The MAGA Supreme Court's Assault on America

26:41And that's not necessarily going to be true in other statutes. And so, yes, it's going to insulate this set of corporations from this particular type of lawsuit, but not beyond that. And could these individuals sue the EPA for the label not being, you know, fully, fulsome enough to give them what they needed to know to make the right decisions here? Or are these people just kind of screwed? Yeah, so they can file Administrative Procedure Act lawsuits against the EPA and challenge the agency's actions with respect to these labels that is not going to get them damages, you know, for any harm that they might have experienced because of a failure of these warning labels.

27:21but they could try to get the EPA to change them going forward. And you said that you, well, this in a vacuum, maybe what's the right decision? You have concerns more broadly. I take it that is the fact that corporations are like 1 million and 0 in the Roberts court over the last 22 years or whatever it is. That would be the general flavor of the objection. And even if you just look at the decisions from this past week, so Monsanto, Corporations can't be sued for labels that allegedly contain insufficient warnings that cause people to get cancer. Earlier this week, the court said you can't sue corporations for abetting human rights abuses that foreign governments commit.

28:05They said corporations, however, can sue foreign governments, namely Cuba, for taking their oil. They said individuals who are incarcerated, they cannot sue state officials who violate their religious freedom rights. They said TPS recipients can't sue to challenge the executive branch for violating their rights under the statute. In another immigration case, they said effectively lawful permanent residents can't enforce this statute protecting their right to reenter the United States at the border. So who gets to sue to enforce their rights? Corporations. You can't sue corporations for violating international law, for potentially violating state tort law.

28:45You can't sue state officials for violating federal law. You can't sue federal officials for violating federal law. And so if you just aggregate all of these decisions together, it's like, OK, who has rights, who doesn't? Corporations, everyone else. You're bringing up the TPS thing. Let's me go back to something I meant to ask you before. Given this decision, what would stop a president, AOC, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, whoever else, from just deciding on day one that they want to grant TPS to everyone from, say, Mexico? It's so funny you say that, Dan, because that was actually an argument in the case, that the challengers said, look, if you completely insulate these decisions from review, they can be abused in either direction.

29:28So in one of the final passages of the opinion, Sam Alito suggests, well, look, the plaintiffs in these cases, they throw out these hypotheticals. We're not going to necessarily say those would be unreviewable, but maybe Congress could fix them. And so there was this narrow potential caveat that the court reserved for itself because they view themselves as the ultimate decision maker to potentially say maybe some wholesale abdications might be reviewable. But who knows? So just if perchance, say, a Democratic president wanted to unveil themselves of the executive authority that they found inherited Donald Trump's actions, there is a way for them to stop that from happening.

30:12Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect. Good. I didn't go to law school, but I'm picking up what's happening here. I mean, from these decisions, it's not clear Sam Alito did either. Fair enough. Fair enough. OK, let's get to the cases that have not yet been released and will maybe release Monday or Tuesday of next week. We think. We hope. Who knows? Do we hope? Honestly, like they're bad things. I mean, I hope for you as someone who has a podcast schedule you have to get to that happens earlier in the week. Better, I would say, for everyone Monday and Tuesday than Thursday.

30:45Perhaps. OK. All right. The biggest one that everyone's waiting for is the one on birthright citizenship.

30:54Everyone seems to think that since the Constitution is quite explicit on this, that it would be seemingly impossible for the Supreme Court to do this. You had a piece of the contrarian where you raised some real questions. You have some worries about this. I'd like to hear what those worries are. And I think it also raises some measure of concern that they've been sitting on this. Like this is something they could have done in a one sentence order a year ago. and we've been waiting and waiting and waiting. And just based on what I've read and reserved, the fact that they're waiting so long on this at least suggests that there's something going on.

31:24So what is going on here? Tell me about the case. Tell me about why specifically you have worries about what this decision might say. Yeah, so the case is a challenge to the president's executive order that purports to deny birthright citizenship to some people who are born in the United States, even though the first sentence of the 14th Amendment says all persons born and naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof shall be citizens. So it's a wildly illegal executive order. And I think most people, even after the oral argument, and even now think it's more likely than not that the Supreme Court will say that order can't be enforced and it's unconstitutional.

32:00But, and this is a big but, the recent immigration decisions are really concerning. The fact that the court adopted such broad reasoning in cases where they didn't have to do so at all, I think is causing some people to rethink their confidence in what the court might do on birthright. I think the delay could also signal that the decision isn't going to be unanimous. And if it's not unanimous, that's going to meaningfully alter the Overton window as far as what people's understanding of our constitutional multiracial democracy is. You know, if you have dissents by Justice Thomas and Alito, is birthright citizenship going to become a new litmus test for Republican appointees where the expectation is you will only be selected for a judicial seat if you would overrule birthright citizenship, just like you could only be selected for a judicial seat if you would overrule Roe versus Wade.

32:54It would also invite future challenges to birthright down the road. So I think those are some of the things that are on people's mind. But then there's this additional consideration for me, which is even if the court does the right thing, I mean, they just cannot get all of the credit and all of the plaudits that are inevitably going to be heaped on them for standing up to the president when, as we were just talking about, they bent over backwards to greenlight some of the more xenophobic white nationalist elements of his immigration agenda when they didn't have to do so. They are the ones that created the need for this case on birthright citizenship and indeed demanded that the federal government bring the case to them when last year in the nationwide injunction case, they refused to just come out and say, even if lower courts can't block this policy on a nationwide basis, we Supreme Court can because it's wildly unconstitutional.

33:49And instead, they made the Solicitor General promise that he would appeal any unfavorable ruling back to them to give them the opportunity to be the hero. And so they were the ones that created this potential opportunity for great PR for themselves that will give them cover for who knows what else they might do in addition to all of the terrible things they've already done. Yeah, it's interesting because John Roberts is a very political individual, and he's not a very good political individual, but he tries to be one. And so I can see in his simple-minded view where he's like, we're going to do all these terrible things, and then we're going to head into Fourth of July break with this decision that will cause everyone want to say, see, all those liberals who want to expand the court and do term limits and say we're a bunch of MAGA shills are wrong.

34:36And then there will be a series of legal pundits who will then applaud John Roberts and he will ride off into the sunset as a hero, right? I mean, you say he's simple minded and not that great. But the end of your sentence, I just think is correct. When the court, if and when the court rules against birthright citizenship, there will be all of those takes and people talking about how the court has stood up to the president and isn't just in the bag for MAGA and isn't on board with all of Trump's agenda. And therefore, you libs and you progressives who want to reform the court, what would you do if Donald Trump could reform the court when he disagreed with it?

35:13Like that there's going to be so much of that. But those takes are why America's most popular, influential Supreme Court podcast exists, right? Like you will be You, Kate Mussel, will be on that wall fighting back against that. I know that. Yes. I mean, we have been screaming about this for over a year at this point. And trust in the Supreme Court is at an all-time low. So don't think you have not put your shoulder to the wheel of history. Yes. Yes. Send strict scrutiny to more friends challenge. Yes. But no, I mean, it's not to say it's going to work, but it is going to generate some of the coverage that they want.

35:52and it's just going to be annoying as fuck when it does. Yes. So let's say, hypothetically, this is a 7-2 decision and Alito and Thomas or whoever else, they are against it. Can you fathom in your brain what that argument would be? It is hard to find something as plain text as this with as a simple and specific application as this. Obviously, freedom of speech is in there, but then there are all kinds of different applications you can take on it. This is basically like, if this happens, you are a citizen. And Trump administration is arguing, if this happens, you are not a citizen. What is the legal argument someone could muster, as bullshit and fake as it would be, that would say that birthright citizenship is not a lot, that could be curtailed or stopped by an administration?

36:44Yes. So having ventured into the dark recesses of right-wing legal circles, I can offer you at least two. One would be to say that there is a recognized exception for birthright citizenship, that birthright citizenship does not extend to the children of invading armies. If, for example, Canada decided to invade the United States and officers who participated in that invasion had children born in the United States while they did so, then those children would not be citizens of the United States. And some on the right have argued that unauthorized immigration is the equivalent of an invasion of the United States, you know, borrowing on great replacement theory and other white nationalist tropes.

37:31And so one possible legal theory is the justices could equate unlawful, unauthorized immigration with an invasion and say children who are born to individuals without legal status in the United States are the equivalent of the children of invading armies. That's one possibility. Another possibility is the court basically reads the exceptions to be the rule. So the phrase, as we were talking about in the 14th Amendment, is all persons born and naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens. And part of that exception recognizes that children of foreign diplomats, For example, you know, they are not born as United States citizens, just like children of invading armies aren't United States citizens.

38:16And so part of the federal government's argument is to basically take those quite narrow exceptions and generalize them into a rule that basically swallows the rule of birthright that says, well, individuals whose parents don't have an allegiance to the United States, their children can't be citizens. And so those are two possible avenues. Both are ridiculous and I think rest on underlying racist tropes about who is sufficiently American that birthright citizenship was intended to rebut. That's exactly what Dred Scott versus Sanford did when it concluded that individuals who were descendants of enslaved persons couldn't be citizens because they, too, weren't American enough and didn't have allegiance to the United States, et cetera, et cetera.

39:06But I think that those are two of the theories that are on hand. That's very dark and very disturbing. And thank you for visiting the dark side to share that with us. I think it's also notable that maybe this decision will come out right about the time the United States World Cup team is playing in the knockout round, where the leading scorer of the World Cup team is someone who has their citizenship through birthright citizenship. Just a fact for that. Now, obviously, if they were to rule this, I know we're in a dark hypothetical place here. It wouldn't be – would they make it retroactive? So this is part of the uncertainty.

39:42You know, the administration developed guidance about how they would implement the birthright order, but courts blocked that before the order would take effect. So we don't know whether the Supreme Court would say those injunctions vacated individuals who were born in the United States after this executive order was promulgated. They are not citizens. We don't know whether the court would say, no, this just applies prospectively now that we have said it can be enforced. it's all TBD, this new lawless, very uncertain era. It's all up for grabs.

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42:53So looking at the other cases that are out there and there's still some pretty big ones. So there is one involving a ban on trans participation in youth sports. There is one about whether the president was able to fire Lisa Cook from the Fed board. And then there are two election cases. Am I missing any other big ones out there? Are those the ones? Those are the ones that I would say are the big ones. Well, so when you said Lisa Cook, it's not just a case about Lisa Cook. There's also a case about whether Trump can fire the head of the Federal Trade Commission and all other independent agencies.

43:28Are those cases joined or are they two separate cases? They're not joint. They're two separate cases. Okay. Can you maybe explain those two cases for us? Sure. Yeah. So one case involves whether Donald Trump can fire a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission and all other independent agencies that are led by these independent multi-member commissions, like the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or you name it, National Labor Relations Board, etc. The Federal Reserve or is that separate? Well, the Federal Reserve is that separate case because what happened is earlier in the Trump administration, Trump fired a bunch of these heads of multi-member commissions, even though the Supreme Court has a case that's nearly a century's old that says Congress can limit the president's ability to fire the heads of these multi-member commissions, specifically the Federal Trade Commission.

44:20So Donald Trump fired people in violation of these laws. And the Supreme Court said, actually, we'll let him do that while the litigation is ongoing because we Supreme Court have decided to adopt this great new rule. It's called the unitary executive theory. And it means the president gets to have near plenary power to fire people who exercise significant executive power. But then they added a sentence, accept the Federal Reserve Board, because that has a distinct historical tradition in the tradition of the Bank of the United States. That bespoke Fed exception, of course, illustrated that their new unitary executive rule was catastrophic immediately once it would be unleashed onto the world because it would give the president the power to effectively blow up the United States and global economy.

45:09But that didn't give them pause. Instead, they just created that bespoke exception. And so what did Donald Trump do? He went ahead and tried to fire a governor of the Federal Reserve Board because, you know, when you give a fascist a cookie, what happens, right? They try to take another cookie. So then the Supreme Court ended up with these pair of cases. And one set of cases asks, is it constitutional for Congress to attempt to limit the president's ability to fire the heads of these multi-member commissions? That's a hugely important case because if the court hands the president that power, they will be giving him the power to control these agencies that exercise such sweeping powers over our lives, over government contracts, over whether corporations have to comply with the law.

45:54Federal Trade Commission, for example, they police Amazon. They police antitrust law. If you tell the president you can fire people who don't enforce antitrust law the way you want them to, that's allowing him to give murders to his friends and penalize his enemies. So that case is super consequential. But they also have that case about Lisa Cook. And that case asks, well, given that this statute does limit the president's ability to fire Lisa Cook, did the president comply with those limitations? So I don't want the Cook case to kind of obscure the significance of the other case, which will affect every other independent agency.

46:34Let me ask a question on the independent agency case. Now, the president gets to appoint the heads of all of these jobs, right? And they are approved by the Senate. And the reason the president can't just fire them like he could fire his secretary of Homeland Security or whatever else is because the way the law was written says they can only fire him for cause. Is that what it is? Yep, because Congress decided these agencies would just run better if they were somewhat insulated from politics and relied more on expertise. And then the question before the court is whether the president's inherent executive authority override that whether the Congress does not have the constitutional authority to hem in that specific executive authority.

47:17Right. Exactly. Whether the Constitution entitles the president to say you're fired no matter what Congress says. OK. And then the possible exception of the Fed because of its unique tradition. Because the justices have stock portfolios. Yes, exactly. They're all quite wealthy. And Clarence Thomas has several very close friends who need that money to send him on vacation and elsewhere. Exactly. Private jet fuel. Don't pay for itself, Dan. OK. All right. Let's get to the Transports case. This one, if I remember correctly, from the oral arguments earlier this year, seemed quite dire in what we thought the court would read.

47:54But maybe talk about that case. And if there's any, you see any hope here? Yeah. So this case is about whether state laws that effectively ban transgender athletes from participating in sports violate either Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs or educational institutions, and also whether these state laws violate the federal constitution's guarantee of equal protection. The oral argument in the cases was awful. The lawyer for the federal government, who, of course, was arguing in support of these state law bans and against trans athletes, said one of the more grotesque things I think that has ever been said at the Supreme Court lectern when he referred to trans athletes as males who take performance enhancing drugs.

48:45And I just don't think there's any question that the six Republican appointees are going to say these state laws are consistent with Title IX. The only lingering question is whether they're also going to say these state laws are constitutional or whether they will instead send the case back to the lower court to decide that constitutional question, perhaps with some additional fact finding. I honestly think that is the best we can hope for at this point. And the other thing to watch for is whether you get separate writings that say not only does Title IX permit states to ban trans athletes from participating in sports, potentially it requires states and schools to ban trans athletes from participating in sports.

49:32So that's kind of the spectrum of possibilities. It's very bleak. Yeah. So we have two sort of major things that, I guess, go beyond sports participation, right? One is suggesting that Title IX would require some measure of discrimination against trans people, whether that could be in anything involving education, right? Funding, scholarships across the board, right? So that's one. That seems quite bad. And then even worse, I would imagine, is making some case that – I mean, am I overreading this that the net result of an equal protection finding here would be that trans people have no equal protection rights?

50:15That being trans would not guarantee equal protection rights in the way that being black or a woman or of a certain religious group? Yeah, the danger is the Supreme Court says laws that discriminate against trans people do not trigger any kind of meaningful judicial scrutiny. So courts should just defer to governments that discriminate on the basis of gender identity and give those laws a pass. Given the extent to which states and the federal government have been trying to erase trans people and strip trans people of their rights, that would be a really concerning development because it would make challenging all of those laws or policies that are anti-trans in court.

50:59Could Congress then, in a different world with a different Congress and a different president, do something to address that by passing laws that would guarantee, like either amending Title IX or like what would a Congress do that would solve that problem? Potentially, yes. So Congress could enact a statute. Maybe the statute itself just prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender identity, no matter the context, in school and elsewhere. Maybe Congress creates a spending program that says, look, if you receive any federal funds, you have to promise not to discriminate on the basis of gender identity.

51:36Those are two possibilities. And yet I am left with but the Supreme Court. I cannot rule out the possibility that this court would invalidate those laws, maybe saying, well, they exceed Congress's powers. Maybe the court would say, well, those laws actually discriminate on the basis of sex in violation of the federal constitution. You know, maybe the court would say they had another spending clause decision. This is one of the other awful decisions from this week where they basically said spending programs can't be enforced against the state officials who are carrying them out. So maybe they would make those spending conditions effectively toothless.

52:13But there are things Congress could do. But basically anything Congress could do that is good requires a different Supreme Court. Yeah, which is that's true of all. That is true of all things. All things, yes. It was stipulated, agreed to. We have to deal with that. Yeah. The Supreme Court is also considering a Mississippi law that allows the five-day grace period for mail-in ballots received after Election Day to be counted. This law is, of course, being challenged by the RNC. And this has implications both for Mississippi and perhaps more broadly, like in California now, where Spencer Pratt, who is a MAGA favorite, his chance spot in the runoff went away as more votes came in.

52:52And so talk a little bit about this case and if it has broader implications for this grace period for mail-in balloting, which is Trump is trying to write an executive order to try to stop the Postal Service from delivering mail-in ballots, although that was stopped by federal courts. Just talk a little bit about what's going on there. Yeah. So the challenge here, the Republican National Committee says this federal law that creates Election Day as this first Tuesday in November, that prohibits states from counting ballots that are received after Election Day, even if they were postmarked on or by Election Day.

53:25If the Supreme Court adopts that theory, that would nullify or change how votes are counted in 29 some states. And of course, we are a few months away from the midterms. I think there's a real concern that changing the rules of the election at this point would put state and local election officials in a really tough spot because they have already begun to prepare to administer the election in accordance with what their state rules are now. And requiring them to all of a sudden change on a dime because the Supreme Court like read Election Day to be this magical unicorn of a date on which everything but only some things have to be completed by would be hugely destabilizing.

54:07I also think it would create a lot of voter confusion and chaos that could potentially lead to voter suppression and people not actually returning their ballots and whatnot. So I am very concerned about that case just because of its potential destabilizing and sweeping implications and also because of what it might invite next. If the Supreme Court says states can't count ballots that are received after Election Day, why can states count ballots that are received before Election Day? If Election Day is this magical day that everything is supposed to happen by, why can they count ballots after Election Day even if the ballots were received before Election Day?

54:48So part of what is so concerning about this case is it could call into question so many established voting practices that we have just taken for granted in addition to fucking with the midterms. And the sea change here potentially is that the courts to date have given states, because of the Constitution, wide latitude in how they conduct their elections. And many of the cases that have been thrown out, even some Trump cases in 2020, are based on that principle that the Constitution grants the states to do it. They have to do it in accordance with the Constitution. But beyond that, you want to do your election all by mail?

55:25You can do that. You want to count them, you want to count ones that arrive after election day, but are postmarked before, you can do that. But that could, that could open the door to other things going forward here. Potentially. So even though states, of course, have the general authority to run elections, Congress can establish rules regarding federal elections. Now, the president can't. So all of his unhinged theories about what he can and can't do and what he does and doesn't want, right, I think are still wildly illegal no matter what the Supreme Court says in this absentee ballot case. But this federal law that just, again, creates an election day in no way displaces how states have conducted elections for years.

56:11And so I think the challenge is what other challenges to other state laws this theory would invite in addition to the position it would put state and local election officials in the lead up to the midterm elections. And it probably is worth noting that the people who are probably most disenfranchised with this are military members serving overseas, which are where a lot of the ballots come from that show up after Election Day. That is indeed true. Indeed, the practice of voting outside of Election Day partially originated during the Civil War to ensure that Union soldiers would not be disenfranchised.

56:45There is always a possibility that the Republican appointees announce no ballots can be counted after Election Day if they're received after Election Day, except for overseas uniformed officers. Now, that might not protect the families of people who are stationed overseas and whatnot. And that would also create its own form of chaos. But who knows?

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58:19The other case is actually one that has gotten very little attention, but this actually has potentially dramatic impacts. In fact, some have said that this case, which involves how whether party committee, parties can coordinate with candidates, would be the biggest campaign finance decision since Citizens United, which is saying a lot because we've had cases like McCutcheon and others in the middle here. Also in the oral arguments here did not seem particularly encouraging. So maybe try to explain this case to people and why they should care about it. Yeah. So it sounds technical because it's a challenge to what's called a coordination limit, as you were saying, which is a political party's ability to coordinate how they spend their money with a candidate.

59:05It effectively amounts to a ban on political parties donating money to a candidate because if they coordinate, they're effectively giving the money to the candidate to decide how it could be spent. And there is a concern that if you say, well, contribution limits, actually those might be unconstitutional, that is like the last remaining vestige of campaign finance law. Because even as the Supreme Court has opened up these pathways for corporations, super PACs to spend an unlimited amount of their own money doing their own advertising, they have not yet struck down limitations on billionaires and corporations' ability to give money directly to candidates.

59:57And once you start saying actually contribution limits, those are no good either, then that invites individuals giving directly money to candidates. And I think that's one of the big concerns about this case. Yeah, like in practical consideration, right? So there's two things. There's what this case would mean right now and how elections are conducted today. And then there is the larger question about whether contribution limits at all are now a violation of free speech, which leads to instead of Elon Musk writing 100 spending$132 million or whatever it was to in a series of outside groups to elect Donald Trump, he just gives Donald Trump$132 million.

1:00:35Cut out the middleman. Yes, that seems bad. But just like as you think about it now, you can give about$7 ,000 to a candidate, half in the primary, half in the general, as an individual, whether you are you or me or Elon Musk. That's the most we can give directly to Graham Plattner, John Ossoff, Roy Cooper, whoever else. You can give – an individual can give$132 ,000,$132 ,900 to the DNC or the RNC. And so now, instead of giving my$7 ,000, my little over$7 ,000 to Graham Plattner, I just give$132 ,000 to the DNC. And then they spend that on behalf of this matters more in presidential campaigns than it does anything else, because that's where we spend directly.

1:01:22But it does have big implications and just once again, gives more power to rich people. This is almost certainly going to the court will approve this. This is in line with every other decision they've made since John Roberts became the chief justice. And the Trump administration isn't even defending the law here. They are on the other side of it because it's the NRSC, the National Public and Senatorial Committee, is the plaintiff in the case. So this one is – this is a big mess. This is one for election nerds are paying a lot of attention to and people who work on elections. But they get some pretty big implications for what else is to come in our politics.

1:01:59Yeah, completely. Because in the short term, it would just rapidly increase the amount of money that rich individuals can give directly to candidates. But then in the longer term, it potentially opens up a pathway for no limits at all. There is a small outside chance that the court says there's no actual controversy here and the case is moot and they don't decide it. But that is the best scenario. I mean, look, I mean, this Supreme Court, there's always hope, right? Like, yeah, give them that. One thing they've earned is the benefit of the doubt. All right. Before we go, I want to hit on Roe v.

1:02:30Wade. this past week was the four-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, which overturned the Roe v. Wade decision. The legacy of that decision continues to live in our lives, in our politics, everywhere. It is coming up in this main Senate race where Susan Collins is running against Grant Plattner. And she got asked about it on Fox News. I wanted to play the clip and get your reaction to it. You held up for quite some time on your vote of support for now Justice Kavanaugh. Is this an issue that you think is troublesome for you in this race now that Roe v. Wade was overturned in Maine, across the country?

1:03:09Well, first of all, let me make clear that I disagreed with the Supreme Court's six to three decision overturning Roe v. Wade. But the fact is that whether Justice Kavanaugh were confirmed or not, Roe v. Wade would have been overturned given the six to three vote. Not true, Sam Alito says. Could you maybe explain where Susan Collins has her facts wrong on this one? Where to start? There's so much to potentially say about this. I am going to step out of the way and let you go. OK, we'll start with the factual inaccuracies. Had Justice Kavanaugh not been confirmed, there were not five votes to overrule Roe versus Wade.

1:03:56Chief Justice Roberts did not vote to overrule Roe versus Wade. He instead voted to change the legal test in a way that would have expanded state's ability to restrict abortion more so than they could have done before the decision, but not to the point of overruling Roe versus Wade. So that's just factually inaccurate. There were just five justices who voted to overrule Roe. And just to be clear, she confirmed the fifth justice. And she confirmed Brett Kavanaugh, exactly. who was one of those five. So facts, not so great. Second, I absolutely just despise this framing of I disagree with the court's decision.

1:04:34I don't regret my vote. Because it just makes me wonder what great things has Brett Kavanaugh done that make the loss of women's lives, their fertility, their health worth it? Like how many women have to lose their lives for you to conclude that actually, maybe you do regret your vote. So that is just horrifying. And then there's this sense that maybe she, you know, made this decision, but it didn't really affect Mainers, which is also wrong, because, you know, people who live in Maine, which still has abortion access, might travel. And sometimes people experience medical emergencies that might require medical care, including abortion care.

1:05:19And if you're traveling in a state where after Roe abortion is banned, you're potentially in a circumstance where you could not receive medical care. Add to that the fact that the medication abortion rulings potentially jeopardize access to medication abortion, even in states like Maine that want to protect abortion. And I just think she is really papering over so many of the horrific consequences that her vote to confirm the fifth vote to overrule Roe have had. And it just one of the more tragic things about the 2024 presidential election is I think people came away from it thinking, well, actually, the Republican Party isn't going to bear any consequences for overruling Roe.

1:06:00And the public has just decided not to force them to pay a price for, again, the loss of lives, health, fertility, more that we have seen in the wake of Roe being overruled. And I hope that is not the case. I hope that in 2026, you know, people who enable this post-Roe landscape are held accountable. But it is just very depressing. I think anytime I think about the fact that people just decided to give a bunch of politicians a pass for what they have unleashed on people in this country. So let me, can I give the counterpoint to that? Yeah, let's do it. Because I just talked, I talked about this on Polar Coaster this past week because of the anniversary of Dobbs.

1:06:51And what is really interesting about the polling on this is abortion was a very divisive issue in this country up until the moment of Dobbs. Yeah. And the number of Americans who consider themselves pro-choice had reached an all-time high right after Dobbs. and four years later has stayed the same. It has not gone down as obviously in that immediate aftermath and in that election year in 2022, as these republic states are rushing to pass their bills, abortion was the number one issue in politics. It was discussed everywhere. People were dealing with, it was just a topic of conversation. As it's dropped in salience, it has not changed the politics of, which I think is very, very positive and creates the path for accountability for these people.

1:07:30And there are opportunities in 2026 to hold these people accountable. You have Susan Collins. Yes. You have Ken Paxton. You have an array of officials in Ohio, right? In a whole bunch of other states that passed some of the most, the cruelest and most retrograde reproductive rights laws in this country can all pay the price. Everyone should go to votesaveamerica.com to figure out how to do that. But I really do believe Donald Trump was this unicorn figure because even though he is the person other than Susan Collins, most responsible for Roe being overturned. No one actually believed that he truly was anti-choice.

1:08:09I remember in focus groups, people would say, if you asked in a focus group if Donald Trump was anti-abortion or anti-choice, they would laugh. They would say that Donald Trump probably paid for abortions. He believes in nothing. Yeah. I mean, here's a guy who cheated on all his wives, sleeps around. He's a disgusting cat. He's from Manhattan. Obviously, he doesn't care about abortion. That is not true for the rest of his republic. It's certainly not true of Ken Paxton, who is a principal architect of that law and the enforcement of that law. There are opportunities to hold people accountable here.

1:08:43I do believe that Dobbs did not bear fruit in 2024 because of a long list of unique circumstances that bedeviled that election that we don't have to get into, but was a fundamental signature moment that changed politics in this country in ways that will ensure those people are held accountable and more and more states will elect the right people to put in place laws. And maybe one day we'll have a Supreme Court that can undo the damage that was done there. I very much hope you are correct. And I just worry that I have rarely gone wrong in estimating the amount of misogyny that Americans will tolerate in their politics.

1:09:26Yes. Yes. And again, I very much hope you are right. May it be the case. And we have the ability to impact that ourselves. Yes. Right now. Everyone has to go to impact that. In many different ways. Yes. Whether that is like calling your officials to remind them that actually you do care about abortion access and reproductive rights. Are your senators confirming nominees, giving blue slips to nominees, right, who you don't think will protect reproductive freedom? John Kedemann, for instance, yes. You know, not naming names, but someone who is on the ballot in 2028 will face the primary challenge.

1:10:02Yes. Yes. Or, again, electing officials, helping to get out the vote to help elect officials who will protect reproductive freedom and to vote against people who didn't. All of those are ways to make this happen. And I think we kind of need to make reproductive freedom a salient issue, I think, as part of protecting democracy. Like you can't really separate these two things. Nope. So yeah, fingers crossed. See, that seems, what was perhaps not the most optimistic and hopeful pod that we've done in Pod Save America for the last many years, although quite insightful, interesting, and entertaining, I would say.

1:10:36Maybe we can end on that positive-ish note. Leah Lippman, thanks so much for joining us. And everyone, check out Strict Scrutiny. You guys can have another podcast out this week, on Monday, with talking about some decisions, and then maybe more, depending on what we hear from the rest of the court. Is that right? That is all correct. A new episode on Monday, and then likely additional episodes whenever the Supreme Court does fuck knows what. Yeah. Leah, thank you so much. Thanks. Thanks, Aaliyah, for stopping by. John, John, and Tommy will be backing your feed with a new episode on Tuesday. Bye, everyone.

1:11:05Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Reed Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pellaviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Thank you.