The Daily Beast Podcast - Where the Right Will Strike Next After Its Big Abortion Win

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the podcaster is fated to release an episode right as the news cycle renders them hopelessly out-of-date. That’s the worst thing to come from the revelation that the Supreme Court is essentially set to overturn Roe v. Wade, obviously. Aghast and mind-blown, co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy attempt to break down this “new, new, new abnormal” we all find ourselves in as the country teeters on the edge of becoming a post-Roe democracy. How did we get here—and, more importantly, what happens now? That, plus: Daily Beast legal affairs columnist and former Supreme Court clerk Jay Michaelson discusses how Justice Samuel Alito cultivates his Scalia-esque brand on the bench and how the abortion’s writing has been on the wall for “years, if not decades.” And Valerie Biden Owens, the president’s sister and former campaign manager, talks about running the 1972 “children’s crusade” that catapulted her brother into elected office for the first time—and why she now lovingly refers to him as “the ass.” Finally: don’t believe the Christian right used to trumpet that life began at birth? Read this, and get back to us. 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. Daily Beast columnist and former Supreme Court Justice Clerk J. Michelson will join us to talk about the leak of the court overturning Roe versus Wade that will be joined by President and his former campaign manager, Valerie Biden Owens, who's going to give us a perspective about the role she's had alongside the president as well as her new book, Growing Up Biden, a memoir. But first, let's have some fun.

Andy Levy. Molly Jongfest. After we taped this podcast earlier in the week, as often happens, news broke. Yeah. I have to say, like, that is the podcaster's curse. May you never live in times where the news cycle moves so quickly that you can be completely out of date, two days later. Definitely the worst thing about that news was that it broke after our podcast. Yes, clearly the worst.

Fascinating and totally, I think not unexpected, but. but completely mind-blowing, in my mind, thing. Monday night, Politico publishes, and good on Politico, because we are not easy on them. And this was a humongous scoop. Politico, Josh Gerstein, who covers the courts, publishes a leaked draft of an opinion written by, I want to say the worst person in the world, Justice Alito,

which says that they're planning to overturn Roe v. Wade. I don't even know if he's the worst person on that court. Well, I guess Thomas and Justice Handmaiden. But I think it's pretty close. Yeah. The decision was filled with pretty disturbing stuff. But I have to say, like, you know, it was based a lot of Republican crazy in there. 96 pages of Fox, not quite Fox News, but there's a lot of Bible, you know, religious stuff.

I mean, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, straight out of the Federalist Society playbook, which is sort of like the smarter version of Fox News, I think. Yeah, I think it's the Wall Street Journal opinion page part of Fox News. Right. We're now apparently close to living in a post-row world. In June, when they go on vacation, we hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled.

The Constitution makes no reference to abortion. So the Constitution doesn't mention abortion and ergo they should overrule it. I mean, it's like being in a – anyway, continue. I'm sorry. It's very infuriating. Yeah, no. Look, the Constitution also doesn't mention women in its original form. So I think we need to take a serious look at a lot.

of things we're doing these days and realize that a lot of, a lot of things are not mentioned in the Constitution, and we need to get rid of them. It was a holy shit moment, but it was also like, well, it's not like we didn't have a clue that this is where they wanted to go, despite Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and I think Connie Barrett's protestations otherwise. Right, that they weren't going to. Literally all of them, when they were in their hearing, said that they wouldn't wouldn't overturn Roe and that it was super precedent. And that Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. Settledo. It's the law of the land.

I accept the law of the land. It's settled precedent of the Supreme Court. Even Justice Handmaiden, Roe v. Wade clearly held that the Constitution protected a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy. But that seems all to be gone now. Yeah. And the worst part of this is they lied to Susan Collins. And I mean, you know, she is obviously, she has concerns now.

It's just amazing, though, because, like, we knew they weren't telling the truth when they said this stuff. What can you do besides say, well, no, that's not, you're not telling the truth. It's enough for the senators, and that's all that matters. It's just, it's so frustrating. It's like, I mean, I'm a guy, and this is, like, frustrating for me. I can't, I honestly, I won't even pretend to imagine what it's. like for women to have to deal with this because I just know how frustrating it is for me. And I'm sitting here going, you know, well, what countries do I need to be looking at?

Well, I mean, what I think is important and I think is not necessarily something we've talked about, is that this is going to create enormous divides between the states. So you're, I don't, I think it's very unlikely that you ever won't be able to get an abortion in California or New York. Now, I don't think that does any good for the number of poor, women or middle class women who are living in the middle of the country and would have to lose a day of work and hundreds of dollars and drive to a place they've never been to have a procedure they've never had. I mean, so I'm not defending this in any way, but I'm just saying

we're about to have a country that has radically different laws in radically different states. And I think Republicans are extremely excited about that. I don't think they've completely explored all the consequences. Their third rail of political commentary is we never talk about the elephant in the room, which is like how this country stays together when it has such incredibly disparate fragments when you have a country that looks like this. I mean, I just wonder if the laws are so different how you can do that. Yeah. And you know what? It might be a lot more than 100 miles or hundreds of miles that they have to drive. If you get a cluster of states. Between Texas and Louisiana and the South, yeah. Yeah. Or like, you know, if you get all of like the

West, you know, you're talking about you could end up having to drive a thousand miles to get if the state will let you do that because some of these states are, you know, somehow think it's okay to say you can't go out of state to get an abortion, which how that's legal is beyond me. And how that's enforceable is baffling to me. Yeah. But we've got, I think there were 13 states that have trigger laws that say that the minute row is invalidated, abortion will be illegal in those states. always thought that too, but it turns out that those laws have to be reinstated. So it's likely that they, it won't actually be like the day of, but they'll get in there quickly.

Right, but they will be reinstated. Yeah, no question. Yeah. So we know there are 13 states that like right off the bat will just completely criminalize abortion. And now we've got, there's a bill advancing in Louisiana that would charge, that would make abortion a homicide. Right. It would make fetuses people and would make abortion. a homicide and also miscarriage, right? Because you couldn't necessarily tell. Right. Well, you'd have to prove, you'd have to then go into court after the horrible experience of having a miscarriage and prove that it was a miscarriage, which, you know, seems like a lovely thing for women to have to do. But I think what's really important

here, too, and I think worth thinking about is that you're going to have governorship races that will control. A good example is a state like Virginia, just elected, Yonkin, Yonkin is a very conservative Republican, even though he advertised himself not to be. Virginia is a very pro-choice state. I mean, you're going to have states where they end up electing a Republican and losing the right to choose. Yeah. I'm not going to use civil war rhetoric because I think that's probably that's overblown.

But this may be the closest to that sort of situation, as you pointed out, where it's going to be these sort of disparate things where what is perfectly legal in one state may be homicide in another state, the bills like the one in Louisiana get through. That's a big difference than, well, you know, smoking, you know, or having an ounce of weed is legal or having an ounce of weed means you pay a fine, which is, you know, sort of where we are now or whatever. This is not that. This is the range of penalties for abortions is going to be so vast that it's just going to be, you know, you're going to need a GPS to make sure that the difference between what you're doing is 100% legal and, you know, could end up with you in jail for 20 years to life. And that is just such a bizarre world that we're going to find ourselves in.

And it's just, yeah, I don't know, I don't know how this works. No, I agree. I mean, I think it is uncharted waters. And I don't think that I'm going to go out on a limb here and say Republicans are so hot to ban abortion. They don't understand the consequences. And again, if you look at this Alito, and again, this is just the draft, and we talk about this as a draft, but this is about blowing up privacy. And privacy is same-sex marriage and same-sex relationships and birth control and all sorts. You know, it's opening the door to all sorts of stuff, which certainly a lot of Republicans, you know, will go along with that.

But I don't think they realize, like, the kind of trouble this is going to cause for everyone. Yeah. And there's a bunch of them trying to sort of tamp down on that stuff. There's, you know, Ramesh Pannuru over at National Review. He has a bond. But he wrote at Bloomberg that he says the end of Rowe won't mean a national abortion ban or an end to Griswold or Lawrence or Obergville, which is, of course, all those privacy and gay marriage stuff that you talked about. And it's just like you may believe that. But I don't believe that.

And I don't believe that they're not going to try. And we've already seen, you know, the Ben Shapiro's of the world saying that gay marriage should be next. I think the way we got here originally was by people telling us that not to worry that Roe would always stand. And I mean, when Trump was elected, people said, don't be so hysterical. You'll always have Roe. He's not going to overturn abortion. He was pro-choice five years ago, you know, remember that? He paid for abortions.

Again, this is like with the Republican Party, they don't necessarily care if you're gay. They just want you to support the anti-LGBQ legislation. Yeah, but they're being very scorpion convincing the frog to let them ride across the river because, oh, well, we all have to get across the river. And then obviously, as the fable goes, the scorpion stings of the frog and they both die. They always do this, though. I know. The sheer amount of stuff out there from the people saying, oh, you're being, I mean, you know, well, they love to use the word hysterical to begin with. Alito seems to, in the opinion, he's got a little paragraph of sort of distinguishing in his mind, Roe from all those other decisions, but it's just not believable.

Why should you give him the benefit of the doubt? You shouldn't, you know, even in this draft decision, he tries to single out Roe from all these other Supreme Court rulings. And it just, it doesn't fly because ultimately the logic is the same. These are not, you know, the right to gay marriage was not, codified in the Constitution, and it was not, it's not a long-held thing in this country. And, you know, for that matter, neither is mixed marriage or whatever you want to call it. Interracial marriage. Yeah. You know, marriage between white people and black people, whatever, which was illegal in this country in so many places up until not all that long ago.

And you recently had a Republican senator say that he wasn't comfortable with, I mean, he said that interracial marriage should be up to the states. I mean, I think we can agree that up to the states means that they want it not protected, which is sort of amazing. I mean, state's rights goes, you know, that was that they still claim that's what the Civil War was about. Right. So they make it very clear that if the Civil War was about state's rights, then they have no problem with the states allowing slavery. So, yes, it's entirely clear any time I hear a state's rights argument. Right, you know they're full of shit. Yeah, it's always about taking rights away from people in those states.

It's never about giving people more rights in those states. That's not a concern. That has never been a concern. But millions of people have these stories, but my great-grandmother died at the age of 37. Obviously, I never knew her from getting an illegal abortion. My maternal grandmother ended up basically having to raise her four sisters because there were already five of them. in the family at this point. And back in those days, my great-grandfather certainly wasn't raising the kids.

So it fell to my grandmother at the age of, I think, she was 16 or 17. She basically had to radically change her life and raise her other sisters. And apparently that's what we want to go back to. I think it's important to mention that, you know, most these women who want abortions, it's because they have many children and because they can't handle more, you know, just like your great-grandmother. I mean, not that it matters and it shouldn't matter. who's getting an abortion and you should have bodily autonomy over your own body. But the Republicans

are painting this as like sort of an easy decision. And for a lot of people, it's the difference between falling beneath the poverty line or not. It's the difference between being able to, you know, stay in your house or stay in your job. I mean, and again, I read actually Margaret Sullivan, my mentor had a very smart piece in the Washington Post today about how the media has really failed on this conversation. And every time we say the term pro-life, we're failing, right? Because a five-celled organism is not a life, right? Even cardiac activity, most doctors would say, that's not a heart. You know, it's the size of a fingernail. Yeah, I mean, the whole terminology we use here is just, honestly, I don't even like pro-choice. I'm just, I've just started saying I'm pro-abortion

and I don't care if people think that that's weird. It's like, all I mean by that, That is, I think if a woman wants to get an abortion, she should be able to get an abortion. So I guess it means the same thing as pro-choice. But pro-choice just to me sounds, I don't know. I'm just at the point where, and again, I'm perfectly willing to be convinced otherwise in that, you know, maybe it does more harm than good to phrase things a certain way. Yeah. I mean, either way, I think what's important here is that this is about control and power

and this is about women losing the right that they've had for 50 years. Yeah, absolutely. And not to minimize how bad this is on its own, obviously, we've been talking about how bad this is. But I also do think it is very much a foot in the door for people who want to roll back. And even if Alito isn't one of those people, maybe he genuinely isn't. Like you said, I don't particularly want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But sure, if we are going to give him the benefit of the doubt and he really does think that Roe is such a singular problem that had to be dealt with, okay, fine. There are a lot of people that don't feel that way and that want these other rulings rolled back so that it is not the law of the land that gay people can get married.

And it is not the law of the land that people have a right to birth control. And it is not the law of the land that people can engage in consensual sexual activities in the privacy of their own home without the government storming in and arresting them. You know, those are the people that are going to be emboldened by this. Those are the people who are going to look at this and say, hey, we got this one. Let's move on to the next one. They're not just going to quite at least say, well, we got Roe, so we don't really care about Griswold and Lawrence v. Texas and all that. No, this is a victory for them. When you win, what do you do?

You keep going. You don't pull out. No pun intended for this discussion, but. Right. But I also think, I think it shows a very emboldened Supreme Court that is going to, right, if they'll take it right away after 50 years, months after three of the justices promised us that they were. were star decisis or super precedent, then what else will they do? And I think ultimately that's what's really scary. Yeah, I would assume things like Brown v. Board of Education are safe, you know. Right, but I wouldn't assume anything is safe. But I mean, who the hell knows? Look, if it's states,

you know, hey, maybe it should be up to the state to decide whether black students are entitled to an equal education. Or maybe it should be up to the state to decide, you know, if you should be able to get a gun. Yeah, well. Why should you have the right to have an assault weapon? Let's not get crazy. Right, exactly. Let's not get crazy. Jay Michelson is a Daily Beast columnist and former Supreme Court Justice Clerk.

Welcome to the new abnormal, Jay Michelson. This is like the new, new, new abnormal today. It's the new, new, new post-row abnormal. More abnormal than before. Yeah, what the hell happened? Well, it's, you know, this is like the article I wrote, for The Daily Beast was almost titled, I Told You So, which, you know, we wisely decided not to do. Because for people who follow the court obsessively, this is zero percent surprising.

But obviously, it should be shocking and it is shocking for everybody. But for people, you know, this was like the writing's been on the wall for years, if not decades. Oh, yeah. I thought when SB 8 went to the court and they let it stand on the, and they didn't even really look at it. and they let it stand to the shadow docket and it was, you know, allowed to continue in the beginning of September. I thought that's it. They're going to overturn Roe.

Is that when you thought it or was there something else? I did think that because, you know, obviously we know that the three Trump justices, Gorsuch Barrett and Kavanaugh were put on there for this purpose, but we don't know what they're going to do until they do it. But that was such a bizarre action, right? I mean, that law in Texas is so strange with the vigilante. revision, you know, obviously with terms. And so to let that stand, that really was abnormal, right? I mean, that was just not conceivable, even a couple of years ago. And it's funny, now that seems like

ancient history, like, oh, how quaint when they didn't give an injunction to an abortion, you know, abortion ban. Now they're just going to allow everyone. But I agree. I think, like, that was so weird that that got left on. Right. That really was a sign, yeah. Because that Texas law, I mean, there were conservatives who were horrified by that Texas law because of the bounties and the way in which it deputized citizens to sue each other. I mean, a lot of conservatives, I mean, think about like the party of small government, all of a sudden has hundreds of thousands of little deputies who can sue you for doing something they don't like. Now that's like Marilyn Monroe's dress. Right. Now everybody's wearing it, right? So now that's true. That's true in Florida, right? The Florida, don't see gay law

has a vigilante provision. Oklahoma just passed an abortion law that's a carbon copy of Texas with a vigilante provision. You know, in a way, it's just sort of weird. But then if you really think about what we see on Fox News and January 6th and what we've seen at school board meetings and part of the weird part of this history will be the role of the pandemic in all of this, right? Like some of this kind of pitchfork citizen activism really got going around COVID and especially at school boards. And so obviously it marries into, you know, 40 years of Christian right hysteria, theocracy, and extremism. But it also draws on this very recent rage where citizens just feel empowered, you know, like I remember when when Pizza Gate happened and like that one guy brought the gun to come at ping pong.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, this is crazy. And that's now enshrined in law. I mean, that's, now that that's behind all of these laws. Well, you saw, and I mean, I remember the pictures of the Michigan militia going to the State House with all the guns. I mean, that's sort of now considered to be right-wing activism. I want to circle back for a minute. So, yeah, SB 8, I think, will be looked at as sort of the foray into this. But the clerk who was involved in crafting this legislation had a Supreme Court history.

Am I right? That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, that is true. And I think there is also... Didn't he clerk for Scalia? Is that right? I think you're better prepared for this conversation.

I know that the clerk who ultimately has been sort of the brainchild of a lot of these legislations. And certainly, you know, it's set up in a way so that you can't stop the bill. But I know that he had clerked for some conservative justice before. What's weird about this? So I'm not one of the... You know, it's like really fashionable in our business to like bash the Democrats for not doing enough like blah, blah, blah, instead of taking responsibility for voters not electing enough Democrats,

which is where I think really we should be looking. But in this particular case, you know, there were all these threats like Gavin Newsom in California, we're like, well, we're going to do the same thing as Texas did, but for guns. And like, that hasn't happened. I think if it is going to be fought this way on one side where citizens are going to be deputized to right, rat on each other and sue each other and do whatever, then that should be a two-way battle. And, you know, we're even having trouble getting Alex Jones held a

accountable for sand you know for for anything let alone the gun manufacturers let alone you know so it is this case where this kind of weird chess move that nobody really saw coming which is the vigilante provision that's something that should be played on both sides not just on one right no question no there was i mean i was doing this interview with this french news station and they were saying well what could Biden do? Biden could do anything he wants. He could pass an executive order. He could pack the courts. He could, I mean, there are endless numbers of things Democrats could do right now while they hold the levers of power that they won't necessarily be able to do in November if they lose. So, you know, it's just a question of that Democrats feel tasked with, you know, I think they're

worried that if they're too aggressive, they will undermine democratic norms. Now, I don't think that's right, but I think that is the thinking. So first of all, this is really just. Joe Manchin and Chris and Sinema, right? All the other 48 Democratic senators are ready to do away with the filibuster. You know, and Joe Manchin's like, oh, this is the only thing keeping our democracy. Does he really believe that in January, when Mitch McConnell is running the Senate again, that Mitch McConnell's not going to do away with the filibuster, as soon as they seize power, that's going to go anyway.

This is like a charade that the filibuster is going to last. I mean, they can make a cutout for the filibuster. They could put it in reconciliation. I mean, Republicans had you know, had Arctic drilling in reconciliation. When Republicans found a parliamentarian that didn't agree with what they wanted,

they fired the parliamentarian. I mean, there is always a fucking way. Like, this system is very smushy and there's a lot of opportunities to do crazy shit. And this is, you know, I think it hasn't been talked about yet because I haven't written the brilliant piece, which is going to set this out.

But what's the only good result of this moment in our history is that this opinion basically never sees the light of day. If the Democrats could get their shit together and pass a national abortion rights bill within the next month, right? That's what they have. The Supreme Court case, the Mississippi law will be moot, right? That case will be moot. It will be not proper for the Supreme Court to decide it. And that will be Chief Justice Roberts's decision, basically. Right. So it's not going to be up to the other five conservatives.

It's going to be up to the Chief Justice to decide whether to then say, oh, maybe our case is moot because the law that we're looking at has now been, you know, is now over. overturned, basically, because of the supremacy clause by a federal law. So the best result is actually achievable, which is to have a national reproductive rights bill, which we should have had a decade ago or two decades ago, right? This is ridiculous that, like, on this one particular issue, right, we leave things to the states. That's not what we did with the civil rights law. That's not what we did with a lot of laws, right? Like, we have plenty of laws which take precedence over states doing bad things.

And this should be one of those. Yes, I mean, for sure. And the other thing I think that is really important that we're not talking about is that Republicans know they have a loser here. That's right. They know 70% or 60 something percent of Americans believe they don't want row overturned. So like this is a very small, very religious minority that has already going to vote for Trump. I mean, these people, so, you know, they know this is not a suburban winning issue. I don't know what that ultimately means. But it does seem like an important data point. No, it's huge. I mean, I think, you know, the New York Times actually just did a sort of depressing analysis

of where, you know, which districts would really be in play. And it was fewer than maybe we thought, but certainly many are, right? And if we had just a slight increase, you know, in voter participation for voters under 30, for example, this would be over. Like, we would not be discussing the Republican takeover in 2022. We would be discussing, like, will it be the AOC wing of the debt? Democrats versus the moderate wing like making. Right.

So if this actually inspires young people and sort of basically white Republican women from the suburbs to, you know, clutch their pearls like Susan Collins and say, I'm totally shocked. I can't believe that the big bad wolf told Little Red Ridinghood a lie. That's unbelievable, right? Like the more that could happen, like that can actually swing both the suburbs and the sort of younger voters who typically sit out these midterm elections. Right. And I mean, I think also it's important to realize like this is.

you know, there will be, this is about an abortion bill. This is about, you know, this is about the abortion pills. This is about like there are so this will not end with. And again, I mean, and I'd like to talk to you about this in this Alito opinion, he's really starting to chip away at privacy. Can you talk a little bit about that? Starting to chip away. He's not starting to chip away.

He's over, he's destroying the entire thing. Right. Like, he's chipping away. This is like a like a bulldozer coming in and knocking over the whole house. So let's talk about what privacy means. Sure. So as a caveat, this is one place where the fact that this is a draft opinion, I think, is relevant, right? So when you're writing a draft, you know, it's a negotiation.

And he knows he knows he's not going to get the chief justice, but he does know that he could get Kavanaugh with him who's a little less crazy than the other crazy, which is, of course, this great irony that it's right. Justice Kavanaugh is going to be the defender of the rights of women. By the way, do you think that Kavanaugh is the least of the three new justices, he's the least crazy and not Gorsuch? Yeah. Well, so it depends on when we mean by crazy, which probably is an word we should use too much anyway. But on religious issues, Kavanaugh is much less extreme than Gorsuch. Gorsuch is quirky, right? He has he's unpredictable and he likes being that way.

Like that's clearly, you know, with his like folksy demeanor and silly stories at the arguments and like, and you know, with the trans opinion that he wrote, obviously, which was. very surprising. So, you know, that's his brand, basically. Funny, it's like Supreme Court Justices as Instagram influencers. Right, exactly. As Instagram and influencers, I think we've seen the title. You know, Alito's brand is, I am Justice Scalia. I am Scolito, right? I am Scalia. I am arrogant. I am so smart. I am way smarter than all of you, even though I'm not really that smart, but I sound really smart. So I'm going to say that I'm smart. And Kavanaugh is a little bit more moderate. It's too early to say for Justice Barrett, really a chance. had a yeah but i think we can assume that justice handmaiden is going to vote well on the other hand if you look at that

there was a case last year about gay adoption in philadelphia right so philadelphia didn't want a contract with a catholic i believe it's catholic yeah yeah because they wouldn't allow gay adoption yeah there was there was social services that wouldn't allow gay right that was surprisingly so we actually that was like a loss but a much smaller loss than we expected and that was because of the surprising kind of position of cabinon Barrett. Which was what? Well, so they could have basically, they're also similar to this, actually, it's very similar. You know, there was the opinion that Alito either wrote or joined, which knocked down the entire idea that, you know, there could ever be any law that could regulate religion, basically. I'm exaggerating a little, but not that much. He really sucks. Yeah, pretty much. And then the more moderate view, which in this case would be, okay, we can

allow this ban, but not, but keep row in place, basically. The more moderate view in that adoption case was the one that Cabinon-Barrid actually ended up taking. and Chief Justice Roberts, like that in this particular case, Philadelphia does have to, they were discriminating against this religious adoption agency, but we're not going to junk the whole edifice. We're not going to throw out every precedent that we've had for 40 years, which is exactly, that is a very similar case to what there is now. So, you know, all this to say that like Alito's draft is staking out a negotiating position, right? So like imagine you're in like some, you know, I spent a lot of time in Israel, like, you know, we're in a Middle East,

Eastern marketplace where you want a hundred shekels for that rug. I'll give you 20 shekels. Right. So like that's, this is the hundred shekel position that's that Alito has put out. But it is true that it completely annihilates the right to privacy. It says it doesn't exist and it doesn't have any basis. And that is the basis also for same sex for marriage equality. One of the bases anyway.

It's the basis for federal right to contraception, meaning the government can't regulate your own body when you're deciding how to have sex. And it's also, it is also the basis this has been exaggerated or like whatever, but it is the basis for the federal right to injureacial marriage as well. Right. And also birth control, right? Controception, Greenwald. Right. So the right for the privacy is the basis for all of these constitutional rights. And Alito saying, well, it doesn't say privacy or abortion in the Constitution. It doesn't say a lot of things in the Constitution. It doesn't say uterus. It doesn't say women in the Constitution, right? It doesn't say right. There's a lot of things that I'm not. are in the right the idea is that when you look at due process right there is no process that can be due for the government regulating a woman's body and getting inside of somebody's uterus that's

there's no way to do that like you we can call it privacy and that is the one of the you know that's a word that was in the row opinion but if you actually read row versus Wade which i reread it uh just you know over the weekend like it does it says clearly like it's not a sort of made up thing It's, you know, if you look at the Ninth Amendment and the 14th Amendment, there is an idea that there's a zone of personal life that the government can't regulate, like hands off of our bodies, basically, is a constitutional norm. So for Alito to say, well, it doesn't say that in the Constitution and then to cite a bunch of, you know, ancient precedents of people who also thought that there could be no marital rape. Right. And didn't he, didn't he cite this religious guy, too? He cites a number of authorities, which is always, first of all, obviously, those are all cherry-picked, right? So you could also cite, if you wanted, that in 1971 and 72, Christianity Today, that's sort of Christian-right, conservative Christian-right magazine, had a forum where everybody agreed, all the Protestants were like, no, of course, life begins at birth, not conception. Here are all the biblical verses that support that. We could put in the show notes. There's a great article at a magazine called Religion Dispatches by an author named Jonathan Dudley, just quote, all of these conservative evangelicals from the 60s and 70s saying, no, no, no, life definitely does not begin at conception, life begins at birth, and also the government shouldn't be making these kinds of.

You know, all of a sudden, there was a change in the 70s and the 80s. But so whenever you see those kinds of selective quotations, just, you know, obviously it's who's being selected. Right. And he's selecting religious authorities who have no business being in a Supreme Court opinion or stating religious principles. And, you know, this is basically the idea that life begins. conception is a religious idea. People are entitled to hold that view, right? There's that in, you know, if you're against abortion, don't have one. Fine. If you believe that life begins at conception, that's your business. And if you're a preacher who believes that, preach it, right? Tell people not to get abortions. But that's not the same as the government, right, enforcing these

religious ideas on everybody. There is no secular basis for the idea that life begins at conception. And obviously, scientifically, that makes no sense. Like, an embryo is not a fetus is not a baby. A fetal heartbeat is neither a heartbeat nor a fetus. I mean, all of, like, it's just fantasy land to cloak a religious dogma that's being pushed on people. And that the Supreme Court, many of whose members have said that they believe in that dogma themselves, right? They have that religious belief. They see nothing wrong with that. Speak for yourself, man. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, no, I mean, good point. And also, Jesus Christ.

Thank you so much for joining us. That's a good place to end because it's that dude's fault. Yeah, fuckety fuckers, man. Valerie Biden-Owins is President Joe Biden's sister, as well as his former campaign manager and author of the new memoir, Growing Up Biden, a Memoir. Welcome to the new abnormal Valerie Biden-Owens. Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

We're so happy to have you. I've been listening to your book on audio, which is actually really fun. And I wanted to talk to you about you have been your brother's campaign manager for all of his runs except for this one, right? Correct. And this one, I was the national co-chair. And the reason, and use a sporting analogy, I didn't hang up my spikes because I quit. I hung up my spikes so I could put on combat boots and hit the ground running because that's what I think. thought I needed in this 2020 election. So I wanted to be out and in the field as much as I could and meet as many people as I could. So I spent my time in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina a little bit in Nevada so that I didn't have to be in headquarters worrying about everything else that headquarters campaign managers have to worry about. I'd love to talk to you about his first run because that is a really interesting story that I feel like doesn't quite get enough attention.

Will you talk about that first Senate run in Delaware in the 70s? Sure. We ran. Our first run was 1972. Joe was 29 years old when he was elected. It was too young to be elected constitutionally. I was 26. I was a teacher at Wilmington Friends School.

And the press dubbed us the children's crusade. So in 1972, Molly, there was a really combustible relationship between youth and the issues that were at hand. We ran because four civil rights against the war in Vietnam and to protect the planet Earth. We were one of the very first campaigns to ever talk about the environment. We had no money. We had no influence. We knew no one in power. Our Democratic Party was in disarray here in Delaware. We were running against a man who was twice governor three times Congress and was running for his third term for Senate in the Nixon landslide election year against McGovern. So, you know, there's a value to not knowing what you don't know.

And we didn't know what we weren't supposed to do. So we just jumped in. The man that we ran against was a gentleman beloved by the state, but wasn't pushing the issues that my brother thought had to be addressed, specifically the three that I just mentioned. I taught school. I taught upper school and 9 through 12. I brought Joe in for an assembly to meet the kids and they connected.

And they, because we didn't have money to deliver or mail fancy brochures, these kids from Labor Day weekend to the election day, six weeks, hand delivered 150,000 tabloids each weekend to the state of Delaware. And all through the summer, they were our volunteers. I'd call and 10 kids would show up and we leaflet and marching parades next to Joe. And it was, as I said, the press called us the children's crusade. And one quick thing, Molly, you know, that when parents think we influence our children, and we certainly do some, but children influence their parents more.

And when these Republican parents, bastion of republicanism, where I taught, saw their kids get up at 6 o'clock in the morning to, you know, hand deliver these for this kid Biden. They said, well, you know, maybe we ought to take a second look at them. And we won by 3,163 votes. And I think it's because these kids showed their parents that there was something to them. And it's also the first year that 18-year-olds could vote. And that helped us, too. Yeah, I'd love to talk to you a little bit about that time.

It's funny, by the way, I just want to mention my little brother taught at that school in Delaware for a year. Yeah, and he really enjoyed it. Wow. Yeah, I loved it. Yeah, coincidence. So I wanted to talk to you about that year, 1972. I know you know, Roe, it's likely with this draft opinion, is going to be overturned or it seems very much. And as a woman, I know my mother is a feminist writer, and she, I think it's particularly heartbreaking to see some of those gains rolled back. I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Well, I think that Roe is about a basic fairness. and justice. And I believe that every woman should have equal access to quality and complete health care. And that includes reproductive rights. I wrestle today more than I ever have because I think this is this is about control. What are these people thinking? I don't believe that the state legislature should determine how I take care of myself and my health and the health of women throughout the country. So this is a very critical time. And as I, again, I don't comment on the administration and what my brother's doing, but there is a lot more to this than just abortion. It's about civil rights as much as reproductive rights and it's about the right of privacy,

which is what my brother in the Bork hearings in 1987 was so concerned about when Bork was appointed to the Supreme Court and ultimately was not nominated. And it was on because it was on the pivoted on the issue of privacy, the right to privacy, which I believe we have. It's interesting that he ran on climate in 1972. I mean, that must have been the very one of the very first people to take that as an issue, your campaign. Yeah, yeah. We are the chemical capital of the world. So we're taught Delaware, a little Delaware. And our shoreline is, was studded with refineries from Philadelphia through Delaware. Our highways were the connecting route I-95 along the east coast. And Delaware, lastly, is one of the lowest-line states. I think even more so than Florida. I think we're the first or second state that will be. affected with the water level raising. So we, we are very much aware, and we've been called the Cancer Corridor from Delaware, you know, through New England. We were aware early on, and I think I was teaching at friend's school at the time when the first Earth Day happened. And I think it was 1970 or 71 was the first birthday. We, anyway, we were part of it. We were aware. Joe's pretty smart guy.

So you're called, and you write about this, the Biden Whisperer. I have these half-brothers, but I'm largely an only child from my mother's third marriage. I'm curious, it strikes me that your family is, they are very involved in each other's lives in a nice way. Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure. There are three brothers and me. I'm number two. From the time I opened my eyes, Molly, I mean, my brother Joe is three years older than I.

I remember, is taking my hand and saying, come on, Belle, we got things to do in places to go. and people to see. And off we went on our journey. And his friends would say, Joe, why did you bring a girl? And his answer was, she's not a girl. She's my sister. And he told me that whatever he could do, I could do better. I mean, that was impossible because he was stronger and bigger and smarter than I was. But he made me believe that I could do whatever he said I could do. And I owed it to him and to myself to try to be that little girl and that woman who grew up. But this all came from mom and dad. dad told us that we were a gift to one another and we believed it. I mean, I said my brothers are a gift. My husband I earned. The three pillars of our family were family, faith, and a responsibility

to take care of one another. Subsequently, our community. When we walked out of the house, Molly, from the door shut, my mother said, when you walk out of that house, remember, you are Bidens. Now, that is not like you are Bidens or you are Kennedys or Whitney's or Rockefellas. It means You're Biden's year, four of you, and you take care of each other and you have each other's back. And God forbid if one of us ever turned on, I mean, kidding each other was out of completely out of the realm of possibility. But if we ever turned on one another, that would have been the big, the worst thing that we could have done in our parents' eyes. And we bought a hook, flying a sinker. So you have been in this business, quote unquote, since 1971, right, when you did your brother's first campaign.

to now, and I listened to the part about the election. Were you shocked at what Trump did after the election? I mean, did you think, I mean, I think a lot of us thought that he would eventually concede. Well, I listened to a couple of your podcasts, and I remember one part, you're saying, you think he's really going to leave? You think he's really going to leave? Do you remember that? Yes.

You were so prescient, you know? Like, I believe that he would hope, I mean, holding up the count was not a surprise, you know. But to continue, and it appears with the efforts that continued that led to January 6th, whether they were directly his hand or not, but the agitation that was stirred up because of his not doing the correct thing by our constitution and by civility and by dignity and by decency and by honor and integrity, and I can go on. That was the result. I felt in every fiber of my body that this man would see.

stop at nothing to destroy my brother and my family. And in the process, it's bigger than my family. I mean, I believe that his hand has helped diminish and destroying our democracy. Yeah, I mean, that seems really clear. Like, we're listening to these tapes now from Jonathan Martin and Alex's book that we're actually talking to them for a different episode. But they were talking about it listening to these tapes. And you have Mitch McConnell, who I don't think I realize just how trapped he was by Trump.

Did you? I spoke to Jonathan's wife, what, a couple days ago on one of these conversations, a Zoom. And I didn't realize that Jonathan's book was, I think it's supposed to be dropped May 3rd. So I ordered it on Amazon. So I have not read it. And I've just heard clips on the news about it. But what I'm doing, Molly, is for my own mental health. don't listen to the news that often.

Yeah. You know, a funny thing when after Joe was first elected, I went by my husband keeps, my husband's Jack and, you know, he always has the TV on listening to the news. And I went and I heard the commentator say, the president said, and I looked at Jack and I said, so what did the ass say today? And the ass was my brother. They were talking about Joe. So when I was talking to Betsy about she was telling me, you know, my husband Jonathan wrote this new book. I said, well, you know, I'll have to order it. And it has not arrived yet.

Or I just got home last night from, so I don't know, maybe here on this on the porch. But I can't intelligently comment on it. But I'm anxious. I think I'm anxious to read it. Go either way. Yeah. I don't know. I'll let you know in a week.

Okay, good. All right. I have one more question for you. You have been in this, in the political business for such a long time. what have you seen that has really surprised you in the change? There's always been a baser element to, you know, human nature. And the particular personalities in various degrees bring it out. And I think it's been a travesty the prior four years with our previous president.

But a positive thing that I've seen in politics is that role that women have played. When I started out in 72, politics was completely a man's game. And for the, this is a brush stroke, but there were no women who were consultants, who were a few journalists, a few, no campaign managers or, I mean, again, you'll find one someplace to make, but my point is that it was all man's game. And now we haven't reached critical mass yet, but women are jumping into the game and they are, you know, you've got to reach and risk. The balance of power with men and women is shifting. And, you know, the more they get, I out in the workforce and the more they speak up, the more other women are coming in and helping and mentoring and sponsoring. In my day, 72, the woman was successful in business or politics or whatever her line was. There was one slot, and she kept that slot. And she didn't help anybody else, any other. We were not our sister's keeper. And to a much greater extent, that's what we're doing through mentoring and sponsoring. And I'll end with this. I could keep going. I can keep going.

because I'm abiding. This phrase, which drives me crazy a little bit, is that, you know, we're now in the age of empowering women. Hell, we don't need to be empowered. We are power. Think of it, Molly, we are the significant cog in the chain of humanity. I mean, without us, nothing happens. I mean, you know, we are the vital cog in this world, and we were born leaders. And what we need is opportunity. And that's what we got to work for the opportunity. But we have the power. We are the ultimate teachers and we are the ultimate leaders. Thank you so much. Thanks, Molly. Andy.

Molly. Who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy for today is a... You know how they have in, like on TV, you have people who have like their recurring characters and, you know, they come up like, they may not be the star of the show, but they pop up on like, you know, eight, nine episodes. a year. And so I think my fuck that guy today is a recurring fuck that guy character. And it is the governor from the Don't Mess With Us state. And it is Governor Greg Abbott. And he on Wednesday said that he is considering challenging the Supreme Court decision that requires states to offer free public

education to all children, including those of undocumented immigrants. And oddly, this came after the after the leaked Roe opinion. Right. And remember, he was the first to ban abortion with SB 8 in August. Yes. And remember that that law is a tattletail law and, you know, tell citizens to rat on their fellow citizens. Something, a very American, you know, thing to do. So, yeah, now he wants to take away, this law is from 1982 that it was passed.

So we're talking like 40 years ago. a simple law that says, hey, you've got to educate all your children in the state. And he is discussing trying to challenge that and get rid of that because it's very good for a state, I think, to not educate its kids. That's definitely good for all the residents of that state. It's not like having an educated electorate and an educated children is, you know, sort of is good for everyone. although I guess it's probably not good for Republican officials since elected. Educated people tend to vote the other way more likely. So maybe that's what this is about.

But anyway, it's just like Abbott, there's guys like at this point, it's Abbott and DeSantis and people like that. It's like anything they can find that's just mean and cruel and makes them feel like they have a very large penis is what they're going for. And so for that, I say, fuck that guy. I think that's a good one. So mine is the J.D. Vance Industrial Complex. He won the Ohio primary. Josh Mandel yet again degraded and humiliated himself, which again, that was actually quite fun to watch. But we saw Vance absolutely millions and millions of dollars from he who shall not be named.

because I don't want to get sued. Peter Thiel? No, I can't say it. And ultimately... I think it's Peter Thiel. No, I don't know. Ultimately, he won. He's running on...

It's the opposite of everything he said in 2016. And so I say, literally the opposite of everything. He ran in 2016 as a David from Conservative on 2021. He won his primary as a... Marjorie Taylor Green conservative. And so for that, he and his entire industrial complex gets an enormous fuck you for me. Yeah, I am obviously 100% with you on that. I guess pour one out for poor Josh Mandel.

It's like no matter what he pretends to be, they just can't win. I'm not going to pour anything out for that. No, I know. I know. I'm being sarcastic. Yeah. I ain't fuck that guy. But yes.

So before we go, I have a question for you. So Vance sort of famously was endorsed. by Donald Trump, and he was also endorsed by Tucker Carlson. Which one of those do you think was bigger? I hate this question. Right? It's a good question, though. This question makes me want to move to the pineapple under the sea.

I don't know. I mean, they're both horrendous. I don't know. Who do you think is bigger? Maybe Tucker. I think Tucker, yeah. I think Tucker, I don't want to say deserves more credit, deserves more blame for this than Trump does. I really do think that.

I got a thought here. Vance was still behind, though, when Tucker was always pushing him in the polls. That tells me it's Trump. Well, all right. I don't know. Maybe. I hate all of this. I know.

I'm sorry I brought it up. 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. will 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 on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studied the Daily Beast podcast at

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