ballots in as well. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producer is Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, Yale Freed, and Narmel Konian, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.