The Daily Beast Podcast - Stop Inviting Trump Toadies Like Kellyanne Conway on Cable News Shows

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

Kellyanne Conway’s Fox News appearance over the weekend angered The New Abnormal co-hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie greatly. Then, Stasha Rhodes, the executive director of United for Democracy, joins the program to discuss the push to counter a well-funded, far-right influence campaign on the Supreme Court. Plus! A conversation with New Republic staff writer and author Melissa Gira Grant about conservative efforts to ban the abortion drug Mifepristone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What a great show we have for you today.

Executive Director of United for Democracy, Stasha Rhodes, joins us to talk about the current state of the Supreme Court and their organization's effort to push for Congress to rein them in before it's too late. Then the new republic's Melissa Gehrigrant is here to talk about the right-wing's responses to the recent Supreme Court ruling on the abortion drug, the abortion drug Miffipipristone, and the new group that's coming for abortion rights. But first, let's have some fun. Well, Danielle, as we glide into another smooth week here in the United States of America, let's start by touching on something that happened towards the end of last week, which is or was, the Supreme Court ruling in a six to three decision that the ATF cannot ban bump stocks for rifles.

And for those who don't know, what a bump stock does, is that the ATF cannot ban bumpstocks for rifles. And for those who don't know, what a bumpstock does is it allows you to fire a semi-automatic weapon, which means one round per trigger pull. It allows you to modify that so that you can just hold the trigger down and fire it in a fully automatic manner, much like a, well, an automatic weapon, aka a machine gun, as some people know them. And bumpstocks were banned back in 2018 after one was used in that horrific mass. murder in Las Vegas. But the court decided 6-3, and you could probably guess, I don't think I even need to tell you who the six are and who the three are, that the ATF had no right to do that. And somehow that this piece of equipment that turns a semi-automatic weapon, a potentially legal semi-autic weapon, into a fully automatic weapon. All automatic weapons are not legal for private

ownership in this country. But the Supreme Court has decided that it doesn't matter. that this thing turns it into an automatic weapon because it's still in their eyes, not really an automatic weapon, even though it can act and fire in a fully automatic fashion. Here's the thing that is just so disturbing. I don't know how many mass shootings we have had where a bump stock was used,

but I definitely know that it was used in the concert at Las Vegas, where I wanna say, roughly 60 people were mowed down in less than two minutes. And for this Supreme Court to kind of exist in this bullshit hypothetical bubble, as if we couldn't bring in a parade of families, loved one, friends and colleagues who can talk about bump stocks from the perspective of having lost a loved one. I don't understand like this gun frenzy that this Supreme Court is in, except for the fact that they're bought and paid for, right? Like the NRA does, buys up members of Congress, buys up the Senate and keeps these people under locking key with their bullshit A ratings.

And it doesn't matter how many Americans we have lost to mass killing. The difference between bump stocks and regular guns is that, Oh, maybe in the time that it takes somebody to reload, that maybe they can be stopped. But if I have the ability to kill, I don't know, a hundred fucking people in two minutes time because I never have to look away, I never have to reload. Like, what the fuck are we doing here?

Countries like New Zealand, they have one goddamn mass shooting. Assault rifles are banned. We have nations around the world that police don't even carry. guns and they managed to live inside of like a civilized society like this supreme court these maga republicans will not be happy until absolute mayhem has overcome America and then that will be their justification for a dictator you see demot this thing called democracy just doesn't work because they have no desire for it to work they want death they want destruction they want despair that's what they are about and that's what this decision was about. It has nothing to do with the fucking Second

Amendment at all. This is not even technically a Second Amendment case. That's what's wild about it. This is just fully a regulatory case. It's not about banning a type of weapon. It's about banning something that turns one type of weapon into an illegal type of weapon. But the whole thing is, and you mentioned the NRA, I don't even think the NRA was that big on this case because they're not what they used to be, really. Over at Slate, Mark Stern and Dahlia Lithwick, both friends of the pod, had a great interview with a guy named David Pacino, who's the legal director of the Giffords Law Center. And he was talking about how the NRA actually losing some power and some sway has opened the door for groups that are, believe it or not, even further to the right of them

to jump in and fill the void. And one of these groups is called the Firearms Policy Coalition. and they filed an amicus brief in this case, and they laid out in six graphics and a GIF, I think, why Bumstock should be legal. And guess what Clarence Thomas in his decision, guess what he used to illustrate this? He used the exact six graphics and a GIF that this group filed in their brief. Oh, what a coincidence. Yeah, you can call his bought and paid for. You can also, you can call it laziness. You can just call it as I think it was Mark Stern at Slate did. He basically said that what Thomas did here was decide beforehand that he wanted Bumpsocks to be legal and then he worked backwards from that.

Yes. Which is, I don't know, maybe not what a judge is supposed to do. Am I crazy for thinking that, Daniel? I mean, the only way that they should actually be working backwards is if you're going to uphold, what is that thing called? Oh, that's right. Precedent. When you're going to uphold precedent.

and then you're looking to the past as a way to create a pathway in the future, but that also is not what Clarence Thomas was doing. Things are so obvious, right? Like, it's so obvious what is happening. It's so obvious that there is no real deliberation, analysis, strategy that is happening when these justices sit down and hear these cases. We already know what Alito and Thomas and roughly robberies. We already know what they're doing.

Because all you have to do is look at their last, I don't know, maybe look at the last six dinner parties they attended and who was hosting them. That's how you know where these decisions are already made. It's just like a fucking farce that we're sitting in. And then we as Democrats kind of look around and we're like, oh, well, they have lifetime appointments. So I guess there's nothing we can do. There has to be something that we can actually do here other than bitch and moan as these

people overturn the 20th century in the 21st. Like, there has to be something that can be done other than me complaining. Well, I guess something that you could do, Danielle, is you could go to a black church in Detroit. Oh, God. And you could fill it with white people and give a speech because that's what Donald Trump did over the weekend. He went to a church in Detroit, a church, by the way, that holds a couple hundred people, which didn't stop Kelly Ann Conway, from going on Fox News and saying 8,000 people were there. This was supposed to be a pitch to black voters. And looking at the pictures from the speech,

it is amazing how many white people, who I can only assume they must be super woke, Danielle, if they're in a black church. I mean, I can't think of another explanation for that. Can you? Now, when they say blacks for Trump, are they talking about the font color of the church? Are they talking about the font color of like the scripture and the programming?

And I have no idea who even runs blacks for Trump. But one of my favorite jokes that I saw recently is like two white women boomers. Marsha Blackburn, I think being one of them. When I see this type of shit, because you see it all, you see it at his rallies all the time. You see a bunch of white people wearing blacks for Trump. It's a white shirt with big black block letters, right? And they don't see the fucking irony. Like they don't like it's it's absolutely lost on them.

And so what difference does it make? No one showed wanted to show up to this event, according to that article that whose congregation it was was going around to local people and saying, oh, the former president is going to be speaking today at the church. And they laughed in his face. And so who did they get the church to be filled up with? A bunch of GOP constituents that probably came in from far and wide so that mine fewer wouldn't see an empty pew, even though there were many.

Like, none of this fucking matters. Because you can go on national television, as you said, Kelly Ann Conway did at the top, and say that there were 8,000 people there. And then the anchor on Fox News goes, oh my God, that's so amazing. Look at us peeling off the black and brown vote, because Donald Trump is for the people.

It's like, okay, like whatever, dude. Like, I'm at this point where I'm just like, okay, Like 8,000 people were there. Why not 80,000? Why not, you know, why not say that literally the roof blew off because that's how many people were there? They were climbing through the windows, according to Kelly Ann Conway, just to hear the president speak.

Like, just make it even bigger because everything that comes out of their mouth is bullshit. What they've learned, and unfortunately what we've all learned over the past eight years or so, is it takes a lot more effort and it's a lot more tiring to keep pointing out the truth. It's super easy to lie. It's super easy to say there were 8,000 people in a venue that fits a couple of hundred people. All you have to do is say it. And you don't have to back it up. You don't have to show pictures. You don't have to show video. Literally, all you have to do is say it. If you want to shoot that down, you have to say, look, here's a picture of the church. How do you think 8,000 people are going to fit in here? But you have to go through the effort of doing that.

and you have to do it every time. And the lies, if you have no conscience, if you have no soul in the way that Kellyanne Conway is deficient, it's just super easy to lie. The only thing stopping you from lying is your conscience. And if you don't have one, then you just say whatever. Because we're past the point of the fact that it's ridiculous being a reason not to lie, where it's like, you know, I don't know, 10 years ago, if someone had said that, they'd just be laughed at and probably not invited back on cable news or, you know, to start a podcast with a certain ex-Obama official.

Mm-hmm. But nowadays, it just doesn't fucking matter. And she can say whatever she wants. And she's the one who came up with the phrase alternative facts, which is another phrase for lie. And she keeps getting invited back on TV shows. She gets invited back to host podcasts, again, with a. former Obama administration official. She suffers no consequences. And if anything, she advances. That is absolutely the point. Like, that is absolutely their strategy. They know that us or any,

any outlet, any outlet that tries to call out their lies and meet their lies with facts is literally going to be exhausted by the end of one workday, let alone eight years of this bullshit. Right. eight years, they have consistently looked into cameras and lied about really big things and really small things. And either the media chooses to ignore the small things, maybe they go after the big things, but to your point, they continue to be invited back because both sides. Speaking of both sides, I think you listeners are about to get both sides of an issue here, of an argument. In Monday's New York Times, the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said that he wants Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms in the way that they are on cigarette

packs. I think this is a horrible idea. I honestly don't see what the point of it is at all. But Danielle, I think maybe you have a different opinion. I like the setup to throw me under the book. No, but that's totally okay. I want you to make go. I want you to convince me. You know, just call me a speed bump. But here's where I stand on this. Look, I'm not a parent, but I think that we have seen enough reports over the last several years that tell us about the harmful effect of overconsumption on social and media, particularly as it pertains to adolescents, particularly as it pertains to adolescent girls, right? there have been so many reports that have been done.

There is absolutely no regulation whatsoever of social media and social media platforms. Now, we've talked about the band that they wanted to do on TikTok, but just so folks understand that that had absolutely nothing to do with mental health and had everything to do with politics and wanting to disarm people from having access to information. This warning label, however, what the Vec said in. in the op-ed that he wrote is that on an average day, adolescents are spending like five hours on social media platforms. Slackers.

And I'm like, and that schools are struggling, right? There are some schools that are beginning to institute, you know, no phones where kids walk in through the door and they kind of do what they do at concerts. I went to see Andre 3000. There was absolutely no phones. You walk in, you put your phone into a. that is locked. You have the pouch with you. If there's an emergency, you can take it out and get it unlocked, but that's the extent of it, right? So that you can have a better experience. Well, schools are

trying to do the same thing in certain instances in locking up kids' phones for the day so that they can, oh, I don't know, do something crazy like pay attention. So there are some parents who they take the words of their doctors, of folks who are research. and studied in these areas around young people who would take these warnings maybe to heart and begin to actually limit the amount of time that their kids are on social media. I'm not saying that it's all bad and I'm not saying that young people shouldn't be doing X, Y, and Z. I try and monitor my own amount of time on social media and fucking doom scrolling because I know that from my mental health, it is really important to be vigilant.

So I don't think that there is anything wrong with potentially having warning labels. It doesn't stop people from using social media, but maybe parents and caregivers and young people themselves think twice about the addiction that they have to their devices. Those are my thoughts. Okay. First of all, I understand why you need to lock up your phone at an Andre Heath 3,000 concert. You've got to be able to hear the fluke. Correct.

I mean, but look, the very first paragraph of Dr. Murthy's, op-ed. Here's what he says. He says, one of the most important lessons I learned in medical school was that in an emergency, you don't have the luxury to wait for perfect information. You assess the available facts, you use your best judgment, and you act quickly. Okay, in a medical emergency, sure. This is not to me how you pass laws. This is how you end up with the Patriot Act. This is how you end up with a lot of laws that turn out to be, I would say, that turn out to be harmful. And I have always believed you don't pass laws in anger. You don't pass laws right after a 9-11 or some kind of crisis like that if the law may have far-reaching ramifications that you're not aware of. So he lost me in the first paragraph alone.

But the other thing is I think social media is a scourge. I think it's awful. You can follow me on blue sky for more on this. But I am not for a second sitting here and saying, nah, social media is fine. kids and adults should be on it 12 hours a day. I don't think that. And I also try to limit my social media exposure these days because it can get out of hand. I don't think putting a warning label on social media. First of all, I don't even know what that means. I don't know that the evidence for social media usage causing a mental health crisis is quite there yet. There's a lot of, well, mental health is rising as a concern for young people, and so is social media use. But as we know, correlation is not necessarily causation. And it may also be that people who are

suffering for mental health issues are more likely to go on social media. And it's not that social media is causing the mental health issues. I'm not even saying that's true. I'm saying I don't think there are definitive studies out there. And the idea to me that as the surgeon general or as Congress or whatever, you pass a law based on not great information, imperfect information. That scares the hell out of me because we've done that a number of times before in this country. And for some reason, it never, ever seems to work out well. Okay. To the points that you made, I think that that's right. I don't think that we make laws.

We are out of time, ladies and gentlemen. We will see you next week. I think you're right about certain things, which is that, look, I don't believe that we need to be making laws and policies like in the midst of an emergency. I think that there needs to be an opportunity for us to stop and to reflect on the information at hand. I think that in his opening paragraph, what he was trying to state is that the mental health crisis that young people are facing is, in fact, an emergency. and we should be looking at it as one. And not as just like, you know, something that we can deal with later. That I think that what he was trying to say is that if we're not looking at this as a current crisis

and thinking about how we avoid adding to the mental health crisis, because look, I would imagine that just being a young person and going to school and knowing that there is a possibility that you could be killed that day is enough of a mental health crisis, right? And having lived through multiple shootings, like all of the, those things. I think adding to that and saying, look, where we are right now with social media that is wildly unregulated, it is just the wild, wild west. We know that algorithms are being improved upon every single day in order to keep you on these apps in order to keep you scrolling and that we need to do something to have a pause, to create a pause, to create a moment

of, oh, maybe this thing isn't that great that I've now look up and I've been on it for three hours, right? And give parents some pause. So I don't disagree with you that we should not be treating this, let's say, like a 9-11 and giving away our rights and our freedoms and all of those things to high regulation. But I do think that we are in a crisis moment and we actually don't really know what the implications in the future will be around. like this mental health crisis that I don't just think that it's young people. I think that Americans in general are in crisis in this area that we are not dealing with at all.

And so I think that what he's trying to offer is a band-aid and not necessarily surgery to truly get to the root of the problem. If we want to really get to the root of this problem, put a damn warning label on iPhones. Yeah. Yeah. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal. The executive director of United for Democracy, Stasha Rhodes, United for Democracy, is a national campaign working to shine a spotlight on the impact that recent Supreme Court rulings have had

in jeopardizing freedom and democracy. Stasha, welcome. I want to jump right in with the fact that just the description of United for Democracy is like, I need United for Democracy to have a budget of about $7 billion. Is that the case? Because I need for something to help rival what we have seen transpire in this Supreme Court at the hands of the likes of Leonard Leo, at the hands of the likes of Donald Trump over the last nine years. Can you talk to us about where we find ourselves right now with this weaponized right-wing Supreme Court?

Yeah, first of all, I don't have the $7 billion. Damn it, Sasha. Damn it. It's a really good fundraising pitch that I will now carry with me from meeting to meaning. So I appreciate you. I will say if we are unlucky in securing the $7 billion, I will settle for political will. Because honestly, that is what we need most is congressional courage and political will to be able to make the necessary structural changes to our Supreme Court so that we democratize the court in a way that it works for Americans.

And somehow we have fallen short on that. I think we are optimistic that we will have an opportunity to do more outside of Washington. So we were founded because we have a belief that Americans outside of the political circles should hear more about how this Supreme Court is impacting our families, our freedoms, and our democracy in a way that is absent legalese and the wonky esoteric terms. but really speak specifically to how the Supreme Court is connecting to issues that we all care about every single day. We know that the right has invested money, time, energy over the past 40 years to capture our federal courts. And a key part of that has been them using and showing the Supreme Court as a power center for the issues that their base cares about. And so we hope that we are able to do that over the next few years. but certainly in in 2024, when the issues are most pressing and when the attention is certainly growing around the Supreme Court in this election. Look, I think to answer your question on where

we are, the Supreme Court has been captured by extremists who favor the wealthiest Americans and the biggest corporations over workers, families, and communities, and who put their own biased beliefs over our nation's laws and use the court to help the powerful gain even more power while the American people pay the price. Since former President Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, this MAGA supermajority, as you know, has overturned abortion rights, weakened voter access, blocked student loan relief, made it harder to fight the climate crisis and easier to flood our communities with guns and so much more. And they're doing it.

I'm sure you know and have heard about recent Alito tapes that have leaked where he mentions that, you know, they're just upset because we're not ruling the way that we would like them to. And the truth is, this isn't about our graves. This isn't about the fact that our side isn't making the final rulings. They're doing this through breaking longstanding legal precedents and ignoring judicial norms. And so, unfortunately, that is where we find ourselves. Here's my feeling, which I have a lot of them and they are deep and layered, which is that I don't have any time anymore left to look back and figure out why Democrats over the last 40 years have not invested the time, the talent, and the wealth behind restructuring our judicial system.

I have no idea why for the last 40 years when we know that right-wing white evangelical Christians were chomping at the bit to overturn Roe v. Wade, why we told ourselves that that is something that could never happen. Why, when we saw Donald Trump become president of the United States and Mitch McConnell hold a Supreme Court seat hostage, we again told ourselves that this was not a time to ring an alarm bell. So when we are looking now at what we are facing, which is a one Supreme Court justice that has a billionaire daddy that has provided nearly $4 million worth of gifts over the last 20-some-odd years, I think, 30 years that he has been on the bench. You have another one that has been caught on tape who says that he doesn't believe that

we can necessarily live side by side with people that think differently than us, whose wife is a rabid, MAGA right winger, who can't even stand the appearance of a rainbow flag, apparently. It sends her into some type of fit. We know all of these things, and yet, Stasia, we find ourselves collectively stuck with people who have lifetime appointments with a chief justice of the Supreme Court who thinks that the Senate judiciary asking him to come before them is like akin to me saying, I'm not interested in coming to your baby shower. Like, it's a choice. And so given all of these things that we see and that we know, I know for one, that if it were our side and we had this type of grifting, this type of egregious, like,

missteps that both Alito and Thomas have had that Democrats would throw them under the bus and they would have probably been forced to resign. That's not going to happen with these people. And so is it that Democrats just feel like we just throw up our hands and we say, oh, we lost this round, I guess we'll get them again in a hundred years? What's the recourse to where we are right now other than to wait and watch? Yeah, look, I think all of that's true and frustrating. And I guess I I will push back and say that we no longer have to be stuck. And I think that we have to use this election year as an opportunity to really make the Supreme Court an election year. I think, you know, what we've seen is Dobbs open the door for us to be able to connect the issues for folks and voters

across the country. I'll pile on for a second before I get to the bright spot. The thing that I will say, just so that you know you're in good company. The thing that I will say, the thing that I will say is that conservatives figured out decades ago how to translate voter displeasure over Supreme Court decisions into winning campaign issues and top priorities for their elected officials. It's no secret that progressives are far behind on this type of work, but we have an opportunity over the coming months to turn this around and we can't afford to let it go to WIS. Trump and his allies created and empowered discord and Americans are deeply unhappy with a results, but not enough of them understand where to point the finger for the Stodist decisions

they hate, and that part needs to change. So according to recent polling, only 24% of voters blame Trump for the Dobbs decision and subsequent abortion decisions, and only 34% blame congressional Republicans. This means that many people who share our values, especially on this issue, including the vast majority, who sort of have gone out in the midterms and call themselves pro-choice, largely blame the Supreme Court alone, or worse, they blame President Biden since it happened under his leadership. And this is a serious problem, but it is also a significant opportunity for progressives. You know, as the Supreme Court gears up for the final decisions, potentially devastating decisions, and the election gains more attention from the entire nation,

we've launched United for Democracy, a campaign to ensure that the Supreme Court is a part of the national conversation in the most important. impactful ways. We have to draw a sharp line between the extreme justices power grab and the key issues that we know Americans care about, the economy, abortion, democracy. And we hope that our campaign will help to raise the profile of the Supreme Court as a major threat to American freedoms. But if we're not sort of pointing to the Supreme Court as an electoral issue, then we really miss this moment. And honestly, we miss an opportunity to reshape the court in the way, the same ways that the conservatives have done for years, they've been able to mobilize their voters as Supreme Court

voters because those issues matter to them. We now have an opportunity to do that. We launched our campaign a month ago. We are knocking doors in Arizona and Pennsylvania, and very soon we'll be doing the same thing in Michigan and Wisconsin. We have about a $10 million, not billion, a million dollar ad buy in these places, and then we hope to sort of make some noise around the debate. But look, it's not just us. There's no way that we're going to be a able to do this ourselves. We have to stop talking about these issues in silos. We have to talk about the issues we care about with connectivity to the Supreme Court. But most of all, we have to point the blame at the folks who are rolling back these freedoms. This isn't just the Supreme Court working alone.

This MAGA infrastructure is operating an entire system that is infiltrating our political system. It starts with President Trump and it goes through the Supreme Court. Congressional Republicans in the House and Senate, and we have to be able to use this. To your point, if it were Democrats, they would be on the trail talking about this. And we have to do a better job at taking this conversation outside of Washington and on to kitchen tables. One of the things that I think is incredibly important, I mean, it's the reason why I do the work that I do in terms of podcasting and writing, which is to build up an educated citizenry,

right? Throw out those numbers. And you say, only 25% holds Donald. Trump responsible for the overturning of Dobbs. When I listen to those numbers, I recognize how important and see the connection between our public education system and understanding civics and understanding our duties and our responsibilities as citizens of this country. We don't know how government works, right? We only understand what is in front of us. So because Biden is in the White House right now and abortion was overturned, quote unquote, on his watch, that's the only two

connections that people make, right? And I think that that's the problem with what Republicans have been able to do just over the last 10 years. I don't even need to go back 40 because the last 10 have been extraordinarily damaging to our democracy and to the courts. And so when I listen to what it is that you're saying and what your organization is doing, I am both relieved but also incredibly frustrated with where Democrats are in terms of providing the educational resources to the public to understand where they need to point their fingers. So in this gap that we have in time, which is very small, we have five months less than, right, at this point until the election. And I don't think that the American people truly understand that they're a lot in

life, if they think that it's rough now, is going to get, I don't even know how to measure how bad things will get and how quickly it will happen in November if they're not able to connect the dots in terms of saving our democracy. So we know that there are a few decisions that are left that the Supreme Court is coming out with, one of them being Trump's immunity, whether a president can actually order Seals Team 6 to kill his political opponents. And you know what? There'll be no problem there because apparently you're above the law. How do you think we message this moment? How do you think that we use what is going to be, because I'm ye of little hope, the last devastating decisions before they go out for summer break so Martha Alito can fly more flags,

like how do we use these devastating moments in order to message to the people what they need to know? Yeah, that's helpful. Look, I just want to agree with all of the first part and then maybe just add two more points. One is you're right about the fact that we are seriously lacking in civics education. And I can't overstate that point enough. But look, I will say two additional things that are, is sort of the fault of Democrats. One is we just really have not talked about the court in a way that makes it matter to people's everyday life. And I think a reason is because the court is seen as this off to the side, non-biased, branch of government that will save us should we get in trouble. They gave us brown and helped

with a number of rights. And so it's a, it's a body that is going to certainly save us and do the right thing. It is not that entity. It is not that branch. And so we've not done enough education around why it isn't and also why it matters to our everyday life. That's one. Second, we have a broader problem as it relates to Democrats. And it is our ability to communicate the importance of structuring, restructuring our democracy. The issues that we face, the sort of gun violence prevention, climate, abortion, all of those point to a deeper issue, and that is a broken democracy that we have to prioritize. Conservatives often have prioritized changing the rules in an effort to get what they want, and we, as Democrats, have been afraid of power.

We've been afraid to change the rules so that we amass and maintain the power to deliver for our people. If you care about gun violence prevention, if you care about reproductive freedom, you also must care about a functioning democracy that's able to deliver those things for you. And we've been afraid of those things. If you look at the Senate, we have a filibuster that stands in the way of delivering the things that we know Americans want. and not just Americans on our side. Americans across the board will like us to deliver on a number of issues that the filibuster stands in the way of. The Senate is also deeply under-representative.

So we have 700,000 people in our country who have no representation in the Senate at all because we don't have D.C. statehood. So the list goes on about all of the ways that our institutions do not serve the people and therefore we can't move the needle on the issues, but Democrats are afraid of being able to take that power, and we have to push them to be able to do those things. In terms of what we're waiting for,

as you mentioned, Trump immunity tops the list for most folks. But I would also just encourage people to pay attention to the administrative law cases. I know it puts us to sleep. We don't want to talk about administrative law cases. And certainly when we're talking to voters and we're talking to folks outside of the political lead circles, it's really important for us to be able to message it in a way that talks, as I mentioned, to the issues. And so right now there are a number of cases, whether it's relentless or Drakasey or corner posts, there's a number of those, a series of cases, if you will, that will allow the court to become the agency experts and agency authority on the issues that matter, whether it is

the environment or medical decisions, they can override the executive branch and decide from the binge what should happen in our country. and we know now that this court needs no more power, but that's their effort. Their effort is to weaken agency power so that the judicial branch has more power and they're able to weigh in. We've seen what that means for us, whether it's guns or abortion or homelessness. We know that this court doesn't have the American people's best interest. And so I would just really encourage folks to pay attention to those cases. Well, you've just successfully depressed me in terms of the other cases that we need to be following. I guess my last question for you,

Stasha, is how do you think that we energize the public in this moment? People are exhausted. They are feeling a sense of hopelessness. They are feeling and watching as each term of the Supreme Court strips away more of the freedoms that their children and grandchildren will never see. And there is a malaise. that is happening in our culture because of it. We don't go out into the streets the way that the French do on a regular basis, even the way that the women in Iran have.

So how do we energize the public around this important body? Yeah, I think we just have to lead with that it's possible. We have to lead with that going out in November voting actually matters whether or not you're a Joe Biden fan. It isn't the point. Look, I think that we've sort of gotten into this popularity contest that we have to be fans of the people that we vote for.

And really, I think the way that we have talked about this election is that we're voting for our last chance to save democracy and which side gives us that opportunity to do so. And so I think characterizing this election and this opportunity and this moment that we're in as the ability to make a real change because it's very true. We have an opportunity to make change both in the state. structures of our democracy so that we can make good on those issues in changing the Supreme Court, we have to be able to let folks know that this isn't just cast your vote and then let's hope that it works out. We actually have hope and an opportunity to make a difference. I guess the other thing I will say is voting for a particular candidate doesn't mean that you don't hold them accountable or continue to ensure that they are doing the things that they say that they would or even things that they

heaven said to push those candidates. That's what democracy is, is that we, we select someone, but then we hold them accountable and we ensure that we show up and continuously ask them to make good on their promises and to reshape some of their thinking. And so I hope that this five months, six months that we have left, that we're doing our best to do that. Stasha Rhodes, thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal folks. You can get more information at United for democracy. Really appreciate you making the time. Thank you. so much. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you. Last Thursday, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed a conservative effort to restrict the use of the medication abortion drug Miffipristone beyond the

Food and Drug Administration's standards. But the ruling hints solely on the lack of standing of the plaintiffs. And as the new republic's Melissa Giro Grant says, this won't be the last run the right takes at a federal ban of this drug. She joins me now to discuss. Melissa, thanks so much for being here. Hey, thanks so much for having me. So let's start with the case itself. which is Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Writing a TNR, you say this case was brought by a group that appears to have been solely formed or formed solely to do this and that it should never even have made it this far. Talk about AHM. When was it formed and by whom?

Sure. So in the days, honestly, days and weeks after the Dobbs decision in 2022, a group called Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, file articles of incorporation, in Amarillo, Texas, looking into the group, like accountability groups like accountable. U.S. have some digging into them. And I collaborated on some reporting with them as well, like finding out that this group is really just like a piece of paper or a shadow group at best. They are composed of five different anti-abortion dental or medical associations. Also, I had no idea there was a Christian anti-abortion dentists association, but there is.

And, you know, as I was also, like, digging into, like, these groups and some of the actual healthcare providers were members of them who as individuals join this case. I was just shocked. Like, I think anybody would want to know, like, if the physician they're seeing or nurse practitioner or dental hygienist is a member of an anti-abortion group, that could be very relevant to your care. So there's this whole universe of these groups. HM, Alliance for Hypocratic Medicine is got a mailbox somewhere in the South, not Texas, where they're incorporated. they don't really seem to have any activities in Texas. And coincidentally, the place where they file their paperwork to incorporate in Amarillo, Texas is around the corner from the Texas court where they filed this case. And folks might be familiar with Judge Matthew Casimiric.

He is the kind of arch maga justice. If you have an anti-abortion case right now, this is the guy you want to get it in front of. And it's not even like judge shopping at this point. Like, you are guaranteed to get him if you file a case in this particular court just because, like, it's only him who's going to get these kinds of cases. So from the beginning, it felt like something that was crafted to get a particular result, which is to find some argument that would allow them to attack access to Miffitt Pryston. Because Mithfittin has been so vital to ensuring abortion access after Dobbs. It's as simple as that. They want to continue to find ways to make it impossible for people to obtain an opportunity.

abortion. So in looking into who's behind Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, do we find this other group called Alliance Defending Freedom? That's what's a little, like I wish I could say there is no such thing as Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and it is essentially Alliance Defending Freedom. It's not 100% a shadow group for them, but it's a group that's enormously useful because Alliance Defending Freedom is Christian right or Christian nationalist law project that's behind the job's decision and behind Masterpiece Cake Shop, behind a case I wrote about last year involving sort of an extension of Masterpiece Cake Shop, you know, they are looking for plaintiffs that will help them advance a political argument. So in this case, they want to, you know, get rid of Miffa

Pristone. And so they have to find somebody who is injured by Mifiphristone. And I do think that they had a heavy hand and sort of selecting like what would be the ideal plaintiff for this. And the fact that Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine didn't exist until this case was filed more or less, that's, It's like kind of a blinking neon sign of like, oh, isn't this convenient? You know, like, I think the simplest answer is like this group had would not exist if not for this case. And the subgroups that are part of it, Alliance Defending Freedom has done legal work for them in the past. And it just, you know, it stretches the imagination that like they could have Alliance Defending Freedom working for them when their total annual income with something like under $50,000 a year. This is clearly, you know, pro bono representation.

That's fine. You know, we see that on the left in progressive cases as well. But in this situation where there's like no actual group, it just seems incredibly convenient. It's there because they had to find somebody who was injured by Mifupper Stone conceivably in order to have standing to bring the case at all. And this was just, I think, the easiest way for them to do that. And it was Aaron Hawley, right, wife of the awful Senator Josh Hawley, who argued the case before the court.

and she is affiliated with Alliance defending freedom. Oh, yeah, that's where she works. And she's been affiliated with them back through Dobbs. I'm not sure how much further back. She goes than that. But, you know, she is somebody who very much like her husband is incredibly ideologically anti-abortion, you know, even anti-sort of sexual freedom. Like her husband has said things like, you know, the sexual revolution is responsible for sex trafficking. Right.

There's no like subtlety with it. You know, these aren't the people who are sitting around being like, hmm, well, at which number of weeks. abortion be legal. They're just opposed to it and they're going to find a way to do it. Aaron Hawley, you know, I was at oral argument. I saw her make her case. And at one point, the justices asked her, you know, well, okay, you're saying that patients have had all these adverse experiences using Mitha Pryston, like how many are there? And she said thousands, which is not what their brief said. Their brief said like dozens. And it was just a moment of like, oh, I'm sorry, I misspoke dozens. It didn't really help them make the argument because that's what you would

think would happen, right? If you're saying the FDA is doing something dangerous, the people who are most harmed by that would be the people who take the drug. Right. And those were not the people who were bringing this case. They were utterly absent from this case. As you mentioned, this is not the first time that ADF is basically making up a plaintiff. And you mentioned 303 creative. It was a case where the court didn't dismiss the case because of the lack of standing. And yet here, they did dismiss. What do you think the difference was? Was this just more blatant? That was my sense, at least at oral argument in the case of HM versus FDA. You could kind of see some of the more conservative justices.

Getting as close to saying outright, like, this is a weak case, but we might side with you if you brought us a stronger one. Right. So we're going to kind of give you some hints of like what that might be. Maybe it would be a patient. The difference, I think, with 303 creative is there wasn't even an injury. Like to me, like, 3 or 3 creative is like just a shabby. You know, that involved a Christian web designer who wanted to refuse the business of wedding websites made for same-sex couples. Preemptively, she says this had never, you know, she'd never been in the position to refuse that service, but she might be someday.

It's ridiculous that you can sort of like come to the Supreme Court and say someday I might want to discriminate against this group, give me permission. But that's essentially what happened there. And in this case, we have doctors saying, and in some case not even doctors, but dentists who have no business prescribing the firstone, saying. saying that like our patients are harmed by taking this drug, therefore we are harmed or we might be harmed. I mean, that to me is is also incredibly weak. In this case, I think maybe they, you know, there was so much more coverage of it, especially because of its connections to Dobbs. This is like the first big major in abortion case to go to the court after jobs. MTALA, also the emergency medical abort case that is we don't have a decision on yet. Maybe the court was feeling scrutiny to not go along with something.

that would seem so extreme. But I also don't want to hand it to them. Yeah, sure. This is like the standing argument here was so, so weak. Like, it's, it wouldn't, it never should have got to them in the first place. And if not for the lower courts, having sort of been groomed to get cases like this to the Supreme Court, they never would have got it in the first place. So given that the case was resolved basically on the grounds of lack of standing,

in states that already have abortion bans, this doesn't change anything, right? with regard to Mifapristone? No, no, it doesn't. You know, if you live in a state with a total or near total abortion ban, Mufa Pristone's status has not changed for you at all. You are still in a situation of having to obtain that, you know, outside the, you know, legal medical system. And there are community networks that are supporting people to get access to Mifapristone as well,

you know, even in states where maybe it's legal, the access is very difficult because, you know, there might not be providers. There's now some states that have shield laws, protecting medical providers prescribing Miphrastone from states where they can legally do that, sending it to patients in states where it might not be legal. None of that has changed as a result of this. All that has changed is this anti-abortion group is going to have to go back and come up with another strategy to take Mitha-Pristone off the market.

And I don't think that we should feel like that. Like, that didn't get knocked down in this case. Like, they are going to come back with something that will allow them to achieve the same thing. Justice Kavanaugh, in his decision or in his opinion, basically gave them a roadmap for how they should go about this, didn't he? Yeah, the thing that was so fascinating for me, I mean, one, just that Kavanaugh wrote it. I don't think anybody would have guessed, even if there was, like, a unanimous opinion that he would be the author. And, like, the thing I actually took away from, from his opinion was when he started meandering into, like, well, if, like, we allow these doctors to challenge the FDA, then aren't we opening up the door for, like, basically anybody? to challenge any regulatory agency and specifically mention the EPA.

You know, I can absolutely see why the conservative justices would not want to create a pathway for individuals to bring legal action against the EPA, rather, over emissions, right? Like, they didn't necessarily even have to, like, depart from their politics. Like, it wasn't, like, a begrudging, like, oh, well, you don't have standing. Otherwise, we would let this proceed. Like, if they had let this proceeded, like, everything in terms of, like, these regulatory agencies that get their power from Congress,

you know, apparently that would now be up for grabs and then anybody could challenge that in court. They don't want that. They know that would be chaos. So because of that, that sort of instructs them to find, I think, somebody who is much more directly injured or perhaps they will try to find a way to do this that doesn't involve the FDA at all. So you don't have to get into these kinds of issues of like, well, who can sue an agency for alleged misdeeds? You know, like, that was very clear in court as well, that like that's just like way too. far for this court to go. Yeah. So in your piece at the New Republic, you have a quote from the campaign director of the abortion on our own terms campaign, a woman named Nancy Cardenas Pena. And she says the people who brought this lawsuit knew it was baseless and this ruling won't stop them or the politicians and judges equally determined to ban abortion and control our bodies. I agree with the large majority of that. I'm curious, though, do you agree that that ADF knew that this was baseless? I'm not inside their heads, but I will say this, like every action they took to craft this case would not make sense if they thought that it was a sure thing, right?

Like you wouldn't have an organization that had never been legally incorporated, all of a sudden incorporate in the most favorable jurisdiction. That says to me that they know that the outcome for them would be better there, but maybe even they know that they wouldn't have much of a chance anywhere else. Gotcha. So I think that for this particular part of the anti-abortion movement, them and the physicians that are allied with them in this, they talk all the time about like chemical abortion. That's their language for it and how chemical abortion harms women and girls. But what they mean by that is medication abortion causes abortion.

Abortion is harm to women and girls. Therefore, like that's like what they're trying to sort of get people to start to associate. They want to make these drugs seem dangerous. They want to make them seem like they're being prescribed callously by doctors. You know, they talk about the abortion industry, that there's some sort of profit motive in, you know, Mifra Stone being available, even though it's been available in some form in the U.S. for more than 20 years. It's so obvious that they're bringing these challenges now because of Dobbs.

It's so hard to kind of like apply normal legal logic to the Christian right. Yeah. Because for them, the courts are just a pathway. They are rooting their analysis in something that's like so far outside the courts. And I think they view the courts as like an instrument that they can wield. But that doesn't mean that they like think that they, you know, have a. strong case. Like, I think they know that they're having to fight really hard to craft a very particular case that would allow a court to even entertain something as preposterous.

Gotcha. You know, you noted in your TNR piece that one thing that Justice Kavanaugh didn't reference, in his opinion, was the Comstock Act, which both Alito and Thomas brought up in oral arguments, and it was something you and I talked about at great length the last time you were on. How big of a surprise was this? Was it just that since it was just blatantly obvious the plaintiffs had no standing that there was no reason for Kavanaugh or any of the other conservative justices to even go there right now? Yeah, like, for them to dismiss it on the grounds of no standing, didn't require them to weigh in on the Comstock Act at all. And I mean, in fact, nothing about this case required them to weigh in about the Comstock Act, except that ADF had mentioned the Comstock

Act in the lower courts saying, look, there's already this law that essentially says mailing medication abortion is already illegal. That is a deeply questionable argument, but it is certainly not only ADF making that argument, you know, since this case is filed and since it made its way to the Supreme Court, that argument that the Comstock Act is already a national abortion ban on the books, that has only gotten more support. And so when Alito and Thomas raised that an oral argument, I kind of think it had more to do with nodding to like this mounting conservative legal strategy to claim that actually we don't need to get an abortion ban through Congress because we already have this 1873 law that would functionally ban abortion. And so it might

even actually point to the strength of that strategy that they didn't mention it in the opinion because it's moving independently of that. And there's also, I think, some anxiety amongst those actors, particularly the ones who aren't like, you know, super allied with maybe some more extreme parts of the Christian writer fringe parts, but the ones who are ostensibly trying to look like they're like, you know, operating normally inside institutions, like Alito occasionally pretends to act. I think there is some fear that if they talk about this too much, it will sound as ridiculous as it does to more people.

It's not necessarily in their interest to continue like beating that drama. And in fact, when Alito mentioned it in oral argument, he only at first referred to it by the number of the statute as if he was trying to sort of not utter the word Comstock knowing, I mean, even ADF did that. They wouldn't use the word Comstock in their briefs. You know, like at a certain point I had to realize like, oh, I have to find search on, you know, the criminal code. If I want to find in these cases, they know it's a controversial argument.

And I think it's one that only is possible for them to make on the premise that like someone like Trump would be in the White House again. Nobody has enforced the Comstock Act in this way from the White House. Like DOJ hasn't been doing prosecutions under a Comstock Act for decades. And even then, they were not these kinds of prosecutions that they're asking for. So I think that it's still incredibly dangerous. like the fact that it wasn't mentioned in the opinion doesn't mean that they backed off on it. And it might mean even that they're like, you know, trying to find ways to continue to advance

that strategy where it will have less public scrutiny. Yeah, no, that's what I was thinking as well. What's the next thing we should be looking at in terms of Mitha Pristone? Is it something on a state level? Is there already an effort to move a case back up the federal chain? Or is it both? There's a couple of states, I think three states that filed to join this legal challenge in the lower courts. And so it's possible that their attorneys general can continue that.

I'm pretty sure that they will continue that. I don't know what that would mean necessarily for access outside those states. The situation that we've been in postdocs where like every state sort of is coming up with their own abortion law and then testing how far they can extend that law into other states is really troubling. You know, we have that with Idaho and this like supposed abortion trafficking statute. Abortion trafficking is not a crime. they invented it to refer to people driving people to another state from abortion because they're angry that Washington is so close by and is a place where people can, you know, still obtain abortion similarly with Texas and New Mexico, Illinois, like states that are close to that. Like the states where people can continue to access abortion are dealing with a lot of scrutiny. And I think what I'm interested in sort of the next phase of this is what access to Mufibu-Pri-Stone looks like for people who live in states where abortion is banned, you know, if there are other ways for people to actually.

access Mithopristone because it's coming to them through doctors in states where prescribing it would be legal and who also have protection for making those prescriptions through shield laws. It feels like there actually hasn't been enough energy to sort of like pass protective legislation to continue to keep Mitha pristine accessible where it could be or from points of origin where it could be, you know, even if it's going somewhere where it's illegal, there is much more energy on the side of like, let's figure out how state by state we can continue to restrict access to this. And I think on the kind of abortion right side, it's a mix.

You know, people are focused on community networks so they can continue to provide access no matter what's going on with the law. But that is not an effort that you're necessarily going to hear about on like a cable news show, you know, because it's an underground effort. And that is unfortunately, I think most of the reality of abortion access work is looking like that right now. All these like state campaigns to put abortion on the ballot, you know, these constitutional amendments that might be going before voters. and somewhere up to a dozen states in November, that doesn't necessarily increase access that would at best get us back to what the status quo was before Dobbs.

And the abortion access landscape has changed so much since Dobbs. Like clinics that were operating in 2022, they can't just like restart operations, you know, in 2025. Like places have lost resources. Doctors have moved. There are fewer doctors also who want to provide abortion because of the political context

or scared of being prosecuted. You know, like there's a lot of, a lot of uncertainty. So I think like it's easier for the right in anti-abortion groups to continue to chip away. It's a lot harder for folks working for abortion rights to build, even if the laws were back on their side because so much has been lost. Melissa, it's always great to talk to you and I love reading your stuff at the New Republic. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. I really appreciate it. Of course. Thanks. Andy Levy. Danny Mood, mood. Oh, no. I told you what you've started on.

social media. Put a warning label on it. I'm going to put a warning label on you. Who is your fuck that guy to start out this gliding good week in America? Okay. So over the weekend, there was a report that Stanford has a, or had a thing on its campus called the Stanford Internet Observatory. It was a group that studied online misinformation and did really, really,

invaluable work along those lines and was highly respected in journalistic circles and in every circle except where, of course, you would expect it not to be respected and that would be conservative media and congressional Republicans. So the SIO was one of the groups that was hauled before a committee by Jim Jordan and others. They ended up having to spend millions of dollars to defend themselves. and the whole thing apparently became too much for Stanford and they shut it down. And Jim Jordan, of course, is taking a victory lap. The whole thing is utterly disgusting, but it's exactly what the Republicans want. They are trying to create this view that reporting on misinformation is the equivalent

of censorship. And this gets back to what we talked about earlier in the episode, that it's very easy to lie. It's very easy to create misinformation, but it takes organizational level stuff sometimes to shut it down. And the Stanford Internet Observatory was one of the key groups doing just that. And Republicans obviously didn't like that. Conservative media didn't like that because conservative media, if it can't lie, it's out of business. So what they did was put pressure on SIO and on other groups like that and made it politically difficult for organizations that donated to that institution, such as the Pew Charitable Trust. the Hewlett Foundation and Stanford itself, you know, from contributing to the work that this organization was doing. So the Republicans did what they do. They created a climate of political

fear around the very idea of combating misinformation. And unfortunately, in this case, it worked. And all of the leadership of the SIL has left. And what is still remains of it is, at this point, it looks like it's going to be subsumed into a cyber research thing going on at Stanford. But for all intents and purposes, it is shut down and it's absolutely shameful. And so I don't know, my fuck that guy can go to so many people here, but I'll just go ahead and give it to Jim Jordan and his cronies who do not want you to know when they are lying. Yeah.

What's fascinating, over the weekend I saw a post by the World Economic Forum that I reposted it on my Instagram stories, which was about. a school in Finland in Finland that they are beginning to train children as young as pre-k to discern disinformation and the program grows from there and using fairy tales and using stories and then getting into more age-appropriate current affairs to have you understand how and if you are being lied to and it is just extraordinary to me that in Finland they're saying to themselves, this is a real problem. And it's one that's not going to go away.

So we actually have to arm our citizens from youth on how to discern the right information from the wrong information. And it's just like wild where we are in the United States, where you have members like Jim Jordan that are just like, fuck you in your truth. I'm going to ram my lies down your throat. And if you say that it's a lie, I'm going to tell you you're unpatriotic. Or I'm going to tell you that that's censorship. ship. Like, we should have the right not to be lied to, right? Like, not to have to read the small print,

not to have their bullshit put down. If you want to tell me, right, that you believe that the sky is purple and Donald Trump is your new Jesus, then like, tell me that. And then it's up to me to decide. But don't, like, put it out there as if it's somebody's fact and science and then sell it to me. And that's what it is that they're doing. And they really fucking need to be stopped. So, fuck those guys. All right, Danielle. Let's smoothly end the show with your fuck that guy. Okay. So I don't know how smooth it's going to be. Well, given that my intro to you was as bumpy as could possibly be right there, I think I already blew it. Fair. So Richard Hall-Torff is how I think you pronounce his name.

Is a pro-life candidate who is running to unseat Lauren Bobert, right, in a Colorado race. And let me just read you this headline, and I probably should just leave it there. Here's the headline from the independent. Pro-life candidate in Colorado race asked about girlfriend's abortion in excruciating interview. Oh, that's right. Richard had a little incident, I guess, if you want to call it that, in his youth, where in college, in his, I think it was his early 20s, they said. said he got his girlfriend pregnant.

His girlfriend then said, I'm not having this child and asked him to pay for an abortion, which she had. And the interviewer from News 9 said, quote, if abortion was the best choice for your girlfriend, why try to deny that choice to other women? And this man, Haltorff's, like, he bobbed, he weaved. you would have thought that he was in a boxing ring. Like he just was all over the place in trying to get out of what was obvious hypocrisy. He said, I don't seek to deny that right.

And the reporter shot back and said, quote, you have voted to restrict abortion access with legislation. And then Haltorff responded, I have. And so the reporter? Mm-mm. I need this person's address so that I can send them a bouquet. He said, I have. And there are exceptions, right? And then the reporter responded and said, quote, is one of the exceptions when Richard Haltorff's is the father? Nice. And then his response was, it's not about me. Don't personalize it and make it about me. Motherfucker, there is nothing more personal than abortion. There is nothing more personal than abortion. We do not have to run through bullshit hypothetical scenarios because nightmares are unfolding all over this country. in red states that now deny a woman a right to an abortion,

that would rather have her bleed out and die, deny her access to emergency room care because of people like Richard Haltorp, who is running to leave the state house and come to Capitol Hill with his Hippocratic bullshit. You funded an abortion, dude. You don't get to turn around and then have the ability to deny other women

the right that you saw. fit to do in your 20s, but now want to turn around and say, oh, no, no, no, I'm about having exceptions. Yeah, the exception being that if you are a wealthy white guy, you get to say whether or not a woman can have an abortion, but everyone else, fuck them. I just, like, if you were to actually, like, this is where I appreciate this reporter, I appreciate investigative reporters, because I would love to know, I swear to God, run me down the list of Republicans right now who have either had an abortion or paid for an abortion in their lifetime. Because I guarantee you, there are more Richard Hall-Torfs than there aren't. And these are the people that are making decisions about the

rest of us that got to choose their life and their economic well-being and, you know, but get to shut down those opportunities for other people. Fuck this guy and, fuck all the Republicans that you know are hypocrites just like him. Danielle, I'm starting to think that maybe for a lot of people who are anti-abortion, it's not about the sanctity of life. Oh, yeah. And it's about running women's lives? Yes.

I don't know. I don't know what makes me think that. But it's just a thought that I literally, I just had this thought. And I don't know if anyone's ever considered this before. I don't know. But for those that are interested, the New York Magazine right now, now felt the need to do an in-depth fucking story on Republican women and what has happened to them as they cling to their guns, their babies, but like want to roll back abortion and be trad wives. Whole in-depth story happening right now because apparently we can't get enough.

Yeah. And I will also say that I think Kyle Clark was the name of the anchor who did the interview. Yes. Let him host all the Sunday shows. Think it would be great. Chuck Todd and his entire career has not had an interview that good. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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