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