The Daily Beast Podcast - Wake Up! Republicans Really Are Trying to Ban Contraception

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

A recent ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court basically halted IVF treatments—and a new bill currently making the rounds in Oklahoma may be even worse, The New Abnormal hosts argue. Plus, chats with former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger about the current state of the Republican Party and Gillian Branstetter of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and LGBTQ & HIV Project about the tragic death of a non-binary high school student in Oklahoma. 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 an excellent show we have today for you. Former GOP congressman Adam Kinsinger is here to talk about his recent substack piece, Alexei Navalny was everything that GOP isn't, and about how much the character of his former GOP colleagues doesn't stack up to the deceased Russian opposition leader, and what he thinks is going on with the modern-day Republican Party in general. Then, Gillian Brandsetter, a communication strategist at the ACLU's Women's Rural, Project and LGBTQ and HIV Project joins us to talk about the tragic death of Next Benedict, a non-binary student in Oklahoma.

But first, let's have some fun. So earlier in the week, we were talking about how Alabama is now placed themselves on the map with deciding that embryos now apparently have personhood rights, which is absolutely fucking bananas. But if you read the stories that are coming out that are essentially have already in the time that this case has been heard and decided that IVF in vitro fertilization has basically halted in the state of Alabama since the ruling where they have decided that embryos are people. And apparently it's just amazing to me that Republicans will decide that everyone, our children except for actual children and people. It's so fucking upside down. But then it was as if the state of Oklahoma looked left and looked right and said, hold my beer. I can do you one worse.

And so now, as all of this, I believe, is a full on strategy to wind its way up to the Supreme Court to basically institute a national abortion ban, the state of Oklahoma folks, has decided that they are not done when it comes to having an all-out ban on abortion, which they already have except for in the case of the death of the mother. They, by the way, don't make any exceptions for rape and incest in Oklahoma. But now a new piece of legislation, HB. 3216, is a bill that according to the Oklahoman, seeks to place further restrictions on abortion in the state by potentially banning emergency contraception

like the morning after pill and friends, IUDs. They are looking to target contraception that induce an abortion or get this, prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg, which ding, ding, ding, is the whole point of fucking birth control. So they have now said every, quiet part, every bit out loud, all of the things that abortion rights activists have been talking about with the reversal of Roe v. Wade, that it was never going to stop, that they were never going

to have caveats for rape, for incest, for emergencies, no. They didn't stop there. Now they're going for IVF and up next, all of your birth control. Andy, I have lost my mind this week. Yeah, I mean, the Oklahoma stuff is beyond insane. And among other things, they want a state database of women who have had abortions. They don't want you to have to register a gun. No. But if you've had an abortion, they want your name in a database somewhere. Doctors will have to report the justification for an emergency abortion to the state. And then as you said, you know, restrictions on IUDs, morning after pill, plan B, all that stuff. There's a guy named Jason Sattler. He's online for people who are online may know him. He posts on. like on Twitter and Blue Sky with the handle, L-O-L-L-G-O-P. And I bring this up because he wrote a piece, and I just want to quote the name of the piece, because I saw it the other day, and I think he's absolutely right. He wrote, we all live in a red state. That is such a good point with the current makeup of the Supreme Court.

It's easy for us to read about this stuff in Alabama and Oklahoma and say, what the hell is going on in these states? And obviously, all of that is terrible and all of that needs to be stopped. I think he's right when he says we all live in a red state, because does anyone have any faith that if something like calling an embryo, giving it personhood rights, went to the Supreme Court, that the Supreme Court wouldn't uphold that? I don't have any faith in that. I don't have faith that five justices will say this is insane. And oh, by the way, we don't live in a theocracy. And we can't pass laws based on religious beliefs, which is exactly what the Alabama Supreme Court justices have done.

And they're not hiding it. You know, we talked about this on the last episode. They are just straight up saying it. For so long, people who have been pro-choice and believe that women should control their own bodies have said that so much of this supposed anti-abortion belief is really about controlling women's bodies. And, you know, there would be some pushback from some people on the right who would say, no, it's not. This is about the sanctity of life and blah, blah, blah. Well, you know what? The jig is up. Y'all have made it very clear exactly what this is. So stop pretending it's anything other than that.

Stop pretending it's anything other than what people who are. are pro-choice and pro-a-woman's right to decide how to deal with their own body and pro-a-woman's right to have her medical issues between her and her doctor and not the state. It's exactly what they have been saying all along. And, you know, I just keep thinking about this. And it's like, I have to figure that at some point, if Alabama, if they're going to give personhood rights to embryos, I guess that means embryos can now work in factories. Yeah, right, because they have repealed, you know, fucking child labor laws there. So. Yeah. So I guess that's the next step.

And I'm wondering, so you can claim them then on your taxes, the embryos, like as dependents? Oh, as dependents. That's a good point. I mean, how far are they willing to go? Because I think that people should go as far as these religious zealots are willing to go. The person that you mentioned, Sattler, the fact is that we are one election away from all living in a red state. And these are the things that I don't feel like. like people are truly registering and understanding. That there is going to be if Donald Trump or any Republican become president of the United States,

there will be no place to go. Right now, we're talking about a handful of red states. If you have somehow the money and the access and the ability to travel and do all of these things, there are quote unquote sanctuary states still available. that provide abortion care and provide IVF for those that are really wanting. Because by the way, to go through IVF is expensive for these fucking Republicans who apparently are all about the children now denying people who desperately want children, denying them the ability to have them.

But if you're raped, you have to carry the bait. Like the distortion in these people's minds, but again, going back to the fact that we are one election away, we are one Supreme Court decision away from no woman, no person with a uterus having bodily autonomy. And that means at all in total, not just, oh, I am now pregnant and I want to have an abortion. No, I am in high school and in college. and I want to take birth control in order to, I don't know, deal with cramps, fibroids. I don't want to have a fucking kid. And they're going to take away all of that ability and option and autonomy from 50% of the population. If this is not the red flag of red flags, the alarm of all alarms, to get people to do whatever it takes to ensure that Donald Trump or any Republican,

does not enter that White House or any body, any legislative body, I don't know what will. I don't either. And obviously agree with everything you said. Make no mistake, what's happening in Oklahoma and Alabama is the blueprint for the whole country as far as what Republicans want. And in terms of taking over the getting rid of the autonomy of a woman's body, God knows where they would stop. And something that you would have think would have stopped. after some news last week is the House's ridiculous efforts to impeach Joe Biden, because last week it was revealed that their star witness, a guy named Alexander Smyranov, who supposedly wrote this document that has a lot of claims about Joe Biden. He has now been charged with basically making the

whole thing up. And on top of that, the Justice Department revealed that Smyranoff has now admitted to prosecutors that, according to the new republic, quote, officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in developing the Hunter Biden narrative. So what we've got here is the Republicans trying to impeach Joe Biden by going through Hunter Biden. And we now have one of their key witnesses, if not their one key witness, admitting that he was in touch with top Republican officials and that they helped come up with this Hunter Biden narrative. You would think that this would make it go away and that Republicans would, you know, in a different world, you'd be really embarrassed by this and you'd kind of slink off into a corner and not want to be heard or seen from again for

quite some time. But no, of course, they just shrug their shoulders and double down and pretend it doesn't matter. But the fact of the matter is anyone with any common sense knew that these attempts to impeach Joe Biden were ridiculous and were strictly political payback for the legitimate impeachment of Donald Trump. And now here's their own star witness basically admitting to the same thing. And also basically making it clear that people like Comer and Jim Jordan have been acting whether wittingly or unwittingly as pawns for Vladimir Putin. Everything they touch turns to shit. Yeah.

Did we need to have a story tell us that? all of their antics with regard to Joe Biden and Hunter Biden led back to Russia and led back to Donald Trump? No. But now that we know that, do you think that Jim Jordan would turn around and be like, I was duped? I'm so sorry? No. They just double and triple down on their bullshit. And so it's like, at some point, doing investigations and fact finding, I'm like, who is it for? Because it's not as if it changes their minds or their actions, they'll just find, well, we know that there's something somewhere in their sprawling investigation that you're wasting tax dollars money on. You know, we'll just keep looking. And it's just like, but with all of the fucking Mount

Everest of evidence that you have that Donald Trump is a crook, is a fraud, is a thief, is a liar, is a fucking rapist, is all of these things. With all of that in front of you, you're like, I can't see anything. They are the monkeys with the see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil, except they just embody evil. Today is a drinking day. It is unreal. And there's an important sort of side note to this that people are overlooking, you know, all the Russia stuff that came out about Trump.

And now is kind of just kind of sneered at as, oh, this was overreach by the left. and, you know, this stuff was insane. The vast majority of it has turned out to be true. I know a lot of people like to say it was, you know, it was a Rachel Maddow fever dream. And look, I'm not even saying the coverage wasn't, some of it wasn't overblown. And some of the things were ridiculous. But again, the vast majority of the stuff tying Trump and his family to Russia has been born out and has been shown to be true. And you couple that with basically what you've got here is, again, James Comer,

Jordan, all the other people involved in this impeachment, whether, again, wittingly or not, they've been doing Putin's bidding. They have been dupes. It's not a coincidence that both these things have happened. It's not a coincidence that Donald Trump has his own shady deals and business stuff with Russia. And then that Russia is trying to create fake information to help the Republicans impeach Joe Biden. It's all part of the same. It's all part of the thing. At a certain point, you have to start thinking or saying, you know, I really don't want to get conspiratorial, but at a certain point, it's like, how much of this can be unwitting? Is I guess what I'm asking.

None? Like, none of it can be unwitting. Like, they're pawns, their lackeys, there's no end to it. I don't understand. It's just like you're presenting people with facts and information and, like, reliable sources to match their bodies. bullshit, it's a refusal of reality. It's like, no, I am choosing to live on Earth too. So I'm like, at what point do we just like give up? Because I'm not quite sure what the end looks like here. One of my biggest fears is that Donald Trump has corroded and corrupted everything. Nine years it took to unravel a close to 250 year American project. It took nine years to really undo. do. And if he doesn't, like, legitimately win and he's not able to steal the election like he tried to do

in 2020, it's like, what will these people do? Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm hoping that they will all go to Russia or hungry or split their time, you know, like, and get the fuck out of here. But, like, honestly, what will they do? Because there's going to be nothing that we can present them with that will have them believe that their king and martyr is a fucking loser. I don't know. Adam Kinzinger spent 12 years as a GOP congressman from Illinois, and along with Liz Cheney was one of only two Republicans to serve on the January 6th Committee. He's a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard,

the author of Renegade defending democracy and liberty in our divided country, which is out now. And he writes regularly at Adamkinzinger.substack.com. He joins me now. Adam, thank you so much for being here. Hey, thanks for having me. That 12 years feels like anywhere from one year some days to like 37 years. I know. So it's always interesting to hear that. Yeah, we were talking before we started recording. You and I met like seven years ago.

We figured out. But you've had like four, at least four lifetimes since then. That's right. I've gone from guy the Republicans like to guy the Republicans. So it feels like a lifetime. Yeah, absolutely. So I want to start by talking to you about the death last week of Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. As we know, he died in an Arctic penal colony. You've been really outspoken about this and about the Republican response to it. And you wrote a substack piece called Alexei Navalny was everything the GOP isn't. Explain what you mean by that. Yeah, I mean, look, you take a guy that got poisoned almost to the point of death, recovers, makes a decision to go back to Russia to fight for

something he believes in knowing he obviously knew he was going to end up in jail and knowing it would probably cost him his life. And he was willing to make those sacrifices. I mean, this is a guy with a family, too, let's keep in mind. He was willing to make those sacrifices because of a cause he believed in. Alexei Navalny was not a perfect guy. He obviously had issues in the past as well in terms of being a little more nationalist that he's come to grips with. And so it's just like this perfect kind of view of somebody who's a flawed human trying to do the right thing and making a courageous step. And you contrast that to what you see in the Republican Party right now, where there's a lot of literally not just people that aren't unwilling to stand up to Donald Trump anymore. I mean,

that's bad enough. You know, that's the whole thing. But even with something like Ukraine, I mean, Alexi Navalny, who goes and fights for, in essence, freedom and democracy in Russia, we have an entire country in Ukraine that has mobilized to defend themselves and frankly the entire Western world against Russia. And you have the GOP on a vacation. And beyond that, there are members who aren't running again, right? And the Republican Party that does. don't have the courage to say, for instance, we're going to vote against every rule that the speaker brings to the floor. In an essence, shut down floor action until we agree simply to put this aid package on the floor for a vote. They don't have the courage to do that. And they're leaving.

It's like, this isn't costing their life. Some of these people, it's not even costing their political career because they're leaving anyway. It will cost them access to jobs in the afterlife. And that's what they're worried about. And they'll cost them access to the tribe. That to me is just cowardice in the face of this really incredible courage by Alexei Navalny. I'm glad you brought that up because that's the part of your piece that I think struck me the most because I hadn't really thought about it that even these retiring members are so skittish and so scared about what their post-Congress careers will be like if they go against the cult. You would think something like this should be the simplest thing to be able to stand up for.

Well, look, I've talked through text to a lot of these people that are still, I would say, friends of mine that are leaving or those that are, for instance, I don't know, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee as an example, and just been like, look, you guys need to understand. This is a moment. You know, I think what Liz and I did on January 6th was historic. I don't say that braggingly. It just obviously was historic. I'm like, you're at a moment right now where literally three of you, you know, three people that

decide we're going to shut the floor down until Johnson agrees to put this on the floor for vote. And it's going to pass, by the way. Three people could literally have statues built for them in Kee. Could literally, not figure to literally change the trajectory of future history, could actually defend Western democracy. You think about that. Like, no member of Congress ever has an opportunity to be so impactful for doing something so easily.

And these folks are frozen. I've asked them these questions. Why don't three of you guys, you know, do this, shut down the floor or whatever? And the response I get is, oh, we're trying a new, you know, thing with new border security stuff in it. Oh, yeah, we really need to fund Ukraine. Well, how about you do the stuff that's required to fund it? Oh, Adam, hope you're doing well. Have a great thing.

God. It just, it blows my mind if I was sitting there right now and I had an opportunity, again, to literally change the trajectory of this defense of freedom. You wouldn't even have to convince me. I'd be on the floor doing it right now. And now that they're on vacation, I'd be on the floor alone doing it. trying to get attention for this. Yeah. It's interesting because you wrote a piece earlier in February, and you talked about the GOP tying Ukraine aid to the border bill. And I just want to read something you wrote in it. You wrote, every time the far right pretends to be willing to accept something they don't

like in exchange for something they do, they move goalposts when the deal is reached. I'm not exaggerating every time. And the normals continue to be walked over, trampled, and humiliated because they are unwilling to fight back, lest they be named in front of the congregation of Fox news and forced to repent. I thought about that as Republicans voted against the border bill that basically gave them everything they wanted. Well, I mean, all you have to do is go back my time in Congress, two or three times, probably two, you know, including, by the way, Marco Rubio was the leader. Remember, the gang of eight bill in the Senate was pretty good. That was a broader immigration reform bill. The Freedom Club, I call them, because they're just a club. The Freedom Club made the

decision to, again, move the goalposts on that. Every time, we've tried to get there with guest worker programs, which are necessary. Agricultural visas, they always move the goalposts because they don't really want to solve the problem. This is the thing that I think people have got to understand. Look, I want to still be a solutions focused kind of in my post congressional career, but there's a significant amount of the GOP base that does not care about solutions. They literally only care about the fight. The fight is what animates them. And that's what you have here. Boy, they had an opportunity to get everything they wanted just about on the border. but then what would they fight about? What would they be able to outrage people about? What woke issue is popping up that they could turn people, you know, around on? And it's just, to me, it's a disservice to American people. It's frankly a disservice to Republican voters that actually believe that these congressmen and women have their interest at heart, which they don't. And it's devastating to this country.

Yeah, you know, it's funny. Our mutual friend, S.E. Cup used to say, this was a while ago. I'm talking 70 years ago. She would say, we're never going to have anything happen on immigration because nobody actually wants. It's a solution. They just want to campaign on it and yell about it. And I used to say, you know, man, I'm cynical, but I'm not even sure I buy that. But boy, she was 100% right and I couldn't have been more wrong. Well, she was. And think about this. You look at it and again, let's take this trunch of members that are retiring, right? That, you know, they're not going to be up for election. And some of them are old. They're not going to run for any other office ever. Why aren't they the ones that are on TV saying that we need to vote for this bill or we need to, you know, pass the Ukraine, whatever this issue is. And it's back to what we were talking about a couple minutes ago,

the issue of access. So you think about in your post-Congress life. Most of these guys will want to go lobby. Well, to lobby, you have to have access to your former members. Well, to have access to your former members, you can't tick them off. And if you go out there and make their life uncomfortable by saying the obvious stuff, which is Alexei Navalny is way more courageous than you guys. Or, you know, we have to defend Ukraine or we have an opportunity for a good border bill. You're not going to have that great access in the post life. And the thing that worries me is I think people fear, and this is especially true in politicians who are people pleasers by nature. That's why you go into the business. I think people fear more than they fear death, okay? More than death. They fear

being kicked out of a tribe. We are a tribal people. We seek security in our tribe. And we are willing to accept a lot of things we don't believe to continue to have that safety and security. and that's a huge dynamic of what's going on and so-called leaders that aren't leading right now. Yeah, and when you hear the leader of what at least used to be your party saying something like he would encourage Putin to attack NATO members who are allegedly not paying their bills, and he doesn't get a hell of a lot of pushback. What goes through your mind? Even for you, that has to be kind of jaw-dropping. It is. And I don't want to be able to say this, but that stuff doesn't surprise me. This still surprises me. When I got into politics, you know, you always knew that you have to play that. a political game a little bit. Sometimes you vote for things you don't love for the team,

that kind of stuff. But I always assume that everybody had some version of a red line that they wouldn't cross, even the most political animal. And I certainly thought that like encouraging Russia to attack NATO members probably would be that red line. I thought an insurrection against the country would be that red line. I just don't think there's red lines anymore for these folks. And the problem is they've been beat down so much, right? I mean, you think about early rebellions against Trump or MAGA get beat down. Liz Cheney and I get beat down. I'm not saying that for sympathy, but we obviously were.

Eventually, you only have to execute a few prisoners before prisoners start behaving. And that's what you have right now, is this idea of, okay, you know, Trump comes out and says, Putin should attack whoever the hell he wants if they're not paying their, you know, their mob fee. And these congressmen that in private will express outrage or feel outrage are just like, I can't say anything. I mean, I got to be here or somebody worse is going to replace me. And that's the danger. That's what we have now. We just have a bunch of people that are going along. And when I say, for instance, they need to start using the tactics of the Freedom Caucus. You know, the Freedom Caucus, I use the analogy, if you put 20 of us, you, me, and 18 other people in a room and you give us all hand grenades, we're all equally powerful. But if somebody's actually willing to pull the pin on the hand grenade and drop it, they're the most powerful people in the room. That's what the Freedom Club does. They pull the pin when nobody else is willing to. And until we have people on the other side like, you want to blow this place up, I'll blow it up, too.

They're going to be the most powerful people in the room. Yeah, it's just unreal. A common thread that at least I think I've noticed in a lot of the stuff you've been writing is sort of the absolute capture of the GOP by Fox News and the rest of the conservative media sphere. Sometimes I think that this really is the whole ballgame. Like, I don't know if I want to call it the prime cause of all of this, but it seems. like such a huge part of it. It is. I mean, it's like a vicious circle, right? The media, the right-wing echo chamber, it's audience capture. This is a term I just learned by the way, so I'm going to use it and

sound like I've got a ton of knowledge. Audience capture is like, you know, you have your base that's providing the funding and now you feel beholden to what they want to see. Now, that audience is getting reinforced by you being beholden to them and gets radicalized. You know, the example that was used, which kind of opened my eyes to it was Charlie Kirk's Talking Point USA. You know, 10 years ago, he was kind of this conservative dude. And now every week he's putting out a podcast where he says he'd be scared if black people were pilots or, you know, whatever racist thing he says. And he feels captured to that audience. That's what you have in this right wing eco chamber.

So, you know, Donald Trump can say Russia should attack NATO. That either won't be covered in that right wing eco chamber like Fox News or if it is, it's covered. as he was joking or, God forbid, it's covered as, yeah, because Russia's awesome. And it just reinforces this self-radicalization that, frankly, it's just, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, Fox knows that the only way they can make money is to feed the beast more. Dopamine hit, dopamine hit. And you see this increased radicalization on the right that is hard to get out of. I don't know, frankly, how we get out of it without, you know, Donald Trump having to lose huge in November. Yeah, I was looking at the about section of your substack, because I'm always curious what

people write about themselves. One of the things you say in there is you call yourself a recovering politician who recognizes that my old party is fading away as it is converted to a fascist cause. That really struck me because the F word, as I like to call it, is something you hear a lot from people on the left when talking about what's going on what's going on with people on the right. You don't hear too many people like you actually using that word. And it really struck me, first of all, it's so much more powerful when you do it. And second of all, how did we get here. Yeah, I mean, so look, it's interesting because I get all the time Republicans ask me, why do you spend all your effort going after Republicans? Don't you know that Democrats do

bad things too? And I'm like, listen, if I said something like, A, this Democrat, you know, believes this, that I don't believe it. It means nothing because then I'm just another Republican attacking the Democrat. But it's like the Bible says, if you have a plank in your own eye, don't point out the spec in somebody else's. And obviously the GOP has a plank in its eye. And I piss off a lot of Republicans. And that makes me happy because it means I'm hitting the target. You know, how did we get to this point is just, I think what's happened is like there were some, there were legitimate cultural clash issues in this country. And the kind of conservatives, you know, actual real conservatives or people in kind of middle America felt like they weren't being

listened to. And what should have happened is somebody that was a real conservative should have come along and said, look, I hear that you feel voiceless. Let me be your voice. But then that voice, that leader's responsibility is to lead you to a person. positive vision. You know, how can we, how can we live in a country where we have different views? Well, we always have and we always should. And here's how we're going to work to get along. Instead, you had a guy that came along, Donald Trump, that basically broke all norms, that feels no personal responsibility for leading a country to a better place. He doesn't give a rat's ass if he leads his country to a better place or a worse place. He only cares about himself and what the

reflection is. And then people who trust that leader, who they feel like they have his voice, they radicalized with them. And the problem is they don't feel like they can win through normal political means. I mean, they probably say they do. They probably think they do. But if you really ask them, they all feel they're losing their country. And that is a secret code for we can't actually win elections. So the only way to stay in power for what you want is not to compete in a fair democratic system.

It's to basically inflict your will through fascist means. Barbara Walter wrote a book, How Civil War Start. And one of the things she talks about is when groups that were in the majority feel like they're going into the minority. That's when you have the biggest spark for a civil war. And I think that's the moment we're in now. Yeah. And I want to ask you about something you said recently in an interview with The Guardian

sort of along these lines. You were talking about, I think the GOP is sort of the move to MAGA. And you said, quote, Tim Scott of all the people is the one that really hurts me. And look, obviously, I don't know Tim Scott at all. But this absolutely tracks with everything I've heard about him that, at least pre-Maga, he was really a respected guy in D.C. Across party lines, people seem to really like him. And now he's on a stage proclaiming his love for Donald Trump. I was elected with Tim Scott.

He and I surfed together on this transition team, you know, when our big class in 2010 won the majority. And I've got to know him well. And, you know, he's just a really, this is how I had perceived him, a really strong guy. I actually said from 2010, I said, Ron, I'm like, he's going to be president someday, and he is my dark horse candidate, you know, somebody to come out of nowhere and just take the country captive, like by his ability to speak and everything in the story. When I saw him, first off on that debate stage in I think it was Milwaukee, where he raised his hand that he would support Donald Trump if he lost, you know, Donald Trump won, that hurt. But I'm like, okay, he's playing the game. Then to watch him just spell out everything that he believes and stand there behind. behind Donald Trump as he rips on Nikki Haley, the same woman that, by the way, appointed Tim

Scott to the Senate, for God's sakes, that to me shows that is a man that stole out everything. And that one hurt the most because I know him and to watch if somebody like him falls, how easy it is for any of us to fall. Yeah, absolutely. What's your biggest fear about a potential second Trump term? Well, the biggest hope would be just an incompetent government. And this is going to sound funny to say it that way, but like he puts people that don't know what they're held to doing around him and it's four years of like lost time. My biggest fear is,

I actually think he's going to put a lot of really smart people around him that have made it very clear what their agenda is. It's this whatever 2025 project. You know, Heritage Foundation hires really smart people. And these are the people that are driving this. And so I worry, you know, it's the old what J.D. Vance said the other day. Let's say the Supreme Court says that something Donald Trump did was wrong. And he just simply says, come and force it. Like, the Supreme Court doesn't have police force, right? They can't make the executive branch do anything. That's my biggest worry because, look, when Donald Trump said the election was stolen, he convinced at least a quarter, maybe a third of the country, that our election system doesn't work. That is a guarantee to violence eventually. And not January

6 violence, widespread violence, because we fought a revolution over the idea that we didn't have a say, we weren't represented. And when he continues to break down those norms and those institutions, of government. My biggest fear is, I don't know how we come back from that. How do you restore trust in the FBI? How do you restore trust in the Supreme Court? How do you restore trust in Congress? You don't. And he's trying to politicize the military. The Republicans are trying to politicize the military. That is the last bastion of hope we have. I knew that no matter how bad January 6 got, worst case scenario, the 82nd Airborne could come in and restore order. If we start thinking that it's a political force. Gosh, I don't know how we get out of that. Yeah, it's a frightening prospect. I want to ask you,

you're speaking at something called the Principles First Summit this Sunday in D.C. This weekend is also CPAC, and I assume that's not accidental. Tell us about the summit. Yeah, so Principles First, I guess this is the third or fourth year they've done it. It's kind of been counter programming to CPAC. CPAC went from, I've never been to CPAC, so maybe it was normal at one point. But it's like, They always call it the Star Wars Bar of Republican politics, but now it's turned into like just Republican politics, because Republican politics is the Star Wars Bar anyway. So this is counter programming where you bring people like Judge Michael Ludig in. You know, I'm coming to speak. There's a lot of truly kind of what I would call moderate to conservative thinkers that actually believe in the Constitution.

And we've got, I think they said, alas, organizers close to a thousand people coming into the biggest year. So this is the counter programming. I mean, we're not going to have gold tennis shoes, unfortunately, but this is where people come that actually want to counterprogrammed the CPAC. I want to say I would encourage my Democratic friends just for the next nine months. We are fighting against people that the chaos that exhausts us actually energizes them. When we talk about this chaos every day, that they feed on. We get tired. And we also have another disadvantage, which is we're going to be having to have a coalition of people that think very differently that are fighting.

in the trenches together. That's hard to do because we've been so programmed to think that if you're left or right, you can't get along. This is something we have to get past. We have to fight with sane right, sane center, and sane left to defend our democracy, even if we have different viewpoints. Because what the hell is government and democracy even about if we all have to have the same view anyway? But we're at a disadvantage. I do believe we're going to win in November. I think Joe Biden will beat Donald Trump. We have to just make sure this coalition stays together through Thickerson. Well, that seems like a perfect place to end things. Adam Kintaguer, thank you so much for being here. It's an absolute honor to talk to you, and thank you for everything you did on the John 6th Committee,

and for speaking your mind now and for continuing to be unafraid and I guess not wanting to be a lobbyist. Thanks for saying that. I appreciate it. And it was good being with you again, too, and it may not pay as well, but I definitely could look at myself in the mirror this way. So thank you. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal communication strategist at the ACLU Women's Rights Project and LGBTQ and HIV project, Jillian Brandstetter, to discuss a case, a story that I think has been, I mean, there are so many things as of late that have been breaking my heart. But I think that the story of the young non-binary 16-year-old next Benedict, who died succumbed to severe head injuries after what is being called a fight in a bathroom at Owasso High School in Oklahoma. Next, as I have read the story and have been following on social media,

was a non-binary youth attending a high school that had been targeted, actually on social media by Lips of TikTok. And for those of you who listen to this show, you know that we have discussed the dangerous and disgusting person behind Lips of TikTok who has now been allowed to lead Oklahoma's book banning project. And Next was badly beaten after going into a bathroom at the high school by three. believe three female students. They were not taken to an hospital by the school. The ambulance was not called. The police were not called. And I don't understand why that happened. But I want to bring

you in, Jillian, because we've heard now there have been interviews with Nex's family. And I just wanted to get your initial reactions to hearing about this story, the tragic death. of this non-binary teenager at the hands of other students. So this is, as you noted, a very devastating tragedy. And obviously, the first and most immediate impact is on Nex's family. And my heart goes out to them. Some of the immediate appearances that they've done, they strike me as indicative of a lot of families who have trans and non-binary youth,

who maybe are not necessarily experts in gender identity, or maybe I've never really considered themselves activists, but who were willing to let love lead them towards acceptance and towards wanting to protect their kid. And to see, I mean, it's very difficult to put into words what it must feel like to lose a 16-year-old so suddenly. Unfortunately, a lot of what we know about what trans youth Leinux face at school, as heartbreaking as that is,

I am also terribly unsurprised. Trans people, generally speaking, experienced four times the rate of violence as are cisgender peers, according to the Willemines Institute out of UCLA. And starting around 2017, the Centers for Disease Control started adding questions about gender identity to what's called the youth risk behavioral system. So they're tracking experiences with violence, harassment, sexual violence, drug use, and the like. And what they found was advocates of long known, which is that trans youth are among some of those vulnerable youth in our country today, that they face significantly higher rates of violence, that they are far more likely to report feeling unsafe at school, feeling unsupported at school. They are overrepresented in our country's foster care systems, in our country's juvenile detention systems, in our country's homeless shelters. So the fact that this tragedy would fall a child like next who seemingly had the love and support of their family, is enormously devastating. I know that there are organizers and advocates and allies across the country, including right there in Oklahoma, who are working every day to make sure

that living as a transgender person is the joyous experience that deserves to be, that a kid like NETS has the bright future that all young people deserve. Among my largest fears is that for a lot of people, a tragedy like this only confirms what they've long supposed, which is that a transgender life is an unlivable life. And what I mean by that is, you know, I have sat in focus groups on the other side of the digital glass, as it were. I have heard how cis people talk about trans people when they don't think any trans person is listening. And one of the things that come up is that when you ask them right up front with little prompt, they will tell you that, well, trans people are discriminated

against, that they're isolated, that they're vulnerable, that they're oppressed and marginalized. They understand that part of it. What I don't see them grasping is what I think happens rather, and even if intuitively, even if subconsciously, is that when a lot of people see something awful happening to someone different from them, their initial instinct, even if they're fighting against it, even if they don't know it, is to blame the difference for it. And ultimately, what I want people to know is that Next Benedict and trans youth like them across the country deserved the bright future of their family was fighting to give them. It is not their trans identity that is the barrier between them in that future. But in fact, the marginalization,

stigmatization, the isolation that currently right now is being written into law by state legislators across the country, including in Oklahoma. Oklahoma has Well, first off, across the country, we are looking at over 400 active pieces of legislation in the United States right now targeting the rights of LGBT folks. Oklahoma has over 50, giving it the dubious honor of being in first place amongst those states. Oklahoma schools are helmed by a man named Ryan Walters, the superintendent, who has been vehemently opposed to any inclusion of transgender people, who has fought two thin. nail to portray transgender people as disturbed, as delusional, and as a danger to others.

What I find, I mean, there are so many aspects of this story that are heartbreaking. But what I find enraging is the fact that the policies and the rhetoric that are put out by the Republican Party and anti-trans and anti-LGBQ representatives are never tied back to the acts of violence that we are seeing rising. And what I mean by that is that Walters is not going to be held responsible. The 50 anti-trans pieces of legislation and those that put that legislation forward are not going to be held responsible. And so when we're looking at, and I know that you're not an attorney, but for me, when I'm I'm looking at an active investigation into this. It isn't just by the police department to figure out who is the cause, because anyone with

eyes, ears, and a brain could figure out who is the cause. Had they not been beaten severely and then had they been treated in the way that they should have been immediately after that, the possibility of them still being alive very high. The possibility of those young people's minds who decided to beat another student because of the lies that they have been fed by people like Superintendent Walters and their representatives in that state, they wouldn't have seen next as someone worthy of death or severe harm. And so what does it look like to hold these people, whether legally or not, responsible for this act of violence that led to a 16-year-old's life being ended? So few things. One, there's a lot we don't know. And I look forward and encourage and open and transparent investigation.

And one of the reasons that I started this conversation by emphasizing not just the risk that next face, but the risk that trans youth face, large, right? In, by the way, blue states and red states, is by emphasizing that any time we're hoping to, if you want to prevent abuse, you empower the abuse. You start from the standpoint of what their needs are. I mentioned before that trans people face four times the risk of experiencing violence as are cisgender peers. Like most people, the people who are most likely to target us for violence are the people we know, are the people in our lives. It's domestic violence. It's an intimate partner violence. It's familial violence, right? When I learned of next, I thought of Catherine Newhouse, who was a transgender girl who's 19 years old and who was murdered by her own father in Georgia

back in 2022. So when you ask about accountability, you are right and it is dismaying and outrageous and frustrating that the politicians, the pundits, the transphobic influencers, all these types who sort of contribute to the culture in which a trans life is not worth protecting, that accountability for them isn't necessarily going to come from you and I. It isn't going to come from, I suspect the people who listen to the show. So what we can do, because ultimately their outrage, and this is one of the most frustrating parts of working in trans rights, is that there are a lot of institutions. for whom my outrage as a transgender person is a badge of honor.

That ultimately, if I am angry at them, that tells them they're doing something right. Because ultimately, they're opposed to the very idea that transgender people should have any role in public life. It can be cathartic and importantly so to demand accountability from these folks. Ultimately, however, for hoping to prevent that violence like the kind of violence that preceded next is death, it's going to require a more systemic look at lifting from the bottom up and ensuring that you mentioned sort of the surround sound attacks on transgender rights in these legislators. Each one of those restrictions, whether it's limitations on health care, whether it's requiring teachers to out them to their family without their consent, whether it's banning

the from bathrooms and the rest. That is meant to make it more difficult to be transatlanticians. to be openly transgender. It is meant to deny us the freedom to be ourselves and to refuse to conform to the narrow script they would like to write for us. It's why, by the way, it's very part and parcel with, I know you've talked a lot on the show about the rise of white Christian nationalism. Let us not forget that Oklahoma is also attempting to charter the country's first religious public school so that taxpayer dollars would go to a school where a child like next would have no legal protections under the law whatsoever, where in fact, it would be taxpayer dollars would go to endorsing the kinds of ideologies that are driving these attacks on trans people that are suggesting

the trans people are just illusion that are suggesting that trans people should not have the freedom to be ourselves. You know, as we're talking right now, I was looking through what the Oklahoma State Legislature was up to today, and they have a committee hearing on a bill that would ban IUDs, right? Like this further encroachment into the private life and into reproductive rights and into free expression and open dissent, those are part and parcel with the attacks on transgender rights. Because ultimately, if a child like Next is able to live the joyful, meaningful life that they deserve. That is an existential threat to this Christian nationalist perspective, which holds at its core a very patriarchal, rigid understanding of gender, not just debates about

who is or who is not a man or a woman, but what men and women are for, right? Right. And if a child like Nets is able to thrive outside of that script, that is an open threat to their ideology. And this is I'm so grateful for you saying that and connecting those dots because this is how I have felt for quite some time that these attacks against the trans community specifically and the LGBTQ plus community writ large is really about attacks against freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of identity, freedom of bodily autonomy. because if you can thrive, like you are saying, outside of this patriarchal, misogynistic, racist system, then you are a threat to that system and that system's power.

And so that is why they are literally guns blazing everywhere to attack every bit of freedom to force people into the binary. What does it look like in terms of in the perspective of the ACLU to fight back when there are like you said at the top over 400 pieces of legislation cases, you know, court cases all over the country? You know, what does it look like to continue to fight back when we are seemingly under siege? First and foremost, I want to shout out an organization where if folks are looking to support the trans community, within Oklahoma, because this is a tragedy first and foremost for them. I would encourage folks to check out Freedom, Oklahoma, which is a fantastic statewide LGBT rights organization. And they are working from the statehouse to school boards to communities across the state. And ultimately, there are trans people in your own backyard, no matter where you live in the country, who are doing

similar work. And they are building those same support networks to ensure that when trans people are at risk, we can help keep each other safe. And as a community, we can keep each other safe. For the ACLU, our tool set is obviously tied to the courts. So we have filed, I mean, just in the last year, more than a dozen lawsuits challenging, bans on gender affirming medical care, laws requiring teachers to out-trans students against their will, laws like Oklahoma's, which requires schools to discriminate against transgender students in terms of which bathroom they can use.

And right now, as we're talking, there are two paths that have opened up to the Supreme Court for two of these really critical legal challenges. In Idaho, we with the ACLU of Idaho sued and blocked enforcement of the state's ban on gender affirming medical care for transgender youth. And the state, which, you know, we were talking about Christian nationalism,

is functionally being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, the same organization that overturned Roe v. Wade, has now asked the Supreme Court to limit the injunction so that they are allowed to enforce this law. We have until literally next Wednesday, the 28th, file our brief, and then we'll have a decision back likely within the next two weeks. We have also asked the Supreme Court to review a decision in Tennessee and Kentucky regarding those states' bans on gender affirming medical care, asking the Supreme Court to block enforcement of those. So these questions, I think that get, you know, we've talked a lot about where the right is on this. I think it cannot be said enough that not even a month before Next died, one of the vanguards of

liberal America, the New York Times, published a 4,500 word essay comparing trans youth to a contagion. All of these sorts of what get treated is sort of like abstract controversies or generic concerns about like women's sports of all things and this sort of thing. Those are having real world impacts on family's ability to access the care that their kid needs, the ability to know that their child is safe at school and is going to be treated like any other kid at school with the same regard and the same respect. Those are quickly reaching peak moments here. And as we're seeing, I mean, are having really devastating effects.

And I don't know that those effects are reaching through the political dialogue that often happens around these issues. Well, I want to thank you, Gillian, so much for making the time to join the new abnormal to walk us through this really tragic and horrific story and the ways in which the ACLU and others can continue to fight back. We really appreciate your time and I hope that you will join us again soon. Thank you so much for having me. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. Andy Levy, how are we starting off this lovely, partial holiday week in this good, good country? We call America.

I want to start it off by introducing a new face to fuck that guy. Oh. He is a Georgia state senator. His name is Cardin Summers. He was the lead sponsor of Georgia's bathroom ban bill, the bill that would prevent trans people from using the bathroom that they should be using. This is reporting from Aaron Reed, who has the great substack, Aaron in the morning, and has been a guest on this very show.

Back on February 6th, as Reid writes, a bunch of families met to lobby senators on issues that were being faced by the local trans community. And one mother took her two children with her. They were waiting to meet with a Democratic senator, and Senator Summers passed by, and he stopped to say hello. And this woman, Lena Kotler, said she was there with her kids to talk to legislators about keeping her kids safe. And then the senator misunderstood what she meant by that and sort of knelt down in front of one of Ms. Kotler's children and said, well, you know, we're working on that and I'm going to protect kids like you. To which Kotler replied, yes, she is trans and wants to be safe at school. She wants to go to the bathroom and be safe. At which point when Senator Summers realized that the child was trans, he stood up and basically tried to walk saying, I mean, yeah, I'm going to make sure she's safe by going to the right bathroom.

And then when he was asked if that meant he would make her go to the boys' bathroom, even though she is a trans girl, he backed away saying, you're attacking me and walked off quickly. So there's two points here. One, I mean, yes, this guy is a piece of shit. And he thought he was using a little child as a prop for his bigoted views. And it turned out to be the other way around. the fact that he then said, you're attacking me, when he was simply asked if he would make this little girl go to the boy's bathroom, just shows these are just the biggest bullies in the world.

And they're so happy to pick on people whenever they get the chance. But if you ask them even the slightest question or ask them to defend themselves, they start crying about how you're attacking them. These are just, these are the saddest people on the planet. I would say this is almost without exception that every person like this who has these views is also like this in the sense that they are just, they are a scared little bully. And they just want so badly to boss other people around and police other people's lives. And if you ask them a simple question, they immediately cannot handle it. So kudos to this woman, Lena Kotler and her daughter.

and absolute fuck that guy to Georgia State Senator Cardin Summers. Trans people and trans children present a type of courage and freedom that these bullies, these oppressors do not want. They need the binary. They need it in order to preserve their power. So anyone who exists outside of the gender binary is a threat to that power. And it's just so fucking clear and so disgusting that they use children as their pawns. And it makes me sick.

So shout out to that brave mom and little girl for putting him in the spotlight. And welcome, welcome to fuck that guy, you piece of garbage. Yes. Oh, God. So, all right, Danielle, close us out. Who's your fuck that guy? Well, you know, we haven't heard from him in a while, and I know that it's made people sad, but somebody, a big giant meatball is rolling back into the headlines, and that would be the one and only Rob DeSantis. So apparently, after being the architect of the book band that have taken. place all over red states and across the country, Ron DeSantis has found himself suddenly backpedaling on what he says has gone completely and totally awry, which are all of these book bans that have happened because in his policy, he gave just one person the ability to remove all sorts of books

from our public schools. And now he thinks that it's gone too far. So now he's trying to course correct and have investigations into these people. And of course, somehow he's blaming both the left and the right, but not the fucking meatball face that's in the mirror for having done this. And also, I don't know anybody on the left

that was calling up schools saying, please remove Tony Morrison, please remove Chase Buttigieg's book. No one was saying that on the left. This was from the right, the monster that he created, and now he wants to turn around. And of course, because he's a fucking punk, not take any responsibility for the monster

that he has created and fed with his lies and his bullshit. That is now posing a threat to the education, the critical thinking of students in that state. And I will say this, like, we talk about it on a global scale about how people leave countries that are beginning to fail and move to different places. And it's called a brain drain. And you are seeing these things take place in places like Florida and other states across the country where teachers, nurses, doctors are fleeing those places because of the Gerconian policies that do not allow them

to do their jobs. And now Ronda Sanzas wants to go, ooh, my bad, but he's not saying my bad. He's just blaming it on activists. He's random activists. So for that reason, Rob, welcome back, buddy, to fuck that guy. Can't say I missed him, but welcome back. Fuck that guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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