The Daily Beast Podcast - Time for Democrats to Stop Triangulating and Go Hard or Go Home

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

“The problem is there are so many mass shootings that they are now pushing other mass shootings out of the news” and Republicans just want to change the subject each time, co-host Molly Jong-Fast says to kick off the latest episode of The New Abnormal. But the cold comfort is that “there are so many shootings that we're going to be talking about it, even though Republicans want to run out the clock, they're never gonna be able to run out.” Plus, We’re Not Broken author and MSNBC columnist Eric Garcia joins the pod to tell Molly about his reporting on autism in America while having autism, and Strict Scrutiny co-host and ABC Supreme Court contributor Katie Shaw explains how politicians hide behind the Supreme Court’s 2008 gun decision to pretend they’re powerless now, and about what’s looming when the Court issues it’s first big gun decision since then any day now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objective. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, 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 the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. Kate Shaw, who hosts the strict scrutiny podcast and is a Supreme Court contributor at ABC, is going to tell us about what she's seeing in the Supreme Court right now, especially around the gun ruling that's about to come down. Then we're going to talk to Eric Michael Garcia, who's an MSNBC columnist and author of We're Not Broken about the talking point about mental health being the

cause of all these shootings. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Jongfest. The problem is there are so many mass shootings that they are now pushing other mass shootings out of the news. Is that where you're stopping?

We're not supposed to laugh. We're laughing because it's just so completely untenable in every way, shape, and form. The one good thing, and there are no good things here, but the one thing that could actually serve the American people is that the gun violence in this country has gotten so out of control that Republicans

sort of no longer think they can win so they just want to run out the clock right they just want to say we can't talk about this now we don't want to politicize gun violence we want to focus on doors and as the noble Ted Cruz said

and mental health which is an NRA approved phrase and not talk about guns but little do these Republicans realize that there are so many, I'm looking at this gun violence archive.org, that there are so many shootings that we're going to be talking about it, even though Republicans want to run out the clock. They're never going to be able to run out the clock. I would love to share your sort of cautious optimism that Republicans won't be able to run out the

clock, but I'm not entirely sure I do. There are Democrats making noise about legislation, and I guess the House is going to take up a red flag legislation in the coming weeks. And on Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi said that the House is going to take up a ban on assault-style weapons. But first of all, I don't know if they have the votes, but that's a separate issue. I think bringing it up. Well, the House has the votes. I don't know if the House has the votes because you've got a lot of, I mean, you've got a fair number of centrist Democrats who may not go for that. And pretty much no Republican, maybe with a handful of exceptions is going to go for it. So you've got to pretty much, you've got to have almost every Democrat

on board. Maybe. Maybe they do. I mean, maybe, look, I've seen some people have said we've, you know, hit the dreaded phrase, the tipping point or an inflection point. I'm so cynical about this stuff and I don't want to be. I just, I want to make that clear. This is, if I say I'm cynical about this, I would be incredibly happy to be wrong. Something has to be done. We need to pass legislation. I mean, we had the shooting in the Tulsa, hospital that left four people murdered, the guy bought his AR-15-style gun that day. He walked into a gun store and bought it that day. And he had purchased the handgun he went in with just a couple days before. So at the very least, put a two-week waiting period on something. You've got to do

something. We've reached the point where it is just beyond clear that you should not be able to walk into a gun store and walk out with a semi-automatic rifle. It just doesn't make sense. Right. And also is a pretty good case that 18-year-olds who can't legally drink should not be able to legally buy a weapon of war. Yeah. I mean, I know here in New York, they're talking about raising the age of 21, and that's probably something that can get done fairly easily up in the lovely state capital of Albany or Albany, depending on how you, guess, depending on where you live. Does anyone call it Albany? And I say this. as a serial mispronancer. I think up there they do, but I don't know. I think I think...

Oh, good for them. Yeah, I'm confirming. They put a weird emphasis on the AL up there. Yeah. Look, we talked about the other day. I think it was Mo Brooks. He was like, well, I brought a shotgun to high school. Future senator.

And that's a lot of the country doesn't think that there's anything wrong with an 18-year-old buying an AR-15 or an AR-15 style weapon or a semi-automatic rifle, period. There's probably large swaths of the country where they think 18 is too old and it should be younger. I think the polling is actually that, well, Republican legislators might not want to deal with this, that actually it's popular, both on the left and the right, a lot of this stuff. And it's much more popular than you think it is. I am happy to hear that. But I don't necessarily think Republican legislators care because they don't want to hurt enthusiasm. before the midterms.

Right. And is it popular with what has become now the Republican base? And which is, of course, at this point, whom every Republican legislator plays to.

So I don't know. Is it popular with the Trumpist base? I don't know the answer to that. But look, the Democrats have to get off their asses and Molly, you've written about how they can't just sit there

and say, we can't do anything. Right. Well, the thing about, that I think is interesting is Pelosi is really a different kind of leader than Schumer. They are similar age. They've been around for a long time,

but it does seem to me that Pelosi is really doing a lot of stuff. She has sort of a frenzy of activity. She's passing more bills. There are already, she's passed a bunch of different gun violence pieces of legislation that have died in the Senate, as such things do. I mean, I feel like this is really the time

for Schumer to get going, to hold a filibuster cutout vote, and to make, you can, you know, he can make Mansion vote against this. But, yeah, minimum age, it's more popular than you think these gun control legislations. The problem is I think that Republicans won't pass it, even if their base wants it. Also, the people who want it aren't the emotional base. They're the sort of more rational part of the base, which tends not to act in such emotional ways. Right.

And that's what I was trying to get at earlier. There are the things that should be the simple things, like the age or, at the very least, like the waiting period and stuff like that. I mean, I don't think any of us think we're going to get another assault weapons ban like we had in the 90s. The only thing standing in the way of that is cinema and mansion. You could say to Joe Manchin, like, you want 50 more battery mines in your state or you want, I mean, I want to, like, encourage Democrats to think. outside of their anxiety-produced box. Right. And to think big.

For example, like, there are no rules here, right? Like, the filibuster is a rule that's made up, right? There is a filibuster cut out. You can use it for anything. There's reconciliation. You can use that for anything. Like, we are in the run-up to the midterm. The Democrats desperately need to get their base excited.

We have a real fucking problem, which is that people keep getting murdered by these assault weapons. Republicans don't want an assault weapon ban, but Republicans don't even want any sensible gun legislation because they don't care because they just want to do kind of very Trumpy stuff. And Republicans don't want to legislate and they haven't wanted to legislate, you know, since nude gingrich in 1994, but really more recently since Trump, you know, the idea that. that these people are going to legislate is kind of, it's almost delusional. So, I mean, I would just encourage Democrats. And again, Chuck Schumer has a moment here right before these midterms.

And we don't know when Democrats are going to have this moment again. Right. They may never have this moment again. I mean, one of the news, big news stories yesterday was that there are these Republicans training poll workers to supervise elections. and this is being encouraged by Steve Bannon. I mean, you know, all of the evidence is pointing towards nothing good here. And, you know, and you're really seeing one party has rejected democracy.

So, you know, if I were the Senate majority leader, which he is, even though people seem to think that Mitch McConnell is because Mitch McConnell keeps eating his lunch. But if I were the Senate majority leader, I would be. doing creative stuff. The thing about Republicans is like they've done a lot of really problematic things, but they haven't ever asked Democrats for permission, which Democrats seem to continually be asking Republicans for permission. Imagine if Republicans had the House, the Senate, and the presidency, and we're like, oh, we can't get this past.

Can you help us? Like, they would never do that. They would just do whatever it took. Yeah, that's unimaginable. I would encourage everyone here to push Democrats, and Democrats need to push themselves. Like, they have an opportunity here, and we don't know when this will ever be back. Yeah, it feels like right now that the Republicans have none of those three positions. Right.

And they're still acting like we're going to do whatever the hell we want. Because Democrats are still asking them for permission. Republicans are just, you know, they're eating our lunch and we're letting them do it. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we're still waiting. I guess it's supposed to come this month for the finals, Supreme Court decision on abortion that we already know is from the leaked version is not going to be pretty.

But you would think that you've got two big issues now for the Democrats. You've got, you know, reproductive rights and you've got gun violence. And if the Democrats can't do anything with those, what good are they? Well, and you know what's interesting is that Punchball News, which is this sort of very inside baseball email-less server than I'm on. has the thing where do they poll the staffers. And the staffers, 90% thought that Roe would help Democrats. But the thing about it is, and I saw an article in the Hill yesterday that made me want to

scream where they were, you know, they were talking about how some Democrats with hard reelection fights are trying to back away from the gun conversation. It's just exactly wrong. Like the Republicans are not going to vote for you. The gun people, even if you pretend that you don't, you know, that you just want them to have their guns and be happy. And those people are not voting for Democrats. The people who are voting for these Democrats are their base. And those are the people.

I mean, here's a statistic, a more recent and Politico Morning Consult poll found that 59% of registered voters believe that gun sales should be stricter. That's a lot. 59%. And so that's your whole. base right there as a Democrat. Right. I mean, I think that the idea that Democrats, that these Democrats who have these hard re-election fights are going to stay away from gun control and choice, which are two wildly

popular things, because they need to present themselves as merely mouthed centerists who have been focused grouped is crazy, but that's what they do. And this has long been a problem for Democrats. They are much more concerned about sort of these, the mythical votes from the independents than they are for the actual votes from Democrats. Yeah. Yeah. And they seem to enter into every election,

and that's their strategy, is we can't win unless we get these mythical voters. We don't have to care about the people who are actually in our party. And it just, I mean, it'd be one thing if it were working a lot, but it's kind of not. Well, I feel like they want to appeal to the never Trump conservatives and not scare them off,

but the never Trump conservatives have no other place to go. And, you know, you can't let them shape the Democratic Party and they're conservatives. Right. No, absolutely. And I mean, I keep calling them mythical. But obviously, those people exist. There are people who are independents, who are moderates or whatever you want to call them. And yes, they do exist. But I don't think you can care more about them than the people who are actually in your party. And in terms of doing what you're supposed to do for the voters, it just seems to me that you should listen to the people and try to help the people who are in your party. And the Democrats, they just don't seem to ever want to do that.

And I've said this before. They're like, it's like they hate their base. Like they think their base are a bunch of socialist loonies. And they think they have to appeal to these center or center-right people. And, you know, and as we've said ad nauseum on this show, that was the logic for, you know, well, you can't nominate Bernie because they're going to call them a socialist. So you've got to nominate Joe Biden. And then what do they do?

They call them a socialist. And it's every time with this, it doesn't matter. Like, you're not avoiding the fight because the Republicans don't give a shit. They're just going to call you socialists no matter what, you know. I mean, if you can call Joe Biden a socialist, you can call Iran Rand a socialist. Like, at that point, it's just that crazy. So I just, I wish the Democrats would sit there and go, you know what, we've got, like, I'll even set aside, you know, morality and just raw, ruthless politics.

Let's just go raw ruthless politics. You've got two big issues here. We've got reproductive rights and women's reproductive freedom. And then we've got gun violence. These are two issues that are really going to stir up our base. Maybe we should play to that for once. For once, just do that instead of saying, well, but, you know, yeah, some of our base, you know, they don't like guns. But then, you know, the moderates, they, you know, they might be okay with raising the age from 18 to 21, but they're never going to

going to go for, you know, X or Y, so we can't go after that. No, just go after it. The whole thinking here is wrong. And I just wonder how Democrats got here and how Republicans are the absolute opposite and why no one has pointed this out to Democrats. I mean, what are these people who are making all this money advising these candidates doing, if not pointing out that the people they need to show up for them? You know, it's funny because Carville was on this podcast. We were talking about Biden's anemic polling numbers, even before inflation was an issue, Biden had these really bad polling numbers that just didn't make any sense to me, considering that there really wasn't anything particularly, you know, I mean, it was just a normal, you know, this was before

inflation became an issue, which, by the way, is a worldwide issue and is happening in Europe and happening everywhere else. And he said, well, you know, if you look at these numbers, if you can get, you know, he showed me sort of how you can get back up to the, to the earlier numbers. And the people in those numbers were the base. They weren't like magically people who voted for Ronald Reagan. You know, they were the Democratic base. So those are the people who won Biden, Georgia. Those are the people he needs.

And those people, all they want from him, all those women who showed up in Georgia and registered all those voters, all they wanted from him was protect their right to. vote. Remember that? That's all they wanted. And they didn't do it. Yep. It's so self-destructive to watch political party not be able to deliver. And I think they can. I just don't think it's prioritized. They're still living in the 90s and the whole Clinton, like the whole triangulation thing. And they think that that's how the world still is. And it's a problem that a lot of the Democratic consultants are those same people. You know, they're all, they're all Clinteneistas and they're all from the Clinton era. And that's a serious problem because America,

is not the same country in 2022 as it was in 1996. And they have to get out of that mindset. They have to get out of that, what do they call it at the time, the new Democrats? You know what's interesting to me is like we talk about this a lot. But in the House, there are a lot of really young Democrats, right? I mean, even in the Senate, I mean, some of these senators, I mean, Brian Chats from Hawaii, Chris Murphy from Connecticut. at some of these senators are actually quite young. It's just the sort of thinking that feels,

and they're not in leadership positions, I guess. Right. But I'm even talking more about the consultant class. I'm talking about the fact that I'm sorry, I don't need to hear what Paul Begala thinks about anything anymore. And I don't mean to sound harsh there. I'm not even saying he didn't do a good job back in the 90s. Great.

The world is different now. They have not changed. They have not adapted to the world. And the Democratic Party needs to stop losing. listening to them and the Democratic Party needs to realize, which the Republicans have realized, and to a large extent, caused this problem. It's not the center that drives things. And it's not this triangulation part, you know, strategy. The strategy has to be the Republicans do not give a shit about triangulation. They do not care about anyone outside of their base. But what they do is

they turn out a large percentage of their base to vote. They motivate their base. And they play to their base. And it's working and it's unfortunately probably going to work in November bigly. The Democrats need to realize that they have got to adopt a similar strategy. And again, this does not mean find the left-wing version of QAnon and play to it. But thankfully, that's not the Democratic left-wing base or liberal base or any of that is not insane Q&N people. You know, it's people that maybe to the left of a, of a, Joe Biden on a lot of things, but they're not, they're not crazy in the way that the right wing is crazy. So just listen to them. Yeah. And I also think like voting rights. Voting rights.

Like that's not even, that shouldn't even be a partisan issue. That's an easy thing to deliver. And it doesn't have to necessarily be a large package that federalizes elections. It can be a slim down package that makes sure, you know, that does the sort of brings back some of the stuff. that we saw the Roberts Court take away in that voting rights ruling that kind of gutted the Voting Rights Act. So, I mean, I just want to see more out of Chuck Schumer. That's my hot take. I want to see more. I don't want him to have a nice summer.

I want him to legislate. I don't want these people. I want these people to work this summer like it could be our last summer of democracy because it could be. I know it's hot in D.C. And that's very hard. But the offices are air conditioning. Air conditioned. And I think they should work.

Kate Shaw is co-host of the strict scrutiny podcast and a Supreme Court contributor at ABC. Welcome to the new abnormal, Kate Shaw. Thanks so much for having me, Molly. So I first wanted you to come on because of this piece that you co-wrote in the New York Times. But I have other things I really want to talk to you about. But the first thing I want to talk to you about is this opinion piece that was published two days ago. with the title we clerked for Justice Scalia and Stevens, America is getting Heller wrong. You know, I don't think I realized how much of America's complete inability to legislate on gun control is based on Heller.

Well, I don't want to overclaim, right? There are enormous political obstacles to meaningful gun regulation, even apart from Heller. But I do think that Heller is a big part of the story of our complete inaction in the last 14 years. So Heller is the 2008 decision in which the Supreme Court, for the first time held that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to gun ownership, right? Before that, it actually had been kind of assumed that because the amendment says a well-regulated militia, really what it was about was like protecting state militias from disarmament by the federal government, but nothing to do with your, you know, your right as a person to own a gun for self-defense

like or other purposes. And in a five-four decision in 2008, the Supreme Court, again, for the first time, said no, the Second Amendment is about an individual right to gun ownership. that was an enormous change in our understanding of this constitutional provision. And I think that it has loomed over debates about regulating guns in the intervening 14 years. And I think people have this impression that because it was this enormously important opinion, it has basically made it impossible to do meaningful gun regulation. But I think if you actually read what the court said in Heller, that's just not true. You know, whether Heller is right or wrong.

I was working for the justice on the dissenting side of it. So I'm not mounting any defense of the correctness of Heller, but I do think that it has in it, the majority opinion, the Scalia opinion, tons of language about how government has lots of leeway to regulate guns. So it is just, I think, a cowardly position for politicians to sort of invoke Heller and say, well, our hands are tied. We can't do anything because that is just not true. Talk to me about what it says in Heller a little bit. It's mostly in the last couple of passages in Heller. And the Scalia, again, this is a Scalia opinion, basically says nothing in our opinion.

And what the opinion said was the Second Amendment has an individual, right? to gun ownership, and the DC law at issue, which was a total prohibition on having a usable handgun at home, was therefore unconstitutional. But obviously, that was just one kind of gun law. And so the end of the Scalia opinion has a couple of passages that basically say, nothing in our opinion cast doubt on the longstanding prohibitions, on possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or throws into question laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of firearms. We're not throwing into question bans on guns and sensitive places like schools.

We're not calling into question bans on carrying dangerous or unusual weapons. So, sure, there's like plenty of room for debate about what some of those passages mean, but you can't pretend they're not part of the opinion. And I think that does mean that politicians, you know, have to understand that if they're making the choice to do nothing in the face of the number of mass, shooting events that we are seeing, they are making that choice. It is not that the Constitution absolutely ties their hands. Right. Where they've gone with it is kind of amazing. So not so usual to have two clerks of very different justices, right, an op-ed together. Why did you guys decide

to write this? And I should say we didn't, you know, just clerk for justices on opposite sides of the case, right? And leaving the court, like John went on to work in the Trump administration. He was the attorney for the Western District of Texas. in addition to working as Maine Justice and the White House. I was in the Obama White House and I've been a law professor now for a long time. So, yeah, we don't actually agree on very much substantively at all. But, you know, I knew he had been the U.S. attorney in the district, in which both Evaldi happened and the El Paso shooting a couple of years ago happened.

And so I just, like, had a feeling that this might, like, hit close to home. And so kind of out of the blue, I sent him an email after the shooting, just saying, this is probably a long shot, but would you ever think about doing a joint op-ed if we could agree on some principles that basically say that Heller gives lots of room for government to regulate guns. And he wrote back, he wrote, he sent a nice response saying, like, I'm not sure how much we can agree on, but I'm open to the idea. And so I said, well, let me just write a couple of paragraphs. And we went back and forth. And, you know, we wanted to be explicit about the places of divergence as well as convergence.

But, you know, obviously we lived and breathed this case when we were working on the court, you know, 14 years ago. And so it had always felt to me and I was just had a feeling that maybe this was also true about John, although I hadn't really talked to him in all those intervening years, that it had been misunderstood and misused in the public debate. And so anyway, we got to kind of consensus and then just emailed the New York Times. And so that's how it came about. I mean, I just saw this thing from Sarah Longwell today about a Trump focus group where they all wanted to raise the age to 21. It seems like, well, the politicians may not be there. The Republican base seems more open to it. Yeah. I think that's right. And I think that was also true about the public opinion polling we

saw after Sandy Hook, right? There was enormous public support for not the age issue, but, or that wasn't even really on the table, but for just expanding background checks. We have federal law requiring background checks, but it's got lots of holes in it. And so, you know, there were some polls prior to the failure of that federal law that had like 90% support and well over 50% Republican support for 60, 65, 70 for various kinds of expanded background check type measures. And I think that sort of age limits and red flag law, are also kind of candidates for the kinds of laws that have a chance of achieving bipartisan support. And so I think that's actually part of the reason why Heller is this kind of useful foil if politicians

don't want to do this. And their base is asking them to. They can just sort of conveniently whip out a copy of the Constitution and say, again, we'd love to. But we want. And that is just wrong. And now I should say, look, like Heller's 14 years old. It is as conservative an opinion as Heller was, it's a much more conservative court now. And so it is entirely possible that these new Trump appointees are about to really expand what Heller said about what the Second Amendment, you know, prohibits and permits. And yet I do think that that the mismatch is important here. And I think that's why there is an opportunity of public pressure staying on elected representatives to actually do something. This opens the door to my next question for you, which is there's this road decision, which has sort of blocked out the sun.

But there is also a really big gun decision coming down. Can you talk about that? Yeah, that's right. So there is an enormously important case out of New York that's a Second Amendment challenge to New York's permitting scheme for carrying concealed weapons. And so for over 100 years, New York has had a pretty restrictive regime, which basically requires you to show you have some special need to carry a gun in order to get a license to do that. And a number of other states have similar schemes. And the argument made by these challengers is that the Second Amendment protects a right to carry gun outside of the home. That's something the court didn't address in Helleran actually has never addressed. and that this New York licensing scheme is inconsistent with that right to carry a gun, that it's too hard to get a license to carry a concealed weapon in New York, and so the New York scheme has to fall. And the tenor of the oral argument last fall suggested that there's definitely a majority on the court to side with the challengers to strike down the New York scheme.

So what really matters, I think, given that that's almost certainly the bottom line outcome, is what the court says about the scope of the right to carry a gun outside of the home. I mean, the maximalist version of that opinion. I imagine Thomas will write some version of it, although I presume he won't write the majority. It's like, you know, states can't impose any kinds of conditions. Like, everybody has to be able to carry a concealed weapon all the time, which is a truly insane reading of the Second Amendment and sort of, you know, world to imagine.

But seems very Thomas. Oh, yeah. And I don't know. He might have, like, one or two people with him. I mean, I can imagine Alito and Gorsuch going along with it. But I think that's probably it for that kind of maximalist reading of that part of the Second Amendment. But the rest of them are who knows. what they're going to say. And it may be that they say states can condition the issuance of these

concealed carry permits, but they have to do it in a more permissive way than New York has done. That could change a lot of stuff for New York, right? I mean, that could make everything a lot more dangerous here, right? We've had two subway shootings since the oral argument in this case. And if all of a sudden there's, you know, an enormous increase in the number of guns on the subway, yeah, I mean, like, I live in New York City and we all ride the subway all the time. And that's a terrifying future to contemplate. And even if the court says something like, like, well, you know, you can ban guns in the subway. I'm not sure how you enforce a ban like that, right? The point in New York is that government, you know, we all live in very different conditions.

It's a diverse, big, sprawling country. And it would be great if those of us in New York who have elected representatives who are going to, you know, make, I think, the very wise choice that we all live on top of each other and we shouldn't all be packing guns while we live this way might make different policy choices than the people who represent the citizens of Montana. And like, that's fine. That's federalism. And I think there are some people who want to impose this one vision of the Second Amendment on those who live in these conditions that are, I think, completely inconsistent with that. And it's really scary. It is very scary to contemplate. Yeah. You said something about Gorsuch. Yeah. I just want to talk about that for a minute because I actually was talking to a friend of

mine yesterday who, you know, was a similar kind of law commentator person. And she was saying that Gorsuch is more conservatively aligned maybe than Kavanaugh and Barrett, which sort of to blew my mind. Can you explain that to us a little bit? Yeah, Gorsuch is, I think, a complicated figure. I think it's right that on a number of issues, he is in the Thomas Alito far, far right corner of the court. And I think the reason that's surprising to hear is because, well, we all know that he wrote the opinion, finding that the sex discrimination provision of Title VII encompasses discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. So that was a liberal outcome, right? You can now challenge being fired for being gay or trans. and that's because of an opinion that Gorsuch wrote.

He's also taken a pretty expansive view of tribal sovereignty in a few Indian law cases that the court has decided or is considering now. And so he has had traditionally non-conservative, you know, like views in particular cases. You know, I think in the Indian law cases, he actually just has kind of a view that is more aligned with the liberal justices on the court that really centers a history of oppression and kind of tribal sovereignty, and that's just like a distinct set of commitments that somehow is cordoned off from

the rest of his views on history, race, oppression, and even. It's very distinct. But I think that in the rest of the cases that the court is considering outside of, you know, that area, and then, you know, sometimes he considers himself the most sort of ardent textualist on the court, and he thinks that he and he alone can sort of discern the true meaning of text. And it happened to be the case that in the Bostock, Title VII case, he believed that the... the text of Title VII that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex was best understood to also prohibit discrimination on the basis of, again, sexual orientation and gender identity. And so it happened to cash out in a very progressive kind of bottom line outcome in that case. But I actually think most of the time he asserts this kind of unique ability to discern meaning in text and statutory text and constitutional text.

And most of the time that ends up tilting in conservative directions and his substantive views and commitments, again, outside of the Indian law area and some immigration. cases, I guess, as well, are, you know, I think as every bit as conservative as Clarence Thomas's. You know, like, I think he has, like, a complete deconstruction of the administrative state substantive set of views and beliefs. And so I think that those two are the ones who are kind of the most willing to completely dismantle modern governance as we know it. I think Alita would kind of only do that if there was a Democrat in the White House. You mean, like, Alita was just kind of like a crass partisan. And so he would be happy to be on board with the, you know, deconstruction agenda if it's, the Biden administration, he would pause if he was fond of the inhabitant of the White House.

And I actually don't think that's as true about Gorsuch and Thomas, who are kind of like, yeah, they're really burn it down. I think that's right, no matter who's sort of residing where. Do you believe that the other two justices, the other two Trump justices, Amy, Coney Barrett, and Kavanaugh, again, this is what I was told. I have no reason to believe this, but that they are, except when it comes to Roe, which they're all idealized. which is why they were put there in the first place, that they are actually a little bit more liberal than we think. I mean, I don't think I would put liberal in the same sentence as either news, but I think it's more kind of moderate and kind of like, you know.

I think it's overstated sometimes, but I think there is definitely some kernels of truth to it that sort of Roberts and Kavanaugh and Barrett are sort of fellow travelers in some cases, and then Thomas and Gorsuch and Alito or sort of fellow travel. It's kind of a three, three court. But I don't think that's in every case, And I don't think it's, you know, in any way, like, absolutely true.

But I think that, you know, Barrett and Kavanaugh, they seem more both attuned to kind of public perception and opinion of the court. I don't think Gorsuch cares at all. I get the sense this is, like, impossible to know, but I get the sense that they reside in maybe like a more ideologically diverse, like, media ecosystem that they, like, you know, imbibe. They don't just watch Fox. I mean, I think that when you hear the things and read the things that Alito says and writes, Yeah, it just sounds like he's kind of inhabiting a sort of, his media diet is 100% Fox News. I think that's true about Thomas, too. And I just, I don't know that's true about Gretax-Gorcech, and I'm pretty sure it's not true about

Kavanaugh and Barrett. And I think that seeps in the way they talk, the way they think. And I also just think that they kind of are institutionalists and care about the court in a way, you know, of course Barrett's, you know, just arrived. And so we don't have tons of data. So we'll see, I think, a lot in terms of what she writes. She very much could have the New York gun case. I think she or Kavanaugh almost certainly does.

And I think we'll learn a lot about, you know, whoever has that majority opinion when we see it. But I do think that that is right, that they are more, I would say, moderate and pragmatic than Gorsuch. Just from my own edification here, do you think that there's so many shootings in the last couple weeks? I mean, do you think that this could influence these drafts or now? I think it's worth thinking about it.

I mean, I think two things. One, we speculated on my podcast, strict scrutiny, maybe about a week ago, that there was this odd silence from the court this week, right? They are not issuing any opinions this whole week. And Tuesday had been an opinion day. They just pulled down. And we speculated, yeah, like, maybe they had been set to issue the Bruin, New York opinion on Tuesday.

Yvall de happened last week. And they were just like, we can read the room enough to know that we're not going to issue this gun rights expanding opinion like five days later. And so they pulled it down kind of strategically. I think that is totally possible. Again, unknowable, but totally possible. possible. But to your sort of more substantive question, like, could this actually be impacting the drafting? It certainly would be unusual for like events in the world to

change the, you know, drafting of an opinion so late in the game. And for sure, you know, the opinions have already circulated majority dissents, you know, the kind of crazy Thomas concurrence that I imagine we will be seeing. And yet I think it is possible that that those in dissent, you know, like if it's a Kagan descent, if it's a Sotomayor descent, I presume it's one of those two. Maybe Breyer's written separately too. He's got a great dissent in Heller. And maybe they're like wanting to update their dissents to kind of like add more data points about the dangers of not regulating guns. And so I think that's possible. And is it also possible that now again, I don't think it's changing any bottom line conclusions.

But if it is a Kavanaugh or a Barrett, and if they are kind of sensitive to public perception in the way that I was just positing, maybe they see the need to soften some language given the political moment in which this opinion is going to kind of be released into the world. So yeah, I think it's, again, for like the fifth time I'll say totally speculative. But I think all of that actually is possible. that that's happening kind of inside the walls of one first street, like while all this is happening at in the world. So interesting. I'm so glad you came on.

I really wanted to just have my questions about the Supreme Court answered. So thank you for doing that. I got you. I'm so happy to do it anytime. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, great. Eric Michael Garcia is an MSNBC columnist and author of We're Not Broken. Welcome to the new abnormal, Eric.

Thank you very much for having me. First, I want to talk to you a little bit about your book. Yeah, so incidentally enough, in a weird way, I kind of have two people to thank, two very unexpected people to thank for this. Tim Mack, who used to work at The Daily Beast, was a person who encouraged me to write this, to initially start writing about autism because I'm autistic, and he said, there's a lot of autistic people who live in Washington.

And then, incidentally enough, Donald Trump. And the reason why I say Donald Trump is because if you remember in 2015, he said that autism is an epidemic, and, you know, he sort of blamed the vaccines. And what shocked me about this is that I was like, okay, look, Trump is Trump, right? And we know he's a serial liar. But the thing of it is is that I grew up in Southern California. And I was like, there are a lot of liberals who agree with him.

If you remember, like in 2015, there was that measles outbreak in Disneyland back in, like, 2015, if you remember? Because, like, parents weren't vaccinating their kids. And what it said to me is, look, I'm a political journalist, but I'm also an autistic person. And I've been autistic my whole life, as my friend John Marwell likes to say, the way I learned about autism as I was born, you know. And, you know, my feeling was, as a political journalist, as I was like, well, if we have a lot of bad ideas about autism, we must have a lot of bad policies about autism. And so what I basically decided to do is kind of see, how did we get these bad ideas about autism?

And then more importantly, how do these bad ideas lead to bad policies? And how do those bad policies affect autistic people? And so what I did is I traveled across the country. I went to West Virginia. I went to Michigan. I went to Nashville, Tennessee. I went to Pittsburgh. And I tried to see what it's like to be autistic in America.

And I guess the underlying premise that I thought was, okay, so why are we afraid that vaccines cause autism? We're afraid because we've been told that autism is something bad and it's something to be avoided. And it's this malady. When rather what we should do is we should work to try to make sure that autism, people live good and fulfilling lives. And that goes into this larger discussion because one of the things that stood out to me is that if you remember in 2012 after Sandy Hook, I can't believe it's been a decade, it came out that Adam Lanzah, the shooter, was autistic or he was diagnosed as having

Asperger syndrome. After that, there was a surge in calls to autism speaks about autism and mass shooters. And then after I believe it was the Umpaqwa community cops, shooting in 2015, there was briefly a Facebook group that was taken down called Families Against Autistic Shooters. So there was this idea that autism is to blame for these shootings or that autism somehow makes someone a mass shooter. That's clearly not the case. So really the impetus for writing this was being kind of enraged by how people talked about autism. Because you had to think about it, I was 21 when Sandy Hook happened. And to hear people constantly,

talking about autism as this catalyst for mass shootings. It's horrible. And it is a way to absolve responsibility from the rest of society. You know, if you blame it on the autistic person, then you can say, well, we just got to focus on stopping autistic people from becoming mass shooters rather than, you know, how do we curb gun violence as a whole? So really what it, what with this, the whole thrust of the book has been about trying to debunk people's fears about autism. And it's called we're not broken. So you have this very very very, unique perspective because you are autistic, but you also write about politics. So you have, really, you sort of have both of the things that you can thoroughly debunk a right-wing talking

point, which I would like you to debunk. It's such an amazingly sort of circuitous thing, but the idea here is that it's not the guns, it's the mental health, and somehow Republicans in their complete in it disinterest in health care in any way. are going to focus on that. Can you sort of talk us through what that is and how that works? Yeah. So, I mean, I think the thing that is that it is a great two-step, so to speak. It is a great way to sidestep the actual issue, which is to say that it's a way for Republicans

and even some Democrats to talk about mass shootings while not actually addressing the problem. So let's kind of look at both of these things. With Republicans, by them talking, you really start to see this discussion about mental health after Sandy Hook. You hear Wayne LaPriere started to talk about this after Sandy Hook, and it really becomes kind of the focal point. And I think what it does is that it allows them to say

that we care about addressing this issue while not actually addressing the guns. Conversely, I think a lot of Democrats, and I don't let Democrats off the hook here, I think because Democrats know that it's generally hard to do any kind of gun violence legislation or any kind of gun safety legislation, they pivot a lot of times, or in the past have at least, saying we don't know, we don't want to take away people's guns, all your guns. We want to take away the guns of people who shouldn't have them.

And this has been something that a lot of Democrats in the past does. So let's talk about this. So I don't know if you remember this was right after, this is a. In 2017, if you remember, there was a lot of talk about, oh, my God, Trump signed legislation that rolled back Obama's executive orders on mental health legislation, on mental health and guns. I don't know if you remember that. A lot of liberals were kind of outraged about this. One thing that a lot of people don't know is that what it was was that, and I'm just pulling

this up, the real thing about it was that a lot of people with disabilities did it like this rule. So basically it prevented people who had a representative payee for supplemental security disability income, for supplemental security income, basically somebody to help them manage their finances from having access to guns. So I'm pulling it up. This is a Vox article that says basically it was Obama-era rule restricting gun ownership for Social Security beneficiaries who have a psychiatric disability and use a representative payee to help them manage their finances. Arina Emon wrote this back in 2017.

And incidentally enough, what was funny about this was disability rights advocates like Samath-The crane and others teamed up with the Cato Institute. Jesus Christ. Because they rightly saw that this was a gross violation of civil liberties. They saw that this was targeting a group of people as, a means of looking like they were addressing gun violence. And in many ways, it was a scapegoat. It was a way for the Obama administration.

They recognized they couldn't pass legislation on guns. So they said, okay, well, let's look like we're doing something. Well, by looking like they're doing something, they kind of, you know, screwed over people with disabilities. Talk to me about the mental health crisis schick and why these Republicans don't actually care about mental health. Yeah. I mean, so let's look at the fact of the matter is that, for one, The bloody of Republicans have tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, something that covers and includes health coverage for people with disabilities and people with mental illness. This is something that provides aid to it.

They've also targeted Medicaid and block granting Medicaid. These are things that help poorer people from receiving services. So incidentally enough, one group that would be affected by kind of targeting and saying, oh, well, only people with mental illness should be prevented from having access to. guns, is veterans. Plenty of veterans worry about losing access to firearms because of mental illnesses, particularly veterans in rural areas, where, you know, gun ownership is just a normal part of life. So this is something that it allows them, again, to look like they're addressing the problem. But not really. It's also about discrimination, right? Yes. Can you explain how it's about discrimination for people just so they completely understand?

It plays, I think, on liberal sensibilities about caring about marginalized people. Right, exactly. That's kind of the trick of it, right? Is that because it touches on this thing that a lot of liberals care about. Liberals by nature, they care about marginalized groups. They care about justice. They care about people who are on the wayside. So it's like, oh, well, we're going to take care of these people who have mental illness.

On top of that, what you're seeing is because like even Trump last week when he spoke at the NRA convention, he talked about institutionalizing people, sending people to mental institutions. Like that is a stunning rollback. And what's funny about it is that for the longest time, Republicans were bigger advocates for home care than a lot of Democrats. Because Democrat and liberals, they tended to be more in favor of like state hospitals and things like that. A, because a lot of union workers were part of them. And B, just there was this kind of thing like, this is the state taking care of people. Whereas conservatives, you know, incidentally enough, the person who is largely responsible for home care for people with disabilities was Ronald Reagan. Right.

Knew this was coming back to this. Yeah, because he closed all the mental hospitals. So there's that. But there's also the fact that there was this woman named Julie Beckett, and this is from her obit in the New York Times. So just the Beckett's, they had a daughter with a disability. disability. She had viral encephalitis and it paralyzed her diaphragm. Her name is Katie Beckett. So Julie Beckett and the family exhausted their $1 million in insurance policy. And what they did is they appealed to their congressman, Tom Tauke, to visit, and that he appealed to Ronald Reagan.

And as a result, it created these waivers that allowed for people with disabilities to receive care in their homes instead of in government institutions. And Reagan at the time, he made and Katie Beckett, and it became this national story. It's a story that's often been forgotten about. He said that now by what sense do we have a regulation in government that says we'll pay $6,000 a month to keep someone in a hospital that we believe will be better off at home? And it created these Medicaid waivers that now a lot of people benefit from. But incidentally, George W. Bush passed legislation or signed legislation, I'd say, on money follows the person to get people out of institutions and actually get the money to follow them. So I think that what's interesting

is that Republicans have historically, the good thing is that they've wanted to get people in their homes. The bad thing is, or like I said, to say the downside is, is that it costs a lot of money to get home care. So like, let's talk about build back better. You know, one part of Build Back Better that Joe Biden wanted was $400 billion in home and community-based care. That's a lot of money. Don't get me wrong. But the reason why it's a lot of money is that it's been so underfunded that that initial influx of cash just not. needs to be incredibly big. So the problem is that a lot of Republicans say, yeah, we like home care, but we don't want to spend that much money. Whereas a lot of Democrats and a lot of liberals, I think,

say, we'll state hospitals, hospitals, there might be a place for them. And they definitely are okay with spending the money, but they still have kind of this paternalistic attitude toward that. So it's this weird kind of dichotomy. And it's the fact that Republicans don't want to spend that money. That means that you get people out of institutions, which is good. getting them out of institutions good. But not wanting to spend the money makes it really hard because where are they going to go? How are they going to get the services? That's the thing is if you want to get people out of institutions, you also need to be willing to say, okay, we're going to spend this money. But Republicans don't want to get people out of institutions because institutions aren't the best

place for them. They want to get them out of institutions because they don't want to do anything for them. Also, it costs money. You know, institutionalization costs money. Right. They want to drown the federal government in the bathtub. up, right? Right. So there are some who definitely want to get out. There are others who, you know, Representative Greg Harper, who used to be in Congress, he had some of the development of disability. Former Representative Jim Sins and Brenner, he also wanted to get people out of institutions. So there were Republicans, former governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge, was a big supporter of this idea. Bob Dole was a big supporter of this idea. But I think that as you've seen

kind of the decline of what I call pro-disability Republicans or pro-disability rights Republicans, you see just the desire to, as you say, to borrow from the rural work was drowned government in the bathtub without that kind of, I guess what you could say, that conservative impulse of saying that it's our communities that can take care of people better than the state. Right. Oh, it's so interesting. So I think the most important thing

that I want people to take away from this conversation is that Republicans don't want to have a good faith conversation about mental health. They want to use mental health to not have to have any kind of talk about the guns. Right. I think that a lot of Republicans, it's their way of, again, it's a wink and a nod to the NRA. It's literally an NRA talking point. This is why it's such an effective thing, is it puts Democrats on the defensive because

then Republicans can say, oh, well, you don't want to talk about mental health. You don't want to do this. And then so even so Senator Chris Murphy, he just put out, this morning he put on an op-ed on Fox News. But he says, like, yeah, I support, I want to have these discussions about mental health. But even, you know, and then even a lot of Republicans, because you're seeing a lot of Republicans talk about supporting red flag laws. Senator Rick Scott has talked about supporting them. Rob Porman has talked about supporting them. Lindsay Graham and Richard Blumenthal are in discussions about red flag laws.

The problem is that even then the term red flag law, you know, a lot of people with disabilities worry about that. I was just talking about this with Julia Baskom, who's the head of the Autistic Self-Adducacy Network, and Rebecca Coakley, who used to work at some. for American Progress and now the Ford Foundation. They said that even then, they would rather prefer a term like emergency protection. So it would basically, like, just the term red flag is in and of itself stigmatizing because it's like, oh, this person is mentally ill.

We should have a red flag instead of like, and on top of that, what it also does is that let's take into account the fact that a lot of Republicans opposed closing the boyfriend loophole. Right. Can you explain what the boyfriend loophole is? The federal law prohibits domestic abusers, from having guns, and this is just from every town, but only if they've been married to have lived with or have a child with the victim.

So what that means is that it doesn't prohibit abusive dating partners who don't have a live-in partner from accessing the guns. It's called the boyfriend loophole as a result. So I think that that's the other thing is that there are all of these other things that should be factored in on quote-unquote red flag laws, whereas extreme risk protection orders. That's what they're called. That's what red flags are also called. A lot of people in the disability community would prefer those, that term, because otherwise, I think that red flag laws are considered, and that's considered stigmatizing, when you factor in

or when you prioritize mental health, even if someone, even if that's not a factor in whether they're going to shoot someone, that, again, it stigmatizes without actually solving anything. When you're not factoring previous convictions, if you're not factoring domestic violence or criminal record, or you're not factoring a lot of these other things, it can be instead be incredibly stigmatizing. And it should also be said that plenty of women get misdiagnosed with mental health disorders. People of color a lot of times get diagnosed with, you know, behavioral disorders or mental health disorders. So instead of it being a universal and widespread and broadspread thing that can universally reduce access to guns,

it winds up doing what the law often does, which is stigmatized and target people of color and women and, you know, whatever. And also, like, let's take into account that mental health in a lot of these cases, it could wind up targeting, you know, queer people, LGBT people, like depending on what state you live. Right. And there's just, and there's no reason at this point to trust that Republicans are committed to actually doing this. So this is super helpful and interesting. Thank you so much, Eric. I hope you'll come back. I really hope that I'll come back. Thanks so much for doing this. And I should say that, like, I'm really glad that we had this discussion. I just want, I hope that. We can include this. Yeah, please. The fact that we were able to discuss this rationally over Twitter and turn this into a productive conversation, I think it says a lot about what you can do and make politics a lot more,

turn it into a productive conversation. So I really appreciate that. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. Oh, thank you. Well, I've been meaning to have you on for a long time. And you're a very rare person in which you can, you know, you're able to write about this and talk about it and have experience with it. So that's really useful.

And I'm always happy to get to. you know, really hear what's going on from people who've experienced it. So I'm very happy to have you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Andy Levy, who is your fuck that guy? Molly Jongfest, my fuck that guy is a youngish man name of Mark Meadows. And actually, he's not a youngish man. But he was, you may recall he was the White House Chief of Staff under former president. That's right. I said former President Trump. He's not currently president? He is not currently president, no.

And if you're getting your information from a podcast that says he is, you need to switch over to the new abnormal. That's right. Anyway, he turned over a bunch of text messages from the day of January 6th, 2021. He turned them over to the J6 committee, and CNN got their greasy little hands on them, because as we know, the January 6th committee is nothing. if not the most leaking committee

in the history of committees. They are so they blame, and by the way, they always blame Denver Regalman, who hasn't even been on the committee. Every time anyone comes on, they say, yeah, it was Denver

Rigelman. He isn't even on there anymore, but sure, it's him. Look, when your name is Denver Rigelman, you're going to get blamed for shit. Right. This is certainly true. Especially after all the Bigfoot stuff. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. That's right. So CNN released a bunch of these. I refuse to use the word tranch because I don't believe it's a real word. It's a tranche. It's a tranche. They released a tranchee of these text messages.

And you've got, you know, when we've seen this before, how quickly all these Republicans who are now like pro the January 6th interrectionists. were scared off their asses at the time. And you've got Chip Roy, and they all thought, because they all knew that President Trump could do something about it. You've got Donald Trump Jr., who I believe is the son of the former president, or maybe the former son of the former president. We call him in this house DJTJ. He texted to Mark Meadows, he's, he's being his dad,

he's got to condemn this shit ASAP. Georgia Representative Jeff Duncan from the fine state of South Carolina wrote, POTIS needs to calm this shit down. Reince Prebus, told them to go home. Chip Roy of Texas, fix this now. So once again, we have seen that all of these Republicans in the, as this was happening, were, A, some of them were actually physically, scared for their lives. And the others just kept saying, this is going to be so bad for us.

This is going to be so bad for us because they knew that it was a bunch of Trumpist nutters, even if later they decided it was actually Antifa. Their base. Right. But that it wasn't even them. So my fuck that guy is, it's Mark Meadows because he was right in the thick of all the shit, but it's also every other Republican who at the time knew that what was going on was dangerous and that they all admitted that President Trump could put a stop to it, meaning that all these people were doing it basically at his bidding. So fuck all those guys. I love Mark Meadows because he's so stupid.

You know, he turned over all those text messages and it didn't even occur to him that he was incriminating himself. So there's like a tranche, I know that's your favorite word, of text messages that he didn't turn over that are the bad ones. I mean, imagine what the bad ones say. That's all I kept thinking while I was reading these was the same thing. It's like, man, these are the ones he turned over? He's a magical little creature.

So my fuck that guy is Thomas Massey. I can't even tell you how little I like this person. And the weird thing about him is I actually think he's just, you know, a lot of these people like one, Louis Gomer, who will be out of Congress in January. A lot of these people, you feel like they're really just. just dumb and they don't know what they're doing, but they really believe whatever it is they're doing. But actually, when it comes to Thomas Massey, he's like Ted Cruz. You know, he's actually smart. He went to MIT. He's an engineer. He's quite smart. So you'll remember he's the one who sent out the Christmas card. He, his kids, his wife, with these enormous guns, very happy,

smiling family, holding enormous guns for their holiday. as one does. He has a new thing he wants to do. It's like one step worse than arming the teachers is to stop making schools gun-free zones and to make them gun zones. Because even though, I mean, the funny thing about what happened in Evaldi

is that we saw that a good guy with a gun who waits 78 minutes, well, this one of these kids bleeds out. out, right? That a good guy with a gun is actually can't stop a bad guy with a gun. But Thomas Massey doesn't believe that and he would like to try. So let's have more guns in schools and that will solve the problem. I mean, you know, you can't make this up. No, you can't. And nor would you want to. Not exactly. Nor would anyone look at you as anything but someone who should be an institution if you did make it up. Yeah. I mean, it's real dystopian stuff.

And for that, this is not the first time he's been my fuck that guy. My guess is it's not the last time he will be my fuck that guy, but I would like to give him a hearty fuck you. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show.

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