Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to Okay f Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Homebunker, Folks,
Speaker 1: I am very excited to bring to you today my
Speaker 1: conversation with my fellow nerd Avenger. We have met and
Speaker 1: just become incredibly fond of each other through the Mary
Speaker 1: Trump Show. If you guys watch that on YouTube. Dahlia
Speaker 1: Lithwick has written a new book that is entitled Lady Justice, Women,
Speaker 1: the Law and the Battle to Save America. And in
Speaker 1: this book, Dahlia lays out a history of women and
Speaker 1: the law, going back to a time and are not
Speaker 1: too distant history where women had no rights in this country.
Speaker 1: That's right, And I'm not just talking about abortion. I'm
Speaker 1: also talking about financial independence. I'm also talking about workplace independence.
Speaker 1: I'm also talking about bodily autonomy. And what Dahlia talks
Speaker 1: about and our interview gets into is also the correlations
Speaker 1: that we need to be drawing between what is happening
Speaker 1: right now on the streets of Iran being led by
Speaker 1: women and pushing back against an oppressive regime that wants
Speaker 1: to dictate how they look, where they go, what they wear,
Speaker 1: and what is happening with the Christo fascist Republican movement
Speaker 1: in the United States. We cannot sit here in the
Speaker 1: US and clutch our pearls and look at Iran and say, oh,
Speaker 1: those poor women solidarity and throw up at this and
Speaker 1: think that what is happening, what has happened over the
Speaker 1: last forty plus years in Iran, can't happen or isn't
Speaker 1: happening in the United States right now. And I will
Speaker 1: also talk about the upcoming Supreme Court docket and all
Speaker 1: of the major cases that are on there, from affirmative
Speaker 1: action to voting rights, and to more cases with regard
Speaker 1: to bodily autonomy, and how one decision at a time,
Speaker 1: this Supreme Court is set to disrupt, ruin crumble, destroy
Speaker 1: our democracy and women's bodily autonomy and black people's ability
Speaker 1: to you know, access the American dream. So, folks, when
Speaker 1: we look at these other countries and we see them
Speaker 1: pushing back in revolution against these regimes, understand that authoritarian
Speaker 1: control doesn't always come in rolling down the street with
Speaker 1: tanks and in military uniform. It doesn't always come with
Speaker 1: the assassination right of said shah or said leader or dictator. No,
Speaker 1: it also comes in the form of dictators that are
Speaker 1: wearing black robes. It also comes in the form of
Speaker 1: a Republican Party that decides that they no longer believe
Speaker 1: in the constitution, they no longer believe in the rule
Speaker 1: of law, and they no longer believe in the ability
Speaker 1: of the people to decide how they want to live.
Speaker 1: We are supposed to be a government that is for
Speaker 1: and by the people of these United States. And what
Speaker 1: the Republican Party is telling us, and has been telling
Speaker 1: us for the last several fucking decades and now has
Speaker 1: a megaphone, is that fuck you and your laws, fuck
Speaker 1: you and your civil liberties, fuck you and your bodily autonomy. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to put you back in your place. Women,
Speaker 1: black people, queer people, disabled people, right, one decision at
Speaker 1: a time. And I'm telling you right now, I ain't
Speaker 1: going out like that, and I know many of you
Speaker 1: that listen to wokaf aren't either. So pay attention, pay
Speaker 1: attention to what we are seeing in Iran. Pay attention
Speaker 1: to how women are leading the fight and the pushback
Speaker 1: against authoritarianism. And I've been saying this, if folks, if
Speaker 1: you've been listening to this show since twenty sixteen when
Speaker 1: I launched it that things in America are going to
Speaker 1: get bloodier before they get better. And I say that
Speaker 1: not from a place of hyperbole, not from a place
Speaker 1: of joy, but from a place of reality that I
Speaker 1: need all of us to grasp on too, so that
Speaker 1: we are not caught off guard and surprised, as apparently
Speaker 1: everyone was in June when the Republican Party did exactly
Speaker 1: what it was that they have been saying that they
Speaker 1: would do for forty plus years, which was rolled back
Speaker 1: Rovie Wade. When people show you who the fuck they are,
Speaker 1: believe them. And it's time that the American people show
Speaker 1: the christto fascist Republican movement who the fuck we are.
Speaker 1: Coming up next, my conversation with my friend Dahlia Lithwick.
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Speaker 1: Listen to Beyond the Scenes from the Daily Show with
Speaker 1: Trevor Noah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast. New episodes every Tuesday, Folks. I
Speaker 1: am very excited to welcome to wok F Daily my
Speaker 1: fellow nerd Avenger Dahlia Lithwick, who is the author of
Speaker 1: the new book Lady Justice, Women, The Law and the
Speaker 1: Battle to Save America. Dahlia, I think that what is
Speaker 1: really fascinating and the perfect timing of your book is
Speaker 1: that it comes at a time when, for the first
Speaker 1: time in American history, since women have actually actualized themselves
Speaker 1: as full and complete citizens, that we are seeing an
Speaker 1: roll back in rights and protections for women that we
Speaker 1: have not seen since prior to I would say, nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four. What is also interesting about your book is
Speaker 1: that it takes us through this history of women in law,
Speaker 1: bringing us back to a not too distant future that
Speaker 1: I think that I'm so grateful for you in bringing
Speaker 1: it to the forefront the way that women have been treated. Right,
Speaker 1: women who are who were going in front of the
Speaker 1: court and needing to wear skirts, who are representatives in
Speaker 1: our Senate and in the House of representatives needing and
Speaker 1: being told too that they had to wear skirts on
Speaker 1: the floor. This is but just forty some odd years
Speaker 1: ago that we understand that women didn't have the right
Speaker 1: to have a credit card without without the authority of
Speaker 1: a husband or a father. That was in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies in these United States. And I bring this up
Speaker 1: because while we are watching our rights being rolled back
Speaker 1: in this country, we're also watching at the same time
Speaker 1: a historic women led revolution that is happening in Iran.
Speaker 1: And we always love in America to point the finger
Speaker 1: at the Middle East and countries and say, oh, look
Speaker 1: at them, that could never be as morality police. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: While they're being forced to wear he jobs, we're being
Speaker 1: forced to give birth. So talk to us about how
Speaker 1: your book is dropping at a time when women are
Speaker 1: being pushed back into a class of citizenship that modern
Speaker 1: day women have only ever read about. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, Danielle, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1: I've been actually really psyched to talk about you because
Speaker 1: I feel like in our conversations you're one of the
Speaker 1: only people who just relentlessly says like, if you choose
Speaker 1: to forget the past, you don't know what's coming in
Speaker 1: the future. And I think, like, if you don't have
Speaker 1: that on a T shirt, you should, because I think
Speaker 1: you have really been a clarion voice of and you
Speaker 1: make this point in your piece that this week about iron.
Speaker 1: My husband and I are obsessed with photos of Iranian
Speaker 1: women from the seventies in their like bell bottoms and
Speaker 1: their wedge heels and their T shirts because you can't
Speaker 1: look at that and look at where we are today
Speaker 1: and not understand this isn't like past is prologue. Is
Speaker 1: past is exactly where we think we are irrevocably now
Speaker 1: that we're going to forever and ever live in a
Speaker 1: world of equality and rights and dignity. And then fast
Speaker 1: forward a couple decades and you know, women are, as
Speaker 1: you note, being killed for not wearing a head scarf
Speaker 1: appropriately by the quote unquote morality police. And so I
Speaker 1: think the refusal to not just look at what has
Speaker 1: happened in the past, like you say, you know, ask
Speaker 1: your grandmother if she had a credit card in her name,
Speaker 1: Ask her if her mother had a credit card in
Speaker 1: her name. Ask if you know somebody raped their wife
Speaker 1: that they knew, if that could be charged as rape.
Speaker 1: It could not. And you know, I always say to people,
Speaker 1: you know, Ruth pader Ginsburg, We like to think she's
Speaker 1: sort of sprung fully form out of the ether. Ruth
Speaker 1: pader Ginsburgh had to hide her pregnancy or she would
Speaker 1: have been fired. And that wasn't the nineteen twenties. And
Speaker 1: so you're exactly right, it's recent past. And I think
Speaker 1: that the two points that you're making that are both
Speaker 1: really important is that to be a historic about any
Speaker 1: of this is to fail to understand how much we
Speaker 1: had to claw equality and equal protection and dignity out
Speaker 1: of the kind of rock face of a constitution that
Speaker 1: was blind to it. But the second point, and it's
Speaker 1: just as important, is that to refuse to look around
Speaker 1: the world and see what is happening in the name
Speaker 1: of sort of religious zelotry and ethnonationalism and just rampant
Speaker 1: religious misogyny, and to say that can't touch us because
Speaker 1: we live on this island of you know, irrevocable forward
Speaker 1: progress is just insane. And so I think both of
Speaker 1: those points are descriptively really important. One, history is not
Speaker 1: ancient in many many ways, it's coming back. But also
Speaker 1: to think that oh, just because it happened in Iran.
Speaker 1: That women don't wear bell bottoms anymore doesn't mean it
Speaker 1: can happen here. Is it's just shortsighted to the point
Speaker 1: of myopic and dangerous. You know. It's what I find
Speaker 1: always so troubling, particularly in America, is our inability to
Speaker 1: look at other countries and to consider our own futures
Speaker 1: as being predicated by what we're seeing, right, And that
Speaker 1: is why I wrote the piece about why American women
Speaker 1: need to pay attention to what is happening in Iran,
Speaker 1: because it's only forty some odd years. It's forty six years,
Speaker 1: you know, forty I think it's like forty two years
Speaker 1: since the Islamic Republic took over, right Iran, And in
Speaker 1: that four decades, right, that they have seen a complete
Speaker 1: and total reversal and how women are allowed to present
Speaker 1: and show up in that country. And we have always
Speaker 1: looked down, I believe, in America, at other nations and said,
Speaker 1: look how backwards they are. Oh, the women in Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabia just got the resentability to be able to drive. Well,
Speaker 1: look like you're saying, talk to your own grandmothers, who
Speaker 1: in there, your own grandmothers, Talk to your own mothers
Speaker 1: about how old they were when they were able to
Speaker 1: get a credit card. Right, that was in nineteen seventy four. Law,
Speaker 1: I believe that was passed in the United States. And
Speaker 1: so I want you to talk about why DABS. The
Speaker 1: DABS decision in June is the canary in the coal mine.
Speaker 1: It isn't. It isn't the end all be all. It
Speaker 1: is actually the beginning of how America. And I believe
Speaker 1: it won't take forty years, right. I believe that it
Speaker 1: can take to tend or less than that for us
Speaker 1: to get to a place pre nineteen seventy four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think, you know, what's the cliche. I mean,
Speaker 1: these things happen slowly and then quickly, and I think
Speaker 1: that we are caught up in the slow build of
Speaker 1: decades after casey of one form of attack on reproductive rights,
Speaker 1: which was essentially, we're going to use this pretext of
Speaker 1: caring about women and we want them to make good decisions.
Speaker 1: And as long as the clinics, you know, have them
Speaker 1: come back for two consults, and as long as they
Speaker 1: have read these completely fact free warnings about the correlation
Speaker 1: between suicidal ideation abortion, like, we just want them to
Speaker 1: be safe and happy. And that was decades, right, those
Speaker 1: trap laws. You know, we just have to have wider corridors,
Speaker 1: and we have to have doctors with admitting privileges. And
Speaker 1: then in a less than a year, right, we see
Speaker 1: that when the opportunity comes to actually reverse row, we're
Speaker 1: seeing like, no, actually, what we want is women to
Speaker 1: be incubators. We don't actually care about them making good
Speaker 1: decisions because we don't want them to make decisions at all.
Speaker 1: And because I think we haven't processed that turn and
Speaker 1: how quickly it happened, you still hear all this nonsense
Speaker 1: from states that are like, no, we care about maternal health,
Speaker 1: we care about fetal health. You know, thank you, Justice Barrett.
Speaker 1: We're just going to force women to carry it to term,
Speaker 1: which is much much more dangerous than terminating. But it's
Speaker 1: okay because they're going to drop the babies off at
Speaker 1: fire stations. And all of this fake solicitude for maternal
Speaker 1: health has just I think crumbled away in the span
Speaker 1: of the summer. Right, And so you are exactly right,
Speaker 1: and I know you and I talk about this in
Speaker 1: other contexts. We're now not talking about abortion. We're talking
Speaker 1: about miscarriages. We're talking about fetal endangerment. We're talking about
Speaker 1: putting medication abortion in the mail. We're talking about women
Speaker 1: in Alabama who are stuck in jail who cannot get
Speaker 1: out because the state has determined they will endanger their
Speaker 1: children with drug use. Right, all of that just happened.
Speaker 1: And by the way, a lot of that has been
Speaker 1: happening before, Dubs. It's just that it happened principally to
Speaker 1: women of color and to poor women. All of that
Speaker 1: is happening. And you know, as you said, there's no
Speaker 1: talk of oh, we were lying when we said leave
Speaker 1: it to the states. What we mean is federal abortion ban. Also,
Speaker 1: we're now just openly hearing about going after contracept next.
Speaker 1: You know, the whole checklist that Justice Thomas laid out
Speaker 1: in his concurrence in jobs, you know, which is LGBTQ
Speaker 1: rights and all other you know, determinants of what is
Speaker 1: private conduct and family conduct. All of that is on
Speaker 1: the table. And so to suggest that you know the
Speaker 1: same people who not four years ago we're telling us
Speaker 1: in whole Women's Health that really the only reason we
Speaker 1: needed wide corridors to push a gurney through in a
Speaker 1: clinic was so that women would be healthy and safe,
Speaker 1: but that you know, what we really wanted was the
Speaker 1: primacy of their health and their baby's health, and to
Speaker 1: see that just scuppered. And now it's like we don't
Speaker 1: care because we just want them to be incubators. And
Speaker 1: if they die, they die. If they have to go
Speaker 1: septic before we treat them, so be it. If they
Speaker 1: have to, you know, have babies that are going to
Speaker 1: live for a few moments, suffer terribly and die, so
Speaker 1: be it. And so I think in some sense, this
Speaker 1: isn't another one of those things where if you didn't
Speaker 1: know this was coming, you weren't watching what was happening
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma. To Brittany Poola, you know, if you didn't
Speaker 1: see this coming, you weren't watching what's been happening. You know,
Speaker 1: people like Dorothy Roberts have been writing about this for decades.
Speaker 1: And you know, as I said, I think because this
Speaker 1: was coming principally for black and brown women and poor women,
Speaker 1: a lot of other people were shocked when Dubbs sort
Speaker 1: of sprawled out for us that your very parenting decisions
Speaker 1: are now going to be criminalized. And it happened, and
Speaker 1: I think we haven't processed it in some I would
Speaker 1: say in no small measure, because we don't want to
Speaker 1: reckon with the history of slavery and how women and
Speaker 1: black women's bodies have been treated ever since. Indisputaful with
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Speaker 1: you hear, be sure to subscribe so you never miss
Speaker 1: a new episode. You know, and you mentioned slavery, and
Speaker 1: I'm also thinking, you know, not too recently during the
Speaker 1: Trump administration, the sterilization of undocumented women, which we don't
Speaker 1: talk about right, which has happened, by the way, the
Speaker 1: sterilization of undocumented women under both Democrats and Republicans, might
Speaker 1: I mention, and so you know, there has been Dahlia,
Speaker 1: an unrelenting war against women in this country for decades.
Speaker 1: And my question is we understand that. But white women
Speaker 1: that have been voting with Donald Trump and have been
Speaker 1: voting with the Republican Party for the entirety of their
Speaker 1: voting age. The numbers went up from twenty sixteen to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty in terms of who was showing out for
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. How do you think that white women reconcile
Speaker 1: the war that has been on their autonomy and them
Speaker 1: still vote alongside their husbands and their fathers. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the short, depressing answer is a failure to
Speaker 1: connect the dots. I think it is to look at
Speaker 1: this as abortion and isolation and all the ways that
Speaker 1: many privileged white women have told themselves for decades that
Speaker 1: this is not their problem. This is you know, if
Speaker 1: you are, you know, using abortions, birth control, you know
Speaker 1: all the stereotypes about you know, the kinds of women
Speaker 1: who get abortions and refusing, I think to open the
Speaker 1: aperture and say, oh wait, you know, my own miscarriage
Speaker 1: could now be subject to investigation and criminal charges because
Speaker 1: the state has determined that I wasn't mischarging, I wasn't
Speaker 1: in fact having a miscarriage, I was aborting. So I
Speaker 1: think that all of that kind of judgmental narrow mindedness
Speaker 1: around reproductive freedom has been kind of blasted open. And
Speaker 1: I think when you you start to hear the kinds
Speaker 1: of stories we're hearing this summer, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: as you say, has been going on for years. You know,
Speaker 1: ten year old rape victim who has to cross state lines.
Speaker 1: You know, women being forced to carry a non viable
Speaker 1: fetus and leave the state because she can't terminate in
Speaker 1: the state. You know this is familiar. Right now, We're
Speaker 1: not talking about abortion. Now, we're talking about miscarriage, which
Speaker 1: one pregnancy in four. Now we're talking about rape, which,
Speaker 1: as you always point out, you know, statistically one woman
Speaker 1: in four. Now we're talking about things that I think,
Speaker 1: even if you are utterly mired in the sort of
Speaker 1: judgmental narrow minded you know, abortion is something that only
Speaker 1: you know, loose women who aren't careful need to access.
Speaker 1: You're in a new world now, and so as absolutely
Speaker 1: awful as it is that these stories of women who
Speaker 1: are left to bleed out until they are in critical
Speaker 1: condition and the hospital's lawyers says, okay, now you can
Speaker 1: treat her. Every one of us either had something like
Speaker 1: that happen or no, somebody who's had something like that happen.
Speaker 1: And so the depressing I think answer to your depressing
Speaker 1: question is a total failure of empathy and imagination, right,
Speaker 1: the total failure of this could have happened to me.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, it did happen to me. You know, I
Speaker 1: had one of those miscarriages that had to be handled
Speaker 1: with a DNC that I think at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: some state actor could certainly have looked at what I
Speaker 1: was doing. And so I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: who said this is a problem for black women in
Speaker 1: Alabama are now looking around and saying, oh wait, this
Speaker 1: is when I send my child to college. This is
Speaker 1: a problem for them too. And I hate that that's
Speaker 1: the answer. Failure of empathy, failure of imagination, failure to
Speaker 1: understand that you don't know what you don't know. But
Speaker 1: I think that's the answer. But the upside I really
Speaker 1: do think, Danielle, is that people are starting to see
Speaker 1: that they don't know what they don't know. And by
Speaker 1: the way, this isn't just loose women who are using
Speaker 1: abortion as birth control. You know, I want to even
Speaker 1: go a step further with this with regard to your
Speaker 1: they don't know what they don't know, because I often
Speaker 1: say on this show that public education is the greatest
Speaker 1: perpetuator of white supremacy and also of patriarchy. And I
Speaker 1: say this because simple health education, sex education, reproductive education
Speaker 1: comprehensive would help us understand childbirth, would help us understand
Speaker 1: a woman's body, would help us understand the burden of labor. Right,
Speaker 1: you had members of Congress and state legislatures, men who
Speaker 1: have no idea how a woman's body works, right, has
Speaker 1: no idea, Oh, just have the baby and drop it off,
Speaker 1: as if pregnancy, nine months of growing a new human
Speaker 1: being inside of you is somehow easy on the body.
Speaker 1: And so I wonder, you know, And I bring this
Speaker 1: up because there are only three women in the South
Speaker 1: Carolina Legislature, and now all of a sudden they're seeing
Speaker 1: in a different tune. They've been voting quote unquote pro
Speaker 1: life until recently where one of them gave this floor
Speaker 1: speech about how disappointed she was with her male colleagues
Speaker 1: for not considering rape and incest and the well being
Speaker 1: and the welfare of of a woman of the mother,
Speaker 1: and then says she's voting against this legislation and oh,
Speaker 1: we need more comprehensive sex education. I said, wait, what,
Speaker 1: where have the hell have you been? So I want
Speaker 1: you to talk about how these things go hand in hand,
Speaker 1: how we see these attacks on education, how we see
Speaker 1: these attacks on women, attacks on voting. And when you
Speaker 1: say we don't know what we don't know, it's strategic.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm going to land the place
Speaker 1: you and I always land, which is it's the culture, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have this pathetic, pathetic cultural conversation around
Speaker 1: women and childbirth in which every single movie ends with like,
Speaker 1: you know, a dewey faced, blonde woman going and then
Speaker 1: the baby pops out and it's six months old, and
Speaker 1: you know, her handsome, strapping partner is like, and now
Speaker 1: we'll take it to a restaurant. You know, Like it's
Speaker 1: so insane that any ring Carmone has written so gorgeously about, Like, actually,
Speaker 1: here's what childbirth is like, it's not, in fact how
Speaker 1: Hallmark movies end. And I think part of it is
Speaker 1: just an massively impoverished cultural conversation. I you know, I
Speaker 1: start the book the first chapter. There's two things in
Speaker 1: the book that I think maybe answer some of this.
Speaker 1: You know, when the court heard oral argument in Griswold
Speaker 1: versus Connecticut, it was all men and they were so
Speaker 1: freaked out. This is the case that was raised the
Speaker 1: issue of whether you could use contraception in the privacy
Speaker 1: of a marriage, and the justices themselves, all men, were
Speaker 1: so freaked out Danielle about talking about this that they
Speaker 1: wouldn't name the devices. And so you go back and
Speaker 1: you read it and it's like a slip inside slide,
Speaker 1: like Abbott and Costello comedy routine, where they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: these devices and they you don't have to name them,
Speaker 1: and they're all yucking it up, and it's like, if
Speaker 1: you can't name it, don't regulate it. Don't because this
Speaker 1: makes you uncomfortable. Don't. Don't. You don't get to set
Speaker 1: the rules. And so I think that's like part of
Speaker 1: the problem is that we're so squeamish and we're so
Speaker 1: prudish and we're so puritanical that we don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about it, but we seemingly still want to regulate it.
Speaker 1: And I think we haven't moved that far from the
Speaker 1: days of Griswold, where you know, there are legislators. I mean,
Speaker 1: people are saying things like, but how can you pee
Speaker 1: with a tampon in Like again, that's not you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't know how women's bodies work, like, don't
Speaker 1: sit down and let doctors do their jobs. And so
Speaker 1: that's part of it. The other thing that I think
Speaker 1: is just really essential and part of the answer to this,
Speaker 1: is that so much of this stuff is bound up
Speaker 1: in slavery. So much of this is bound up in
Speaker 1: sort of the idea of women and their bodies as
Speaker 1: economic you know, producers of units of future slavery, children
Speaker 1: taken away from their parents, fathers and mothers, separated, the
Speaker 1: idea that your body belongs to a white man who
Speaker 1: can rape you. It's impunity, who can separate you from
Speaker 1: your children with impunity? And you know, I know you've
Speaker 1: heard me bang on about this, but the fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 1: was drafted to fix that because there was nothing else
Speaker 1: in the Constitution that would fix the idea that women
Speaker 1: could be used that way, and so which is why
Speaker 1: you know, when you hear during Contunja Brown Jackson's hearings,
Speaker 1: you know, Republican senators, including Marsha Blackbird, just being like,
Speaker 1: there's nothing about bodily autonomy and privacy in the Constitution.
Speaker 1: There is, It's right there, and it was meant to
Speaker 1: be a curative for the obscene ways in which black
Speaker 1: women's bodies were utterly, utterly used at the whim of
Speaker 1: white men. And we've erased that history. You know, if
Speaker 1: we want to go through all the history, we don't
Speaker 1: want don't want to talk about. I didn't learn that,
Speaker 1: by the way, in law school, to be clear. And
Speaker 1: if you erase all the history, then it's not a
Speaker 1: surprise that, like we are still living in the vestiges
Speaker 1: of a time when Justice Alito happily writes the Dab's
Speaker 1: opinion citing to the law of that moment, Dalia just
Speaker 1: you know, quickly, one, folks, everybody needs to pick up
Speaker 1: Lady Justice, women, the law and the battle to save America,
Speaker 1: which is out now. We have a new term for
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court that is coming up. The last term
Speaker 1: gave America devastating blows. It was just nauseating. I didn't
Speaker 1: even want to be on Twitter between you, between Gentab,
Speaker 1: between Ellie miss Stall, between Joyce, Like I was just
Speaker 1: please stop. What can we expect at a time when
Speaker 1: our belief in the system of the Supreme Court is
Speaker 1: at an all time low? That no one we we
Speaker 1: I mean, their their approval ratings are in the toilet,
Speaker 1: not like they have to care because they're sitting on
Speaker 1: there until they're dead, right or retire. So what can
Speaker 1: we expect and what recourse, if any, do the people have? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. We're already seeing I mean, the term starts
Speaker 1: the first Monday of October, and we're already seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of conservative commentators try to suggest that, oh, we're
Speaker 1: going to take the temperature down this year. There's nothing
Speaker 1: on the docket that's nearly as you know, high profile
Speaker 1: as Dabbs. And you know, first of all, Dobbs wasn't
Speaker 1: the only case last year. As you said, the Court
Speaker 1: massively expanded gun rights. The Court tried to essentially kneecap
Speaker 1: the EPA and regulatory agencies. The Court allowed religion to
Speaker 1: enter the public sphere in a series of cases that
Speaker 1: is shocking. Almost none of that got surfaced because we're
Speaker 1: also busy reeling from Dubbs. Last term was, as you say,
Speaker 1: catastrophic in so many ways, and now we're heading into
Speaker 1: a term that really will first of all, see I
Speaker 1: think the demise of affirmative action and higher education that's
Speaker 1: already docketed, a bunch of voting rights cases that will
Speaker 1: probably do away with whatever's left of the Voting Rights Act.
Speaker 1: After the Court took you know, one whack at it
Speaker 1: in Shelby County and then another whack of it at
Speaker 1: it in Bernovich. Now there's going to be another opportunity
Speaker 1: to pretty much make the Voting Rights Act utterly toothless.
Speaker 1: We have an Indian Child Welfare Act case that folks
Speaker 1: should really really pay attention to because it is, as
Speaker 1: we've been saying throughout this entire conversation, an effort to
Speaker 1: use surp tribal prerogatives their ability to keep families together,
Speaker 1: which is supposed to be a value, a constitutional value.
Speaker 1: And then you know the voting rights cases that are
Speaker 1: really really chilling. Chief among them this you know Morvie
Speaker 1: Harper case, which is a case that it uses a
Speaker 1: made up, prefab notion of independent state legislature theory to
Speaker 1: hand all plenary power over elections to state legislatures. And
Speaker 1: this is a whole different show, and I'm happy to
Speaker 1: come back when it's argued. But it's the most important
Speaker 1: case nobody's talking about. And the best way to describe it,
Speaker 1: I think I've said this to you before, is that
Speaker 1: the coup that John Eastman tried to pull in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty that judges laughed out of court, the notion that
Speaker 1: a state legislature could just say, like, h, whatever the
Speaker 1: legislature decides about this election is unreviewed by state courts.
Speaker 1: It is uncheckable by the governor that is coming in
Speaker 1: black robes. And if the court says it's fine, then
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four election is in the hands of
Speaker 1: legislatures in a way that John Eastman and Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and Jeffrey Clark were begging, begging state legislatures in Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: and Georgia to do in the twenty twenty election. Jeff,
Speaker 1: send your own electures, elector nobody can do anything that's coming.
Speaker 1: And it seems technical, it's really not technical. It is
Speaker 1: the most shocking power grab born of nothing. No doctrine
Speaker 1: and it's coming. And if the term kind of plays
Speaker 1: out the way last term does, I'm sorry. If the
Speaker 1: term plays out the way last term did. This is
Speaker 1: a court that's not I think, inclined to pump the
Speaker 1: brakes on any of those areas. I tell you what
Speaker 1: this spells to me. Dahlia is an impending revolution and
Speaker 1: not I and I do not say that lightly. I have,
Speaker 1: but I have been saying this since twenty sixteen, that
Speaker 1: things in this country will get bloodier before they get better.
Speaker 1: We cannot look at Iran with eyes that say, oh,
Speaker 1: poor them, because we are them. And this is where
Speaker 1: this country is headed. And it isn't an Islamic republic.
Speaker 1: It isn't the fear of foreign terrorists. It is the
Speaker 1: white supremist Christo fascists Republican party that is establishing their
Speaker 1: coup and putting them in black robes. Dalia Lithwick, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for making the time to join Woke
Speaker 1: f We appreciate you your writing, your work all the time. Folks. Again,
Speaker 1: the book is Lady Justice, Women, The Law and the
Speaker 1: Battle to Save America on stands on Amazon everywhere you
Speaker 1: buy your books. Now, that is it for me today.
Speaker 1: Dear friends on Woke f as always Power to the
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