Rev Left Radio - The Anti-Choice Onslaught and American Institutional Decay

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

Red Menace Teaser: Alyson and Breht discuss the recent Supreme Court leak and the implications of Roe's dismantling... Listen to the full episode here: https://redmenace.libsyn.com/roe-scotus-friedmann https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/

First and foremost, we're going to focus on the recent Supreme Court draft leak, and it is just a leak, right? So this is not an actual law being imposed yet. There's some confusion about that. But we're going to talk about that first and foremost. And I think, Allison, if you want to bring us into that conversation, kind of set that up for us. Totally. Yeah. So, you know, kind of setting the stage a little bit, like Brett said.

And, like, I'm sure everyone's heard at this point a draft leaked for a majority decision that would essentially overturn Roe versus Wade. and obviously that has some massive implications. In the wake of this draft leaking, we've also seen several states passing laws to basically strengthen their potential abortion bans, so-called trigger laws that would go into effect if Roe v. Wade were overturned with some very, very intense laws coming out of states like Louisiana in particular. Obviously, again, this is just a draft, which I think is important to recognize for a couple of reasons. One is that not all of the conservative justices signed on to this particular draft,

which might indicate that there could be changes and what a final decision would look like based on trying to get full sign on from the conservative judges. And in addition to that, most importantly, the fact that it is just a leaked opinion and not an actual decision yet means that there is still time to organize, which many people are doing, to try to create pressure to push things in a different direction. So I do think recognizing that we are talking about a draft is important. That said, there are a couple of updates that have happened since that draft has leaked, perhaps most importantly today, a Senate vote. So the Democrats tried to rush and put together a bill to codify legalized abortion at the federal level. And that

bill failed today in the Senate with a 51 to 49 vote. Un surprisingly, would Joe Manchin citing with the Republicans on that. That was more or less predicted to fail. It is no surprise. to anyone, but I do think that that failure sets us up, perhaps, to have a conversation about the Democrats in relation to abortion. Because one thing that I think is very important for us to point out is that the Democratic Party has been running politicians on the platform of legalizing abortion on the federal level for fucking decades now, and never done it. And we have to ask, why is it that at the last second when there's this leaked decision, the Democrats make this messy attempt to pass a bill that they've had opportunity after fucking opportunity to pass

every time that they've been in power and had a majority in the legislature. And obviously, you know, I think there are a couple factors there. But the main one is that the Democrats don't want to fucking actually do that, right? For them being able to kick the can down the road and rally, you know, voters around we need to protect abortion while never actually codifying it into law is a strategy that they've leaned into in order to garner votes. Because the Democrats, as the cynical fucking mainstream politicians that they are, don't really give a shit about abortion. They give a shit about winning. And it is actually advantageous to them to never codify it so that they can always use it as a carrot to bring votes into their direction.

So when we see something like the Senate vote failing, there's going to be a lot of outrage thrown at Joe Manchin in particular, which he obviously deserves. But all the Democrats deserve that outrage. And I think it's really important for us to emphasize that because they have failed to take action on this every time that they have had an opportunity because cynical politics has always come above defending abortion rights. And again, this shouldn't surprise us. If you're listening to this, you know our opinion of the Democrats. We've been pretty fucking clear about that. And obviously, they are a Bouchoir party who is not interested in protecting the rights of the masses. But we should call it out, and we should be clear about that, because there is going to be a rally around the

Democrats in reaction to this. They are going to try to use this leaked court decision. to create a midterm strategy. They are going to try to save they're the party that can save abortion in the United States. And that is absolutely not true. It has never been true

any time that they've, you know, had power. And we shouldn't let them mobilize around this. What we need is actual grassroots mobilization, not Democratic Party politics in response to this. So those are just kind of some opening thoughts there. Brett, I'll toss it your way, anything that you might have. Yeah, so just bouncing off of that is one thing is really important

as you, as you said in your, in your little rant there is that, you know, by keeping, you know, Roe v. Wade a hot topic, keeping it on the table, not codifying it, one thing they get to do is they get to not never deliver on anything materially for people, but they'll still have something to scare you into voting for them. It was Trump, right? For a long, like the whole last Biden's campaign and everything was all about nothing will fundamentally change. We're not going to do jack shit for you. I mean, Biden himself said, I don't have any compassion for, like, millennials complaining about how hard life is, right? And so that's the whole plan, but like, we have to vote for me or else you'll get Trump and fascism and that's bad.

So vote for Biden. And enough people felt for it that that more or less worked. And now they're going to do basically the same exact thing but with abortion. No, we will not deliver on, by the way, have we heard a goddamn syllable about student loan debt the moment this dropped? it was actually amazing for the Biden administration to get this at that time because Biden doesn't want to fucking do anything on student debt. He was going to have to do it because of terrible voter or youth support and the midterms being a bloodbath. He was going to, he was backed into a corner, I was feeling he had to do something for that constituency. Now it is off the table.

You know, I'm not saying it'll never come back on, but I'm very skeptical that it will. This is the perfect distraction from it because what it does is I was saying is allows them not to do anything on student loans one one example of helping us materially but those same people who will not get delivered on when it comes to student loans will you know more more than likely be the sort of person that is very pro-choice and very so you know wants to stop this and and will be susceptible to the classic tactic by the democrats saying if you don't if you want to protect abortion rights you have to vote for us even though they've proven over the last 40 years that they're not willing to lose that as such a wonderful issue it's kind of like there are some differences but kind of like the

gun issue on the right right every time a democrat runs for a president they say if they win they're coming for your guns nobody ever comes for anybody's guns but it works election cycle after election cycle um and so that you know they would hate to lose that issue to drag people in to support them and the exact same with with rovey wade the other important thing which we everybody listening certainly knows but it's that rich people are going to be fine and all the politicians in the Democratic Party, they're going to be not impacted by this. I mean, they can travel to different countries, let alone different states if they need anything like this.

A lot of them are post, you know, the age of reproduction. They're very, very old, geriatric. They're not going to be personally impacted. Their kids, their grandkids will have the financial buffer to ensure that if that's ever needed for them, they'll be taken care of. But notice that when protest start up in the wake of this decision, Susan Collins gets some sidewalk chalk out on her front street, all of a sudden, you know, and Brett Kavanaugh gets some protests in front of his house, 911 is called and a bill is passed through with peer

bipartisanship to provide more security to SCOTUS members. So SCOTUS literally is enforcing violence on women. If Roe v. Wade is dismantled, literally women will die because of that decision. And sidewalk chalk in response is literally the nicest, most charitable thing you could do in response to a violent attack on you and the people you love. And that is seen as a bridge too far. So we have an attack by theocratic freaks and robes, undemocratic, unelected, a violent attack on half the population and more of this society. The most tepid pushback, thank God for anything. I'm glad for the protesters out there. They're amazing.

Keep it up. But the most tepid pushback to that violent assault on half of the population gets met with the hysteria that the actual issue itself deserves. So see that when rich people, when the politicians themselves are made to feel even a little uncomfortable, they'll all act as a single unit. And when it's anything else, when it has to do with our well-being, they'll throw us to the fucking wolves and run on it next time. So I do have something to say about tactics and stuff, but I'll bounce it back over to you, Alison. to pick up any of that and add any more points you want to add to that? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really good point that you make there to point out that the rich aren't going to be affected by this. And I think for Marxists in this moment, emphasizing that

class aspect is what's really important. It is working class women, right, who are going to be most directly impacted by this decision. That has been the case always essentially in terms of access to abortion, even with the amount of legalization that we have. The states that have managed to pass whatever restrictions are still constitutional underwerect. have mostly disenfranchised working class women from being able to access abortion in the first place and money has always made it more accessible to people. So the class I mentioned there is very, very real and I think important for us to emphasize. This is an attack on the working class and on working women in particular, which is really, really crucial for us to focus in on. The other thing that I want to talk

about, though, just in terms of the electoral aspect of it, is what this means for the GOP a little bit, right? Because one of the takes that I've seen a couple people have recently that I think needs a little bit of pushing back on is this idea that perhaps the GOP is making some sort of mistake by overturning Roe because they lose the ability to rally around abortion on their side, right? And it is true that the promise of overturning Roe and the promise of outlawing abortion has been a major rallying point for the GOP that is one of the big things that pulls the evangelical block in in particular. And while that's true, I don't think that they're actually making a mistake or going to lose

some of the culture war rallying that they get from it. And this I actually think should probably concern us more than it is concerning people. The GOP will survive getting rid of Roe versus Wade and no longer being able to rally around that because they'll set their sights on loftier goals, right? Such as actually not just overturning Roe versus Wade, but making abortion illegal federally as a goal, right? Or these broader goals that we're seeing, with a new push for anti-LGBT legislation, this language around referring to trans and queer people as groomers, all of this development that we're seeing, especially with bills like we've seen coming out of Florida, are a new site of rallying points for social conservatives that the GOP has.

So I've seen this kind of like wanting to find a silver lining almost take of, well, they're getting rid of this electoral strategy that's really helpful for them. And I really want to push back on that because what's fucking scary is that they've found more terrifying electoral strategies. and they feel like they're in a place where they can weather this and make this action. And that should make us concerned about how reactionary politics in the United States are shaping up. And it shouldn't be something where we're trying to say, like, oh, the GOP is making a dumb mistake here. I think it's a very calculated decision that tells us something about how broad their sights are in terms of attacking women and attacking LGBT people, because I think those struggles are really combined in this particular instance.

Right. And there is like, I mean, there's a little bit of a sense that because, of the vast majority of Americans right, left and center, who are against this, you know, at least in polling, that there's like the sense that the, after 40, 50 years of attempts, like the dog caught the car and doesn't know what to do with it. And there's a little bit of like hesitancy to brag about this victory because they know it is so unpopular. So when the news broke, Fox News famously talked all day about the leak, who leaked it? The leak is bad for the court, right? They didn't actually dive into this issue. And you would think after 40 years of trying to fucking do this, that the moment you actually see some light at the end of the tunnel, like, we're actually

going to do this damn thing, you would be dancing. But the fact is, they know huge swath of their own damn audience don't really like that. I mean, the secularization of America means that huge chunks of the right, which 40 years ago would have almost been synonymous with hyper religiosity. Now you see with the new right, the fascist right, the alt right, a lot more pagan, atheistic, agnostic, you know, not traditionalist, you know, religious values at play. And a lot of those people aren't necessarily in love with this. So, but, but Allison is 100% right that this is still a huge victory for them and the car will start up again and continue in the sense that, as you said, what's next? Well, we only have half the fucking country that is, that has abortion

bans. We want, we believe it's evil. We believe you're literally murdering children or so they say. So the next move is obvious. We will try to legislate for the other half of the country that still has it. And then as you say, what's next after that? Well, fuck, we can roll back gay marriage. We just rolled back abortion rights that most people alive today, 40 and younger, have lived their entire lives with the assumption that you have that right. We rolled that back. Well, gay marriage just happened a few years ago. We can certainly attempt to roll that back. Now, having said that, there will, of course, be blowback to this. There's going to be pushed back. And it's not going to be, you know, dialectically, there's never a 100% victory on either side, right? Like,

It's just going to create the next level of confrontation, the next fight, et cetera. So they will have to deal with some shit. It could hinder them a little bit in the midterms, nothing dramatic, though. And I don't think ultimately their party's going to be destroyed by this or anything like that. And a lot of people who, like, on the religious, people on the right that aren't religious, that like to trigger the libs and own the libs and stuff, a lot of those, especially like young men and shit, don't give a fuck about this issue at all. and they like the fact that it, like, humiliates women, that it puts people they don't like into a state of fear and confusion and panic.

And so that alone is enough to keep a lot of those psychos going. So I don't think you're going to see, like, a huge split in the Republican Party over this whatsoever. I do want to say, too, though, you know, we talked about the Democrats' ability multiple times to codify this, but they didn't because they wanted to run on it. You definitely have, especially in Obama's administration, that super majority. and 60, I mean, that's almost unheard of where you have 60 senators of a single party at once. That's a huge, you know, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And Obama specifically explicitly ran on the promise that one of his first things he was going to do was codify Roe. But that never happened, as we know, and this is the result of that.

So it's always important to keep that in mind that a lot of these problems, you know, go back to Obama's administration utterly failing in us living, you know, a decade later in the fallout of those non-decision, so. Right. Do you have anything else you wanted to talk about there? Yeah, I mean, if you want to transition to your thoughts on tactics, I'd be interested to talk about that a little bit, perhaps. Sure, yeah, my basic point here,

and I think I made this clear on, I think I said something on Twitter about this, but it's just the basic thing was like, if all we do in the face of this violent attack on us and the people we love is go out in a street corner and wave some signs or vote in the midterms, like they'll laugh in our friends. face. But you see the moment they start getting uncomfortable, they start freaking out. And that's where the real pressure is. The pressure has nothing to do with like a protest or signing a petition or voting for Democrats next election. The actual shit that works is making these rich, elite

motherfuckers used to having a life of extreme comfort, have a life of extreme daily discomfort. Every time you walk out of your house, you're going to see a huge crowd of people. Every time you're in a restaurant, somebody's going to come up to you and start some shit. You know, at your own church maybe somebody's waiting for you out in the parking lot but to make these people you know i'm not i'm not advocating anything illegal i'm not advocating anything violent i am just saying when you are faced with a violent attack by the by the ruling class in this country you should be able to escalate tactics to make them as uncomfortable as you possibly can and show them that when you punch us in the mouth we can punch back if there is never a response

from the American working class, if there's never a response from the victims of this system or the response is tepid or disproportionate on the low end of what you're actually received, they're going to keep going. Every conflict is a measuring unit. Okay, we're doing this terrible thing to our own people. What will the response be? Oh, they mostly just take it? Okay, let's do this next thing then, right? That's the mentality that begins to develop in a certain sort of ruling class elite psychology when they see that they can get away with this shit over and over and over again. So my recommendation is like hats off to everybody making these people uncomfortable. I mean sidewalk chalk made Susan Collins almost have a meltdown. But Brett Kavanaugh is

like the protest out in his in his front yard are absolutely awesome. And that's the first opening salvo in this attack. You attack us. We punch back. You make us uncomfortable. We make you uncomfortable. Anything that does not meet the challenge where it's at and fails to rise to what they're doing to us is going to be in so many ways another green light for them to keep going. And so that's the basic tactical argument that I want to make. Again, I'm not saying anything illegal. I'm not saying do anything negative or violent. But I am saying that we need to continue to escalate the tactics in proportion to the attack that people are under, you know, this time with SCOTUS, but any of these ruling class monsters.

Yeah, I think those are all great points. I mean, it reminds me of an anecdote that I saw from a comrade who was saying that they were at a protest. And after everyone had kind of yelled and held their signs, as people were leaving, someone got on the microphone and basically was like, okay, what the fuck are we going to do now? Right. We made ourselves heard, now what? And I think that is precisely the question to be asking. So I think that you're very much correct to push us in that direction. Protest, you know, this is a thing that I think the left needs to realize is a tool that has. to be towards an end, right? So in those cases that you're talking about where it's protests outside of SCOTUS judges' houses, there's a clear effect that that produces, right? It's not just getting outside of some random building with some signs. It is actually creating pressure in a specific way. And I think we need to think about protests tactically in that regard and in terms of what tactical ends that they represent. But the other thing that I do think is worth saying in this context, right, is that to make an actual response doesn't mean like individual adventurous action, right? Because that's the temptation in this situation. And

you know, based on some fucking Twitter discourse, there's already been some actions that might fall into that, which everyone's debating whether or not their false flags or not. The question of whether they're false flags, I think, is irrelevant. Lennon, I think, made a very clear case about what these kinds of individualized, attacked, adventurous actions are, which is their detachment from a mass movement, their detachment from the masses and their desperate attempts to try to make a crisis worse without doing the actual mass organization that's necessary. So we have to reject individualism, and we need to reject adventurism. What we do need is a mass response, which requires organization, not individualism.

But the struggle there, right, is to overcome the fact that most of the mass response that we've seen is dominated by liberalism, right? And it's just these protests that are not necessarily putting direct pressure or not necessarily actually achieving tactical ends. So I think it's important for us to recognize that there's a balancing act there, right, where we're not falling into adventurism, but where we're also rejecting the idea that, yeah, just getting out and yelling does anything, because it doesn't. We have to have more than that, and I think that's really important. One other thing to transition a little bit on this that I wanted to talk about. Really quick before you transition, just two points.

You're right about adventureism and for all those reasons, mass movement is 100% preferable to random acts of terror by frustrated individuals for sure. at the same time. I mean, with the state of the left right now, like, I'm just saying, hypothetically, somebody did something crazy. I don't think it would be the worst thing in the world for the left to show some fight and to sort of rally people, which, again, we have the majority of people on our side

to rally people to more militant tactics. That's all I'm going to say. I'm not going to say anything else. There has been a more direct approach in the form of an attack on an anti-choice headquarters or something in Wisconsin, and there's some stuff on, line that's sort of dubious about who's taking credibility for that. I think you might be referring to a similar thing there. Right. But at the same time, again, this is like, oh, there is direct

economic material consequences for your decision to put half the population under direct violent assault. And so I am generally for those things in the abstract. Not telling anybody to do anything like that, but I silently sit back with the smirk of my face and applaud because, again, it's a punch back in the face. You just got hit. the mouth, what are you going to do? You know, are you going to, are you going to try to talk nice and then, you know, use nice words or just go online and post about it? Are you going to punch them back in the face? And punching them back in the face at this moment is something that I personally am going to do a little nice golf clap for. But that's just me. Sorry, go ahead.

No, you're good. And I mean, here's what I'll say, because I get your perspective. I guess my concern, though, to push back maybe slightly is at the same time that I think that what we need is basically, and, you know, I'm seeing comrades do work around this, that is fucking awesome, attempting to say, okay, this struggle for reproductive rights of which abortion is a part of it is dominated by liberal NGOs right now, and to the extent to which there is a large-scale non-individualistic rallying around this, those NGOs and liberalism broadly control it, and there are a lot of comrades talking about how we get beyond that, right, and how we can connect it with existing labor movements, with existing socialist movements in the United

States. And, you know, my perspective, at least, is that it's important that as that connection is being made, as people are doing work around that right now, that we not increase repression more than we need, right? That is my other concern, is that those actions, while cathartic, do increase state repression that will come down on the people who are doing that kind of mass organizing, which is currently, unfortunately, kind of in its infancy, because of the extent to which liberal NGOs have dominated around this issue. So that is just kind of the only concern that I have there as well. Yeah, that is fair. Yeah, I'm not going to say anything more on that front. I think that's a very good point. And mass organizing is the real work, period. And you're right about that

100%. Awesome. So the other thing that I wanted to tackle a little bit, which we talked about this a bit beforehand, is some of these just kind of fucking bad Marxist takes on what is causing this and what is behind this decision to overturn Roe versus Wade. Specifically, one take, which I've kind of been thinking as like a bastardized social reproduction theory kind of take is almost how I think about it, is this idea that the reason that this is happening is that the capitalist class has decided that they need more workers. I've seen this phrased a couple ways, one of like people dying off as a result of COVID or lower birth rates leading to a shortage in the supply of workers. And this is a take that, you know, has been articulated by a couple different people that I think we need to

just take a second to push back against, because it's very vulgar, it's very crass, and it also just, like, reveals some broader problems with understanding how capitalism functions that I think are worth wrestling with a little bit. So, as many people point out, I think correctly in regards to this take, it kind of assumes that the capitalists are like all in a room somewhere making coordinated decisions in this way, which is just not the case, right? Like, Like, there are definitely groups of powerful people that make decisions, but the capitalist class as like an entity is not making decisions in that coordinated of a manner. So I think, you know, we need to push back against that. But more importantly, actually, I think that part of what motivates this take is a failure to take seriously how much capitalist ideology and the superstructural aspects of capitalism affect our society, right?

What people are trying to do with that take is they're trying to rush to find an explanation in the material base, i.e. a shortage of workers to explain this. But I actually think that's kind of mistaken, right? The more useful way to try to frame this isn't just to try to find like, oh, here's a crass economic explanation, but to ask whether or not the ideologies that capitals and produces as a result of its material base are at play here. And one of the things that, you know, Marxist feminists and proletarian feminists in particular have made, a very strong case for is the fact that the oppression of women is a product of capitalist society and a product of class society more broadly, right, which emerges with private property in particular. And given that, I think we can say that this attack on abortion, this attack on access to reproductive health is not motivated by some crass economic explanation, but is motivated by an ideology of patriarchy and of essentially hatred for women that is based on keeping women repressed and oppressed in various ways and exploited in various ways as well. And we can say that without abandoning a Marxist analysis because we can understand that

patriarchal ideology as a product of capitalism itself and is the social base that relies on gendered divisions of labor, etc. So I do think that what you kind of get here is people rushing to make an explanation that just frames ideology or the superstructure out and tries to give a crass base explanation, when in fact, from a Marxist perspective, even though the superstructure and ideology are not primary in capitalist relations, they still impact society. They're still real. They still actually have effects on things. And I think that we'd be much better suited trying to find explanations that start by looking at the level of ideology and a patriarchal ideology in particular, rather than kind of bad attempts at social reproduction theory.

I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, but I wanted to throw that out there because I find that take rather frustrating yeah absolutely um and i just wanted to say too like it's it's it's forgivable if it is a young new person on the left just groping for an understanding i get it i get it i get it you know so i'm not trying to like put down in the individuals and neither is alison that might have advanced this in good faith um thinking that they were doing some some proper analysis but you really got to have a less mechanical um you know cause plus effect version of like this happens in the base and then this happens in the superstructure. It is a multi-directional, reinforcing, vague mechanism of, that kind of bleeds into one another.

It's not these sharp, divisive lines with clear causes and effects in that way. To say nothing of some of the other logical issues, which is that growing new workers or forcing new workers to be born won't pay off for another fucking 20 years. And if anybody wants a, if anybody has a low supply of workers and they need to boost up their support, of workers, particularly the United States, their option is not to force women to have kids. Their option is to fucking bring in immigrants. And that's exactly what they would do. They've done it before. It's a very easy, immediate solution to the problem of having too few workers, you bring in immigrants. And as a country like the U.S., largely huge inflows of immigrants throughout its history, it's not as destabilizing as a place in like Japan. So if Japan has a real

labor shortage, which they're going to with their demographic problem, um that that's a real issue because then they're weighing well if we allow immigrants in it's going to fundamentally change the culture and the social behaviors and what we know as japanese and so you have to weigh that against the ab but you have this lopsided demography where you have a lot of old people and too few young people to deal with it so you're going to have to negotiate you know america doesn't have that problem let them in um to solve that problem they've done it many times that's what they would do moreover the ruling class itself as alison was alluding to is never a monolith. There are always splits and factions and rabid disagreements

between them. I mean, look at the Trump conservative reactionary elites and like the technocratic Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden elites. They're members of the ruling class. They hate each other. So there's not this seamless collusion that happens like that. It's a fight between elements in the ruling class, you know, over a long period of time. Moreover, this is a 40, 50, 50, pushed by the by the religious right that's coming to culmination so this happened well this was started well before a lot of you and I and a lot of people listening were even alive this push has started it's been a systematic march specific conservative focus on the judiciary at every level is one of their basic tactics and it has been for decades and decades and decades so for

those reasons and more that analysis just really really fall short and as the principal people on the principled Marxist left, you know, if somebody's doing it in good faith, kindly kind of push back. You don't need to necessarily devastate them. But just kind of point these nuances out and say that's actually not great. And that's not the right way to analyze this situation. Because, you know, people can have the same toolbox and try to analyze a certain situation and just come up with different conclusions based on blind spots or illogical jumps or whatever it may be. So, you know, people agreeing on a starting point and still coming to different conclusions is very common and our job is to try to bring some clarity to a to an obscure

conversation and i think that's what alison and i are trying to do here absolutely for sure last point on this on my end um well two points really quick and this this is neither here nor there most people know this but you know don't grant them the the label pro life their anti choice don't don't play with their terms they want to paint themselves as these lovers of children and we're just so morally you know we can't stand the fact that children are being killed, but they don't care when children are killed anywhere else in the world. They don't care when children are killed here in the U.S. for any reason that they don't personally feel attached to.

So these are not pro-life people. These are anti-choice people. Just the framing might be helpful when you're in a discussion to emphasize that. But one more question I wanted to ask Allison before we move on to the next one is this is kind of silly and small, but like who leaked it? Because a lot of the original takes were, especially on Fox News, as they were obscuring the actual victory, was a liberal justice must have done it. And then these right-wing freaks on Twitter, like picking random liberal staffers. And like, this is the one. Let's go after this one.

But the other argument is that, well, it could have very well been a conservative staffer leaking it because one of the judges on the conservative side might have been a little hesitant, a little shaky on whether or not to overturn Roe v. Wade and therefore wanted to put pressure on him. We leak this decision, any conservative therefore deviates from it, it will look very bad for that conservative, et cetera. I mean, at the end of the day, these people aren't electable or accountable, so does it even really matter? We'll see. But yeah, do you have any thoughts on who leaked it or whether that question even really matters? Yeah, so, you know, I've seen all the speculation about that, including the right-wing people, just kind of picking

random fucking clerks and attacking them. You know, there's ultimately no way of knowing, I'm not unconvinced, though, by the idea that it could have been a conservative, right? There's the reason that you talked about, and again, the fact that not every conservative judge was co-signed onto that draft opinion, I think is telling in that regard. But the other thing that could have motivated a conservative to do it is that, again, as I talked about a little bit earlier, what we've seen in response to the leak is states strengthening their trigger laws to make them more intense. So the other reason that a conservative might want to leak it is to give state's time to do that prior to Roe being overturned so that conservative states like Louisiana

can get legislation passed knowing that it's going to be overturned and push their trigger laws in an even more radical direction. So that's the other reason that I could see a conservative being behind it. Ultimately, again, like who really knows? But I definitely think that that would be like a real motivation and would be something that we've seen play out in terms of states strengthening their laws in this case. Because, you know, even if Roe is going to be overturned, a lot of those trigger laws were a little more conservative in their approach because they weren't assuming a total overturning of Roe like we're seeing here, right? So the leak could be to give some intel in that regard and give state legislatures on the right the ability to get those out. But again,

ultimately, you know, it is kind of speculation at the end of the day. Yeah, absolutely.