September 24, 2025 • 47 mins
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller examines Trump’s disastrous speech at the UN. Abortion Everyday’s Jessica Valenti details how some Democrats are floating the idea of running pro-life candidates.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and Donald Trump says, I'm really good
at this stuff. Period. Your countries are going to hell.
We have such a great show for you today the
Bulwark Zone. Tim Miller stops by to talk about Trump's
(00:21):
disasters speech at the UN Then we'll talk to Abortion
every Days Jessica Valenti about how some Dems are floating
running pro life candidates. But first the news Somalia.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Last night we got news that the Supreme Court is
gonna let Trump fire the head of the FTC and.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Oh boy, yeah, so look here it is the Supreme
Court likes to take things on the shadow docket and
let Trump get away with murder. Basically, by the way,
we know where this is going, right. He wants to
fire people in the fand he wants to fire Lisa Cook.
His dream is to fire Jerome Pale. So we see
where this is going. And again, this is like one
(01:02):
of these things I want to talk about because I
think the Supreme Court really does think, or at least
enough of them think that they can just sort of
go along to get along. But with every ruling like this,
what they're doing is they are giving Trump more permission
to do more. And I don't think they realize that
eventually they're going to come crashing into Trump's desire for autocracy,
(01:26):
which is already we're already well in our way there.
And when that happens, they're going to eventually have to
stand up to him, and he's going to be so furious,
so he's going to fire the FTC. Rebecca Slaughter. But
what's eventually going to happen here is that Trump is
going to try to FIRELUSA Cook and then eventually, you know,
(01:46):
he's trying to wrestle control of the FAT something that
he is not constitutionally allowed to do, something that is
not how any of this is supposed to work. Something
that's bad for the economy and bad for all of us.
And is this sort of Trump try to make America
look like Venezuela. But eventually he's going to come crashing
into the Supreme Court. And again the question will be
(02:09):
will they roll over like Congress has and give up
all their autonomy or will they push back? And the
answers we don't know yet.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
So Molly we've gotten progress in our Democratic leaders. There's
no longer strongly worded letters the requesting meetings, and Trump
is turning them down.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
You know, even very salty about this.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
I find it reprehensible.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, in this podcast we talked to Tim Miller, and
they're not great options here. Democrats are not in the majority.
They're in the minority. They wanted to have a shutdown
meeting with Trump like the one that happened in twenty
eighteen with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer that created like
a million memes of her with the glasses those salad
days of when things were much less shitty. I don't
(02:53):
know what the answers here are. They really wanted a meeting.
Trump said he was going to do a meeting, then
he realized that it opened him up for criticism, so
he canceled it. Or maybe who knows He said the
truth was, after reviewing the details of the unseious and
ridiculous demands being made by the minority radical left Democrats
in return for their votes to keep our thriving country open,
(03:16):
I've decided that no meeting with their congressional leaders could
possibly be productive. So, I mean, he certainly saw that
he could lose on this and decided not to do it.
There are not great options here. Democrats are fighting for
this healthcare premium money, so Obamacare will go up twenty
percent if the premiums are funded. Republicans want the premiums
(03:39):
to be unfunded because they don't want to pay for it,
and because also they want Obamacare to fail, just like
they want the government to fail. I mean, that's the
secret of Project twenty twenty five when we did that
whole documentary on it, was what we saw was that
it's basically a war against government, good government, wanting government
to get small and drafted in a baths up. Republicans
(04:00):
want Obamacare to fail. Democrats want to try to keep
the premiums lower in order to keep more people on it.
I think like there's an acceleration is case for this,
which is like one of the big things Democrats did
in twenty sixteen was they save voters from themselves. They said,
you know, we're not going to let this happen. We're
(04:20):
not going to let them repeal Obamacare. We're not going
to let this happen because you will be better off
if we save it for you. But voters voted for
Trump again, so obviously, and you know, one of the
things that we would hear in the twenty four psycho
was always, well, he didn't do it last time, so
he's not going to do it this time. And they
didn't understand the level of like blood, sweat and tears
(04:41):
that came from Democrats who were able to prevent him
from doing some of his wish list items. So I
am always thinking, like just part of me thinks they
should just let it happen. Part of me thinks they
should try to ask for subpoena power so that they
could have some hearings on what's happening, because at least
then there's some ability to shine the light on this.
(05:02):
You know, right now they don't have power subpoena, they
can't call hearings, they can't you know, they have everything
has to be bipartisan or Republicans have to do it.
And so I think that that might be the smarter play.
But they're going to try, but they're not. It's not
going to work, right. The CR is not going to
They're not going to be able to get all this
money into the CR. And so the question is will
(05:24):
they shut down the government or not, And you have
to think like someone like Russ Vought wants the government
shut down. So I don't know, there aren't easy answers here,
and I think Tim is right.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I think that they should be coming up the works more.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
But I agree, I mean, they should be coming up
the works more, and they should be just screaming from
the rooftops more.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
The key is is you make people see how unpopular
all these policies are and get more visibility and drive
down their approval and make them scared.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Because we see what happened in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Okay, Molly, we had big news, you know, Charlie Kirk's
memorial service. In the middle of it, Trump's making a
speech autism tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
You know.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Enough, we found out many things that are not true.
Cuba has virtually no autism. Tail and all is the
cause of autism. I hope you weren't just pounding that
daily while you were pregnant, because if so, you're dale
pariah of a mother.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Jessica Valenti talks about this. We talk about this sort
of the misogyny, the anti woman stuff going on in
this administration. But part of the idea of blaming mothers
for taking talent on and somehow til and all might
cause autism. By the way, first of all, doesn't cause autism.
Second of all, a lot of the Johnson and Johnson
family are big Trump donors, So that is a delightful
(06:36):
a little bit of you know, turns out if even
if you give him tons of money, he will still
lie about your product. But more importantly, Donald Trump, he
went crazy on health. I think that's the way he said.
RFK would go crazy on health. And he's sort of
ad libbed. He's great when he ad libs on health
because he really is like, let the light in the body,
(06:58):
my man is the doctor, is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Do you not just find this to be the usual
case of that. A lot of Trump's second term is
just a lot of him being like, too long, didn't
read whatever that guy said.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, sure, get me to the next event.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah no, Now I would love you to play the
put too much fluids in the body, too many fluids
in the babies, too many fluids. Anyway, The point is
a lot of crazy shit was said, but perhaps the craziest,
according to Jesse Cannon and Me Too, Trump says that
Cuba has virtually no autism. I know you're going to
be shocked to hear this, but Cuba does in fact
(07:34):
have autism. I don't even understand why he even went
down this path. I'm stupid, but there is in fact
autism in Cuba. You will be shocked to know. And
it's because they all take talent all there. No, just kidding,
that's not why.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
No.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
I like the analysis that the paper that RFK is
citing reads like the top was written by him at
the bottom his societ just being like, oh god, fuck
my life.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, everything Trump touches dies. Really, we're seeing that in
action here. But I mean, the good news about RFK
and Trump's vaccine announcement is that it was so bad
that even Trump's people are like, you know, and that
is I mean, that is not nothing. Because we have
seen Trump's people defend a lot of crazy stuff, but
(08:19):
even they are not able to defend this. So that's something.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Samalia the Yale School of Management, which is not known
for the woke, they've been coming out with a lot
of things about how business feels about Trump and their
way to survey, most CEOs say Trump policy has harmed
their business.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah, I'm shocked to hear that. I am just shocked
to hear that the anti business policy is harming their business.
This is like this piece we saw it in the
Wall Stroop Journal. Basically, these ceo seventy CEOs who attended
the CEO Caucus convened by the woke liberals at the
Yale School of Management, they were surveyed and they said,
(08:57):
among the CEOs, and these are people like the head
of Pfizer, the head of Motorola, the head of gm SO,
seventy one percent of CEOs said that the tariffs were
harmful to their businesses. Seventy four said the courts were
correct to fight the tariffs illegal eighty percent so the
president was not acting in the country's best interest by
(09:21):
pressuring FED chair Jerome pal to cut rates. Seventy six
percent said that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior is
putting us public health at risk. And that was even
before the HB one visas, so I think, which cost
one hundred thousand dollars a week or maybe a year,
or maybe a month or maybe whatever. Because who had
(09:43):
time to figure this out before they made the presidential proclamation?
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Not I.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Tim Miller is the host of the bow Work Daily Podcast.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Tim Miller.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Hey, momly Jon Fast I'm back Fast Politics. I think
I've lost my gold jacket. You know, for a while there,
I was the top guest.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Well, you're busy, You're a little busy.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
You know what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
You know, that's a lot going on. Yeah, and things
are going great.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
Oh yeah, firing on all cylinders in the USA.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
You know, Trump at the UN just did great jobs.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
Thing. I mean, like the substance of his policy is
not great, and I oppose most of it, not the
foreign policies. Lost my expertise, the style, the politics of
like what he's doing. And he goes up there and
talks about how well respected he is now and how
all the all the countries respect him. If you were
extremely respected, is that something that you'd say in front
(10:44):
of a room of people, like usually someone like Tom Hanks, Tom,
I don't know why to Tom's come to mind when
I think about respected people, Tom broke Off, Morgan Freeman.
They don't don't have to go in a room and say,
Matteline Albright, I am so respected in the room. It's
just kind of like people know it, right, you know,
But anyway, you know, he's doing that whole thing. He's
lecturing Europe about their free speech laws and about how
(11:05):
their heritage.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Is Katie Vance play right.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
Yeah, I mean the whole thing is just really and
how do you sit through it if you're one of
these other countries? I guess that's why I wonder.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
One of the things that I think is a hallmark
of trump Ism. And I'm curious if you think this
is like the quest to solve problems that never existed
and to.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
Create problems and then solve them.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah, so I feel like the UN has a smattering
of Trump doing that.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
Yeah. I mean he has this list of wars that
he thinks he solved, for example, and a lot of
those were real problems, but it's like.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Some of them are wrong.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
Yeah, It's like do the people even know that he
had solved, you know? And then he lists him twice
and he mixes up which countries are involved in which conflict,
and it's all like, okay, well, you actually there were
two pretty not to undermine the Armenia Iserbaischan conflicts, but
like there are two really serious, major conflicts that that
he said that he was going to resolve very quickly Russia, Ukraine,
(12:00):
in Israel and Kaza, both of them are worse than
when he got in. You added a kind of a
quasi hot war with Venezuela in our own atmosphere. Yes,
and so it's kind of like you don't really get
credit for the dwindling tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia, like
when you're starting a you're starting a war in the Caribbean,
and you know, enabling Russia to continued to assault on Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
You know, are you surprised that Republicans aren't pushing back
more on the blowing up fishing boats?
Speaker 5 (12:29):
No, I'm not. I mean you get Rand. Do you
get the civil libertarians and civil libertarians out there?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Right?
Speaker 5 (12:36):
I actually thought it was notewere it Rand, Let's say
a week or two ago, now I don't know, you know,
times a flat circle. But he was on Fox, you know,
and then all the blow dried hair guys start to
pun together. Is either Will Kine or Jesse Waters, I
forget one.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Basically the same.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
Yeah, and I thought it was actually good that Rand
was on Fox, like making a pretty coherent and cogent
argument for why we don't want to just have the
government start bombing random boats in the Caribbean. And how
you know, somebody that was a small government conservative might
be concerned about that kind of power if it gets
into the wrong hands. And so it was good that
he was out there doing that. But like, no, these guys,
(13:13):
the only fight they've really picked has been on the
free speech stuff, right. I mean, like BONDI did have
to back down. Cruz and several others are out there
on the on the Brendan Carr thing, which is good,
which I appreciate. There's some reasons for that, some of
them political, some of them genuine policy disagreements. But like,
besides that, like they're not saying anything. And even my
(13:33):
Senator Bill Cassidy was on Twitter like yesterday talking to
RFK about how he appreciates that he's reviewing the autism
research and applauds him for it. I'm like, you applaud
him for this, like you're a doctor, you know better.
So anyway, I know, I don't have any help for
these guys, really, and I just take pleasant surprises when
I can get them.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I do think when it comes to Ted Cruz having
a podcasting senator, right.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
Like, it goes against interest as a podcaster. He doesn't
want anybody. I think he identifies as much as a
competitor of ours and as he does as a competitor
of like Sheldon Whitehouse, because I really think he likes
being a podcaster. So yeah, I think there's something to
that for sure. I also think that like their identity
is really wrapped up in being a don't tread on
(14:20):
me free speech thing and the way that like so
Trump's other abuses obviously biden to them, they would oppose them.
They're they're opposed to them in academic sense, you know,
at the Department of Justice, oh, you know, going after
foes or I we go down the whole list. But
like the free speech thing, I do think a lot
of these guys like feel is very central to their identity,
(14:42):
and I think that's part of the reason why they've
pushed back. And another part is that like Pam Bondy
and Brendan Carr, that's to see that Will Twarp have
been so like hackish about all this that like it
gives them an easy way to like distance without really
distancing from Trump. You know, they can be like Pam
BONDI doesn't you know that Blonde doesn't know it hates
speeches and you know, brending cars, you know. So that
(15:05):
so there are some situational reasons, but I'll take it.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
I guess it is interesting though, when you're talking about
these libertarians, because like one of the very few voices
of descent in the House of Representatives is Thomas mass.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
Yeah, you know, everyone's all. I got to hand it
to the Libertarians, like at least they are you know,
at least they have a big Labaskan line. At least
they have an ethos, yeah, you know, And so I
do think there's that part of it is I think
that they are have been used to opposing the party
leadership right and in times on things that maybe wouldn't
(15:44):
necessarily align with the left. Right, Like there were times
when they opposed the party leadership on like too much
spending right or something right, And so they got used
to opposing party leadership and and they're a little more
comfortable with it than some of the more rank and
file Republicans. The crazy thing as you just like list
through all of the just total abuses of the constitution,
(16:05):
just plain stupid policy decisions, harmful to MAGA, the mega
based decisions that they've made, and it's just like the
fact that we can name these guys that have spoken up,
and it's a big difference in seventeen and like I
was on you know, I was, well, I guess this
podcast hadn't started in twenty seventeen, But if we had
an imaginary version of this podcast in twenty seventeen, I
would have been on there then, also complaining that more
(16:26):
Republicans weren't speaking up. But then they were kind of
a lot, but comparison, right, like there weren't enough for
my tastes, you know. But and even the Speaker of
the House at times, Paul Ryan, you know, in seventeen
and eighteen, no model of courage. Don't want to build
hm a statue, but like he was, he was checking
Trump on various things. Again, like not as much as
we would have wanted. It's totally different. Like they're like
(16:47):
the party has totally you know, bought a full subsidiary
of the Trump Inc.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Tell me if you think I'm crazy here, because I
think one of my many bad qualities is that I'm
too optimistic. But the Kim situation strikes me as an
opportunity where we are seeing twenty sixteen style resist.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
And it worked, I wouldn't say that's too optimistic. And
I was on Nicole yesterday offering a version of that argument, right,
which is, like you can see in the Kimmel thing,
the ways in which Trump is weaker than he lets
on if the opposition actually stands up to him, right,
Like a lot of Trump's wins have come from people folding.
(17:28):
You know, I saw this on immigration. I wrote this
up a lot about El Salvador. El salvag was such
a tragedy what they did to those men, sending them
to without due process. But like their stated plan was
to send a lot of people to El salvatark right
when Keela first came, remember when there was still some
pop there. Like Trump's whole thing was that you got
to build me a bigger prison, right because I got
a much more people come in your way. And so
(17:49):
they went from that because of pushback, partially ly in
through the courts, and like a ton of great work
was out there in the courts, partially through the media,
partially through regular people protesting right like and protest us
in Central America, right, like a combination of the Senator's
going there. Yeah, just a combination of all of the
parts of civil society saying no, we're opposed to this,
and now there's nobody there right leaves sense right, and
(18:12):
so that's good. So you've had some small examples of that,
and I think that those are the models we should
look to as far as resistance, like my only caveat
to it on the Kimmel thing. And we'll see how
this all plays out, like the developing as we're taping.
But like we have these two affiliates that are not
I'm next star as well, that's the next star one
is more interesting to me because Sinclair is like the
Newsmacs of local media. So that's bad in its own right,
(18:35):
but like that's been bad for a while. The nextra
thing is new. This is a new kind of corruption
where it's like if you have business before the government,
you are then cajoled into silencing the government's critics or
doing some sort of favor for the government in order
to get it. Like that is you know, banana republic shit,
and like that's what we're having right now. And so
that's where I'm not like, so you know, optimistic about it,
(18:57):
Like there's some good parts, but like the nextar thing
is to watch for me.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
It's the Jeff Bezos school of trump Ism.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
Right, Sherry Redstone, it's CBS, same thing, right, yeah, Zuck.
A lot of them, They are just a ton of
them that are doing this right now.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
You want regulatory approval. But the tension between consumers consuming
what we saw with Target and what we're seeing with
Disney where they lost you know, three billion dollars in
market share, not a huge number for them, but still,
you know, not good. The tension between what people want
and what the autocrat wants is real.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Yeah, and people still have power in this front, right,
you know again, I think there's just part of it
was people who are very beat down, you know, yeah,
and I get it, sign me up to the front.
And you know, part of it is like there's a
sense of lack of power, lack of agency, lack of power,
like what can we do? There's something we can actually do,
won't make a difference. It's fucking idiot, moron one twice now,
(19:56):
it's you know what I mean. So I it was
part of that, and then there were as part of
like there's no leadership really right, Democratic party that is
shis in pretty weak. And then in civil society university
that we can go down the list of people haven't
stood up to him, and so that conflence has made
a lot of people feel like, oh, it's not worth
it to do these sorts of campaigns to push back
against them. But we can see that that they do
(20:18):
work again, like on the margins. Not everything's going to
be great tomorrow, right, but like he can't be pushed
back against. And he's still despite the fact that you know,
he has some anti democratic desires at minimum, right, he's
still at this point today is subject to political reality
and like, and we've seen that on our number of things, tariffs,
(20:39):
you know, other things where it's like he is not
totally acting like Putin right now, like he's acting like
a aspiring autocrat that is pretty shameless, but within the
pull back, like but still has to adhere to some
laws of political gravity, which is, you know, different than
other politicians, but like it's not we should we shouldn't.
(21:03):
And sometimes I see a and I wonder if you
see this too in your like comments, And I try
to push back against this with people because like I'm
pretty dark, but like sometimes I see in feedback from
people that like this is hopeless, Like why are you
even talking like they're going to be more elections, like
it's over, and it's like, well, it's bad, it's bad,
but it's not over. And we've already seen plenty of
(21:23):
evidence that like he is responsive to like some types
of democratic pushback. And I mean that as a small
d you know, democracy being all of us, and you
know we've seen that a little.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Bit this week.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
No, I agree, and I think that's right. And I
also think cynicism is the enemy of all of this.
I want you to talk about. We are hurtling towards
a shutdown. So Democrats are very excited about They were
very excited about getting this meeting because one of my
hobbies is I yell at comm's people when they try
to give me stories. I just tell them all the
(21:58):
ways in which they point disappointed. That's the Jewish mother
I am.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
So I say glad, I'm glad that you're out there
doing that because I am ghosting them and I love
you all comms people, and I do. It's more it's
about me. It's kind of a it's me not you
time thing where it's just like I used to be
a comms person. I used to shovel shit and so
it makes me feel bad for them that they have
to shit to me, And so rather than arguing with them,
(22:23):
I just pretend like I didn't see it.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
So I literally come back with I'm really disappointed about
that debt, and do you really think that that dea
debt will work? And also you realize and then I
send them all the mean tweets that people tweeted without
them got it. So that's my interaction. So I, as
you can tell, I'm real popular mother, and this is
what we this is how we get results. So it
(22:48):
is emotional blackmail. So they are super excited about this
meeting with Trump. They really wanted it, they got it.
Trump canceled it, hurtling towards a show down. What if you,
I mean, do you think this is a good call?
And if not, what should they be doing?
Speaker 5 (23:06):
I could be a really unsatisfying act answer to this one. Sure,
this situation is really hard. It's really easy.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, rather have a nuanced take.
Speaker 5 (23:17):
Yeah exactly, I just think that and I get it.
And I have been, you know, at the front of
the parade on the do something parade. Yeah, democrats like
do anything, just like do something, show me you're alive.
Poking them with a stick. I got that has been
me and and I and there's something at some point
there's like something easy about that which is like, what,
(23:39):
I'm happy that the Gavin thing have been exactly what
I would have done as far as the mocking tweets,
but it's like working and I'm happy he's doing right
like anyway, So I understand that like the tendency, especially
of like hyper political resistance podcast listeners are gonna be like,
do shut it down, do something. I'm with that, like
emotionally right, but like, what's the end It's hard to
(24:01):
think of an endgame, right, Like it's hard like are
you are we really going to show the government down
our demo? Are people going to hurt? Are people going
to lose, you know, access to government services, to the paychecks?
It's how long is that paying going to last? Is
our Hakeem and Chuck at the end of it going
to just go with their tail between their legs the
Trump and look even weaker than they did before, right Like,
(24:21):
I just you need a plan. This is probably a
metaphor that's going to get me in trouble. But it
was always my critique of the Israel causal war where
I was like, I'm kind of for you pushing back
after October seventh, but what is your plan again, Like
what's the strategy? Like we can't just be here forever,
right and and so you know, you don't want to
have the same same strategic miscalculation. So for me, it's
(24:42):
kind of like I don't know. I'd pick an issue
or two, and I try to make it very clear
what that is. They're picking health care, you know, and
say to people, hey, we want you to have this.
Your Obamacare premiums are going to go up. We're going
to fight for this, We're going to fight against this,
you know, We're going to do it for as long
as we can. At the end of the day, then
we're going to keep it closed for a year and
(25:03):
a half where people don't care. Like that's just not doable,
you know. So at the end of the day, if
if Donald Trump has to jam this through and we
a bunch of Democrats abstain, there's gonna be a bunch
of a man at Democrats and shouting at them about that.
And I'll understand that, but like, okay, what's the other option,
Like the Republicans aren't going to come to the table,
don't care that you know, people are like, well, there's
(25:25):
an asymmetry here. It's like, yeah, the Republicans are in
Congress and the Democrats are in the White House. They
do have more chips in this argument because they don't
give a fuck if people don't get their food stamps
or whatever, you know, not essentially, so like whatever and
like the Demo you know, so like makes it a
little more complicated. So I would just try to message
it as clearly as possible, tack a couple of issues
(25:48):
for maybe force them to try to jam this thing
through without you know, without Democrats, which would require breaking rules.
But they've broken a lot of rules already, right, and
and and and and least come out of us at
the end with your endgame being like everyone will know
at the end of this that we wanted your premiums
to go down on your health care and the Republicans
(26:11):
didn't give a fuck and they jammed it through anyway,
And like, I think that's probably the best they can do.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
It is interesting, though, because it would be good for Republicans.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
For the Democrats to try to shut it down.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
No, I mean, it would be good for Republicans for
them to lower Obama.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
Yeah, I know. This was the other thing. So my
husband we were chatting about this. The other shows you
it's like complicated. His point was like, why are we
picking healthcare because he was like, what if they fold? Right,
Like what if they fold on it? And then and
then he's like, don't we want people to see that
the Republican policies are hurting them in their healthcare premiums.
I hear that, like, I don't know, that's what I'm saying.
It's kind of there's not a perfect option, Like there
(26:47):
could have been another path that was like, you know,
we're not going to fund your ice agents until they
take off their masks. But then some people would say, well,
immigration's kind of a winning issue for Democrat Republicans. You
really want to pick that one. Okay, It's not like
we're going to say refund USAID and I would like
that would be my policy prefer Nobody actually cares about
USA idea except you and me and like eighteen other people, right, Like,
(27:08):
it's a little bit more complex than people think. I'm
reserving judgment. Actually, well, so I want to see how
things go over the next week.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
What a nice nuanced take.
Speaker 5 (27:15):
Tim Miller, thank you, Junk Fast. Good to see you again.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Go of the newsletter Abortion every Day. Welcome to Fast Politics, Jessica,
thank you for having me.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
I'm really excited to be on. I'm talking to you.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
It's like first time call a longtime reader. So I'm
very much sam. Wow, I'm very excited. This is very cool,
you know, as someone who I have a lot of
respect for what you do, and I'm going to introduce you,
which we like tend not to do because why would we.
But you write this, this incredible newsletter which is called
(27:51):
Abortion every Day. And when you started writing it, I
think you saw what was coming. But I mean, it's
been how long have you been doing the newsletter? And
how do you poster you?
Speaker 4 (28:03):
You know, I've been doing a pretty good job but
being more angry than depressed, Like I'm pretty good at
just like keeping the fury level at like an all
time high and that tends to help. But I started it,
you know, I already had a substack where I was
doing sort of like a weekly feminist column, but I
started it officially after Rose overturned, and it sort of
(28:23):
like came about organically because there was so much horrible
shit happening that I was trying to keep track of
that I decided to I was like, Okay, I'm gonna
write a little bit, almost for myself. And after a
couple of weeks I realized, no, this is a this
is a thing, that this is a thing that needs doing,
And sort of naively, I wondered why be able to
(28:44):
write about this? Like will there be enough news to
write about every day? And boy was I stupid because
I could write, you know, four newsletters a day and
it wouldn't be enough exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
So let's talk about one of the hot hot ideas
right now is to run anti choice democrats. I didn't
know that was a thing, but I didn't even know
you could find an anti choice democrat because choice seems
so popular in all of these ballad initiatives. So talk
us through why that's not a thing.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
I mean, yeah, it's it's a sort of absurd idea,
to be honest, especially, I think the idea is that
the Democrats need to have a bigger tent, need to
open the party to more people if we want to
beat back fascism, beat back like this horror show that
we're all in and I think that there's sure there's
a conversation to have about a bigger tent more broadly,
(29:42):
but when you're talking about the fundamental human rights of
half the population, that is not something that should be
up for debate. And as you said, this is a
really popular issue, right like abortion rights is one of
democrats most popular issues. It is not that is actually
(30:02):
making the tent bigger, right like leaning into abortion this
is how we're getting Republican voters like, this is the
issue that we can actually use. And so when you know,
when pundits and again unfortunately a lot of the women,
when they talk about sort of throwing women's rights under
the bus in service of getting more votes, it reveals
(30:25):
that they don't follow this issue and that they don't
know what they're talking about when it comes to this issue.
Because of how popular it.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Is, you wrote this really good newsletter that goes through
how popular it is. And i'd love you to sort
of like give us the highlights. I mean, there's stuff
like there are different states where it's more popular than
other states, but really it's so so like i'd love
you to talk about sort of the states like Nevada,
(30:55):
like New Jersey, Pennsylvania. Just talk us through what that
looks like.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Sure, I mean, I think you can look at pretty
much any state and see that it is pro choice,
like voters overwhelming. You're like, you go to Tennessee, voters,
voters want the abortion band gone. You go to what
you would consider red states, like really red states, they
don't want the government involved in abortion at all. Nationally,
(31:20):
we know that it is any one percent of Americans
do not want they don't want a law on abortion,
They do not want pregnancy and abortion legislated. Eighty one
percent is a massive, massive numbers, Like that's a really
that's a really big deal. In the states, some of
the states I talked about in the newsletter last night,
(31:41):
I mentioned them because when you know, asra client made
this comment about pro life democrats, he mentioned, you know,
if you want to win in Missouri, Ohio, Kansas, you
know you need pro life democrats. It just so happens
that all three of those states in the past two
or three years had huge, huge ballot measure wins. Right
in Kansas, they back in anti abortion ballot measure sixty forty,
(32:03):
like they completely walloped it. In Ohio, they passed the
purchose ballot measure. In Missouri, they passed the purchase ballot
measure and the you know the thing I said about
Missouri that I think is really telling Republicans there know
how popular this issue is, to the point where the
pro choice ballot measure that they passed was called Amendment three.
(32:25):
Now in twenty twenty six, Republicans are putting a ban
on the ballot. They're calling it Amendment three because the hope,
because they know how popular it is, and the hope
is to is to trick voters. So Republicans understand that
this is where they're losing and that this is where
they need to like roll back. So it just blows
my mind that Democrats that some Democrats don't understand that.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
I would love you to talk us through why you
think that abortion is, while being super popular, an issue
that people are willing to sort of liked of like
the success of Donald Trump. And you know, I feel
like I'm gonna get hit by lightning by saying this,
But is that he pretended to be pro choice and
(33:08):
he continues to pretend to be pro choice.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Yeah. I mean, I think a huge part of it,
unfortunately is media coverage and sort of like the perfectuation
of both sides media where we are giving equal space
and credibility to you know, the anti abortion movement, which
is they lie, they have science against them, and again
like very very unpopular, and yet the media coverage. If
(33:34):
people were just to look at sort of like magazines
and newspapers and knew nothing about abortion, they would assume
that the country is evenly split or that this is
like a really controversial issue among voters, and that is
like a myth that just keeps ongoing and going. And
I think even for that's even for politicos, even for
people who pay attention to this issue broadly, if they're
(33:56):
not paying attention to abortion and they don't understand any
thing about it, then it's easy to say, oh, well,
you know the country, the country has split on abortion.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Right.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
It hasn't been It hasn't been true for decades, and
it's certainly not true now right not while people are
are seeing their their neighbors, you know, get success or
have to carry and doomed pregnancies to term. People are
really outraged over it.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Talk to me about what's happening with birth control. I
would love you to just talk to us about what
you've seen since the overturning of ROW, I think, and
I want you to start with SBA, because I feel
like SBA for me, that was the moment where I
was like, Oh, they're gonna overturn ROW, like nobody's you know, SBA.
This Texas state law that overturned ROW a year before
(34:43):
ROW was officially overturned, and it basically was allowed to
stand on the shadow docket. And when I saw that coming,
I knew they had just that that was not going
to be a right we had for a much longer
talk to us about like do you have that same thought?
And sort of I would love you to first talk
about sbare.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
I think, like a lot of other feminists and abortion
rights activists, like we saw it coming a mile away.
We knew that that's what they had been building towards
for fifty years, you know, through this chipping away approach
and then through through SB eight, through this abortion band,
and of course Texas continues to be sort of the
(35:22):
canary and the call mine for the rest of the country.
If you ever want to know what's going to happen
with abortion rights, you know, six months from now, a
year from now, just look at what they're doing in Texas.
I think we all did know it was coming. What
was so frustrating was this sort of response from the
mainstream and from like liberal men and progressive men, mostly men,
(35:44):
that was, that's not going to happen, right, like you're
I mean literally, I were being hysterical, hysterical, hysterical, you're
being hysterical. That's never going to happen. And of course
we were right. And it's sort of now doing this
newsletter and writing about what's happening every day, I see
the same thing happening where like me, other feminists, other
(36:07):
people who work in this field are warning about birth control,
are warning about the right to travel, and their response
is that's never going to happen. You're overreacting. That's never
going to Is there going to be a point where
you listen. Is there going to be a point where
you like, trust the expertise and see that we continue
to be right again and again and that we know
(36:29):
what we're talking about because we are tracking this really closely.
I don't know. I think I have to remain a
little bit of football right now.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
What you said about SBA Texas Canary and the coal mine,
the right to travel is already being tipped away in
Texas to talk us through what that looks like.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
It's Texas in a couple of other states. So in
Idaho and Tennessee, both of those states paths what they
are calling an abortion trafficking law and anti trafficking law,
which they say is about preventing abusive adults from taking
miners across state lines to get abortions to cover up
evidence of their crime. Right in reality, when you look
(37:08):
at the law, what it actually says is any adults,
it could be a grandmother and aunt, right, trusted friend,
any adult who helps a teenager get an abortion in
any wet even like sending them a text message with
a URL to a clinic. That that is abortion trafficking.
That is a felony. You can go to prison for that.
With those laws, the free speech infringement parts have been
(37:31):
blocked that they're still fighting it out in court. In Texas. Again,
they're always ahead of the game. It's not just teens,
it's adults. They have ordinances. I think it's like ten
counties at this point, ten counties in towns where they
have passed what they're calling abortion trafficking laws that make
it illegal to use the state roads or highways go
(37:55):
through the county to travel out of the state to
get an abortion, or to travel to get abortion medication, again,
no matter what your age. And while that is not
a criminal offense, it's essentially like the rest of us
bea someone can sue you, They can sue the shit
out of you, ruin your life. And the idea is
to create this chilling effect where women, pregnant people are
(38:19):
too afraid to leave the state to get the care
that they need, and that the people who might normally
help them will be too afraid of lawsuits to stick
their neck out. It is, you know, a fundamentally anti community,
you know, snitch culture situation that they are setting up.
And I don't know how much clearer they can be. Right,
they've had the anti abortion activists who's sort of leading
(38:41):
the charge on these ordinances has been asked, well, you
know these are adults you're talking about. How can you
call that trafficking when it's an adult who's willingly leaving
your state, And he said, the fetus is always being trafficked.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
The fetus is fetus is being trafficked.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
Fetus is being trafficked. So if you leave the state.
His idea is, if you're pregnant person leaving the state,
you're trafficking the fetus.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
And this isn't Matthew Kause Merrick, right, everyone knows that's.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
Not the judge. No, that this is Mark Dickson, who's
like a full weirdo, like backwards baseball cap has like creepy,
you know, youth pastor vibes. He goes down to town
trying to trying to pass these things. But like what's
important to know though, is that this isn't just going
(39:31):
to stay in Texas. Last year, Montana Republicans proposed a
law that said, if you are pregnant and you leave
the state for an abortion, you are trafficking your fetus.
You're trafficking you're on fetus. Obviously it didn't go anywhere,
but like they're trying.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
And this is where it's going. I was on bellmar
Show and we're talking about this story about how Crosco
is no longer carrying matthe and Prisstown. They would make
me jokes about Cosco buying in bulk, but but that's
not what's happening here. And clearly there's also like a
kind of Cold War on the pills, the medical abortion pills,
(40:11):
but also the birth control pill writ large to talk
us through.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
That, Yeah, I mean, listen, this is another thing that
they have been working on and shipping away at for decades,
and that the primary way that they are going after
it is by conflating contraception with abortion and by saying
that certain kinds of contraception are actually abortifationis right. Yeah, So,
(40:35):
like the same conservative legal organizations that are fighting to
get methipristone off of Costcos shelves and other pharmacies are
also though they're not quite as loud about it, fighting
to get emergency contraception off of their shelves because they
say it's an abortion. They are arguing that iud's are abortions,
and even the birth control pill. And the story that
(40:58):
I'm very concerned about that I've been covered for the
last two weeks I think is that the Trump administration
basically made their first official move, first official statement, policy
calling birth control abortion and it's nowhere. There's like no
coverage of it. It's wild. And this was several like
(41:18):
the State Department usaid. It has to do with this
ten million dollar stockpile of birth control that everyone they
talking about, Yeah, which they're I don't know if they
destroyed it or it's set to be destroyed. There was
some concoction about it because like who knows, but they're
but they said they're going to destroy it. And they
said they're going to destroy it because it's abortion. And
you're talking about iud's the pill and hormonal implants. You're
(41:42):
talking about the Trump administration saying that the most common
forms of birth control are actually abortifationis and it's in
like the seventh paragraph of the time story. It's mind
blowing to me because that is how they get away
with it. They're just dipping their toe in the water.
They're putting it out there again and again and again.
And that's what's happening. And so how long until it's
(42:04):
not just you know, birth control that is supposed to
be dispensed to women abroad, but women here. It's very
clear that this is where they're going with it.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah, and this is just so dark in my mind.
I know this, but I want you to say this,
what do you think the larger goal here is?
Speaker 4 (42:24):
It is the tron wife bullshit, right, It is the control.
It is re establishing white supremist, white male patriarchal control
over every aspect of women's lives. It's about pushing us
back into the home, about getting us out of the
public sphere, about making sure that we are forever fragment
(42:47):
and so that we can't go anywhere. It's about taking
away financial control. Like the best way to keep women
American women under sort of like the patriarchalm is to
ensure that they're forever pregnant, sure that they that they're
that they are constantly physically vulnerable and I can't do
anything about it. And so at the end of the day,
(43:08):
like that's what this is about. To me, it's not
a coincidence that this is all happening at the same
time that conservatives are putting millions and millions of dollars
into this insidious, you know, cultural campaign against birth control,
saying birth control hurdso the campaign with the child wife
stuff saying like it's actually great to be at home.
And unfortunately, like I do think that Democrats are fucking
(43:30):
it up on this because they're so obsessed with getting
young male voters to their side and assuming that young
women are always going to be there for them, even
as conservatives are running this massive indoctrination machine. It's it's dangerous.
We're in danger of losing those votes.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
It's just so incredibly dark, the reality of ROW, the
people bleeding out in their you know, women going to hospitals,
not being able to be treated, that reality. Do you
think people are seeing it firsthand? And do you think
it is changing hearts and minds because that's what happened
(44:08):
in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Yeah, I think yes and no. I think when those
stories are out there, we know that they make a difference.
We know that people's personal accounts of being denied care
and the suffering that they're facing, we know that that
changes people's hearts and minds. And I think that it's
only a matter of time before every single person in
this country knows someone who's been impacted by a band,
(44:33):
whether it's that they got sepsis or were really harmed,
or they you know, had to wait three months to
get their paths near like, it's not long before everyone
is going to be impacted by this. But I also
think that there is this really specific, proactive move to
cover those stories up, to sweep them under the rug.
(44:54):
You know, you have Republicans shutting down maternal mortality committees.
You have them saying that, you know, these women who
are dying didn't actually die because they were denied abortions,
but because of abortion pills. Like again, because they've been
planning this for so long. They knew women were going
to die, right, they like strategized over that and polled
(45:16):
for it and messaged for it. And now they're they're
doing all the stuff that they planned for. And so
I am concerned that if we're not fighting back really
aggressively on that and making sure the stories are out there,
that people won't hear them.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
Yeah, no, I mean and that and there we are,
Jessica Vlendi, will you please come back.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
There? No, mo.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
My did you know it's quote unquote really illegal for
journalists to cover Trump's administration negatively?
Speaker 3 (45:52):
Because that's what he's saying.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
It's really illegal. It's the most illegal. It's so illegal.
Why is it so illegal?
Speaker 3 (45:58):
Many people are saying it's illegal.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Many people are saying, is look we're at in times
stupid here? This is it intimes stupid. So Trump is
a free speech warrior, but not really, my man. He
has a whole shtick about how much bad publicity he's
gotten and how horrible that is for him. You're going
(46:20):
to be shocked to hear this, but Donald Trump really
does not like bad purplic today.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
That is the vibe I've picked up from him.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Anyone who's mean to him, he really wants to get
them back.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
We did that great interview about revenge this summer and
how fixated he is on it, and it wrings in
my head every time I see something like this.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Yeah, he's really focused on revenge and he wants to
basically shut down the mainstream media luckily for us. Oh wait,
never mind, that's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear
(46:57):
the best minds and politics makes sense of all this chaos.
If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and Donald Trump says, I'm really good
at this stuff. Period. Your countries are going to hell.
We have such a great show for you today the
Bulwark Zone. Tim Miller stops by to talk about Trump's
(00:21):
disasters speech at the UN Then we'll talk to Abortion
every Days Jessica Valenti about how some Dems are floating
running pro life candidates. But first the news Somalia.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Last night we got news that the Supreme Court is
gonna let Trump fire the head of the FTC and.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Oh boy, yeah, so look here it is the Supreme
Court likes to take things on the shadow docket and
let Trump get away with murder. Basically, by the way,
we know where this is going, right. He wants to
fire people in the fand he wants to fire Lisa Cook.
His dream is to fire Jerome Pale. So we see
where this is going. And again, this is like one
(01:02):
of these things I want to talk about because I
think the Supreme Court really does think, or at least
enough of them think that they can just sort of
go along to get along. But with every ruling like this,
what they're doing is they are giving Trump more permission
to do more. And I don't think they realize that
eventually they're going to come crashing into Trump's desire for autocracy,
(01:26):
which is already we're already well in our way there.
And when that happens, they're going to eventually have to
stand up to him, and he's going to be so furious,
so he's going to fire the FTC. Rebecca Slaughter. But
what's eventually going to happen here is that Trump is
going to try to FIRELUSA Cook and then eventually, you know,
(01:46):
he's trying to wrestle control of the FAT something that
he is not constitutionally allowed to do, something that is
not how any of this is supposed to work. Something
that's bad for the economy and bad for all of us.
And is this sort of Trump try to make America
look like Venezuela. But eventually he's going to come crashing
into the Supreme Court. And again the question will be
(02:09):
will they roll over like Congress has and give up
all their autonomy or will they push back? And the
answers we don't know yet.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
So Molly we've gotten progress in our Democratic leaders. There's
no longer strongly worded letters the requesting meetings, and Trump
is turning them down.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
You know, even very salty about this.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
I find it reprehensible.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, in this podcast we talked to Tim Miller, and
they're not great options here. Democrats are not in the majority.
They're in the minority. They wanted to have a shutdown
meeting with Trump like the one that happened in twenty
eighteen with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer that created like
a million memes of her with the glasses those salad
days of when things were much less shitty. I don't
(02:53):
know what the answers here are. They really wanted a meeting.
Trump said he was going to do a meeting, then
he realized that it opened him up for criticism, so
he canceled it. Or maybe who knows He said the
truth was, after reviewing the details of the unseious and
ridiculous demands being made by the minority radical left Democrats
in return for their votes to keep our thriving country open,
(03:16):
I've decided that no meeting with their congressional leaders could
possibly be productive. So, I mean, he certainly saw that
he could lose on this and decided not to do it.
There are not great options here. Democrats are fighting for
this healthcare premium money, so Obamacare will go up twenty
percent if the premiums are funded. Republicans want the premiums
(03:39):
to be unfunded because they don't want to pay for it,
and because also they want Obamacare to fail, just like
they want the government to fail. I mean, that's the
secret of Project twenty twenty five when we did that
whole documentary on it, was what we saw was that
it's basically a war against government, good government, wanting government
to get small and drafted in a baths up. Republicans
(04:00):
want Obamacare to fail. Democrats want to try to keep
the premiums lower in order to keep more people on it.
I think like there's an acceleration is case for this,
which is like one of the big things Democrats did
in twenty sixteen was they save voters from themselves. They said,
you know, we're not going to let this happen. We're
(04:20):
not going to let them repeal Obamacare. We're not going
to let this happen because you will be better off
if we save it for you. But voters voted for
Trump again, so obviously, and you know, one of the
things that we would hear in the twenty four psycho
was always, well, he didn't do it last time, so
he's not going to do it this time. And they
didn't understand the level of like blood, sweat and tears
(04:41):
that came from Democrats who were able to prevent him
from doing some of his wish list items. So I
am always thinking, like just part of me thinks they
should just let it happen. Part of me thinks they
should try to ask for subpoena power so that they
could have some hearings on what's happening, because at least
then there's some ability to shine the light on this.
(05:02):
You know, right now they don't have power subpoena, they
can't call hearings, they can't you know, they have everything
has to be bipartisan or Republicans have to do it.
And so I think that that might be the smarter play.
But they're going to try, but they're not. It's not
going to work, right. The CR is not going to
They're not going to be able to get all this
money into the CR. And so the question is will
(05:24):
they shut down the government or not, And you have
to think like someone like Russ Vought wants the government
shut down. So I don't know, there aren't easy answers here,
and I think Tim is right.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I think that they should be coming up the works more.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
But I agree, I mean, they should be coming up
the works more, and they should be just screaming from
the rooftops more.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
The key is is you make people see how unpopular
all these policies are and get more visibility and drive
down their approval and make them scared.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Because we see what happened in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Okay, Molly, we had big news, you know, Charlie Kirk's
memorial service. In the middle of it, Trump's making a
speech autism tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
You know.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Enough, we found out many things that are not true.
Cuba has virtually no autism. Tail and all is the
cause of autism. I hope you weren't just pounding that
daily while you were pregnant, because if so, you're dale
pariah of a mother.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Jessica Valenti talks about this. We talk about this sort
of the misogyny, the anti woman stuff going on in
this administration. But part of the idea of blaming mothers
for taking talent on and somehow til and all might
cause autism. By the way, first of all, doesn't cause autism.
Second of all, a lot of the Johnson and Johnson
family are big Trump donors, So that is a delightful
(06:36):
a little bit of you know, turns out if even
if you give him tons of money, he will still
lie about your product. But more importantly, Donald Trump, he
went crazy on health. I think that's the way he said.
RFK would go crazy on health. And he's sort of
ad libbed. He's great when he ad libs on health
because he really is like, let the light in the body,
(06:58):
my man is the doctor, is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Do you not just find this to be the usual
case of that. A lot of Trump's second term is
just a lot of him being like, too long, didn't
read whatever that guy said.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, sure, get me to the next event.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah no, Now I would love you to play the
put too much fluids in the body, too many fluids
in the babies, too many fluids. Anyway, The point is
a lot of crazy shit was said, but perhaps the craziest,
according to Jesse Cannon and Me Too, Trump says that
Cuba has virtually no autism. I know you're going to
be shocked to hear this, but Cuba does in fact
(07:34):
have autism. I don't even understand why he even went
down this path. I'm stupid, but there is in fact
autism in Cuba. You will be shocked to know. And
it's because they all take talent all there. No, just kidding,
that's not why.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
No.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
I like the analysis that the paper that RFK is
citing reads like the top was written by him at
the bottom his societ just being like, oh god, fuck
my life.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, everything Trump touches dies. Really, we're seeing that in
action here. But I mean, the good news about RFK
and Trump's vaccine announcement is that it was so bad
that even Trump's people are like, you know, and that
is I mean, that is not nothing. Because we have
seen Trump's people defend a lot of crazy stuff, but
(08:19):
even they are not able to defend this. So that's something.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Samalia the Yale School of Management, which is not known
for the woke, they've been coming out with a lot
of things about how business feels about Trump and their
way to survey, most CEOs say Trump policy has harmed
their business.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah, I'm shocked to hear that. I am just shocked
to hear that the anti business policy is harming their business.
This is like this piece we saw it in the
Wall Stroop Journal. Basically, these ceo seventy CEOs who attended
the CEO Caucus convened by the woke liberals at the
Yale School of Management, they were surveyed and they said,
(08:57):
among the CEOs, and these are people like the head
of Pfizer, the head of Motorola, the head of gm SO,
seventy one percent of CEOs said that the tariffs were
harmful to their businesses. Seventy four said the courts were
correct to fight the tariffs illegal eighty percent so the
president was not acting in the country's best interest by
(09:21):
pressuring FED chair Jerome pal to cut rates. Seventy six
percent said that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior is
putting us public health at risk. And that was even
before the HB one visas, so I think, which cost
one hundred thousand dollars a week or maybe a year,
or maybe a month or maybe whatever. Because who had
(09:43):
time to figure this out before they made the presidential proclamation?
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Not I.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Tim Miller is the host of the bow Work Daily Podcast.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Tim Miller.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Hey, momly Jon Fast I'm back Fast Politics. I think
I've lost my gold jacket. You know, for a while there,
I was the top guest.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Well, you're busy, You're a little busy.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
You know what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
You know, that's a lot going on. Yeah, and things
are going great.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
Oh yeah, firing on all cylinders in the USA.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
You know, Trump at the UN just did great jobs.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
Thing. I mean, like the substance of his policy is
not great, and I oppose most of it, not the
foreign policies. Lost my expertise, the style, the politics of
like what he's doing. And he goes up there and
talks about how well respected he is now and how
all the all the countries respect him. If you were
extremely respected, is that something that you'd say in front
(10:44):
of a room of people, like usually someone like Tom Hanks, Tom,
I don't know why to Tom's come to mind when
I think about respected people, Tom broke Off, Morgan Freeman.
They don't don't have to go in a room and say,
Matteline Albright, I am so respected in the room. It's
just kind of like people know it, right, you know,
But anyway, you know, he's doing that whole thing. He's
lecturing Europe about their free speech laws and about how
(11:05):
their heritage.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Is Katie Vance play right.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
Yeah, I mean the whole thing is just really and
how do you sit through it if you're one of
these other countries? I guess that's why I wonder.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
One of the things that I think is a hallmark
of trump Ism. And I'm curious if you think this
is like the quest to solve problems that never existed
and to.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
Create problems and then solve them.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah, so I feel like the UN has a smattering
of Trump doing that.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
Yeah. I mean he has this list of wars that
he thinks he solved, for example, and a lot of
those were real problems, but it's like.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Some of them are wrong.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
Yeah, It's like do the people even know that he
had solved, you know? And then he lists him twice
and he mixes up which countries are involved in which conflict,
and it's all like, okay, well, you actually there were
two pretty not to undermine the Armenia Iserbaischan conflicts, but
like there are two really serious, major conflicts that that
he said that he was going to resolve very quickly Russia, Ukraine,
(12:00):
in Israel and Kaza, both of them are worse than
when he got in. You added a kind of a
quasi hot war with Venezuela in our own atmosphere. Yes,
and so it's kind of like you don't really get
credit for the dwindling tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia, like
when you're starting a you're starting a war in the Caribbean,
and you know, enabling Russia to continued to assault on Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
You know, are you surprised that Republicans aren't pushing back
more on the blowing up fishing boats?
Speaker 5 (12:29):
No, I'm not. I mean you get Rand. Do you
get the civil libertarians and civil libertarians out there?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Right?
Speaker 5 (12:36):
I actually thought it was notewere it Rand, Let's say
a week or two ago, now I don't know, you know,
times a flat circle. But he was on Fox, you know,
and then all the blow dried hair guys start to
pun together. Is either Will Kine or Jesse Waters, I
forget one.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Basically the same.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
Yeah, and I thought it was actually good that Rand
was on Fox, like making a pretty coherent and cogent
argument for why we don't want to just have the
government start bombing random boats in the Caribbean. And how
you know, somebody that was a small government conservative might
be concerned about that kind of power if it gets
into the wrong hands. And so it was good that
he was out there doing that. But like, no, these guys,
(13:13):
the only fight they've really picked has been on the
free speech stuff, right. I mean, like BONDI did have
to back down. Cruz and several others are out there
on the on the Brendan Carr thing, which is good,
which I appreciate. There's some reasons for that, some of
them political, some of them genuine policy disagreements. But like,
besides that, like they're not saying anything. And even my
(13:33):
Senator Bill Cassidy was on Twitter like yesterday talking to
RFK about how he appreciates that he's reviewing the autism
research and applauds him for it. I'm like, you applaud
him for this, like you're a doctor, you know better.
So anyway, I know, I don't have any help for
these guys, really, and I just take pleasant surprises when
I can get them.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I do think when it comes to Ted Cruz having
a podcasting senator, right.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
Like, it goes against interest as a podcaster. He doesn't
want anybody. I think he identifies as much as a
competitor of ours and as he does as a competitor
of like Sheldon Whitehouse, because I really think he likes
being a podcaster. So yeah, I think there's something to
that for sure. I also think that like their identity
is really wrapped up in being a don't tread on
(14:20):
me free speech thing and the way that like so
Trump's other abuses obviously biden to them, they would oppose them.
They're they're opposed to them in academic sense, you know,
at the Department of Justice, oh, you know, going after
foes or I we go down the whole list. But
like the free speech thing, I do think a lot
of these guys like feel is very central to their identity,
(14:42):
and I think that's part of the reason why they've
pushed back. And another part is that like Pam Bondy
and Brendan Carr, that's to see that Will Twarp have
been so like hackish about all this that like it
gives them an easy way to like distance without really
distancing from Trump. You know, they can be like Pam
BONDI doesn't you know that Blonde doesn't know it hates
speeches and you know, brending cars, you know. So that
(15:05):
so there are some situational reasons, but I'll take it.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
I guess it is interesting though, when you're talking about
these libertarians, because like one of the very few voices
of descent in the House of Representatives is Thomas mass.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
Yeah, you know, everyone's all. I got to hand it
to the Libertarians, like at least they are you know,
at least they have a big Labaskan line. At least
they have an ethos, yeah, you know, And so I
do think there's that part of it is I think
that they are have been used to opposing the party
leadership right and in times on things that maybe wouldn't
(15:44):
necessarily align with the left. Right, Like there were times
when they opposed the party leadership on like too much
spending right or something right, And so they got used
to opposing party leadership and and they're a little more
comfortable with it than some of the more rank and
file Republicans. The crazy thing as you just like list
through all of the just total abuses of the constitution,
(16:05):
just plain stupid policy decisions, harmful to MAGA, the mega
based decisions that they've made, and it's just like the
fact that we can name these guys that have spoken up,
and it's a big difference in seventeen and like I
was on you know, I was, well, I guess this
podcast hadn't started in twenty seventeen, But if we had
an imaginary version of this podcast in twenty seventeen, I
would have been on there then, also complaining that more
(16:26):
Republicans weren't speaking up. But then they were kind of
a lot, but comparison, right, like there weren't enough for
my tastes, you know. But and even the Speaker of
the House at times, Paul Ryan, you know, in seventeen
and eighteen, no model of courage. Don't want to build
hm a statue, but like he was, he was checking
Trump on various things. Again, like not as much as
we would have wanted. It's totally different. Like they're like
(16:47):
the party has totally you know, bought a full subsidiary
of the Trump Inc.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Tell me if you think I'm crazy here, because I
think one of my many bad qualities is that I'm
too optimistic. But the Kim situation strikes me as an
opportunity where we are seeing twenty sixteen style resist.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
And it worked, I wouldn't say that's too optimistic. And
I was on Nicole yesterday offering a version of that argument, right,
which is, like you can see in the Kimmel thing,
the ways in which Trump is weaker than he lets
on if the opposition actually stands up to him, right,
Like a lot of Trump's wins have come from people folding.
(17:28):
You know, I saw this on immigration. I wrote this
up a lot about El Salvador. El salvag was such
a tragedy what they did to those men, sending them
to without due process. But like their stated plan was
to send a lot of people to El salvatark right
when Keela first came, remember when there was still some
pop there. Like Trump's whole thing was that you got
to build me a bigger prison, right because I got
a much more people come in your way. And so
(17:49):
they went from that because of pushback, partially ly in
through the courts, and like a ton of great work
was out there in the courts, partially through the media,
partially through regular people protesting right like and protest us
in Central America, right, like a combination of the Senator's
going there. Yeah, just a combination of all of the
parts of civil society saying no, we're opposed to this,
and now there's nobody there right leaves sense right, and
(18:12):
so that's good. So you've had some small examples of that,
and I think that those are the models we should
look to as far as resistance, like my only caveat
to it on the Kimmel thing. And we'll see how
this all plays out, like the developing as we're taping.
But like we have these two affiliates that are not
I'm next star as well, that's the next star one
is more interesting to me because Sinclair is like the
Newsmacs of local media. So that's bad in its own right,
(18:35):
but like that's been bad for a while. The nextra
thing is new. This is a new kind of corruption
where it's like if you have business before the government,
you are then cajoled into silencing the government's critics or
doing some sort of favor for the government in order
to get it. Like that is you know, banana republic shit,
and like that's what we're having right now. And so
that's where I'm not like, so you know, optimistic about it,
(18:57):
Like there's some good parts, but like the nextar thing
is to watch for me.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
It's the Jeff Bezos school of trump Ism.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
Right, Sherry Redstone, it's CBS, same thing, right, yeah, Zuck.
A lot of them, They are just a ton of
them that are doing this right now.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
You want regulatory approval. But the tension between consumers consuming
what we saw with Target and what we're seeing with
Disney where they lost you know, three billion dollars in
market share, not a huge number for them, but still,
you know, not good. The tension between what people want
and what the autocrat wants is real.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Yeah, and people still have power in this front, right,
you know again, I think there's just part of it
was people who are very beat down, you know, yeah,
and I get it, sign me up to the front.
And you know, part of it is like there's a
sense of lack of power, lack of agency, lack of power,
like what can we do? There's something we can actually do,
won't make a difference. It's fucking idiot, moron one twice now,
(19:56):
it's you know what I mean. So I it was
part of that, and then there were as part of
like there's no leadership really right, Democratic party that is
shis in pretty weak. And then in civil society university
that we can go down the list of people haven't
stood up to him, and so that conflence has made
a lot of people feel like, oh, it's not worth
it to do these sorts of campaigns to push back
against them. But we can see that that they do
(20:18):
work again, like on the margins. Not everything's going to
be great tomorrow, right, but like he can't be pushed
back against. And he's still despite the fact that you know,
he has some anti democratic desires at minimum, right, he's
still at this point today is subject to political reality
and like, and we've seen that on our number of things, tariffs,
(20:39):
you know, other things where it's like he is not
totally acting like Putin right now, like he's acting like
a aspiring autocrat that is pretty shameless, but within the
pull back, like but still has to adhere to some
laws of political gravity, which is, you know, different than
other politicians, but like it's not we should we shouldn't.
(21:03):
And sometimes I see a and I wonder if you
see this too in your like comments, And I try
to push back against this with people because like I'm
pretty dark, but like sometimes I see in feedback from
people that like this is hopeless, Like why are you
even talking like they're going to be more elections, like
it's over, and it's like, well, it's bad, it's bad,
but it's not over. And we've already seen plenty of
(21:23):
evidence that like he is responsive to like some types
of democratic pushback. And I mean that as a small
d you know, democracy being all of us, and you
know we've seen that a little.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Bit this week.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
No, I agree, and I think that's right. And I
also think cynicism is the enemy of all of this.
I want you to talk about. We are hurtling towards
a shutdown. So Democrats are very excited about They were
very excited about getting this meeting because one of my
hobbies is I yell at comm's people when they try
to give me stories. I just tell them all the
(21:58):
ways in which they point disappointed. That's the Jewish mother
I am.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
So I say glad, I'm glad that you're out there
doing that because I am ghosting them and I love
you all comms people, and I do. It's more it's
about me. It's kind of a it's me not you
time thing where it's just like I used to be
a comms person. I used to shovel shit and so
it makes me feel bad for them that they have
to shit to me, And so rather than arguing with them,
(22:23):
I just pretend like I didn't see it.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
So I literally come back with I'm really disappointed about
that debt, and do you really think that that dea
debt will work? And also you realize and then I
send them all the mean tweets that people tweeted without
them got it. So that's my interaction. So I, as
you can tell, I'm real popular mother, and this is
what we this is how we get results. So it
(22:48):
is emotional blackmail. So they are super excited about this
meeting with Trump. They really wanted it, they got it.
Trump canceled it, hurtling towards a show down. What if you,
I mean, do you think this is a good call?
And if not, what should they be doing?
Speaker 5 (23:06):
I could be a really unsatisfying act answer to this one. Sure,
this situation is really hard. It's really easy.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, rather have a nuanced take.
Speaker 5 (23:17):
Yeah exactly, I just think that and I get it.
And I have been, you know, at the front of
the parade on the do something parade. Yeah, democrats like
do anything, just like do something, show me you're alive.
Poking them with a stick. I got that has been
me and and I and there's something at some point
there's like something easy about that which is like, what,
(23:39):
I'm happy that the Gavin thing have been exactly what
I would have done as far as the mocking tweets,
but it's like working and I'm happy he's doing right
like anyway, So I understand that like the tendency, especially
of like hyper political resistance podcast listeners are gonna be like,
do shut it down, do something. I'm with that, like
emotionally right, but like, what's the end It's hard to
(24:01):
think of an endgame, right, Like it's hard like are
you are we really going to show the government down
our demo? Are people going to hurt? Are people going
to lose, you know, access to government services, to the paychecks?
It's how long is that paying going to last? Is
our Hakeem and Chuck at the end of it going
to just go with their tail between their legs the
Trump and look even weaker than they did before, right Like,
(24:21):
I just you need a plan. This is probably a
metaphor that's going to get me in trouble. But it
was always my critique of the Israel causal war where
I was like, I'm kind of for you pushing back
after October seventh, but what is your plan again, Like
what's the strategy? Like we can't just be here forever,
right and and so you know, you don't want to
have the same same strategic miscalculation. So for me, it's
(24:42):
kind of like I don't know. I'd pick an issue
or two, and I try to make it very clear
what that is. They're picking health care, you know, and
say to people, hey, we want you to have this.
Your Obamacare premiums are going to go up. We're going
to fight for this, We're going to fight against this,
you know, We're going to do it for as long
as we can. At the end of the day, then
we're going to keep it closed for a year and
(25:03):
a half where people don't care. Like that's just not doable,
you know. So at the end of the day, if
if Donald Trump has to jam this through and we
a bunch of Democrats abstain, there's gonna be a bunch
of a man at Democrats and shouting at them about that.
And I'll understand that, but like, okay, what's the other option,
Like the Republicans aren't going to come to the table,
don't care that you know, people are like, well, there's
(25:25):
an asymmetry here. It's like, yeah, the Republicans are in
Congress and the Democrats are in the White House. They
do have more chips in this argument because they don't
give a fuck if people don't get their food stamps
or whatever, you know, not essentially, so like whatever and
like the Demo you know, so like makes it a
little more complicated. So I would just try to message
it as clearly as possible, tack a couple of issues
(25:48):
for maybe force them to try to jam this thing
through without you know, without Democrats, which would require breaking rules.
But they've broken a lot of rules already, right, and
and and and and least come out of us at
the end with your endgame being like everyone will know
at the end of this that we wanted your premiums
to go down on your health care and the Republicans
(26:11):
didn't give a fuck and they jammed it through anyway,
And like, I think that's probably the best they can do.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
It is interesting, though, because it would be good for Republicans.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
For the Democrats to try to shut it down.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
No, I mean, it would be good for Republicans for
them to lower Obama.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
Yeah, I know. This was the other thing. So my
husband we were chatting about this. The other shows you
it's like complicated. His point was like, why are we
picking healthcare because he was like, what if they fold? Right,
Like what if they fold on it? And then and
then he's like, don't we want people to see that
the Republican policies are hurting them in their healthcare premiums.
I hear that, like, I don't know, that's what I'm saying.
It's kind of there's not a perfect option, Like there
(26:47):
could have been another path that was like, you know,
we're not going to fund your ice agents until they
take off their masks. But then some people would say, well,
immigration's kind of a winning issue for Democrat Republicans. You
really want to pick that one. Okay, It's not like
we're going to say refund USAID and I would like
that would be my policy prefer Nobody actually cares about
USA idea except you and me and like eighteen other people, right, Like,
(27:08):
it's a little bit more complex than people think. I'm
reserving judgment. Actually, well, so I want to see how
things go over the next week.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
What a nice nuanced take.
Speaker 5 (27:15):
Tim Miller, thank you, Junk Fast. Good to see you again.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Go of the newsletter Abortion every Day. Welcome to Fast Politics, Jessica,
thank you for having me.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
I'm really excited to be on. I'm talking to you.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
It's like first time call a longtime reader. So I'm
very much sam. Wow, I'm very excited. This is very cool,
you know, as someone who I have a lot of
respect for what you do, and I'm going to introduce you,
which we like tend not to do because why would we.
But you write this, this incredible newsletter which is called
(27:51):
Abortion every Day. And when you started writing it, I
think you saw what was coming. But I mean, it's
been how long have you been doing the newsletter? And
how do you poster you?
Speaker 4 (28:03):
You know, I've been doing a pretty good job but
being more angry than depressed, Like I'm pretty good at
just like keeping the fury level at like an all
time high and that tends to help. But I started it,
you know, I already had a substack where I was
doing sort of like a weekly feminist column, but I
started it officially after Rose overturned, and it sort of
(28:23):
like came about organically because there was so much horrible
shit happening that I was trying to keep track of
that I decided to I was like, Okay, I'm gonna
write a little bit, almost for myself. And after a
couple of weeks I realized, no, this is a this
is a thing, that this is a thing that needs doing,
And sort of naively, I wondered why be able to
(28:44):
write about this? Like will there be enough news to
write about every day? And boy was I stupid because
I could write, you know, four newsletters a day and
it wouldn't be enough exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
So let's talk about one of the hot hot ideas
right now is to run anti choice democrats. I didn't
know that was a thing, but I didn't even know
you could find an anti choice democrat because choice seems
so popular in all of these ballad initiatives. So talk
us through why that's not a thing.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
I mean, yeah, it's it's a sort of absurd idea,
to be honest, especially, I think the idea is that
the Democrats need to have a bigger tent, need to
open the party to more people if we want to
beat back fascism, beat back like this horror show that
we're all in and I think that there's sure there's
a conversation to have about a bigger tent more broadly,
(29:42):
but when you're talking about the fundamental human rights of
half the population, that is not something that should be
up for debate. And as you said, this is a
really popular issue, right like abortion rights is one of
democrats most popular issues. It is not that is actually
(30:02):
making the tent bigger, right like leaning into abortion this
is how we're getting Republican voters like, this is the
issue that we can actually use. And so when you know,
when pundits and again unfortunately a lot of the women,
when they talk about sort of throwing women's rights under
the bus in service of getting more votes, it reveals
(30:25):
that they don't follow this issue and that they don't
know what they're talking about when it comes to this issue.
Because of how popular it.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Is, you wrote this really good newsletter that goes through
how popular it is. And i'd love you to sort
of like give us the highlights. I mean, there's stuff
like there are different states where it's more popular than
other states, but really it's so so like i'd love
you to talk about sort of the states like Nevada,
(30:55):
like New Jersey, Pennsylvania. Just talk us through what that
looks like.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
Sure, I mean, I think you can look at pretty
much any state and see that it is pro choice,
like voters overwhelming. You're like, you go to Tennessee, voters,
voters want the abortion band gone. You go to what
you would consider red states, like really red states, they
don't want the government involved in abortion at all. Nationally,
(31:20):
we know that it is any one percent of Americans
do not want they don't want a law on abortion,
They do not want pregnancy and abortion legislated. Eighty one
percent is a massive, massive numbers, Like that's a really
that's a really big deal. In the states, some of
the states I talked about in the newsletter last night,
(31:41):
I mentioned them because when you know, asra client made
this comment about pro life democrats, he mentioned, you know,
if you want to win in Missouri, Ohio, Kansas, you
know you need pro life democrats. It just so happens
that all three of those states in the past two
or three years had huge, huge ballot measure wins. Right
in Kansas, they back in anti abortion ballot measure sixty forty,
(32:03):
like they completely walloped it. In Ohio, they passed the
purchose ballot measure. In Missouri, they passed the purchase ballot
measure and the you know the thing I said about
Missouri that I think is really telling Republicans there know
how popular this issue is, to the point where the
pro choice ballot measure that they passed was called Amendment three.
(32:25):
Now in twenty twenty six, Republicans are putting a ban
on the ballot. They're calling it Amendment three because the hope,
because they know how popular it is, and the hope
is to is to trick voters. So Republicans understand that
this is where they're losing and that this is where
they need to like roll back. So it just blows
my mind that Democrats that some Democrats don't understand that.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
I would love you to talk us through why you
think that abortion is, while being super popular, an issue
that people are willing to sort of liked of like
the success of Donald Trump. And you know, I feel
like I'm gonna get hit by lightning by saying this,
But is that he pretended to be pro choice and
(33:08):
he continues to pretend to be pro choice.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Yeah. I mean, I think a huge part of it,
unfortunately is media coverage and sort of like the perfectuation
of both sides media where we are giving equal space
and credibility to you know, the anti abortion movement, which
is they lie, they have science against them, and again
like very very unpopular, and yet the media coverage. If
(33:34):
people were just to look at sort of like magazines
and newspapers and knew nothing about abortion, they would assume
that the country is evenly split or that this is
like a really controversial issue among voters, and that is
like a myth that just keeps ongoing and going. And
I think even for that's even for politicos, even for
people who pay attention to this issue broadly, if they're
(33:56):
not paying attention to abortion and they don't understand any
thing about it, then it's easy to say, oh, well,
you know the country, the country has split on abortion.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Right.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
It hasn't been It hasn't been true for decades, and
it's certainly not true now right not while people are
are seeing their their neighbors, you know, get success or
have to carry and doomed pregnancies to term. People are
really outraged over it.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Talk to me about what's happening with birth control. I
would love you to just talk to us about what
you've seen since the overturning of ROW, I think, and
I want you to start with SBA, because I feel
like SBA for me, that was the moment where I
was like, Oh, they're gonna overturn ROW, like nobody's you know, SBA.
This Texas state law that overturned ROW a year before
(34:43):
ROW was officially overturned, and it basically was allowed to
stand on the shadow docket. And when I saw that coming,
I knew they had just that that was not going
to be a right we had for a much longer
talk to us about like do you have that same thought?
And sort of I would love you to first talk
about sbare.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
I think, like a lot of other feminists and abortion
rights activists, like we saw it coming a mile away.
We knew that that's what they had been building towards
for fifty years, you know, through this chipping away approach
and then through through SB eight, through this abortion band,
and of course Texas continues to be sort of the
(35:22):
canary and the call mine for the rest of the country.
If you ever want to know what's going to happen
with abortion rights, you know, six months from now, a
year from now, just look at what they're doing in Texas.
I think we all did know it was coming. What
was so frustrating was this sort of response from the
mainstream and from like liberal men and progressive men, mostly men,
(35:44):
that was, that's not going to happen, right, like you're
I mean literally, I were being hysterical, hysterical, hysterical, you're
being hysterical. That's never going to happen. And of course
we were right. And it's sort of now doing this
newsletter and writing about what's happening every day, I see
the same thing happening where like me, other feminists, other
(36:07):
people who work in this field are warning about birth control,
are warning about the right to travel, and their response
is that's never going to happen. You're overreacting. That's never
going to Is there going to be a point where
you listen. Is there going to be a point where
you like, trust the expertise and see that we continue
to be right again and again and that we know
(36:29):
what we're talking about because we are tracking this really closely.
I don't know. I think I have to remain a
little bit of football right now.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
What you said about SBA Texas Canary and the coal mine,
the right to travel is already being tipped away in
Texas to talk us through what that looks like.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
It's Texas in a couple of other states. So in
Idaho and Tennessee, both of those states paths what they
are calling an abortion trafficking law and anti trafficking law,
which they say is about preventing abusive adults from taking
miners across state lines to get abortions to cover up
evidence of their crime. Right in reality, when you look
(37:08):
at the law, what it actually says is any adults,
it could be a grandmother and aunt, right, trusted friend,
any adult who helps a teenager get an abortion in
any wet even like sending them a text message with
a URL to a clinic. That that is abortion trafficking.
That is a felony. You can go to prison for that.
With those laws, the free speech infringement parts have been
(37:31):
blocked that they're still fighting it out in court. In Texas. Again,
they're always ahead of the game. It's not just teens,
it's adults. They have ordinances. I think it's like ten
counties at this point, ten counties in towns where they
have passed what they're calling abortion trafficking laws that make
it illegal to use the state roads or highways go
(37:55):
through the county to travel out of the state to
get an abortion, or to travel to get abortion medication, again,
no matter what your age. And while that is not
a criminal offense, it's essentially like the rest of us
bea someone can sue you, They can sue the shit
out of you, ruin your life. And the idea is
to create this chilling effect where women, pregnant people are
(38:19):
too afraid to leave the state to get the care
that they need, and that the people who might normally
help them will be too afraid of lawsuits to stick
their neck out. It is, you know, a fundamentally anti community,
you know, snitch culture situation that they are setting up.
And I don't know how much clearer they can be. Right,
they've had the anti abortion activists who's sort of leading
(38:41):
the charge on these ordinances has been asked, well, you
know these are adults you're talking about. How can you
call that trafficking when it's an adult who's willingly leaving
your state, And he said, the fetus is always being trafficked.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
The fetus is fetus is being trafficked.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
Fetus is being trafficked. So if you leave the state.
His idea is, if you're pregnant person leaving the state,
you're trafficking the fetus.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
And this isn't Matthew Kause Merrick, right, everyone knows that's.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
Not the judge. No, that this is Mark Dickson, who's
like a full weirdo, like backwards baseball cap has like creepy,
you know, youth pastor vibes. He goes down to town
trying to trying to pass these things. But like what's
important to know though, is that this isn't just going
(39:31):
to stay in Texas. Last year, Montana Republicans proposed a
law that said, if you are pregnant and you leave
the state for an abortion, you are trafficking your fetus.
You're trafficking you're on fetus. Obviously it didn't go anywhere,
but like they're trying.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
And this is where it's going. I was on bellmar
Show and we're talking about this story about how Crosco
is no longer carrying matthe and Prisstown. They would make
me jokes about Cosco buying in bulk, but but that's
not what's happening here. And clearly there's also like a
kind of Cold War on the pills, the medical abortion pills,
(40:11):
but also the birth control pill writ large to talk
us through.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
That, Yeah, I mean, listen, this is another thing that
they have been working on and shipping away at for decades,
and that the primary way that they are going after
it is by conflating contraception with abortion and by saying
that certain kinds of contraception are actually abortifationis right. Yeah, So,
(40:35):
like the same conservative legal organizations that are fighting to
get methipristone off of Costcos shelves and other pharmacies are
also though they're not quite as loud about it, fighting
to get emergency contraception off of their shelves because they
say it's an abortion. They are arguing that iud's are abortions,
and even the birth control pill. And the story that
(40:58):
I'm very concerned about that I've been covered for the
last two weeks I think is that the Trump administration
basically made their first official move, first official statement, policy
calling birth control abortion and it's nowhere. There's like no
coverage of it. It's wild. And this was several like
(41:18):
the State Department usaid. It has to do with this
ten million dollar stockpile of birth control that everyone they
talking about, Yeah, which they're I don't know if they
destroyed it or it's set to be destroyed. There was
some concoction about it because like who knows, but they're
but they said they're going to destroy it. And they
said they're going to destroy it because it's abortion. And
you're talking about iud's the pill and hormonal implants. You're
(41:42):
talking about the Trump administration saying that the most common
forms of birth control are actually abortifationis and it's in
like the seventh paragraph of the time story. It's mind
blowing to me because that is how they get away
with it. They're just dipping their toe in the water.
They're putting it out there again and again and again.
And that's what's happening. And so how long until it's
(42:04):
not just you know, birth control that is supposed to
be dispensed to women abroad, but women here. It's very
clear that this is where they're going with it.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah, and this is just so dark in my mind.
I know this, but I want you to say this,
what do you think the larger goal here is?
Speaker 4 (42:24):
It is the tron wife bullshit, right, It is the control.
It is re establishing white supremist, white male patriarchal control
over every aspect of women's lives. It's about pushing us
back into the home, about getting us out of the
public sphere, about making sure that we are forever fragment
(42:47):
and so that we can't go anywhere. It's about taking
away financial control. Like the best way to keep women
American women under sort of like the patriarchalm is to
ensure that they're forever pregnant, sure that they that they're
that they are constantly physically vulnerable and I can't do
anything about it. And so at the end of the day,
(43:08):
like that's what this is about. To me, it's not
a coincidence that this is all happening at the same
time that conservatives are putting millions and millions of dollars
into this insidious, you know, cultural campaign against birth control,
saying birth control hurdso the campaign with the child wife
stuff saying like it's actually great to be at home.
And unfortunately, like I do think that Democrats are fucking
(43:30):
it up on this because they're so obsessed with getting
young male voters to their side and assuming that young
women are always going to be there for them, even
as conservatives are running this massive indoctrination machine. It's it's dangerous.
We're in danger of losing those votes.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
It's just so incredibly dark, the reality of ROW, the
people bleeding out in their you know, women going to hospitals,
not being able to be treated, that reality. Do you
think people are seeing it firsthand? And do you think
it is changing hearts and minds because that's what happened
(44:08):
in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Yeah, I think yes and no. I think when those
stories are out there, we know that they make a difference.
We know that people's personal accounts of being denied care
and the suffering that they're facing, we know that that
changes people's hearts and minds. And I think that it's
only a matter of time before every single person in
this country knows someone who's been impacted by a band,
(44:33):
whether it's that they got sepsis or were really harmed,
or they you know, had to wait three months to
get their paths near like, it's not long before everyone
is going to be impacted by this. But I also
think that there is this really specific, proactive move to
cover those stories up, to sweep them under the rug.
(44:54):
You know, you have Republicans shutting down maternal mortality committees.
You have them saying that, you know, these women who
are dying didn't actually die because they were denied abortions,
but because of abortion pills. Like again, because they've been
planning this for so long. They knew women were going
to die, right, they like strategized over that and polled
(45:16):
for it and messaged for it. And now they're they're
doing all the stuff that they planned for. And so
I am concerned that if we're not fighting back really
aggressively on that and making sure the stories are out there,
that people won't hear them.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
Yeah, no, I mean and that and there we are,
Jessica Vlendi, will you please come back.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
There? No, mo.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
My did you know it's quote unquote really illegal for
journalists to cover Trump's administration negatively?
Speaker 3 (45:52):
Because that's what he's saying.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
It's really illegal. It's the most illegal. It's so illegal.
Why is it so illegal?
Speaker 3 (45:58):
Many people are saying it's illegal.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Many people are saying, is look we're at in times
stupid here? This is it intimes stupid. So Trump is
a free speech warrior, but not really, my man. He
has a whole shtick about how much bad publicity he's
gotten and how horrible that is for him. You're going
(46:20):
to be shocked to hear this, but Donald Trump really
does not like bad purplic today.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
That is the vibe I've picked up from him.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Anyone who's mean to him, he really wants to get
them back.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
We did that great interview about revenge this summer and
how fixated he is on it, and it wrings in
my head every time I see something like this.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Yeah, he's really focused on revenge and he wants to
basically shut down the mainstream media luckily for us. Oh wait,
never mind, that's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear
(46:57):
the best minds and politics makes sense of all this chaos.
If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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