Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly john Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Elon Musk, who is not a secretary,
Speaker 1: will attend the first Trump cabinet meeting with all the secretaries.
Speaker 1: We have such a great chow for you. Today, The
Speaker 1: Atlantic's George Conway talks about illegality in the Trump administration
Speaker 1: and how it will continue to dog them. Then we
Speaker 1: will talk to Pro Publica's Lizzie Presser about the horrifying
Speaker 1: rate of sepsis in women in Texas in the years
Speaker 1: since Texas enacted its abortion ban.
Speaker 2: But first the news.
Speaker 3: So last night, Mollie, the Republicans in Congress first didn't
Speaker 3: do so hot at passing their budget, but then got
Speaker 3: it through. It looks very bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're so excited that they got something past.
Speaker 1: And look, let's give them a minute here. If Mike
Speaker 1: Johnson is very bad at math and his vote counting,
Speaker 1: he's not known as a whipper versus Nancy Pelosi, so
Speaker 1: it is kind of incredible that he got anything done.
Speaker 2: So perhaps that's something.
Speaker 1: Of course, he did make almost every Republican, with the
Speaker 1: exception of Thomas Massey. Welcome to the resistance, Thomas Massey,
Speaker 1: and I'm kidding that's ironic. Vote for eight hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty billion dollars in Medicaid cuts and two hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty billion dollars in cuts two food stamps. So, yes,
Speaker 1: they did make a lot of cuts. That means that
Speaker 1: people like everyone's favorite Republican Mike Lawler, who thinks he's
Speaker 1: going to be governor of New York, he.
Speaker 2: Just had to vote for an eight.
Speaker 1: Hundred and eighty billion dollar cut to Medicaid. That means hospitals,
Speaker 1: nursing homes, poor women who they don't even need to
Speaker 1: be poor, right, women who don't have the insurance, can't
Speaker 1: afford insurance, or can't afford insurance on the exchanges.
Speaker 2: These women, why should they.
Speaker 1: Have anything less than what Trump has wanted for them.
Speaker 1: So this is House Republicans, and they are trying to
Speaker 1: cut a little bit from the budget so that they
Speaker 1: can keep these tax cuts in place.
Speaker 2: Representative Drypole tweeted.
Speaker 1: Last night after this past ninety nine percent of House
Speaker 1: Republicans voted to gut Medicaid so they can lower taxes
Speaker 1: for the richest one percent. Yes, I am shocked to
Speaker 1: know that an administration almost entirely stocked with billionaires and
Speaker 1: trillionaire you know, and millionaires that that crew voted to
Speaker 1: keep their own taxes down. And you know who's going
Speaker 1: to suffer MAGA voters.
Speaker 3: Yikes. Yeah. I particularly appreciate how Thomas Massey came out
Speaker 3: of the first vote and dog did talked about how
Speaker 3: much it's adding to the debt, and then look at
Speaker 3: that they got it done.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yes, I am very imp and not very surprised.
Speaker 3: So now in every one of these we turned to
Speaker 3: the bizarre, which was Trump posting an unhinged AI video
Speaker 3: of his vision for Trump Gaza, which included bearded ladies,
Speaker 3: which I did not think that the Republican constituency was
Speaker 3: a big fan of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's talk this through for a minute.
Speaker 1: He is saying that he's going to make Gaza a
Speaker 1: trumpy development.
Speaker 2: There are many reasons why this is bad.
Speaker 1: I don't think we should even I mean, like, obviously
Speaker 1: there's no world in which this is actually going to
Speaker 1: be happening. But I think there's a real game of
Speaker 1: chicken here that Donald Trump is engaging in. I think
Speaker 1: it's worth remembering for a minute that there were a
Speaker 1: lot of Democratic voters who did not come out, including
Speaker 1: like Muslim voters in Dearborn who voted for Trump with
Speaker 1: the thinking that Trump would somehow be better on Gaza
Speaker 1: than Democrats, And well, the Democrats made a lot of
Speaker 1: mistakes when it comes to Middle East. I think it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine anything a Democrat cooked up being as
Speaker 1: batshit as this. You know, these people live there, and
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is sort of pitching this idea of just
Speaker 1: completely kicking them out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nice stuff. So Maai, it's beginning to look a
Speaker 3: lot like recession. According to some economists who are starting
Speaker 3: to seriously worry about Trump's actions on the economy.
Speaker 1: A really good example of this is just like the
Speaker 1: NIH cuts right Alabama, red state filled with trumpers, the
Speaker 1: University of Alabama at Birmingham, biggest employer, the University of
Speaker 1: Alabama system in the state. They're cutting NIH funding. Those
Speaker 1: NIH funds will be cut. Where we'll see this is
Speaker 1: that there'll be less money flowing into red states like Alabama.
Speaker 1: Then you cut Medicaid, so you're going to cut more
Speaker 1: funding that goes into these red states. Then you cut
Speaker 1: food stamps and snaps, you cut like these people have
Speaker 1: less money to spend on food, Like, I don't think that.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm not sure Elon understands
Speaker 1: about how the economy works is that if people have
Speaker 1: less money to spend, they spend less money. And if
Speaker 1: they spend less money, less money goes through the economy.
Speaker 1: And if less money goes through the economy, the economy
Speaker 1: starts to get smaller. And when the economy starts to
Speaker 1: get smaller, the GDP goes down. And when the GDP
Speaker 1: goes down, you end up in a recession. Right. This
Speaker 1: is a question of a growing economy versus a stalling economy.
Speaker 1: And when you start cutting government spending, that's where you go.
Speaker 1: And look, you know a lot of people are scared
Speaker 1: of Trump, so they don't want to say the truth.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting things is there's a hedge fund
Speaker 1: manager called Steve Cohen, and he's very, very rich. Probably
Speaker 1: I would have a hard time imagining he's a Democrat,
Speaker 1: but maybe who knows owns The METS warns that TARA,
Speaker 1: slowing immigration, and cost cutting could lead to a market
Speaker 1: correction and or solar economic growth because cutting tears make
Speaker 1: things more expensive, slowing immigration makes labor more expensive, so
Speaker 1: goods are more expensive, labor's more expensive, and the government
Speaker 1: is spending less money, all of which mean that the
Speaker 1: economy will shrink. He suggests that while tariffs and government
Speaker 1: inefficiencies post risks, their ultimate impact depends on execution. And
Speaker 1: you know, the guy with the chainsaw, he may not
Speaker 1: be so incredibly careful when trimming the federal budget.
Speaker 3: Yes, you know how chainsaws are known for their calculated
Speaker 3: cutting and really precise, So as I would imagine what happened,
Speaker 3: I could have predicted this headline after last week Friend
Speaker 3: of the Show John Allen is reporting that House Republicans
Speaker 3: have hit the brakes on town halls after blowback of
Speaker 3: Trump's cuts.
Speaker 1: Yes, who could have seen it coming, certainly not me.
Speaker 1: Turns out, if you go and you protest, and these
Speaker 1: are organic protests.
Speaker 2: Some of them are organized, but a lot of them
Speaker 2: are organic.
Speaker 1: It turns out that a lot of these members of
Speaker 1: Congress don't like it when you scream at them. And
Speaker 1: you know, this is what happened in Trump one point
Speaker 1: zero was that they had these town halls and people
Speaker 1: came and screamed at them, and they did not like it.
Speaker 2: And now we're seeing it again.
Speaker 3: Kind of seen it coming.
Speaker 2: George Conway is a contributor to the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, your friend and mine, George.
Speaker 4: Conway, I I'm back.
Speaker 2: So here's my question for you, Legal or illegal?
Speaker 4: Illegal? I just play percentages. I don't have to hear
Speaker 4: the question. I mean, I have my own podcast and
Speaker 4: we used to call it the latest in the legal
Speaker 4: trunk legal news, but it's now we call it the
Speaker 4: latest in illegal news because Pat covers it mostly.
Speaker 1: So let's talk this for so nih fund freezes legal
Speaker 1: or illegal.
Speaker 4: The only way to know exactly whether something is illegal
Speaker 4: or legal is to actually go to the appropriations bills
Speaker 4: and see to what extent any of this you know
Speaker 4: is discretionary in unwers. And I've never been working in Congress,
Speaker 4: and I never read an appropriation's bill. But generally speaking,
Speaker 4: if Congress has allocated money for a specific purpose, and
Speaker 4: the language is such that it can be determined that
Speaker 4: it is that a reasonable reading of it is that
Speaker 4: it's mandatory that the government shall spend X, then the
Speaker 4: government shall spend X. And it's not for the president
Speaker 4: to say, well, you say I want to spend X,
Speaker 4: but I don't want to spend X, I don't want
Speaker 4: to do that, and you can't do that. And there's
Speaker 4: a there's a nineteen seventy five I think, a Supreme
Speaker 4: Court case called Train versus New York, where the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court basically says, look, if the statute says the president
Speaker 4: has to spend money, the president has to spend money.
Speaker 4: And then on top of that, before Train versus the
Speaker 4: United States, this law didn't apply to Train. But there's
Speaker 4: something called the Impoundment Act that Congress passed to respond
Speaker 4: to President Nixon's refusal to spend money on various things,
Speaker 4: and it says, it's very very specific about the conditions
Speaker 4: and procedures by which the president can decline to spend money.
Speaker 4: He has to jump through lots of hoops, and as
Speaker 4: you know, he can't jump very correct. Also can't read.
Speaker 2: Wait say more about how Donald Trump can't read?
Speaker 4: Well, what's there to say? I mean, he can't spell,
Speaker 4: he can't read. He's got a lot of problems, but
Speaker 4: thankfully he's got somebody who can tell him what to do.
Speaker 4: A genius who is that? Maybe?
Speaker 2: Long?
Speaker 1: What do you think you know all of these people,
Speaker 1: or at least you know some of these people?
Speaker 2: It seems like the.
Speaker 1: Big conflict right now is the law versus Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and more specifically the judges and the courts.
Speaker 2: So I want you to sort of talk us through.
Speaker 1: Where we are here with like they keep going to
Speaker 1: the courts, they keep losing. We're seeing Mike Lee and
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk and some of the Rain Trust saying like,
Speaker 1: you have to go against the judges, you have to
Speaker 1: impeach the judges, you have to fight against the law.
Speaker 1: Play this out for me.
Speaker 4: All right, here's my take on this. I mean, generally speaking,
Speaker 4: there are always going to be inter ranch conflicts. There
Speaker 4: are always happen There would be going to be circumstances
Speaker 4: where an administration pushes an interpretation of the law that
Speaker 4: others may not share and that the courts may not
Speaker 4: ultimately share. And there's that that's a natural push and
Speaker 4: pull between Congress, who writes the laws, the President, who
Speaker 4: administers the laws and to some extent interprets them, and
Speaker 4: then the courts, which end up have always been since
Speaker 4: Barbary against manisl which we all learn in.
Speaker 2: In law school. I learned about it in law.
Speaker 4: School, Oh, high school or earlier.
Speaker 2: You speak for yourself, learned about it in law school.
Speaker 2: Go on, did you run law school?
Speaker 1: I didn't go to college. Oh I'm a degenerate gangster.
Speaker 4: But yes, continue, okay, all right, yeah, you just drove
Speaker 4: around in your limousine.
Speaker 5: Liberal I mean.
Speaker 4: Limits, I'll have you know.
Speaker 2: I have a master's degree.
Speaker 4: Like, let me know, Europe, you're a very liberal person.
Speaker 4: You have a book coming out, but everyone, absolutely everyone
Speaker 4: should buy it.
Speaker 2: Yes, people love that book. Do you want to outsend
Speaker 2: you a PDF if you want by?
Speaker 4: I would love to. I would would It would make
Speaker 4: the adat Okay, So to go back to that, I
Speaker 4: mean so there's always been this push and pull. But
Speaker 4: the bottom line is what has kept us going as
Speaker 4: a constitutional republic for now, well for two hundred and
Speaker 4: what thirty seven years or so whatever it was in
Speaker 4: seventeen eighty nine, is that, ultimately, when the court say
Speaker 4: the law means ex the president has complied. There have
Speaker 4: been circumstances where presidents have threatened not to comply, like
Speaker 4: Andrew Jackson saying let those courts enforce their rulings, But
Speaker 4: generally presidents have complied. The executive branch has complied with
Speaker 4: four orders. Now you have a president and an administration
Speaker 4: that does not appear to give much of a shit.
Speaker 4: Is an important legal term about following the laws or
Speaker 4: following what Congress has said, and a perfect example of
Speaker 4: that are these spending cases that you started the discussion with.
Speaker 4: Another example is doge, which relates to that, but also
Speaker 4: writes the more fundamental notion about whether or not somebody
Speaker 4: with the power that Elon Lusk is exercising is someone
Speaker 4: who has to be appointed to an office that is
Speaker 4: created by Congress. And since he's basically running around as
Speaker 4: essentially the chief operating officer of the United States, telling
Speaker 4: cabinet agencies what to do, the Constitution requires that somebody
Speaker 4: exercising such authority, as essentially he's ahead of the reports
Speaker 4: to nobody else but Trump. If anything Trump may report
Speaker 4: to him, that person has to be sentate confirmed. And
Speaker 4: they're ignoring that very basic element of the Constitution. They
Speaker 4: are running roughshod over laws to see what they can
Speaker 4: get away with, and see what they can get away
Speaker 4: with before courts tell them to stop. And they're doing
Speaker 4: it with such frequency and such alacrity that you have
Speaker 4: to wonder why should they obey a court oral if
Speaker 4: they don't care about what Congress has to say if
Speaker 4: they don't care about the laws and the constitution. And
Speaker 4: the constitution for example, a great example of that is
Speaker 4: Birthright citizensp, where a constitution says, in words of one syllable,
Speaker 4: but if you are born or naturalized in the United
Speaker 4: States of America, you are a citizen. And there are
Speaker 4: no exceptions to that other than four children or foreign diplomats.
Speaker 4: They don't care about the law. So what does anyone
Speaker 4: believe that they are going to obey court orders? And
Speaker 4: when you add to that the nuts and bulls how
Speaker 4: court's orders are enforced, it becomes even more showing. Because
Speaker 4: courts do not have their They do not have soldiers,
Speaker 4: they do not have police officers except for the Supreme Court,
Speaker 4: which has police officers who patrol the plaza to make
Speaker 4: sure there are people don't throws eggs at the court.
Speaker 4: But they have no independent way of enforcing their orders.
Speaker 4: The way that an order gets enforced is let's say
Speaker 4: I assue you and the court orders you to stop
Speaker 4: doing something, whatever it is, and you just keep doing it,
Speaker 4: and so I file emotion saying, hey, Molly's not obeying
Speaker 4: your judgment. And if you don't obey the judgment, the
Speaker 4: court can hold you in what's called civil contempt, meaning
Speaker 4: the court can incarcerate you until you comply with the order,
Speaker 4: or can find you one thousand dollars a day, and
Speaker 4: sometimes they even have these exponentially increasing fines two thousand
Speaker 4: to second day, four eight and so on to compa
Speaker 4: tell you to obey the court order. But here's the rub.
Speaker 4: What mechanism does the court use to enforce those orders
Speaker 4: to haul you in, to arrest you on the street
Speaker 4: or at your house, or to attach your property. It's
Speaker 4: something called the United States Marshal Service. And they are
Speaker 4: fine people, and they are sworn to uphold the law
Speaker 4: and to obey the court orders and to assist the courts.
Speaker 4: But they are an agency of the United States Department
Speaker 4: of Justice. They are part of the executive branch. The
Speaker 4: President gets to say who the head of the United
Speaker 4: States Marshall Service is. Then the Attorney General gets to
Speaker 4: tell the head of the United States Marshal Service what
Speaker 4: to do. So what if the order comes down saying
Speaker 4: that any court orders that are directed at or contempt
Speaker 4: orders whatever that are directed at members of this administration
Speaker 4: shall be referred to the head of the United States
Speaker 4: Marshall Service. And I suppose, you know, the head of
Speaker 4: the United States Marshall Service is a you know, a
Speaker 4: friend of Cash Bettels and Dan Bungino's and completely beholden
Speaker 4: the Trump and he decides, oh, here's a nice contempt
Speaker 4: order against Elon Musk. I'm not going to give it
Speaker 4: to a United States Marshall to go out and force
Speaker 4: and to arrest must Okay, So there is no mechan
Speaker 4: no now, and it's going to be hard now. Obviously
Speaker 4: the point that others have made, I've been having this
Speaker 4: discussion of a lot of ladies as well. The marshals
Speaker 4: really want to obey orders. They want obey they have
Speaker 4: they've sworn to all the constitutions. But but if nobody
Speaker 4: tells them, here's the order you're going to enforce, and
Speaker 4: nobody gives it to them, who's going to tell them,
Speaker 4: who's going to go out there and do it? They're
Speaker 4: just there is no mechanism by which we can force
Speaker 4: the government, the executive branch to obey court orders at
Speaker 4: the end of the day, which is why if they
Speaker 4: don't obey the courts, the only thing that we've got
Speaker 4: going for us is to flood the streets with people.
Speaker 2: What does it mean to flood this treats?
Speaker 1: So when will we know, because what you're talking about
Speaker 1: is a constitutional crisis. We're not there yet, but we
Speaker 1: probably will be soon. So when will we know we.
Speaker 2: Are in a constitutional crisis?
Speaker 4: Well, we are in a constitutional crisis in a sense already.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like you're going from defcon. Was it
Speaker 4: five to one or one to five? I don't know
Speaker 4: what order it is, but we are in the early
Speaker 4: stages of this, and I do believe that the government
Speaker 4: is already not complying with court orders by saying, oh, gosh,
Speaker 4: we don't know who's running doors. They did they play
Speaker 4: a game for a few days, and they are saying, Okay,
Speaker 4: we're going to obey this court order. And then it
Speaker 4: turns out the right hand doesn't know what the left
Speaker 4: hand is doing, and they say, ooh, somebody else was
Speaker 4: doing this. We weren't able to turn that off. They're
Speaker 4: using the fact that the government is big and balky
Speaker 4: to kind of, you know, play like a four corners
Speaker 4: defense on the courts, which is a dangerous play because
Speaker 4: it really pisses off federal job is. We're at that
Speaker 4: level of potential defiance, which can be a mistake for incompetence,
Speaker 4: but also it's not like they're trying that hard. The
Speaker 4: true constitutional crisis that you're asking about occurs when the
Speaker 4: executive branch basically says, fuck you, okay, we don't agree
Speaker 4: with that order, and we think that's an incorrect interpretation
Speaker 4: of the law, or we think that's an incorrect interpretation
Speaker 4: of the constitution, or the president, because he's president, is
Speaker 4: the ultimate arbiture of what the constitution is, not the courts.
Speaker 4: And this is something that we are starting to hear
Speaker 4: people in and around the administration say, for example, J. D.
Speaker 4: Vance said just the other day, basically, we should stop
Speaker 4: obeying court orders and basically doing Andrew Jackson sentence, tell
Speaker 4: the courts that you go force your awarders. And I
Speaker 4: think the degree first of all, psychologically, he doesn't have
Speaker 4: any respect for the law.
Speaker 2: Trump right, No, No, Certainly.
Speaker 4: Musky's going out there now threatening saying these judges all
Speaker 4: need to him be impeached. So they're threatening the judges.
Speaker 4: And Trump hates the judicial system because the judicial system,
Speaker 4: you know, puts people in jail who are criminals, and
Speaker 4: he is a criminal, and he almost got put in jail.
Speaker 4: He would be soon in jail if he hadn't gotten
Speaker 4: that lucky draw in Florida with that crazy judge, Judge Cannon.
Speaker 4: So it is difficult for me, and I hope I'm wrong.
Speaker 4: I've never more hope to be wrong than I am
Speaker 4: now about what I'm about to say. But I believe
Speaker 4: that it is inevitable that this administration will openly start
Speaker 4: to find court orders, and once that happens, we are lost.
Speaker 4: As a there is no rule of law. If the
Speaker 4: government can't bail, why the hell should anybody else? Why
Speaker 4: should we pay our taxes? Right, that's the problem we face.
Speaker 2: And let's go down this road for a minute.
Speaker 1: Because Janet Mals, the governor of May, in a meeting
Speaker 1: with Trump and the governors, and he said, you know
Speaker 1: you're not going to get federal funds if you let
Speaker 1: the one trans kid go in the sports.
Speaker 4: Then we know that there are any trans kids in
Speaker 4: the state of Maine playing like college and Caa says
Speaker 4: there were only six in the entire country playing NC.
Speaker 1: Probably not, but anyway, the point is, so he says,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get any federal funds, and she
Speaker 1: actually said some the effect of, like, maybe you're not
Speaker 1: going to get any federal.
Speaker 4: Funds, she said, she said, we'll see you in court.
Speaker 2: Right, she said that.
Speaker 1: But she also said later on, like the question of like,
Speaker 1: should we all be paying federal taxes if the federal
Speaker 1: government is going to withhold aid, that's a road that
Speaker 1: we could be going down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I certainly would not advocate that that's
Speaker 4: a massive violation of law. But on the other hand,
Speaker 4: if you have a government that has basically forsaken the
Speaker 4: rule of law, and like, you know, if tomorrow the
Speaker 4: government said we will have no further elections, wants to
Speaker 4: destremantle the irs, who's going to fucking after anybody? And
Speaker 4: when that happens, not only do you have a collapse
Speaker 4: of the civil order, the economic effects will be absolutely
Speaker 4: devastating to the world. Who's going to buy a United
Speaker 4: States Treasury bond?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's a real question.
Speaker 4: We don't know how bad this. I mean, this could
Speaker 4: get really really bad unless somebody over there wakes up
Speaker 4: and realizes that they're playing with fire. But they're all
Speaker 4: you know, these people are psychos.
Speaker 2: So are there any grown ups in the room?
Speaker 1: Is there anyone in there who would say, maybe we
Speaker 1: don't want to crush the federal government.
Speaker 4: There may be this fellow Scott descent is by all accounts,
Speaker 4: maybe there's more to him. I mean, anybody who takes
Speaker 4: a job in this administration you have to have some
Speaker 4: doubt on it. But the guy understands how the financial
Speaker 4: markets work and the global economic system works. By all accounts,
Speaker 4: he's a very intelligent. But you tell Trump this, and
Speaker 4: Trump's gonna say, well, you know, Trump doesn't think he
Speaker 4: has to run for anything anymore, even like to serve
Speaker 4: a third, four fifth, sixth, and seventh terms illegally, as
Speaker 4: I keep saying, And some people think I'm out there,
Speaker 4: but the shrinks all agree with me and the people
Speaker 4: who have been listening for a while. And he is
Speaker 4: a malignant narcissist, a narcissistic sociopath. In deep down, they
Speaker 4: want vengeance over everybody and everything who has that has
Speaker 4: wrong them. They want to exercise their control and power
Speaker 4: over the world. And one way they get to do
Speaker 4: that is to create destruction. Okay, I think of Hitler's
Speaker 4: neuro order, think of there are so many examples these
Speaker 4: people think of Pouted, the amount of damage he's caused
Speaker 4: to his own country by this senseless war in Ukraine.
Speaker 4: The hundreds of thousands of them Russians or other people
Speaker 4: who are you know who have died? These people that
Speaker 4: they are the worst of the worst. Trump has every
Speaker 4: fits the psychological profile of somebody who is associopath and
Speaker 4: a sadist. I don't think he cares. I think this
Speaker 4: is his chance to seek. Everything he wants to do
Speaker 4: is vengeful, everything from the trivial like the takeover of
Speaker 4: the Kennedy Center to the destruction of the North Atlantic
Speaker 4: Treaty Organization, which I think the Europeans have to face
Speaker 4: up to the fact there is no more NATO. I
Speaker 4: don't know that he's going to all of a sudden
Speaker 4: wake up one morning and say, oh gee, maybe I
Speaker 4: shouldn't have Elon Musky shutting down the government because people
Speaker 4: are going to get mad. I don't think he gives it, damn.
Speaker 4: I think all he cares about is doing harm to
Speaker 4: the people he feels have disrespected him, which is basically
Speaker 4: everyone higher world.
Speaker 2: Game this out for me. How do you think this goes?
Speaker 1: You think somebody eventually says like you got to stop
Speaker 1: doing this, or you think he just keeps going and
Speaker 1: then they.
Speaker 4: Are going to be some cases he wins, They're going
Speaker 4: to be some cases he loses. They're going to be
Speaker 4: some cases he wins at the early stage. Like there
Speaker 4: was this case the other day where a temporary restraining
Speaker 4: order was denied. I think it was one of the
Speaker 4: Doge cases. But I think he's ultimately going to lose
Speaker 4: that case. I think he's going to lose most of
Speaker 4: these cases, not all, so you know, are like I
Speaker 4: think the Hampton Dalladier case is one he's going to win,
Speaker 4: but he's going to lose a bunch of these cases.
Speaker 4: And he's going to lose the Doge cases I think
Speaker 4: in particular, and the Doge case is going to be
Speaker 4: He's got two choices there. One is he can just
Speaker 4: comply with it on the theory that Doge has done
Speaker 4: enough damage already that it's done his job, so who cares?
Speaker 4: Or he could say no, Elon's going to keep doing
Speaker 4: what he's.
Speaker 2: Doing, right, why do I care?
Speaker 4: No, we don't know which case it's going to be,
Speaker 4: but there are so many of them that I can't
Speaker 4: help but think that a man who is showing and
Speaker 4: an administration that is showing, and you know, You've got JD.
Speaker 4: Vanc yea law school graduates, saying this should happen. I
Speaker 4: think that at some point they're just going to say
Speaker 4: we're not going to agree with the courts. And some
Speaker 4: people says, well, we know the real problem is the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court's going to do ruin
Speaker 4: his favor, saying I don't think that's true. I think
Speaker 4: they're going to rule against him in some significant cases
Speaker 4: and he's going to tell them to go pounce in too.
Speaker 4: And once that happens, once he is in open defiance.
Speaker 2: Right, that's when you have to take to those trades.
Speaker 4: That is when we moved from Poland to Hungary to Russia.
Speaker 2: Thank you, George, thank you. Lizzie Presser is.
Speaker 1: An investigative reporter for Pro Publica. Welcome to Fast Politics, Lizzie.
Speaker 5: Pressler, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Molly, please talk to us about what's happening in Texas.
Speaker 5: We analyze seven years of hospital data in the state
Speaker 5: of Texas, and what we saw was that when we
Speaker 5: focused in on the second tremester and looked at women
Speaker 5: who were experiencing miscarriages in the hospital, their rates of
Speaker 5: sepsis spiked fifty percent after the first abortion band has
Speaker 5: put into place in twenty twenty one. And it's this
Speaker 5: kind of crazy chart because the rates of sepsis are
Speaker 5: really quite steady previous to the abortion law among this
Speaker 5: Paesian population, and then almost immediately they shoot up. So
Speaker 5: a lot of doctors who looked at the data and
Speaker 5: talk to us about our methodology said, this is most
Speaker 5: likely an indicator that these women are experiencing really dangerous
Speaker 5: delays in the hospital when they show up experiencing a miscarriage.
Speaker 1: So I want you to stop and explain to our
Speaker 1: listeners what sepsis is. Talk us through kind of why
Speaker 1: you think that there's such a rise in sepsis.
Speaker 5: So, sepsis is the body's reaction to an infection. It's
Speaker 5: super dangerous. It can damage permanently every organ in the body.
Speaker 5: It can lead to apartment can need damage, permanent brain damage,
Speaker 5: It can rob a women of her ability to bear
Speaker 5: children in the future, and it can rapidly lead to
Speaker 5: a dangerous drop in blood pressure and death. And what
Speaker 5: we are hearing from doctors across the state is that
Speaker 5: when a woman is experiencing a miscarriage and her water
Speaker 5: breaks early or her cervix is dilated, she's at a
Speaker 5: much higher risk of contracting an infection, and if that
Speaker 5: infection is not treated properly, the risk is that it
Speaker 5: will develop into sepsis and ultimately septic shock. And doctors
Speaker 5: when they are seeing these women, because of the law
Speaker 5: and their interpretation of the law, are being asked to
Speaker 5: wait for one of two things to happen. Either the
Speaker 5: fetal heartbeat needs to end and they need to be
Speaker 5: able to document that, or the patient needs to show
Speaker 5: signs of a life threatening condition like sepsis. We're hearing
Speaker 5: from women who are saying that they're doctors who they trust,
Speaker 5: are saying to them when they come in miscarrying, I'm
Speaker 5: so sorry, but I can't touch you. I can't do
Speaker 5: anything for you until you can track sepsis, which is
Speaker 5: quite likely to happen if I don't treat you. And
Speaker 5: so these women are being asked to wait until their
Speaker 5: bodies develop a condition that could threaten their lives, and
Speaker 5: their partners are being asked to sit by them and
Speaker 5: wait for this to happen as well.
Speaker 1: Sepsis is an infection of the whole body, and to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, if you get far enough along in sepsis,
Speaker 1: you can die, right, So you're asking these women to
Speaker 1: roll the dice at dying because Republicans are so incredibly
Speaker 1: anti choice. There's no good outcome from sepsis, right, Like,
Speaker 1: talk me through this.
Speaker 5: There's only danger and there's only risk when it comes
Speaker 5: to developing sepsis. I mean, I think the other thing
Speaker 5: that's important to know is that doctors will tell you
Speaker 5: that it's extremely difficult to get ahead of sepsis once
Speaker 5: it sets in. So as soon as you document this
Speaker 5: life threatening condition, you're on a back foot as a doctor.
Speaker 5: You're trying to make sure that it doesn't kill your patient. So,
Speaker 5: I mean, we wrote about one girl last fall, Nadia Crane,
Speaker 5: who was eighteen years old and kept showing up to
Speaker 5: the hospital because she was sick and developing and infection
Speaker 5: and kept getting turned away, and on her third visit
Speaker 5: she had sepsis and she looked like she had sepsis.
Speaker 5: But you have to wait for those labs to come
Speaker 5: back before you say this is definitely sepsis, So you
Speaker 5: have this waiting time, and in that waiting time, the
Speaker 5: doctor said, we're not going to do anything until we
Speaker 5: can confirm fetal demise, and he made this eighteen year
Speaker 5: old girl who was extraordinarily sick. And the doctors from
Speaker 5: the me medical notes know that this looks like sepsis, right,
Speaker 5: wait an hour and a half for a second ultrasound
Speaker 5: to confirm fetal wize and but by the time that
Speaker 5: they confirmed it, it was too late to rush her
Speaker 5: to the operating room. She had already developed such intense
Speaker 5: internal bleeding that they couldn't operate, and she died with
Speaker 5: her baby still in uterow Jesus, So, this is the
Speaker 5: risk of sepsis. It is such a rapidly developing condition
Speaker 5: that you're asking women to gamble with their lives. And
Speaker 5: you're also asking doctors to wait until your patient is
Speaker 5: so sick that you could lose them. It's moral hazard
Speaker 5: for them as well.
Speaker 1: It's so this is just such an insane way to
Speaker 1: practice medicine in this country. I mean, we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: shocked because this is what we knew was coming. Just
Speaker 1: explain to us, like, how sort of outside the norm
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 5: This shouldn't be happening. Molly and I think that when
Speaker 5: we were writing these one off stories where we were
Speaker 5: investigating deaths of pregnant women who were dying after they
Speaker 5: experienced delays and care that followed the abortion bands. You know,
Speaker 5: people would come back to us who didn't believe that
Speaker 5: this was a widespread issue and say, you know, maybe
Speaker 5: these are isolated events, Maybe these are bad doctors, maybe
Speaker 5: this is malpractice. And so to see these numbers and
Speaker 5: this data across the state of Texas at a time
Speaker 5: when no state officials in any state that we know
Speaker 5: of is doing work to identify the health effects of
Speaker 5: these bands, and to have to confront that this is
Speaker 5: not isolated. This is a state wide trend where the
Speaker 5: danger for these women of being pregnant is rising dramatically.
Speaker 5: It just adds to a body of evidence and to
Speaker 5: a lot of anecdotal reports just how much we are
Speaker 5: asking the women of this country to suffer, to gamble
Speaker 5: with their lives when they get pregnant.
Speaker 1: It feels to me like a lot of this is
Speaker 1: about delaying treatment so that these women they sort of
Speaker 1: have to prove that they're going to die by the
Speaker 1: time you get to that moment.
Speaker 2: A lot of times it's too light a miscarriage.
Speaker 5: It's a process. That process can be hours, it can
Speaker 5: be days, it can be weeks, but it.
Speaker 2: Is not one moment.
Speaker 5: So women are coming to the emergency room or they're
Speaker 5: going to a beeze means sent to the hospital, and
Speaker 5: they their water has broken, or their cervix is dilating,
Speaker 5: or they're experiencing bleeding. And whereas before these bands, the
Speaker 5: standard of care would have been that these doctors who
Speaker 5: they're seeing would say to them, Okay, you have three options,
Speaker 5: wait and see what happens, and here are your risks
Speaker 5: based on your condition. I can give you medication that
Speaker 5: will help speed up the process of emptying your uterus.
Speaker 1: And those medications are very wildly available, usable and have
Speaker 1: been on the market for many decades and.
Speaker 2: Are very safe.
Speaker 5: Yes, I can give you these medications that will help
Speaker 5: speed up the emptying of your uterus. Here are the
Speaker 5: risk of benefits. Or I can do a procedure like
Speaker 5: a even an induction, and here are the risks and
Speaker 5: benefits of that. What we are hearing is that in
Speaker 5: states like Taxis and other abortion band states, that option
Speaker 5: of number two at number three, here's medication and here's
Speaker 5: a procedure, many doctors don't even want to mention it
Speaker 5: because they can't provide them untail they can document either
Speaker 5: fetal deay or a life threatening illness, and so they're
Speaker 5: just asking women to wait and see until they get
Speaker 5: extremely sick. I mean women. They're telling women, go home
Speaker 5: and check your temperature every two hours and if it
Speaker 5: hits one o'q one, come back in. Go home and
Speaker 5: wait for your discharge to smell so rancid that you
Speaker 5: want to vomit. When doctor told a patient I spoke to,
Speaker 5: it's just horrible like that, It's horrific to imagine being
Speaker 5: the person I spent to. One person who is sitting
Speaker 5: in a hospital room with amiotic fluid is leaking out
Speaker 5: onto her thighs, right, which before fetal viability. What your
Speaker 5: doctor is telling you is your feets will not survive.
Speaker 5: Their lungs are relaxing, and I can't do anything for you,
Speaker 5: even though I know that what's going to happen is
Speaker 5: you are going to contract an infection.
Speaker 1: Right, that's it. Texas is the first state that had
Speaker 1: an abortion ban. It had a year before Roe was overturned.
Speaker 1: It had SBA. So it really is the state where
Speaker 1: we are seeing all of this happen first, right, because
Speaker 1: it's had an abortion ban for longer than other places.
Speaker 1: So you're seeing more and more of this in Texas
Speaker 1: because A it's a really big state and B it's
Speaker 1: because they've had a ban for longer. Now we're going
Speaker 1: to see this in other states.
Speaker 5: Right, we have no reason to believe we won't. And
Speaker 5: that's exactly everything you're saying about Texas is part of
Speaker 5: why we focus some of our attention there. A lot
Speaker 5: of the laws in you know, the thirteen other states
Speaker 5: that have abortion bands, maybe it's fourteen now, including Florida
Speaker 5: that's six weeks or before, are written like nearly identically,
Speaker 5: So we don't have any reason to believe that the
Speaker 5: outcomes we're seeing in Texas are substantially different from outcomes
Speaker 5: that we might see in other states with bands. Now,
Speaker 5: I will say that there's a piece of this that
Speaker 5: I think really warrants further investigation, which is how the
Speaker 5: hospitals are responding to legal risk. And even in Texas,
Speaker 5: We've spoken to doctors across the state, and some doctors
Speaker 5: will say, oh, our hospital allows us to intervene in
Speaker 5: a case like a condition called p PROM for example,
Speaker 5: which is pre viable premature rupture of membranes, your water
Speaker 5: breaks early before viability.
Speaker 1: That's a situation where there's zero chance that you will
Speaker 1: produce a viable fetus.
Speaker 5: There's very minimal chance, and even if you were to
Speaker 5: have a live birth, the chances that that child would
Speaker 5: survive very long are extraordinarily So some doctors are saying,
Speaker 5: our hospitals have said, we'll protect you. You go forward
Speaker 5: with the standard of care, We'll protect you. And other
Speaker 5: doctors have said that their hospitals have said, I can't
Speaker 5: protect you. We don't feel comfortable as a legal team
Speaker 5: to protect you, so don't go forward with that. What
Speaker 5: is so troubling to me as a reporter is that
Speaker 5: there's no transparency around this. And even when we as
Speaker 5: journalists reach out to hospitals across the state, asked and
Speaker 5: for their policies, they don't want to give us anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they're scared.
Speaker 5: And how are as a patient, how are you supposed
Speaker 5: to know you're playing Russian rulette with your life? How
Speaker 5: do you know what hospital to go to and who's
Speaker 5: going to treat you and who's going to give you
Speaker 5: the standard of care and who's going to withhold it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a good point.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious when you talk to these women two
Speaker 1: three years ago, we didn't have horror stories like this.
Speaker 1: What is their take like, are they like, we're going
Speaker 1: to go to blues states? Are they like, we're too
Speaker 1: poor to go to blue states? I mean, you have
Speaker 1: women who can't get medical care. I mean, like talk
Speaker 1: us through sort of what their take on this is.
Speaker 1: Do they feel like Texas is the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: Do they understand that they're being penalized for like political beliefs?
Speaker 1: I mean, do they get sort of how unusual this
Speaker 1: is and if they lived in a normal state or
Speaker 1: a normal country, they wouldn't be asked to make these
Speaker 1: kind of choices.
Speaker 5: Anyone I've spoken to who has been put through this
Speaker 5: in Texas is deeply alarmed, deeply angry. But many of
Speaker 5: them going into the experience hadn't ever considered how these
Speaker 5: laws would affect them. They had wanted children, These were
Speaker 5: wanted pregnancies. They never wanted to lose the pregnancy, and
Speaker 5: so the first bit of news they're getting when they
Speaker 5: go to the doctor is you're losing something that you
Speaker 5: have dreamed of, and so they're kind of in grief.
Speaker 5: Layer it on top of that is this shock that
Speaker 5: they can't get the help that they need. And many
Speaker 5: of the women I've spoken to who have gone through
Speaker 5: kind of horrific experiences like the ones I'm describing have
Speaker 5: either left the state or are saving up to leave
Speaker 5: the state. Certainly they're trying to think about what to
Speaker 5: do if something happen, like what do you do if
Speaker 5: you live two of hours away from a good hospital system?
Speaker 5: Trying to be more proactive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you seeing prosecution of doctors or are they
Speaker 1: just sort of complying in advance? And obviously I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this, you know, I know that this is a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure on doctors and that they are in
Speaker 1: a terrible position, but I'm just curious, like what this
Speaker 1: sort of like, are you seeing people get prosecuted?
Speaker 2: What are you seeing there?
Speaker 5: We've see no prosecutions of doctors in.
Speaker 1: Texas, so it's just they're just scared that they might
Speaker 1: get prosecuted.
Speaker 5: But let's just be clear, this isn't a compliance in advance.
Speaker 5: It is illegal for them to intervene in these miscarriacs
Speaker 5: unless they can document. One needs to be document according
Speaker 5: to the law.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So interesting and also so profoundly important and terrifying.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: No pecto Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 3: Hi junk Fast. Ever since Peter Thiel secretly funded Hulk
Speaker 3: Cogan's casingg In Schwalker, we kind of knew the Republican
Speaker 3: playbook would be to try to sue media into silence
Speaker 3: and compliance. And sure enough, we got some comments from
Speaker 3: Trump this week that show that's where the way this
Speaker 3: is headed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not a fan.
Speaker 1: The ironic thing here is that while Trump hates the
Speaker 1: mainstream media, he also is obsessed with the mainstream media.
Speaker 1: So he's saying that he wants to end anonymous versus.
Speaker 1: These guys love the Second Amendment, but wait till they
Speaker 1: hear about this First Amendment because it's going to blow
Speaker 1: their minds. Now, look, it doesn't involve guns, so that's
Speaker 1: very sad. But my guess is that this is not
Speaker 1: going to fly. But you know, look, they're going to
Speaker 1: try everything right, and even if they just get some
Speaker 1: of it through, they're going to be happy. So you
Speaker 1: should not be surprised when you see more and more
Speaker 1: anti democratic language coming out of this admin.
Speaker 2: It's a feature, not above.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's how it is.
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