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 James Comer has finally admitted in
Speaker 1: writing that the vibes based Biden impeachment hearings have been defeated.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 2: Lawyer ROBERTA. Kaplan and Imron Ahmed.
Speaker 1: Who is the founder for Countering Digital Hate, talk to
Speaker 1: us about their victory.
Speaker 2: Over one Elon Musk in court.
Speaker 1: Then we're joined by Slight Senior editor Dahlia Lithwick to
Speaker 1: talk about the horrors of today's Supreme Court oral arguments
Speaker 1: on miff thepristone. But first we have former Senator and
Speaker 1: host of the Al Franken podcast.
Speaker 2: The One, the Only Al Franken.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, too Fast Politics, my friend Al Franklin.
Speaker 3: Hi, Mollie. Hi.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of depressing shit going on right now.
Speaker 1: But they're like these little green shoots that are kind
Speaker 1: of like spring A little bit. Go with me here, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking because you're like, what.
Speaker 3: No, I'm excited. I'm excited for the green shoot.
Speaker 2: I always try to be like a.
Speaker 1: Little it's spring, right, I'm also very a very depressive person.
Speaker 1: So always I'm trying to not completely unlike you, who
Speaker 1: is happy and cheerful.
Speaker 3: I think of you as a happy person.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, But I'm thinking about like Lisa Murkowski, right,
Speaker 1: And last week she said something to the effect of
Speaker 1: I'm not getting on this clown car. You know her,
Speaker 1: you've served with her. I'm curious what your take on
Speaker 1: that was.
Speaker 3: Well, she's in Alaska. She I believe it was two
Speaker 3: elections ago. She had to run, serve as an independent
Speaker 3: anyway and write in and right and yeah, and she won.
Speaker 3: And I think she realizes that she doesn't have to
Speaker 3: be a Republican, she can be an independent. I don't
Speaker 3: know who she'll cauc us with. It'd be great if
Speaker 3: she caucus with the Democrats. But I see no problem
Speaker 3: for her being an independent.
Speaker 2: There are these states where it's just everything you.
Speaker 1: Think about American politics is completely different. But so this
Speaker 1: is what she said. She said, she's not voting for Trump,
Speaker 1: and she very independent minded and I'm navigating my way
Speaker 1: through some.
Speaker 2: Interesting political times. Let's just leave it at that. And
Speaker 2: she did not close the door to becoming an independent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think she pays a price for that.
Speaker 3: In Alaska, I think Alaskan's like independence. I think she'd
Speaker 3: be fine doing that, And it really would be a
Speaker 3: question who she caucuses, especially if this election we lose
Speaker 3: a couple seats. I mean, you know, we could get
Speaker 3: down the forty nine Democrats, and if she decides to
Speaker 3: caucus with Democrats and we'd be back to fifty. And
Speaker 3: if the president is still Biden and Vice President of Harrison,
Speaker 3: we have the vote, and so it could mean all
Speaker 3: the difference in the world. And who has a majority,
Speaker 3: who's a majority leader.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about Angus King.
Speaker 1: There are Republicans who have been like, no, this is
Speaker 1: too insane for me. Not in the House, obviously, because
Speaker 1: New Insane is the brand, but in the Senate.
Speaker 3: Do you know the House much better than I do?
Speaker 3: What the hell's going on there? Now? They're down the
Speaker 3: one right, I mean, it's like it really is like
Speaker 3: a very badly written political drama that it's down to
Speaker 3: one now. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: It's Alpha House without any likable characters. It's veep without
Speaker 1: the sort of humor. So I would say what happened
Speaker 1: here is that when McCarthy left, he had a five
Speaker 1: seat majority. And again McCarthy knew what he was doing, right,
Speaker 1: he pissed off a lot of Democrats, so he never
Speaker 1: was going to have the votes if Republicans turned on him,
Speaker 1: which was strategically stupid. And you know McCarthy, or at
Speaker 1: least I assume you know McCarthy. I think of him
Speaker 1: as a very stupid fellow.
Speaker 3: I didn't think of him as a super bright guy,
Speaker 3: but I didn't know well enough to think of him
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 2: He's no Louis Gohmert.
Speaker 1: Oh, we should establish the floor, which is like a
Speaker 1: Louis Gohmert or a Tommy Tuberville. That's the bottom.
Speaker 3: He's not there. He's not there.
Speaker 2: He's not there. Yeah, he's a little smarter than that.
Speaker 1: But I would think So what I would say is
Speaker 1: what happened was m Gates, first of all, had this
Speaker 1: Gates eight that threw him out. M Gates had a
Speaker 1: huge fundraising bump from that. So already, like throughout this
Speaker 1: entire time, the House has been rewarded for bad, stupid
Speaker 1: behavior with small dollar donors. So, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that's like an interesting motivator when you look at this
Speaker 1: and they put in Mike Johnson, who was Trump's guy,
Speaker 1: right because of the his work on the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he had filed a brief right for the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court to revisit the election.
Speaker 1: It was the idea that you could just throw out
Speaker 1: all your votes in your state if you wanted to.
Speaker 2: Even this Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: Was like too much, Please don't involve us in this, please.
Speaker 1: Right, which is like, we're trying to destroy the EPA
Speaker 1: and we want to take away women's reproductive rights.
Speaker 2: But even this is too much for us.
Speaker 1: So that crew then, so they put him in again.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, I wonder always how much this has
Speaker 1: to do with Trump? Right, Like everything Trump touches turns
Speaker 1: to gold exactly, and I think the opposite. So Trump
Speaker 1: puts him in, he decides to run not one, but
Speaker 1: two impeachments, and the rest is history.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how's biden impeachment going?
Speaker 1: If vibes based, baby vibes based, it's always a bad sign.
Speaker 1: I'm not a lawyer, but it's always a bad sign
Speaker 1: when your witness is in jail.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, they have to keep him in jail so
Speaker 3: he won't flee the country, right.
Speaker 2: That's right from their defense.
Speaker 3: In his defense I'm only in jail. I'm only in
Speaker 3: jail because they're afraid out flee the country. I didn't
Speaker 3: commit a crime, I contend, but I'm only in prison
Speaker 3: so that I don't flee the country.
Speaker 2: It's hard to argue with that, you know.
Speaker 3: No, well, this is that guy. What's his name?
Speaker 2: His name is Smirnoff, like the vodka.
Speaker 3: I had a little key to that to remember that,
Speaker 3: but I wasn't thinking vodka. Of course, it's Smearanov, not
Speaker 3: like the Smearnov.
Speaker 2: Smearnoff. It's the same, thank you. It's very one letter,
Speaker 2: one letter. He's so mean, this producer we have.
Speaker 1: But yes, I think we would have actually gotten in
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble for calling him Smirnoff.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 3: It'd be a smear, that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, the poor guy's already in jail, and I
Speaker 1: would like to add that the FBI had sort of
Speaker 1: flagged him as a very bad bet, you know, Like
Speaker 1: remember the beginning of this was that Republicans were like,
Speaker 1: we know, there's someone who has this dirt and the
Speaker 1: head of the FBI sort of slow rolled it and
Speaker 1: they got furious. And it turns out that was because
Speaker 1: this guy they knew he was incredible. So I feel
Speaker 1: like that's an amazing little bit of.
Speaker 3: And I believe his name is Smirnov. I believe that anyway.
Speaker 1: So the point is this guy, so now comer, has
Speaker 1: this theory that he can refer this to the DOJ
Speaker 1: and that for a criminal charge, and that somehow that
Speaker 1: will make it seem like he hasn't completely fucked up.
Speaker 2: And he actually sent a fundraising email.
Speaker 3: He's referring to the now.
Speaker 1: He's he's referring Biden and Hunter pot Hunter. He has
Speaker 1: two things right, the tax thing and the gun thing,
Speaker 1: and for both right. The gun thing was that he
Speaker 1: put the gun in a trash thing behind a school
Speaker 1: and he didn't get rid of it the right way.
Speaker 3: That seems very irresponsible, very irresponsible. And where would you
Speaker 3: put a gun by a school.
Speaker 1: I'm not defending him, but the gun and the taxes
Speaker 1: and both things he's had been charged for. I mean
Speaker 1: there has been a lot of like the man has
Speaker 1: really been charged more than he probably would have been
Speaker 1: had he been.
Speaker 2: Just a normal moron.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if that's fair, that's how they get to Biden's
Speaker 3: going after the sun. And also what's bad about about
Speaker 3: him is that he's fifty four, so he minds minds
Speaker 3: people that the president has a son at fifty four
Speaker 3: years old.
Speaker 2: Nobody looks good.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to get too stupid here,
Speaker 1: but anyway, the point is, Comer actually sent a fundraising
Speaker 1: email last day or two on this idea that he had.
Speaker 1: He was going to refer these and this is like
Speaker 1: what they think of as their off ramp to this impeachment,
Speaker 1: is that they're going to do this and it's going
Speaker 1: to look like they really did this, but they really
Speaker 1: didn't do anything. And then they have the other impeachment
Speaker 1: than my orc has impeachment, which actually, you know, it's
Speaker 1: the first time in one hundred and sixty four years
Speaker 1: that a cabinet member has been impeached. Again, it's like
Speaker 1: they never read the rest of the Statute High Crimes
Speaker 1: and Misdemeanors, right, So you can't just impeach them for
Speaker 1: like you don't like the policy. Like that's not how
Speaker 1: any of this works.
Speaker 3: Did you read these articles of impeachment? I mean I didn't,
Speaker 3: did you.
Speaker 1: I mean they're written in I can't read crayon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Look, Trump was very mad that he had
Speaker 1: been impeached twice, and he figured at least one impeachment
Speaker 1: would make.
Speaker 2: Up for that.
Speaker 3: Well, I got it, but I actually don't know what
Speaker 3: the charges are. But they have to come up with something.
Speaker 3: So what are they They carried out policy that they
Speaker 3: didn't vote for or something like that to be something.
Speaker 1: I'm going to look it up, or Jesse's going to
Speaker 1: look it up if we are lucky.
Speaker 3: You know what it is is that we had no
Speaker 3: interest in looking it up because we know how bogus
Speaker 3: it is. It may be one thing if there was Okay,
Speaker 3: he's been impeach there must be something serious. Let's see. No,
Speaker 3: we went this is bogus. I'm not going to look
Speaker 3: it up.
Speaker 2: I have it here. So let's see.
Speaker 1: In preach for high crimes and mismeanors, okay, in violation
Speaker 1: of his constitutional oath, engaged in a pattern of conduct
Speaker 1: that is incompatible with his duties as Officer of the
Speaker 1: United States.
Speaker 2: As followers, okay.
Speaker 1: Article one, he did not ensure the laws passed by
Speaker 1: Congress and written into law for the Secure Fence Act
Speaker 1: of two thousand and six, which requires a Secretary of
Speaker 1: Homeland Security to maintain operational control over the entire international,
Speaker 1: land and maritime borders of the United States. The term
Speaker 1: operational control is defined as the prevention of all unlawful
Speaker 1: entries into the United State. It's including entries by terrorists,
Speaker 1: other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and contraband.
Speaker 3: They're basically saying people enter the country illegally and therefore
Speaker 3: we impeach you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And also it's a ballsy move in the fact
Speaker 1: that it makes I think that's not how any of
Speaker 1: this works. But yeah, so I think it'll go to
Speaker 1: the Senate, and I think nothing will happen.
Speaker 3: I actually do think that they will dispose of it
Speaker 3: sort of instantly because the idea, the spectacle of a
Speaker 3: trial there, I think would be a Shonda for Theonda
Speaker 3: for everybody. I mean, see if you know you know, No,
Speaker 3: I'm saying that the Senate is not going to want
Speaker 3: to have this because it'll be a giant waste of
Speaker 3: time and it'll also be embarrassing. I think actually having
Speaker 3: this trial would be very embarrassing for the Republicans. So
Speaker 3: I think both both Republicans and want to go like, well,
Speaker 3: thank you very much, House, But no.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. And I also think, you know,
Speaker 1: they put themselves in this.
Speaker 3: So how many weeks has it been to say Peachton.
Speaker 1: They impeached him one nine, twenty twenty three, so he
Speaker 1: introduced it.
Speaker 2: A year ago, more than a little more than a
Speaker 2: year ago.
Speaker 1: They were very hot to impeach someone as soon as
Speaker 1: they got to control the House, right, which is incredible,
Speaker 1: but you know, everybody now the House is out for
Speaker 1: two weeks, the Senators out for two weeks. Ukraine still
Speaker 1: has no money. You know, they're on the battlefields running
Speaker 1: out of munitions. I mean, there's still the question of
Speaker 1: like the money for you know. It just it's really
Speaker 1: been interesting to me because like one of the things
Speaker 1: that I thought was kind of amazing was, you know,
Speaker 1: you did have over Christmas break you had Chris Murphy
Speaker 1: and you had Kirsten Cinema.
Speaker 3: Blank for are you talking about the border?
Speaker 1: The three of them negotiating a border bill, and they
Speaker 1: sort of called Republicans bluff in an amazing way.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, And then Trump said no, I want it
Speaker 3: as an issue, and the Republicans backed off because dear
Speaker 3: leader wants this as an issue, So we're not going
Speaker 3: to pass something that actually does some good on from
Speaker 3: their point of view, we're not going to pass this.
Speaker 3: The question that I have is does this work for Trump?
Speaker 3: Does this work as a border issue? And the answer
Speaker 3: I think is kind of yes. I mean do Republicans
Speaker 3: does his base do they remember that there was a
Speaker 3: bill that addressed most of the issues. You know, Trump said, no,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do a perfect bill.
Speaker 2: Exactly, I'm going to find a perfect solution.
Speaker 1: Like there are other things that coming out of the
Speaker 1: House that have like worked for Democrats to I actually
Speaker 1: think the impeachment ends up working for Democrats and the
Speaker 1: kicking the camp because if the border is the biggest thing,
Speaker 1: why did you reject this bill? Very conservative that's shut
Speaker 1: down the border and you know has these deporting I mean,
Speaker 1: it has all the Republican fever dream stuff and negotiated
Speaker 1: by James Langford. But I think what's interesting about this
Speaker 1: situation too is like the Republican Study Committee, eighty percent
Speaker 1: of the Caucus, they are coming out with some of
Speaker 1: the most bad shit.
Speaker 2: You know, they're going to raise retirement.
Speaker 1: Age, They're going to do all the things that voters hate, right,
Speaker 1: They're going to rethink Obamacay. You know, it's just like
Speaker 1: a laundry list of all this stupid shit.
Speaker 3: You know, it's almost like they don't talk to each other.
Speaker 3: It's almost like, don't do that because that's what they
Speaker 3: accuse us of doing. Now we're going to do it
Speaker 3: anyway because that's what we think should be done. And
Speaker 3: you know, when you have a majority of one, it's chaos.
Speaker 1: It also has been chaos this whole time too, so
Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see.
Speaker 2: But I think what is You know, you.
Speaker 1: Got k Granger stepping off appropriations a SAP right, Like
Speaker 1: you have these people with these very powerful positions being like,
Speaker 1: fuck it, it's not worth it. And then you have
Speaker 1: people like from Wisconsin Mike Gallagher, who's like this sort
Speaker 1: of like you know that was supposed to be this
Speaker 1: generation's Paul Ryan and he's like, I'm out, man, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go work for Peter TiAl a Palenteer. Actually
Speaker 1: Peter Till is not I don't know that Peter Till
Speaker 1: still owns palenter but you know that or still has
Speaker 1: a controlling state. But but you know, he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: out of here. I'm not even going to finish that
Speaker 1: get d Yeah, like it's not worth it. Power is
Speaker 1: not worth.
Speaker 3: Well, it's just how much power is it really? And
Speaker 3: it's just chaos and Johnson, I remember, I kept hearing
Speaker 3: like he's one, he's done it as many times as
Speaker 3: he can. He's defied the nutcases too many times. And
Speaker 3: then he did it again, and this was supposed to
Speaker 3: be the time that he'd be called on it and
Speaker 3: they'd get rid of him again, like they got rid
Speaker 3: of McCarthy. I don't know if there's an appetite for
Speaker 3: that either.
Speaker 1: Well, as they were leaving, Marjorie Taylor Green filed emotion
Speaker 1: to vacate, which she called both a pink slip and
Speaker 1: a warning, which I just say, like, the people who
Speaker 1: cover Congress try to be, you know, the sort of
Speaker 1: straight news people try.
Speaker 2: To be right down the middle and not political in
Speaker 2: a certain way.
Speaker 1: And I saw I heard one congressional reporter like being like,
Speaker 1: this person is a fucking moron.
Speaker 2: You can't have a pink slip. That's a warning.
Speaker 3: Well, it is what it is. Where it's going to
Speaker 3: be two weeks of wondering what the hell she's thinking
Speaker 3: and talking about, and when they get back, she'll try
Speaker 3: to figure out what she's thinking. And taught that's how
Speaker 3: I read it. She made her statement. That's a statement.
Speaker 3: That's what it is, right, and she's going to either
Speaker 3: have to pull the trigger or not. And the thing is
Speaker 3: is that McCarthy accepted that one member can pull the trigger. Right.
Speaker 2: It's so stupid, I mean, just an impossible way to work.
Speaker 3: But I think it's been that way before, but they
Speaker 3: haven't done it. And now this group becides it's something
Speaker 3: I can do. There's more than a few nutcases, so
Speaker 3: at any point that one nutcase decides to do it,
Speaker 3: they'll do it. So it's in her court and we
Speaker 3: have to wait two weeks to see what she does.
Speaker 2: Oh, Frankin, thank you.
Speaker 3: Well. I hope we solve something.
Speaker 2: ROBERTA.
Speaker 1: Kaplan is a lawyer who represented Eating Carroll in her
Speaker 1: case against Donald Trump, as well as arguing United States
Speaker 1: versus windsor Imron Ahmed is the founder of Countering Digital Hate.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Hi, I'm am Ron Ahmed. I'm chief executive ASCENTI for
Speaker 4: Countering Digital Height Great.
Speaker 5: And I'm ROBERTA. Otherwise known as Robbie Kaplan, and I'm
Speaker 5: a lawyer and to partner at Kaplin HECKERD Thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, you guys are coming on today to talk about
Speaker 1: a very interesting case. So want who wants to sort
Speaker 1: of set the stage on maybe Iran? You wanted to
Speaker 1: sort of paint the picture of what happened here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So my organization studies the dynamics by which hate
Speaker 4: and disinformation, the lies that underpin hate spread online. When
Speaker 4: Elon must took over X, he made it clear to
Speaker 4: people that he was putting up the bas signal for racist,
Speaker 4: for homophobes and misogynists to come back to the platform.
Speaker 4: He actually unbanned tens of thousands of people who've been
Speaker 4: banned previously, he reinstating their accounts. He made it clear
Speaker 4: that he wasn't going to enforce the rules, and we
Speaker 4: wanted to know what does that effect does that have
Speaker 4: on a platform, So we did a study looking at
Speaker 4: how many times racial swear words like the N word
Speaker 4: were being used on the platform in the week after
Speaker 4: he took over compared to the before he took over,
Speaker 4: and we found, for example, that anti black swear words
Speaker 4: went up two hundred and two percent, so they trip number.
Speaker 4: We found that anti gay, anti women, anti Jew, anti
Speaker 4: Lslim words went up substantially. When we published a report
Speaker 4: on it. It ended up on the front page of
Speaker 4: The New York Times. A bunch of advertisers Elon Musk
Speaker 4: claims Reddit and then wrote to him saying, we're pulling
Speaker 4: our advertising because of this article, and he subsequently sued us.
Speaker 4: We argue that we were just putting up a mirror
Speaker 4: to his platform and that if you don't like the
Speaker 4: image and a mirror, go for a have a shave.
Speaker 4: But he decided to sue the mirror and that.
Speaker 1: Is where Robbie comes in. Robbie, will you explain to
Speaker 1: us what happened next?
Speaker 5: Yeah. So it was a really kind of interesting lead
Speaker 5: up to the actual file complaint and it was very revealing. Basically,
Speaker 5: the first thing they did is they had one lawyer
Speaker 5: I've basically threatened us with a pseudo defamation claim. He
Speaker 5: said that he was going to be a came under
Speaker 5: the Lanermac, which has to be with Pulse Advertising. We
Speaker 5: wrote back and said, forget it, that's ridiculous, no client,
Speaker 5: go for it. Then another lawyer showed up and this
Speaker 5: ended up being very important to the judge's ultimate decision.
Speaker 5: The other brings a complaint that has nothing to do
Speaker 5: with defamation. It alleged to his technical contrad violations and
Speaker 5: statutory violations having to deal with how CCdh got these tweets,
Speaker 5: which were public tweets on Twitter, there was any secret information,
Speaker 5: and why that ended up being so important to the judge,
Speaker 5: And he said, look, if you had a defamation claim,
Speaker 5: that would be one thing, But you're studiously avoiding saying
Speaker 5: that there was anything inaccurate and what ccdch reported. So
Speaker 5: therefore this is clearly just a case to stifle speech.
Speaker 1: This is not the first time you've sort of represented
Speaker 1: people being kind of punished for having information, if that
Speaker 1: makes sense. You know, you've worked on the Egene Carol case,
Speaker 1: so you have gone, you know, sort of into the limestone.
Speaker 1: But I'm just curious Elon musk is or was the second, first,
Speaker 1: or second richest person in the world. I mean, even
Speaker 1: though this case seems on the marit pretty flimsy, does
Speaker 1: he have great lawyers?
Speaker 5: So first of all, I looked it up last night.
Speaker 5: I think he's now the third richest person in the world,
Speaker 5: but that's still three. They believe that really rich. I
Speaker 5: think when you're that rich, there are lawyers who will
Speaker 5: work for you no matter what. What was really interesting
Speaker 5: here is that the first group of lawyers, obviously for
Speaker 5: whatever reason, didn't feel comfortable bringing the place that was
Speaker 5: actually brought because, as the judge pointed out, it was
Speaker 5: such a ridiculous case.
Speaker 4: One of the things that really comes across to me
Speaker 4: is that this is not a man who is taking
Speaker 4: good advice from smart people, because I mean, it's all
Speaker 4: kicked off with him replying to one of those Twister
Speaker 4: Files journalists in quotation marks calling me a rat on
Speaker 4: his platform, you know, calling CCdh the Certificatory of Digital
Speaker 4: Aid and Evil organization, him calling up the chair of
Speaker 4: my board and demanding a meeting, and the chair of
Speaker 4: my board said, no, you speak to the CEO. You know,
Speaker 4: this is a guy who's kind of behaving in a
Speaker 4: really erratic and really frenetic way, almost unhil inged, you know.
Speaker 4: And then the day after he tried to contact the
Speaker 4: chair of my board and I said, you know, and
Speaker 4: he told them to salve to me. Then this initial
Speaker 4: complaint came in from one set of lawyers, and after
Speaker 4: we responded to one set of lawyers, within days he'd
Speaker 4: come up with a new lawsuit which came in from
Speaker 4: a second set of lawyers, and the difference I think,
Speaker 4: you know, ironically, for me is that even though I
Speaker 4: run an organization with only thirty staff, where you know,
Speaker 4: we're a non profit, we had Roberta on our side.
Speaker 4: We had a whole bunch of professionals, and we dealt
Speaker 4: with it in a sort of smart and calibrated way,
Speaker 4: and that's why he's ended up being comprehensively defeated.
Speaker 2: Do you have thoughts on this, Robbie.
Speaker 5: Look, you know I've said this before and I'll say
Speaker 5: it again. I think we are all living right now
Speaker 5: in an age of bullies.
Speaker 2: Right now.
Speaker 5: There have been bullies throughout history, that's for sure. What
Speaker 5: makes it so dangerous today is that social media provides
Speaker 5: a weapon that bullies can use that is really unique
Speaker 5: in the history of humankind, and it is incredibly destructive
Speaker 5: and incredibly dangerous. And the idea that groups like Mrun's group,
Speaker 5: our clients CCdh, who are trying to tell people the
Speaker 5: truth about the misinformation, the hate, the disinformation on social media,
Speaker 5: and then to have someone like Elon Musk turn around
Speaker 5: and sue them, which really was a huge crisis for them.
Speaker 5: I mean, as Amroun said, they're not for profits, they're
Speaker 5: not rolling in dough. It just shows how dangerous this
Speaker 5: kind of behavior is. In other words, the lawsuit in
Speaker 5: a way was just an extension of Elon's bully And
Speaker 5: again I think Judge Bryer saw through that and pointed
Speaker 5: it out in his opinion.
Speaker 1: By the way the opinion was, really it was like
Speaker 1: a judge who had had enough? Right?
Speaker 2: Can you talk about that?
Speaker 5: One nice thing about our court system United States and
Speaker 5: federal court judges is many of them do not have
Speaker 5: patients for people who seek to manipulate the court system
Speaker 5: in order to kind of sporture other people or to
Speaker 5: bring claims that are essentially frivolous. It's critical. As the
Speaker 5: opinion was of ex Corp and Elon, the or argument
Speaker 5: was one hundred times worse. I really grilled the lawyers
Speaker 5: for ex Corp. And they were completely unable to answer
Speaker 5: his questions. And as a lawyer represented Apply, you never
Speaker 5: want to be in that position. It's obvious it's a
Speaker 5: bad position for you to be in personally because your
Speaker 5: reputation matters, and it's a terrible position for any client
Speaker 5: to be in. It was very clear from that opinion,
Speaker 5: and excuse me from that argument that they were going
Speaker 5: to lose. And one thing I should point out is California,
Speaker 5: I think has the first anti slap law in the country,
Speaker 5: and he made it very clear that under the California law,
Speaker 5: now CDCH is going to be able to recover its
Speaker 5: cost and feet, can you.
Speaker 1: Explain to me and what slap laws are and what
Speaker 1: they mean, just for people who are not completely read
Speaker 1: in on this.
Speaker 5: The whole point of slap laws is basically to prevent
Speaker 5: lawsuits like this. The point is that if you bring
Speaker 5: a lawsuit, the point of which is to stifle someone's speech,
Speaker 5: and the point of the suit is to make them
Speaker 5: go through all the burdens and costs by suing them.
Speaker 5: That is what's called a slap lawsuit. And there are
Speaker 5: statutes in various states, including California, New York, and elsewhere
Speaker 5: that basically say, in that kind of situation, the court
Speaker 5: can basically a number one require you to neet a
Speaker 5: pretty high standard to be able to go further in
Speaker 5: the case, although that wasn't even necessary here, and two
Speaker 5: to make you pay costs if you lose to try
Speaker 5: to deter people from doing this.
Speaker 3: In the future.
Speaker 4: That's the most powerful thing for US is that, I mean,
Speaker 4: funnily enough, because I'm British by origin, even though I
Speaker 4: live Atchington, d C. In the UK, if you bring
Speaker 4: a lawsuit against someone and you lose, you pay both
Speaker 4: sides costs, and that deters people from bringing frivolous lawsuits,
Speaker 4: whereas in the US, because each side pays their own costs.
Speaker 4: It's really important that we've got the cost shifting in
Speaker 4: this case because otherwise it's bullying would have worked. In
Speaker 4: one respect, it would have worked because he would have
Speaker 4: you know, his aim was to try and bleed us
Speaker 4: as much as possible. I mean, it's funny because you know,
Speaker 4: we talk a lot about bullying is really at the
Speaker 4: heart of a lot of how Elon behaves. And I
Speaker 4: read you know, the Baals Rising since biography of him.
Speaker 4: This is a guy who was bullied when he was young.
Speaker 4: It's almost sort of banal, how simple the psychology is.
Speaker 4: This guy who was bullied when he was young and
Speaker 4: had a really difficult up bringing with his father, and
Speaker 4: then when he became a grown up, he bought the playground.
Speaker 4: He changed the playground so that he's the most important
Speaker 4: kid on the playground. He bought you know, he bought
Speaker 4: himself a crown, and he put the crown in his
Speaker 4: head and he walks around the playground saying, I'm the
Speaker 4: king of the playground. And then someone came along and said, hey, sorry, Elon,
Speaker 4: Actually you're you're behaving like an asshole. Actually you're all wow,
Speaker 4: you know, Nazi's why supremacist to run riot over this playground.
Speaker 4: He sues the kid who's doing that? And what was
Speaker 4: really interesting about the way the judge I didn't think
Speaker 4: he was I didn't think he was exasperated. I think
Speaker 4: it was more of that measured, calm tone that you
Speaker 4: get when the teacher finally arrives on the playground and goes, Elon,
Speaker 4: what are you up to get back in class, young man?
Speaker 4: And I think that, really, you know, it really was
Speaker 4: one of those moments. But I've said before that, you know,
Speaker 4: I feel a lot of sympathy for Elon. I know
Speaker 4: what it's like to grow up with a difficult situation
Speaker 4: at home, and I learn a lot about bullying growing
Speaker 4: up as well. The difference between me and Elon is
Speaker 4: that whereas he buys the playground, I know that the
Speaker 4: only way that you can ever stand up to bullies
Speaker 4: is to actually stand up to them, and we did.
Speaker 4: And it turns out the bullies, like they're often kind
Speaker 4: of damaged themselves, you know, And I think he's really exposed.
Speaker 3: How damaged he is.
Speaker 4: There three speech absolutists who seeks to silence people using
Speaker 4: law fair, how pathetic.
Speaker 1: I'm like so uninterested in him, but I am interested
Speaker 1: in this idea of a sort of trump es the
Speaker 1: right wing world that works very hard to use the
Speaker 1: legal system to try to silence speech. Which, Robbie, this
Speaker 1: is not the first time you've seen a conservative or
Speaker 1: I would I want to say a trump is because
Speaker 1: even though we don't know if Elan is going to
Speaker 1: become a Trumpist, he certainly is well on the path.
Speaker 1: I worry more about this sort of like you know,
Speaker 1: book banning, anti speech crusade by that crew. But it
Speaker 1: sounds like legally the courts are not very delighted by this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's first of all. Let me begin
Speaker 5: by saying I have nothing to add really to what
Speaker 5: Imron just said. That was the perfect statement of the
Speaker 5: situation that he and our client was in in terms
Speaker 5: of the courts. That's exactly right. Look, there are a
Speaker 5: lot of legitimate disputes, criminal and civil that need to
Speaker 5: get litigated in the courts every day. The courts, for
Speaker 5: the most part, are overburdened, underpaid overworld, and as a result,
Speaker 5: the idea that they have to essentially spend their time,
Speaker 5: you know, dismissing frivolous claims like this, the whole point
Speaker 5: of which is fundamentally inconsistent with our First Amendment, tends
Speaker 5: to aggravate them. And you can see why if you
Speaker 5: think about it for a second.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, definitely true. So California with the slap laws,
Speaker 1: can you just explain a little bit about the jurisdiction.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he brought that where Twitter is located. So they
Speaker 5: brought the case in California. They had the right to
Speaker 5: do that. You know, there are a lot of tech
Speaker 5: cases in California, and so I think they actually thought
Speaker 5: that would be a good place for them. It turns
Speaker 5: out it was not.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, I feel like that's amazing. I mean, now,
Speaker 1: where are you with the case?
Speaker 5: So they said yesterday they should have a very brief
Speaker 5: statement on Twitter ex corpse saying that they intended to appeal.
Speaker 5: I'm going to take them at their word that they
Speaker 5: intend to do that. I don't think their prospects before
Speaker 5: the ninth Circuit are any better than they were before
Speaker 5: Judge Bryer.
Speaker 4: But we'll see the truth is that we're up for this.
Speaker 4: We'll beat them again. This has been you know, this
Speaker 4: is kind of a classic example of the strives On effect.
Speaker 4: The truth is that all they've done is get giving
Speaker 4: us more voice at CCdh. They've given us more credibility.
Speaker 4: We've now seen off an attempt to disparage and destroy
Speaker 4: our research capacity, and the truth is that it's also
Speaker 4: brought us in thousands of new donors, people who are
Speaker 4: giving recurring donations. It's actually made us a stronger organization,
Speaker 4: and it's baffle harder than my team. So bring it on, Elon.
Speaker 1: You'll be shocked to hear that you guys are not
Speaker 1: the only people I've had on this podcast in the
Speaker 1: last month who are being sued by Elon. Are you
Speaker 1: surprised that this man who's so who has so much
Speaker 1: capital and is control so many important public companies, has
Speaker 1: such bad judgment.
Speaker 2: I'm just curious about that.
Speaker 4: When I started CCdh, I remember going to someone for advice.
Speaker 4: He's quite a well known comedian, movie star, and I
Speaker 4: said to him, like, you know, I have to run
Speaker 4: an organization. It's a really serious job. You're kind of
Speaker 4: just an anarchic fundster. And he said to me, that's nonsense.
Speaker 4: I have really good lawyers, have really good rights to this,
Speaker 4: I have really good security, think about everything, and it's
Speaker 4: only because I have the basics in place that I'm
Speaker 4: able to be creative. And it really struck me. It
Speaker 4: really humbled me because it made me realize to what extent,
Speaker 4: even as the front person for an organization, you are
Speaker 4: dependent upon organization and discipline and professionalism. And I think
Speaker 4: that one of the problems that Elon has is that
Speaker 4: he's not listening to those people. It's really important that
Speaker 4: you do listen. And it's really clear that he's just
Speaker 4: he thinks that he's a great businessman. He thinks that
Speaker 4: he is some kind of wild, you know, entrepreneur who
Speaker 4: can do whatever he can, and he's he's got the
Speaker 4: Midas touch. But actually, you know, look at everything he's
Speaker 4: done on X. The irony is that every single thing
Speaker 4: that's gone wrong for X, that he's blamed everyone else
Speaker 4: for that is proof that his touch isn't Midas's touch.
Speaker 4: He turns anything to do with X and turns it
Speaker 4: to shit. There is a lesson to be learned. There
Speaker 4: will write textbooks about this one day, How not to
Speaker 4: manage a company, how not to behave as a CEO.
Speaker 2: You know, there's so many sort of unforced errors.
Speaker 1: So to talk about this sort of online hate that
Speaker 1: you're seeing and what worries you more the online hate
Speaker 1: or the misinformation the foreign actors?
Speaker 2: I mean, what is this sort of thing that keeps
Speaker 2: you up at night?
Speaker 3: Look?
Speaker 4: I mean, disinformation and hate are intrinsically into linked. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, especially when it comes to things like antisemitism,
Speaker 4: which is one of our major areas of study. Anti
Speaker 4: Semitism has always been based on lies, whether it's the
Speaker 4: blood libel two thousand years ago, it's the protocols of
Speaker 4: the Elders of Zion in the twentieth century that informed
Speaker 4: Hitler's ideology, or in the twenty first centuries the Great
Speaker 4: Replacement theory. And we are interested in why it is
Speaker 4: that lies get hyper amplified on these platforms, because, of course,
Speaker 4: the way that platforms really work is they don't present
Speaker 4: you with everyone's posts. What they do is they order
Speaker 4: it into a timeline, and that's run by algorithms which
Speaker 4: are designed for commercial purposes, and they amplify the most
Speaker 4: controversial content first, and I think the ness efet to
Speaker 4: that on society. It's a bit like climate change. The
Speaker 4: temperatures rising every day, icebergs are melting. I started this
Speaker 4: work because my colleague was assassinated in the British Parliament
Speaker 4: during the the EU referendum, the Brexit referendum. We saw
Speaker 4: the massive rise of anti semitism on the left in
Speaker 4: the UK. We saw other things happening around the world
Speaker 4: Bolsonaro du Terte. And as we see more icebergs melting,
Speaker 4: as we see more forest fires, more hurricanes, what terrifies
Speaker 4: me is that we don't have enough time to save
Speaker 4: democracy before people realize that something fundamental has shifted. That
Speaker 4: it's because it's a negative byproduct of the digitization.
Speaker 2: Of our economy.
Speaker 3: And unless we.
Speaker 4: Put some rules in place, we put some transparency in place,
Speaker 4: some accountability in place, we may not have a long
Speaker 4: time to save democracy. Especially this year. There are over
Speaker 4: two billion people going to vote, and this is a
Speaker 4: year in which democracy has to stand strong against authoritaire.
Speaker 4: So you want to know what makes me worry at night.
Speaker 4: I'm Askgan. My family are Afgan. In the seventies, we
Speaker 4: had women in government, we had women in many skirts
Speaker 4: walking around cable And what worries me is what happens
Speaker 4: in our democracy crumble because empires do collapse, and lies
Speaker 4: and hate there are two of the things that can
Speaker 4: collapse even in empire, a civilization as great as the
Speaker 4: United States today.
Speaker 5: Again, I have not a word to add to them.
Speaker 5: In I was one of the very few people who
Speaker 5: like makes me silent.
Speaker 2: Robbie, what keeps you up at night?
Speaker 5: Exactly the same thing?
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 5: You know, I say, and I really believe this that
Speaker 5: as an American, I believe that we are in a
Speaker 5: moment in which the survival of our democracy is very
Speaker 5: much in question. One of the single greatest contributing factors
Speaker 5: to that is how siloed people are, how manable are
Speaker 5: open they are to misinformation and disinformation, how unwilling they
Speaker 5: are to have discourse civily with people who they disagree with.
Speaker 5: And a lot of that, not all of it, thought,
Speaker 5: A lot of that can be blamed on social media
Speaker 5: and the danger of these algorithms.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm very depressed. Thank you both so much.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Molly, Thanks so much, Molly.
Speaker 2: Dahlia Letswick as a senior editor at Slate.
Speaker 1: Host of the podcast Amicus, and author of Lady Justice,
Speaker 1: Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics, My Supreme Court. I want
Speaker 1: to say, Guru, my person, the person who I want
Speaker 1: to be if I ever grow up, which I never will,
Speaker 1: but maybe, well, Dahlia, thank you.
Speaker 6: There was an awesome moment, Molly, where Justice Kagan said
Speaker 6: in casting about for someone who had standing to bring
Speaker 6: this myth of pristone suit said where is your person?
Speaker 6: So I am your person and Justice Kagan's person, I
Speaker 6: am the person.
Speaker 1: So often with this Supreme Court, we are just bracing
Speaker 1: for them to remake our country in some terrifying conservative weirdness.
Speaker 2: But today it did seem like this case.
Speaker 1: And I think, like I feel like this case is
Speaker 1: like the Canary and the coal Mine, Like it's definitely comming,
Speaker 1: but it may not be this that does it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I think what I would say is this
Speaker 6: is a marker for a couple of things. One is
Speaker 6: the cases that come from Judge Matthew Kusmeerick's Court in Amarilla,
Speaker 6: Texas that are deranged and then come up through the
Speaker 6: Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is deranged by the
Speaker 6: time they make their way to the Supreme Court overto
Speaker 6: windows have been flung open. Moll like now it's like
Speaker 6: we're going to get a hey eight to one or
Speaker 6: seven to two. The Supreme Court says these doctors had
Speaker 6: no standing. That doesn't make this court normal. That just
Speaker 6: means it's not as crazy as the craziest person seeking
Speaker 6: to impose a national.
Speaker 5: Wife pin on with the pristo.
Speaker 1: So what I was struck by, and I just listened
Speaker 1: to some of it, and I am not a lawyer,
Speaker 1: was that Alito has brainworms.
Speaker 6: He just has abortion derangement syndrome. I mean, I think
Speaker 6: there's like a really good piece to be written, and
Speaker 6: I guess I just assigned it to myself.
Speaker 2: Yes it is. I can't wait to read it. What
Speaker 2: if you used.
Speaker 6: His theory of standing for any other area of the law,
Speaker 6: Like imagine if you could, like, you know, sue the
Speaker 6: EPA over climate change, or imagine, you know, because somebody
Speaker 6: had their feelings hurt, and the fact that Alito has
Speaker 6: his feelings hurt and so his heart goes out to
Speaker 6: a clutch of doctors who have their feelings hurt by
Speaker 6: the fact that mitha pristone is in the world. Just
Speaker 6: I think, to me highlights the fact that you know,
Speaker 6: Leah Littman's been saying this forever, my friend who teaches
Speaker 6: at Michigan.
Speaker 2: But you know I from Strict Scrutiny.
Speaker 6: Yeah, at the Strict Scrutiny podcast. But it's just feelings
Speaker 6: all the way down. And so there was this amazing
Speaker 6: back and forth where several of the justices, including the
Speaker 6: conservative justices, were like, this handful of doctors who doesn't
Speaker 6: want to someday have a person who is prescribed if
Speaker 6: of pristone by someone else, who then has extremely rare complications,
Speaker 6: stagger into their office so that they have to be
Speaker 6: quote unquote complicit in something bad. Is not a sery
Speaker 6: of standing. It's not a theory of Article three standing.
Speaker 6: It's a theory of feelings. And the fact that Alito,
Speaker 6: who only has feelings, he has all the feelings, is
Speaker 6: the mayor of feelings down should surprise nobody, right. I mean,
Speaker 6: they kept pressing Aaron Hawley, that's Holly's wife, who was
Speaker 6: representing the plaintiffs, and they kept saying, like, explain to
Speaker 6: us why it is that state and federal conscience laws
Speaker 6: that already allow a physician to opt out if they
Speaker 6: don't want to provide abortion care. Why those laws are insufficient?
Speaker 6: Why you have to take if a pristone from every
Speaker 6: single physician and person in America. And her answer was
Speaker 6: some version of complicity, complicity, complicity, And that's not an answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I think when we were talking about shifting the
Speaker 1: Overton window, which I think is really what this argument,
Speaker 1: this oral argument was about, right, was this is they're
Speaker 1: not going to get metha pristone this time, but they're
Speaker 1: smart enough to be to be setting the table for
Speaker 1: next time. And so one of the things that I
Speaker 1: was struck by was, you know, their problem was standing, right,
Speaker 1: They didn't have the standing because it's a made up case.
Speaker 1: You know, nobody is injured. I mean, the whole idea
Speaker 1: of the law is that you have.
Speaker 6: A plaintiff, right, Yeah, you have to have a plaintiff,
Speaker 6: and they have to have what's known as a cognizable injury.
Speaker 6: Something has to have happened to them. And even amongst
Speaker 6: the doctors who submitted declarations in this case, nobody actually
Speaker 6: had something happened to them. Even as I said justices
Speaker 6: like Kavanaugh and the Chief Justice and Amy Cony Barrett,
Speaker 6: who probably are very solicitous of the argument that MIFA
Speaker 6: pristone is just bad because I don't like it. Even
Speaker 6: they couldn't seem to find anything to hang this onto,
Speaker 6: and they kept saying like, there's much narrower relief available
Speaker 6: than branding MiFi pristone nationwide for everyone.
Speaker 1: When Alito was talking about Comstock, what got me very
Speaker 1: anxious was he was going on and on about how
Speaker 1: Comstock isn't some weird thing, when in fact it is right.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you talk about that?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: The Compstock Act of eighteen seventy three was this right
Speaker 6: completely eighteen seventy baby, and it was this like anti vice,
Speaker 6: anti obscenity, anti porn law that was entirely the brainchild
Speaker 6: of one religious zealot who liked pawing through people's male who.
Speaker 2: Happened to also be pro choice right.
Speaker 1: That piece in the Washington Post says that actually, nearing
Speaker 1: his death, he said he believed that some abortions were okay.
Speaker 6: He just mostly seems to have been very proud of
Speaker 6: driving people to suicide going through the males. And this
Speaker 6: law has been defunct for all intents and purposes, and
Speaker 6: you know today, I'm sorry. Then and then at the arguments,
Speaker 6: you have Justice Alito saying making it sound as though
Speaker 6: this is this is you know, good law, and he
Speaker 6: kept saying, this is a prominent provision. It's not some
Speaker 6: obscure sub section, as though you know, we all live
Speaker 6: under comstock and we don't know it. And it's this
Speaker 6: weird wish casting where he's like hoping to instantiate a
Speaker 6: world in which we are all bound by Comstock that
Speaker 6: nobody can put anything in the mails, and you can't
Speaker 6: put abortion devices in the mails, and you can't put
Speaker 6: information about abortion in the mail. He's acting as though
Speaker 6: that's already the case, and it's probably just worth saying, Mollie,
Speaker 6: we know that if Donald Trump is elected, the people
Speaker 6: who want to run this Justice Department will take the
Speaker 6: position that comstock is good law on day one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and comstock has really not been used regularly in
Speaker 1: about one hundred years. So this is like, you know,
Speaker 1: it was wildly popular from eighteen seventy three to nineteen,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty two or whatever, but it hasn't It's
Speaker 1: really not anything that anyone uses today, which is why
Speaker 1: that Alito is. I always feel like Alito is the
Speaker 1: one who's telling you what the Heritage Foundation is working.
Speaker 6: On, right, I mean, surprising no one ever. Two years
Speaker 6: ago it was Alita that was citing witch burners right
Speaker 6: as though that was good law. So I think it's
Speaker 6: fairly safe to say that if he still thinks that
Speaker 6: Sir Matthew Hale, who said you could beat your wife
Speaker 6: is a good legal source, then Comstock must be good
Speaker 6: law as far as he's concerned. And I get it,
Speaker 6: I suppose, but I think you're exactly right. Like the
Speaker 6: slippage here is saying no, this isn't some obscure law.
Speaker 6: This is, you know, the cloud under which we all operate,
Speaker 6: and it's almost like they're really really hoping that by
Speaker 6: saying it enough times they'll make it so and thus
Speaker 6: do away with abortion nationwide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is definitely where all of this is going.
Speaker 2: I mean, how do you think this ends up splitting?
Speaker 6: I mean, listening to arguments, I felt like it was
Speaker 6: kind of eight to one that there's no standing here,
Speaker 6: and you know, with wiggle room, right saying like maybe
Speaker 6: if the states come, they'd have standing, which is something
Speaker 6: that judge Cosmeerk is already starting to tee up and
Speaker 6: certainly seeing some of this constuck nonsense, you know, like
Speaker 6: a loaded gun on the table for the next time round.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I think that you'll probably get some grumpy
Speaker 6: descent maybe from Justice Thomas, Justice Alito saying like they
Speaker 6: don't they no stink in standing, This already violates comstock.
Speaker 6: And then right all the papers will harald like, oh,
Speaker 6: look at how moderate the Court was on Mifa pristo,
Speaker 6: Like they've sure learned their lesson. And I think this
Speaker 6: is one of those, like we said at the beginning,
Speaker 6: over to the window cases, where the only lesson to
Speaker 6: have been learned is any case that comes from the
Speaker 6: Fifth Circuit comes with the stink of overreach. That doesn't
Speaker 6: mean the Supreme Court is doing bang up law right exactly.
Speaker 2: Don't give them a pass on this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, on the very rare occasion that this Supreme Court
Speaker 1: doesn't do something insane, you know, we want to reward
Speaker 1: them and be like, maybe they're not all, but I
Speaker 1: think it is really important, Like when you listen to that,
Speaker 1: you really see that Thomas and Alito will do anything
Speaker 1: to roll back women's reproductive health.
Speaker 6: Right, and that they'll do it on a theory that
Speaker 6: would apply to no other area of the law, which
Speaker 6: is that some doctor might have some moderately bad thing
Speaker 6: happen from which they're already shielded by conscience laws. And
Speaker 6: that is so unacceptable that we should take abortion pills,
Speaker 6: which are the safest, easiest means of terminating a pregnancy
Speaker 6: for over sixty percent of American pregnant people. And it's
Speaker 6: so myopic and self indulgent and also religiously bonkers that
Speaker 6: to suggest that, oh, well, they didn't go for it,
Speaker 6: that sen suggests much other than we only you know,
Speaker 6: need to wait for this to come next time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I listened to your podcast.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 6: I listened to yours.
Speaker 1: You're welcome, and it's very very very good and everyone
Speaker 1: should listen to it.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I'm a huge fan of yours,
Speaker 2: but you're so smart.
Speaker 1: And when I was listening to Amoicus Slade, I am
Speaker 1: also a I joined, so whatever it is that I
Speaker 1: don't have to listen to ads. But when I was
Speaker 1: listening to Amicus, you had an incredibly good interview with
Speaker 1: a woman who was both a lawyer and a doctor,
Speaker 1: Carrie and Baker, and she talked about how much anti
Speaker 1: choice activists worked hard at every point to try to
Speaker 1: keep this drunk from coming to the United States, and
Speaker 1: I just was curious if you could talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about this sort of legacy of methapristone and just
Speaker 1: how you know, they really acted in this really crazy
Speaker 1: way about it.
Speaker 6: It was such a like scales fall off my eyes moment, Mollie,
Speaker 6: because I I thought I knew this case pretty well,
Speaker 6: and I thought I knew medication abortion pretty well, and
Speaker 6: I thought that all these decades of roadblocks and over regulation,
Speaker 6: you know, how is it possible that myth of pristone,
Speaker 6: you know, for decades has been legal in most other
Speaker 6: countries and over the counter, as it should be, and
Speaker 6: none of these restrictions that are only now finally we can,
Speaker 6: you know, get it through telemedicine and you don't have
Speaker 6: to be in person, you can put it in the mails.
Speaker 6: Why are we decades behind other places? And what she
Speaker 6: helped explain is that this was the plan all along,
Speaker 6: that even when it was being developed in France, American
Speaker 6: anti choice activists were terrorizing the scientists and terrorizing the regulators.
Speaker 6: That it has been the reason the FDA did this
Speaker 6: in these sort of mincing baby steps that always met
Speaker 6: a drug that, let's be honest, it's safer than talent
Speaker 6: all it's safer than viagra. Millions and millions of people
Speaker 6: have used it. And the reason it was so wildly
Speaker 6: over regulated is not because it was a dangerous drug,
Speaker 6: or not because the FDA didn't know what it was doing,
Speaker 6: but because the same tactics that were used to close
Speaker 6: clinics shutter clinics, demand that clinics have extra wide hallways
Speaker 6: and HVAC systems. All of the things that were being
Speaker 6: directed at abortion clinics for surgical abortions were also being
Speaker 6: directed at Mefypristown. And so the result is you have
Speaker 6: this drug that takes decades to come on the market
Speaker 6: in ways they're comparable to other countries, and we all
Speaker 6: are sitting there saying, ah, it must be a super
Speaker 6: crazy dangerous drug. Nothing out of the sort. It was
Speaker 6: by design made to look dangerous by those who didn't
Speaker 6: want it. And the other thing she said, and I
Speaker 6: thought this was almost more compelling, Molly, and she was unbelievable,
Speaker 6: is that if you have devoted as the anti choice folks,
Speaker 6: have decades to shuttering clinics, to having abortion doctors you know,
Speaker 6: terrorized and murdered, and to throwing bricks through the windows
Speaker 6: of places where surgical abortions are administered, and yelling at
Speaker 6: people as they walk into a clinic and calling it
Speaker 6: free speech, and having crisis pregnancy centers set up next
Speaker 6: door to clinics so that you can direct people away.
Speaker 6: Like that whole battalion of actions goes away if a
Speaker 6: doctor can just prescribe with a pristone in a telemedicine appointment,
Speaker 6: or you could just get it in the mail. So
Speaker 6: this really blows up the entire decades long post Rose
Speaker 6: strategy of terrorizing women, terrorizing physicians, terrorizing clinic workers, because
Speaker 6: all that goes away. And so this is the whole
Speaker 6: enchilada to get rid of medication abortion, because there's no
Speaker 6: strategy if you can't do all those things that have
Speaker 6: worked for years to shut our clinics around the country.
Speaker 1: One of the things the Heritage Foundation is working on
Speaker 1: next and I read it on their website so I
Speaker 1: know it's true, is they hate all regulation except when
Speaker 1: it comes to women's bodies. They want to regulate I
Speaker 1: viapp And if you read this, what they have on
Speaker 1: the website. It's like dangerous and expensive and there's no protocol.
Speaker 2: And why isn't it regulated?
Speaker 1: And it just struck me as we talk about these
Speaker 1: Republican justices trying desperately to get this medicine off the market.
Speaker 2: That regulation is where they're going with a lot of
Speaker 2: this right.
Speaker 6: And not just regulation. But remember the promise of Dobbs.
Speaker 6: We talked about this a little bit when you came
Speaker 6: on my show, But the promise of Dobbs was this
Speaker 6: was going to be left to the states and the
Speaker 6: justices were out of the abortion business much less less
Speaker 6: the life begins at personhood, you know, all of that
Speaker 6: stuff business. That was the promise, right, and that was
Speaker 6: always a lie. We knew that was a lie. We
Speaker 6: read Clarence Thomas's concurrencying, Oh, but the way we're coming
Speaker 6: for your birth control, we're coming from LGBTQ rights in
Speaker 6: same sex marriage. Like it's all coming down, and I
Speaker 6: think we just contented ourselves that they were telling us
Speaker 6: the truth. But you're exactly right when you read the
Speaker 6: Alabama ivf. That Supreme Court decision, which is by the way,
Speaker 6: entirely theological and in no way constitutional, what's really really
Speaker 6: clear is that the endgame here is fetal personhood, and
Speaker 6: the endgame is a national ban. And you're completely right
Speaker 6: that anybody who thought that, because they told us in
Speaker 6: Dabbs that it stops at abortion and it stops at
Speaker 6: the state. Anyone who thought that was like not the
Speaker 6: most glorious lucy football in the history of lucy footballs.
Speaker 6: Just I guess those are the people who are surprised
Speaker 6: now that they're coming for IVF.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're not, unfortunately. Thank you, thank you, Thank you, Dahlia.
Speaker 1: You are awesome. I so appreciate getting to talk to you.
Speaker 1: You were the person I absolutely wanted to talk to about.
Speaker 6: This, and you are my person too, and you're probably
Speaker 6: Justice Kagan's person. She just doesn't know it yet.
Speaker 5: Thanks Mollie.
Speaker 2: No, No, Jesse Cannon, my junk fast.
Speaker 3: We've all been waiting for a gag on Trump, but
Speaker 3: we got that in somewhat form in a legal order today.
Speaker 3: Tell me what you're seeing here.
Speaker 1: So the judge presiding over Donald Trump's criminal trial is
Speaker 1: no dumb dumb and he has already ordered a gag
Speaker 1: order on Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: You'll notice this follows Donald Trump true thing. Remember truth Social.
Speaker 1: His highly overvalued meme stock of a company which is
Speaker 1: now trading today publicly.
Speaker 2: It's a spac it's a scam, it's whatever.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not a scam. Maybe it's really worth billions
Speaker 1: of dollars.
Speaker 3: I think those bibles he's selling are the real scam.
Speaker 2: I like the gold sneakers.
Speaker 1: This is in a rambling and angry posts on his
Speaker 1: social media site truth Social on Tuesday, mister Trump made
Speaker 1: ominous references to mister Cohen, claiming without explanation that his
Speaker 1: former fixer was death.
Speaker 2: This is never a good thing to do.
Speaker 1: He also referred to one of mister Bragg's prosecutors in
Speaker 1: pejorative terms. Both comments would now arguably violate the gag order.
Speaker 1: He's gagged, but that doesn't mean he'll stop. As we've
Speaker 1: seen before, nothing makes Donald Trump stop and his big
Speaker 1: mouth and his itchy thumbs because he truths with his thumbs.
Speaker 1: That is our moment of fuck Gray. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again thanks for listening.