Dan and guest co-host Annika Brockschmidt discuss "Stand Your Ground Laws" in the wake of more shootings in the USA. They outline the catch 22 of perpetual fear that people live in as "wrong place, wrong time" murders rise in the country.
They then turn their attention to the onslaught of authoritarian legislative violence in Florida, including a law that would take children away from parents for giving them gender-affirming care.
And then, finally, to SCOTUS and the abortion pill case - as well as the multitude of controversies surrounding Clarence Thomas.
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Hello and welcome to Straight Wide American Jesus.
I am one of your hosts, Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
I am joined today not by Brad Onishi, who could not be with us, but by my guest co-host, who I will allow to introduce herself, though she will be familiar to many listeners.
Hi, I'm Annika Brockschmidt.
I'm a German... I'll do that again.
I'm Annika Brockschmidt.
I'm a German journalist and author, mainly focusing on white Christian nationalism and right-wing extremism in the US, but also in Europe.
And I'm very happy to be here.
Yes, and I will say that Annika has been very tolerant of my issue with time zones and things today, so we're delighted to be here.
I am not one to talk on that.
Yeah, we were discussing before the show that we are both humanists, humanities people, and it's because we can't do basic math, among other things, and so the time zones are just a problem.
So thank you, Annika.
Of course.
I do want to say one last time, I think before it starts, that we have the series, or excuse me, the seminar by Sarah Mosliner, starting with Straight White American Jesus here, I believe in the next week or so.
So if folks are interested in that, check it out.
Go to the website, straightwhiteamericanjesus.com, and they can learn more about that.
Sarah's work is fantastic.
She's one of the kind of world experts on American purity culture and what that means.
So just let people know about that.
Onaga, diving into yet another week of cheerful American news, and I always appreciate having a perspective from outside of the U.S.
because I think a lot of people don't realize, I don't know, how notable and kind of weird, not in a good way sometimes, we as a country are with some of the things that we're dealing with.
A topic we talked about last week, we introduced it, but it's back this week, was the issue of yet more shootings.
We talked about in Texas briefly, Governor Abbott promising that he was going to pardon a man convicted of shooting a Black Lives Matter protester.
We want to talk some more about that this week, as well as some of the new developments to that, as well as the way that that leads into and connects to a number of other shootings that occurred this week.
So I'm going to throw it to you to sort of lead us in on that and walk us through some of the issues with Abbott and this promised pardon of the protester, the person who killed the Black Lives Matter protester, who I should add was a white man.
So it's a white man shot another white person who was a Black Lives Matter protester.
Yeah so and this happened in 2020 and Daniel Perry is the name of the guy who shot Garrett Foster who was attending a Black Lives Matter protest with his fiancée who he was pushing in her wheelchair at the time.
They're both army people Which I found an interesting detail.
So I think Perry was still part of the army and the killed man was an Air Force vet.
So there's been a lot of writing that's been done about this because similarly to the Rittenhouse case, Perry and his defenders ...are claiming that he acted in self-defense.
Anyway, he was convicted by a jury of murder.
And then Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, took to Twitter and tweeted out, "I'm working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sergeant Perry." And he makes a reference to Texas' Stand Your Ground laws.
And that's quite stunning in itself, because Perry hasn't even been sentenced.
But in tweeting this out, Abbott has basically signaled to him and to every other right-winger, basically with an itchy trigger finger, that if you shoot a Black Lives Matter protester in Texas, Even if they convict you, he will pardon you even if you've been found guilty by a jury of your peers.
And we should also say that this is not a one-off.
This is not just Greg Abbott, you know.
Just going crazy.
This is not the first time that a prominent GOP figure, because also let's remember, Greg Abbott is still rumored to want to run for president.
Don't know if he will announce, but he clearly seems to be putting himself out there to sort of prove to the MAGA crowd that he is the most radical one out there.
Trying to out right-wing DeSantis, trying to out right-wing Trump.
And he is not the first GOP politician who has expressed their support for right-wingers who kill their political enemies.
You guys have covered the Kyle Rittenhouse case extensively.
Who, unlike Perry, was acquitted.
So we have this new escalation here in Perry actually being convicted.
There was a case of an Arizona rancher who was charged with murdering an illegal immigrant.
His trial is set to start in September.
All of these people have basically We've gotten praise from right-wing figures such as Greg Abbott.
But Abbott, you know, went even one step further and has also since not taken back his promise because we've heard revelations since.
We now know that Daniel Perry had texted and written to friends on social media extensively about his desire to kill black people, to kill protesters, to specifically kill Black Lives Matter protesters.
So, this action was already inexcusable from Abbott, but of course he's not backpedaling and I don't think we should expect him to.
He has no reason to because this was a clear case already.
This was not a controversial ruling and I think you're going to tell us some more about that and the whole stand your ground issue.
Yeah, so we talked about this some, but I think it still comes in and is important as we talk about these other shootings that I'll get to in just a minute.
And people, I know some will be like, Dan, you talk about this a lot.
Yes, I do, because it just blows my mind that something as illogical as the stand your ground rules, excuse me, laws come into place.
Because again, I'm not a legal expert, but the way that they work is this.
It's basically the idea that if you feel threatened, by somebody.
Number one, there's no obligation to try to avoid a confrontation, right?
You don't have to try to leave the area or go somewhere safe or drive away.
You can stand your ground.
And that means that if you feel threatened, you can respond appropriately or proportionately, they say.
But of course, what does that mean?
Well, he looked threatening to me, so maybe I hit him.
But But what happens if he hits you back?
Oh, well, then I had to pull a knife.
Or what if he does?
Or no matter what, it escalates.
The logical conclusion of Stand Your Ground laws is somebody's death.
All you have to do is provoke them in some way to respond to you uncomfortably.
And there it is.
It's this kind of escalation.
And I brought this up last week.
The fact that a jury found him guilty Despite the fact that there was a stand your ground law that was being used in the defense and so forth indicates that that it was a pretty clear cut case.
And so Abbott, you know, sort of undermines all of this.
What I think is the other piece that brings us into the other, I think, really dark shooting news from this week is that, of course, not only do we have stand your ground laws, I mean, this would be like imagine this in like a school ground, like a schoolyard playground, I get the occasional email from my kid's teacher saying that, you know, my kid got frustrated at recess and like these kids shoved each other or something.
And it turns into a whole thing.
We don't teach our kids this way.
We just keep escalating it and letting it go.
But we also don't give our kids guns.
We also don't have a virtually unregulated saturation of guns in this country so that we can really guarantee that standing your ground is going to mean that somebody is going to use deadly force.
And what I think stands out to me about this is that it's not just the fact of the law, it's the way that I think the law shapes our perceptions of reality.
When we walk around looking for constant threats and carrying weapons that are intended to defend us against a threat, I think we start to perceive threats everywhere.
There's that old saying that when your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I think it's similar with guns and the perception of threats.
And I think we should probably add, because I don't think we said it yet, that both Daniel Perry and the man he killed, they were both armed.
They were both legally carrying.
So this is exactly this case that you're talking about.
Here's two people with guns.
The guy who ended up being murdered by Perry, he wasn't aiming at Perry.
And yet, Perry uses this defense, and we see this over and over, and we see this in the cases that we're going to talk about now, of people citing this perceived threat to their life, which kind of is stuck in this catch-22, you know?
Yeah, you're exactly right.
And so here's what we're talking about.
So this week, there were multiple accounts of people who were shot Just because they made a mistake and weren't in the place they thought they were going to be.
Probably the best known at this point, and most people will probably have heard of this, was in Kansas City, a 16-year-old named Ralph Yarle.
He rang the wrong doorbell.
He was going to a house to pick up his kid, and I'm not going to know the name of the town, but it was like such and such circle, and he went to such and such street, right?
And so it was the same house number and so forth.
Rings the doorbell and is shot from inside the property multiple times by- Through the door?
Through the door, yeah, by an elderly white man.
Yarl is African-American.
The person who shot him has now been charged.
But he claimed that he was scared because this person was ringing the doorbell.
But he's ringing the doorbell.
He's not attacking him.
He's not threatening him.
He's ringing the doorbell.
In upstate New York, a 20-year-old named Kaylin Gillis, a white woman, was shot and killed after pulling into the wrong driveway.
Everybody raise your hand if you've pulled into the wrong driveway at some point in your life, or if you've used the driveway to turn around because you realize you're lost, or whatever.
And the accounts I read say she was actually pulling out.
Like, she was pulling out of the driveway, and she was shot by somebody who, for whatever reason, Presumably felt threatened by this.
Another example is a man named Pedro Rodriguez, who was 25, who shot two teenage cheerleaders in a grocery store parking lot after one of them confused his car for hers and opened the door.
I, once upon a time, picking my kid up from school and walking back to my car, I open it, I sit down and I realize that it's not my car.
Like I was in somebody else's car that looked like mine.
My child is embarrassed and, you know, whatever, but I didn't have to fear for my life.
Where am I going with all this?
So here's my kind of hypothesis, and I'll throw it over to you, Anika, in a minute and see what you think about this, is I don't think these are all homicidal maniacs that are just terrible people out looking to shoot somebody.
I think when they say that they're afraid, they really are afraid.
But here's my issue, and this is why I think this problem is so intractable, They didn't have any reason to be afraid.
These people weren't trespassing.
They weren't doing anything threatening.
They had no connection to the people who shot them at all.
And yet, I think the people who shot them felt fear.
They felt fear because somebody was pulling into the wrong driveway, because somebody rang their doorbell, because somebody in the grocery store parking lot opened the wrong car door.
And this is my point.
This is what I think is going on, as I say.
Your only tool is a hammer.
Everything looks like a nail.
The irony of this notion that guns will make us safer.
We all need guns to protect ourselves.
We want guns to feel secure and so forth.
And yet, I think it actually breeds insecurity.
The very fact that everybody's walking around strapped all the time means that every misstep that somebody makes is perceived as a possible threat.
We're sort of keyed to the fact that threats are everywhere.
We need to be armed.
And so we start perceiving threats where they don't exist.
And I think that this is true on the range from, you know, stand your ground laws, all the way down to these everyday encounters or what should have been everyday encounters that turned deadly for somebody.
And that's the connection I see between these is the pervasiveness of gun culture in the U.S.
But the way that I feel like that culture really changes the way that we collectively perceive Other people and the society we live in.
Yeah, your thoughts on these other shootings and the events as you read about them and learned about them this week.
What I thought was really startling and really sort of chilling to me was that in all of these cases that we've now talked about, that you've listed, one common denominator seems to be that none of the people pulling the trigger Waited for even a second before shooting.
So I pulled up this quote from the person who was shot at in Austin, where the suspect, a 25-year-old man called Pedro Terro Rodriguez Jr.,
is also said to have simply opened fire and he says, the victim says, quote, this is according to CNN, I see the guy get out of the passenger door and I rolled my window down and I was trying to apologize to him and then halfway my window was down and he just threw his hands up and then he pulled out a gun and he just started shooting at all of us.
So, I thought this was really something because it's, I don't think it's, I think the fear is one aspect, but the fear seems to have become so internalized that, and it is in part real, you know, being afraid because you know that Because of lax gun laws, there's a lot of guns around you and another person could potentially have a deadly weapon on them.
That is likely to escalate conflicts.
But it seems that there was not even a conflict here.
These people weren't like in interaction with each other.
But what these shootings seem to have had in common is that the shooters weren't even willing to let a situation play out for even a couple of seconds, you know?
These are shootings that happen immediately in sort of fairly unassuming, uncritical situations.
And I think I think we really get down to the core of the problem when, yes, of course, it's the guns, it's the number of guns, but it's also how gun culture has been promoted, I would say, especially in right-wing spaces where there are way more
You know, there's way more guns on the right than on the left, and you have the gun on the one hand as this sort of tool that's supposed to reassure you, you know, but you also have the gun because you've been told over and over and over again by, you know, it's not just Fox, it's the whole media circus on the right, by telling you the world is out not just to get you, the world is out to kill you.
You need to defend yourself at all times.
And this is something that I think shows that a society is on track to a very dark place.
When, you know, we know this problem when it comes to police training that, and I think this especially as a European or as a German, don't get me wrong, we have problems with German police brutality here as well, but German police officers get trained to Not to kill, you know.
They get trained, if they have to shoot, which is, you know, it's quite a rare thing that a police gun gets even fired here, but if they do shoot, they're supposed to aim for the limbs, they're not supposed to kill.
It still happens sometimes.
But having police officers trained to kill, if you shoot, you want to see, quote unquote, the enemy, the other person, the supposed threat to die.
But this seems a further escalation because you have now civilians who are shooting to kill.
And this, in combination to the ever more sort of frayed political political situation in the US, and at the same time seeing where the rhetoric on the right is going, seeing things like Abbott promising a pardon, basically a blanket pardon, signaling to his supporters, this is fine, this is cool.
That's essentially state-sanctioned, you know, that's state-sanctioned violence, extra police state-sanctioned violence, which It's quite a scary place to be as a society, so I can only say, looking across the pond, this was quite a harrowing week, because there doesn't seem to be a way to de-escalate this anyway soon.
No, I think that's true.
I'm going to have us pause for a break, and then we're going to pick up on this theme of fear, because I think it is something that cuts through into the next topic we want to discuss.
Let's just pause for a moment.
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All right.
So coming back to that or from that, this theme of fear, one of the things you talk about this sort of fraught political moment in the U.S. is not just in the U.S.
It occurs other places as well.
But is this the capitalizing on the cultivation of a culture of fear, not just that there are people afraid of X or Y or Z, but actively sort of cultivating that.
And one of the places we see increasingly, we talk about it a lot on the show, Brad and I talk about it.
We're like, we're not going to talk about Florida this week, but then every week, like Florida's back because Florida has become this kind of authoritarian sort of training ground.
So just, just this week, people are familiar with some of this.
But the so-called don't say gay legislation in Florida was expanded to where now the Florida Board of Education approved a ban on classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in all grades with the exceptions of where it's required for state standards We can talk about coherence and incoherence.
I have no idea how you teach to state standards without any reference to any of this, but whatever, we'll get into that.
Um, or if it has to do with part of, of basically optional, uh, reproductive health education, that the parents can opt out.
I'm just going to say that's something that's true everywhere.
Every place that does sex ed, uh, has this option where parents can have their kids removed from that if they want.
Um, the Education Commissioner, Manny Diaz, said that this was, was not intended to, rather it was intended to clarify the law, quote unquote, and to make sure that teachers teach to the standards and not deviate from existing curriculum.
And we are told, of course, that there's no discriminatory intent here, right?
This is all about protecting the children.
We don't want them hearing of foreign things or seeing things and so forth.
But as I think you'll remind us in a minute, and we've talked about some of these, but we can come up with a laundry list of laws that have been passed that target particular groups.
If you want to, as the good journalist that you are, very good at pulling out like these lists of things, remind us for a minute what some of these laws are and sort of what the commonalities of them are.
And I said a minute ago that this is about authoritarianism, that Florida has become a kind of authoritarian testing ground.
Authoritarianism feeds on fear.
And I guess I'll just, I'll have you do this list, but then I want to ask you, is that too strong a word?
Because I know as a journalist, if you use words like authoritarianism or whatever, we use those words.
And of course we'll get the emails that say that's too strong, you're overstating it, you know, whatever.
So walk us through this, this laundry list of what's been going on in Florida.
And talk about that question for a minute, if you would, of like, is authoritarianism a fair description?
Yeah, yeah.
So because there was so much happening in Florida this week, I decided to make a list.
And it is quite something because even if you pay attention to these things, there's so much happening all at once that it feels like it gives you whiplash.
So this is, I always find this quite helpful.
So you already covered last week that DeSantis also signed a draconian six-week abortion ban into law last week.
Then we have this This basically amending of the don't say gay law which at the beginning incidentally was sort of promised to you know this is only about about you know shielding kids from quote-unquote sexualization which is how all of these laws that I'm going to talk about in this segment are being promoted.
It doesn't matter if it's abortion, if it's laws restricting LGBTQ rights, it always gets promoted in the sort of still harrying but sort of more moderate quote-unquote version.
You know, it's not all grades, it's just grades one to four.
Now it's all grades.
So the aim is always you start with You know, just giving the little finger, just saying, oh, this is just to protect the kids.
This, don't worry, this doesn't apply to all ages.
It doesn't apply to, you know, only applies to trans kids.
It's not a ban on gender affirming care for trans adults.
We just want to protect the kids.
This is not a complete abortion ban.
We just want to protect women from making the wrong choices.
We just want to protect, you know, quote unquote, unborn life.
But this is not a blanket abortion ban.
So, another law that was passed, and I saw the news about this today and I had to make sure that this was right.
I checked it, it is actually true.
The Florida legislature also passed a bill, and this might be the worst news I've had all week.
They passed a bill that would allow the state to take trans kids and trans teens away from their parents.
If those parents gave them access to life-saving, gender-affirming care.
Just as a reminder, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who we talked about earlier, had tried a similar thing, I believe last year, but not succeeded.
But he also, that wasn't a law, he just basically wrote up an order and saw that would, you know, impress anybody.
Another thing that the Florida GOP passed is basically, and here's a summary from the Associated Press, the House sent to Senate is another bill that bans children from adult live performance, a proposal aimed at the governor's opposition to drag shows.
The legislation would allow the state to revoke the food and beverage licenses of businesses that admit children to adult performances, The DeSantis administration has moved to pull the liquor licenses of businesses that held drag shows alleging children were present during lewd displays." So here again we have this, oh this is, you know, we're not trying to restrict anybody's freedom, we are protecting the kids.
This is to prevent kids from being sexualized, from having to witness sexual acts that are not appropriate for their age, Then, another point, the House also passed a bill that, quote, will ban people from entering bathrooms other than their sex assigned at birth.
So this is a classic bathroom bill, you know, the ones that failed in 2015.
It requires bathrooms in public places to be listed as men, Women or unisex.
What this of course will result in is that once this gets applied in schools, this will, you know, it's classic discrimination.
It's one of the classic types of bills to restrict trans rights that the religious right has tried to push for years.
And you said, is authoritarianism too strong a word?
I don't think it is.
I think there's even a case to be made in all of this and you know that's...
I would be willing to be debated on that, but there is a case to be made that this is not just authoritarianism, but that it is a very specific form of authoritarianism, which is fascism.
Because in authoritarianism, and especially in fascism, you need to have an enemy within.
You know, that's kind of the basic concept.
You need also, in order to make that work, in order to get people afraid, You need a small group.
You need a small group, ideally a marginalized group, to vilify, to mock, you know, because people also want to enjoy themselves.
And people kind of, if you give them license to give in to their worst impulses, something we see a lot in fascism, they enjoy the cruelty that you're giving them license to enjoy.
But you have to also make this small group that's the enemy within into a secret threat.
So they can't just be laughable.
And this, and this is how we tied back to the laws.
This is how authoritarian violence, be it through guns or through laws, gets framed as self-defense.
I'm not doing this to harm people.
I'm doing this to protect the children.
I'm doing this to protect my yard.
I'm doing this to protect this state.
I'm doing this to shield the children.
But what you do is you create a sort of moral arc that allows you and that gives other people, that gives your followers license to do very, very serious harm to the groups that you vilify.
I think all of that.
Sorry.
No, I think all of that is correct.
I think I agree with everything that you just said.
I think this notion of the enemy within, we talk about it with Christian nationalism all the time.
It's about who are the real, in this case, the real Americans.
Who counts as a real American?
And if you can get some group That you can identify as not only not really American, but as a threat to real Americans and then start targeting them.
That's how you make your unity.
And it's fundamentally about fear.
It's about fear of, in this case and lately, so much about trans, queer people broadly, but I think trans and gender nonconforming people in particular.
And it is the ridiculous logic of this that somehow this isn't about attacking them, it's about, you know, defending our rights.
Because as you're saying, it's about positioning them as a threat.
That somehow or another, it's a threat to somebody else if my child, and this isn't real life, as people know, as I've shared, I actually have a trans child, that somehow or another it says anything about the rights of any other parent if My child receives the gender-affirming care that she needs to lead a healthy, happy life.
The only thing, as you mentioned, I mean, it's sort of dark and terrifying to look at Florida and think about, okay, so what if that was at the federal level?
What would that look like?
It can be a sort of terrifying exercise.
Yeah.
One thin sliver of light that I saw this week with that is another set of reporting that came out that suggests that, you know, it's possible that with all of this, and we talked about this, you and I talked about this last time you co-hosted, Brad and I talk about this, of the GOP trying to out-MAGA one another all the time and, you know, more and more, you know, further and further to the right.
You made the same reference with Abbott just a few minutes ago.
But there are signs that DeSantis, who's been kind of leading in this game, may have overplayed his hand somewhat.
There were articles this week that despite the fact that the Florida legislature keeps handing him wins, there's some fatigue in the Florida legislature.
They feel like there are other priorities that aren't taking place, that aren't being addressed.
Some of them feel that it is just a vindictiveness.
Their hypocrisy can kind of only go so far before they begin to feel the effects of that.
You talk about the weird Disney thing.
You had the thing where they took away Disney's special privileges and then Disney apparently like just outsmarted the board and took the teeth away from that.
And now DeSantis is all upset and is vowing that he's going to, you know, do this to Disney anyway.
And there are legislature, legislators rather, who have said, look, number one, this is cancel culture.
I read a quote from one of them that said, we're not supposed to be about cancel culture and now we're trying to cancel Disney and so forth.
Um, DeSantis goes to Washington.
Sounds like, like a, like a movie.
DeSantis goes to Washington.
He goes to try to lay down his mark and show that he's a big national player.
And all the, not all, most of the people from the Florida delegation declined to endorse him.
Uh, some specifically endorsed Trump.
Most played the, we're not sure yet.
And he's not even running for president because of course DeSantis hasn't officially declared that he is running for president.
We all know that all of these kind of moves are out of step with the American general population.
The population as a whole does not support super restrictive abortion laws.
They don't support discrimination against trans and other LGBTQ plus people.
But of course, that's not who MAGA Nation is trying to win.
They're trying to win their grassroots and so forth.
So I took some small measure of hope.
This isn't even my reason for hope.
I'm so hopeful this week that I guess I found hope in two places.
One is This question of whether or not he overplayed his hand and polls are showing that he, the luster has kind of come off of DeSantis a little bit.
Trump is consolidating his lead, perhaps capitalizing on the fact that he has actually run, you know, declared that he's running for president.
You have the rally around the Trump because of the indictments and so forth.
But that's one small measure of hope that I've taken from this.
Final thoughts on Florida and the kind of authoritarian experiment there before we move on to our sort of some final thoughts on some other topics.
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right because, you know, two things can be true at once.
I would say it would be, we should not underestimate the terrifying potential because, you know, this is clearly the playbook and you and I, we don't have to interpret this.
DeSantis has written a whole awful book about it, which I have read much to my, you know, Watch what you do for a job, I can only say regarding that.
But, so this is clearly his, his, his, his goal.
You know, he keeps talking about Florida as a blueprint.
And as a whole, when you talk about the GOP platform, that would make sense.
But, and I think you and Brad, if I remember correctly, you also talked about this a lot, DeSantis just as a human being and as a speaker is incredibly unappealing.
And I think we might be seeing the effects of that.
We might be seeing the effects of somebody who very clearly seems to have ruffled the feathers of his own, you know, fellow state lawmakers and might have overplayed his hand.
Now, that doesn't mean that the overall cause of the GOP is going to change, but it might at least make DeSantis I will honestly say I'm not sure at this point if this keeps going, if he keeps, you know, lagging behind in the polls, if he will announce.
Because the fact that he still hasn't announced, I think, is a pretty good indicator that he knows that this is a risky, risky gamble he's taking.
I would say this is a good sort of half point for hope I would be willing to take here, so I think you're onto something there.
So we're both halfway hopeful on this point.
Yeah, a little bit, a little bit, yeah.
Good, good.
So maybe if we add us together, it's like a half point of hope or something.
Yeah, we can round out, we can round out.
That's right.
So on that hopeful note, pause again for another break here, and we'll come back and tackle SCOTUS.
Let me just, I will just check just to see if something has come down.
Nope.
- Interesting. - Yeah. - On this.
Nope. - Okay.
So we come back and we could not do, I feel like literally there can no longer be a straight white American weekly roundup if we don't talk about SCOTUS somehow.
I have a colleague and friend at another institution who, his area of specialization is SCOTUS confirmation hearings and things about like The history of the Supreme Court and public pressure.
And he talks about when he was in grad school, people were like, nobody's going to care about that.
And it turns out he's become like a hot commodity.
So why is SCOTUS back?
We talked last week about what we called the dueling rulings of these different courts talking about the abortion pill, the name of which I still cannot pronounce fluidly.
So I'm not going to try this week after sounding like I was talking with a mouthful of marbles last week.
Yeah.
But we talked about this, and so now we kind of closed with the newest news last week that the Fifth Circuit had issued this ruling kind of rolling back access to the abortion pill to kind of 2016, 2015 levels and so forth.
We are now, as we record, we were just checking to see if anything happened to see what the Supreme Court is going to do about this, if they are going to stay that ruling, if they're going to let it stand.
But the point is, and lots of observers have made this point, that less than 10 months, or 10 months-ish, less than a year after the Supreme Court struck down Roe, It's back, right?
Abortion is back before the Supreme Court.
And it's been interesting because Brett Kavanaugh, in talking, giving voice to the opinion in that ruling, trotted out a line that the GOP had had for a really, really long time and said, this should be a state decision.
This shouldn't be for judges and the judiciary to decide.
This should be the will of the people by democratically elected legislators and so forth.
We're doing this.
And I've read lots of things, Annika.
Some people, I don't know if he was naive.
I don't know if it was being disingenuous.
I don't know if it was both.
But everybody's like, you could not possibly have thought, SCOTUS, that you were actually going to get out of it that easily.
That you're like, yep, we settled the abortion thing.
States will go do it now and so forth.
Because as everybody knows, immediately anti-abortion activists, who for decades had said it should be a state's right issue, the federal government should get out of the business of deciding laws about abortion and so forth, immediately started trying to find ways to make it into a national ban.
And that's where we are is the issue about this.
One of the questions I have, and I'll throw this out and I'd love to get your response and other thoughts you have on this, is I've talked a lot about how the GOP for a long time courted these radical right movements and what were fringes to gain power, to gain votes, and it sort of unleashed something that they can't put back in the bottle.
There are some who I think would really like to move away from MAGA Nation, and they can't.
And I suspect that there's something similar with the Supreme Court.
You have now, as we've talked about, the culmination of decades of effort From conservative activists to get conservative justices into the Supreme Court, the formation of, you know, legal societies focused on a very specific form of jurisprudence.
Justices who participated in those who actively sought to get their names on lists to be considered and so forth.
They have courted the same politics and specifically the politics of abortion for decades.
They are now in the Supreme Court, and I wonder now if they're facing the same reality that a lot of elected officials are of, we can't just turn this off.
We cannot simply turn off the flow.
And I'm curious if that's a thing that you see, and I'm curious to see, we won't get the answer today, even no matter what the Supreme Court rules, of where this goes.
If the Supreme Court justices stay with this belongs in the state, Or if they stay somewhere else.
And I think all of this speaks to the explicit politicizing of SCOTUS, which we'll pick up in other ways in a few minutes.
But first, your thoughts on just sort of that, on abortion being back before SCOTUS and the significance of that.
Yeah, so I think because you mentioned the question of did the Supreme Court really think that with a Dobbs ruling they would have could, you know, wash their hands of the abortion issue?
And, you know, did they really basically believe their own lie?
Oh, well, this will just go back to the States.
My take on this is that just because just looking at the sort of background that the large majority of the conservative majority has, they knew there would be chaos
And they didn't care because, you know, a lot of people, there's always a lot of talk about, you know, oh, the Republican Party, they've always had to cater to these religious writers, these extremists.
You know, they always kind of, you know, we knew Sarah Palin was there.
All of this is not really news.
But I think because so much of what the right does or what Republican politicians do, Get seen as, you know, they have to pay lip service to these radicals.
It is often overlooked, especially from journalists, that there are some true believers here.
And I think when we look at SCOTUS, you have some true believers sitting on the bench of the highest court of the land.
Because the only reason why they would have ruled in the Dobbs case the way they did right before the midterms, knowing that this would hurt Republicans in the midterms, is because they truly believe that abortion is murder.
They are true believers.
So when it comes to this case now, I read up on what my favorite Supreme Court watchers Analysts have said about this, and the general vibe I got was, and Ellie Mistel tweeted this, I think on the 19th of April, and I think this sums it up pretty perfectly.
He wrote, somebody is writing a very angry dissent and I have no idea if it's Alito or Sotomayor.
So we truly do not know how this will go because That the case is, even at the Supreme Court, is in itself so ludicrous that it's not immediately thrown out, that we have to sort of see and we have to, I guess, sort of wrangle the fact that it is truly possible, I think Brad and you, you and Brad have talked about this in the past, that
You know, John Roberts may be Chief Justice in name, but he is that in name only at this point.
So just as the Republican Party, in whose establishment I think there were lots of people who thought they could control and use extremists, I think, just like the GOP, John Roberts, who, don't get me wrong, is not the moderate that he gets, you know, painted out to be.
It's one of the things that frustrates me to no end when John Roberts is called the moderate.
He is a die-hard conservative with some, in my opinion, very anti-small-D democratic views when it comes to You know, voting and everything else.
But I truly do believe that he has lost control.
And now the only question and the sort of thing that will decide this case, in my opinion, is if people like Barrett and Kavanaugh, who I believe are quite attuned to how The court's legitimacy has taken a big beating since last year, but who also have a long list of things they still want to do while on the bench.
They're still young.
So I think it will be decided on whether or not these two, and maybe even Gorsuch, Will be willing to throw their towel in with this, I'm sorry, just completely batshit Texas judge.
And I'm not sure.
It could go either way.
I'm at this point.
Do you have a hunch?
I don't.
I guess.
I don't know if it's a hunch, but I think, number one, they have the maneuvering room to appeal to the states' rights thing, right?
Like, they've already said this.
They've got a long time.
That gives them, I think, kind of a way out that at least among lots of mainstream GOP people would get them a pat on the back.
I do also think, and I mentioned this last week, but I think it's still relevant, the complicating factor is that if they rule with the crazy Texas judge, They unwind an awful lot about the FDA and and drug protocols and things in the U.S.
We talk about like, yeah, a level of chaos socially.
That's I mean, I don't know what it's what it would even do to like over the counter prescription or excuse me, over the counter drugs or prescription drugs or any number of things.
I think that even for them, that may be a box that they just don't want to open.
And and so I I'm hoping maybe I'm just Wishful thinking that I think there's a possibility that they say, we've said for years, and it's a tried and true judicial principle that this is for the elected officials to decide.
And I think they've got a way out, I guess, is what I'm saying.
And I think I can see reasons they would want to take that way out.
Yeah.
The question is, will they be able to do that?
Because as you say, on the one hand, I think there is a sense you've spent your entire life and career trying to get on the Supreme Court, and in doing so, you delegitimate it in the minds of many.
Wanting to do that.
There's the fact that they've got the appointment now.
So if they have some anti-abortion activists who are angry at them, it doesn't bear the weight that it once did.
They're not looking for those activists to give their name to a candidate Trump anymore and say that if he has to appoint people, here's who they will be.
So I guess I see a real pathway for them to go in that direction, whether they do or not.
Especially because it would give them really, really easy headlines.
They clearly care, and we've seen this in the sort of backlash that people like Clarence Thomas and Alito have unleashed on Federalist Society dinners where the video got leaked.
They're really ...incensed about public pushback against the court.
And this would be a very easy way to get headlines, being like, Supreme Court rules and surprising moderate, you know, opinion that this is thrown out, where the actual issue is It should be an absolute scandal that this Texas ruling was even being able to be written in the first place, that this guy is even a judge.
And then, this wouldn't change anything.
It would not change anything if they just threw this out, you know?
It is objectively, from what I've read of legal analysis, the Texas judge, I don't know how to pronounce his name, which is why I always keep saying Texas judge, his ruling is apparently just plain stupid.
So it would be a really weird thing to hitch your wagon onto if you could otherwise have an easy, what, 20, 25, 15 years on this court wreaking havoc to what is left of American democracy in certain states.
Why would you want to throw it all away right now?
On the other hand, I feel like I've been burnt in the past by this Supreme Court, and let's just say it would be very, very unwise for them To, you know, throw their hat in with the Texas judge.
But, you know, who knows what's going on in Amy Coney Barrett's mind?
I don't know.
I don't know if any of us would want to know.
No, I think I'm good.
Yeah, sort of a last topic to get into here, and we will be sort of quick with it, but as long as we're talking about the Supreme Court, and as long as we're talking about loss of legitimacy, and as long as we're talking about explicit politicizing of, you know, the highest court in the land, we have to talk about Clarence Thomas.
Came out a while ago.
We talked about it on the podcast that he had received these lavish gifts and big trips and so forth from a GOP mega donor.
As sort of an update to this, Clarence Thomas has now declared that he is going to amend financial disclosure forms to reflect some real estate purchases by said mega donor.
He kind of threw aides of his under the bus with this, said that he has aides helping with the forms and, you know, that it was an oversight.
He also said, though, that he didn't believe he had to report the sales because he lost money on the deal.
I'm just going to say, which is it?
Was it an oversight or was it that you knew about it and thought you didn't need to report it?
Those are two different things.
Yeah.
The question that I have is this, and it's just a thought to throw out.
And again, I know I'm watching the clock and we have to be brief.
But once upon a time, there was yet another Supreme Court decision decided by the conservatives, the Citizens United decision, that said money is speech.
It's a form of free speech.
It's protected by the First Amendment.
The context was campaign contributions and so forth.
But this question has come up of like, how does influence work People said, you know, this mega donor doesn't have, like, doesn't have, like, he's not a member of standing in any Supreme Court issues and so forth.
And yet, I wonder, and I can't help but wonder, here's one of the justices who made the argument that basically money should be unregulated when it comes to campaigns because it's just a form of speech How long is it before we hear from Justice Clarence Thomas that says, you know what?
I didn't need to report those.
We need to do away with these reporting requirements because you know what?
It's just a form of free speech and you're limiting the rights of people to speak freely what they feel and to justices and so forth, despite the hypocrisy that you can't say protest on the side of the Supreme Court.
You're not allowed to protest there because there are American laws against trying to influence judges through protest.
I just see so many layers here of what could happen.
Final thoughts on that, on this kind of updated thing about Clarence Thomas and these lavish gifts and real estate sales and everything else.
I mean it's just one of the most Vibrant examples, you know, with the paintings and the gifts and the superyacht and the buying his childhood home that his mother still lives in to this day.
It's one of the best cases I've seen in a long time.
For court reform, for finally making sure that there are ethics rules that these justices need to follow.
And I think Democrats have signaled that they will start investigating this, which, you know, took them longer than it should have to reach this decision.
But, you know, I think actually, as in so many cases on the right, I think if you had written this, you know, Clarence Thomas bribery scandal, you know, with the gifts, not just to him, but also, you know, giving $500,000 to his wife, who then sets up her lobbying firm, which, you know, lets her spend days on Capitol Hill.
If you had written that in a novel, you know, In a novel on the American political sphere.
Your editor would probably have rightly taken out a big fat red pen, did a little squiggle of line on the side of the page and said, maybe, maybe there's a little bunch, maybe make it more, no, but this is actually how crazy this has gotten and how out of control this court is and how drunk on power this court and his justices are.
So I think excellent, excellent case for court reform and, um, Yeah, it needs to come sooner rather than later.
It's now the good old days when it was shocking to find out that Ginny Thomas was Clarence Thomas's wife and that she was this right-wing activist and so forth.
And now that seems, you know, so tame.
So on that, turning a hard corner here to try to have us not end in despair, we want to close with our reasons for hope.
Yes.
Have you, Annika, this week been able to identify a reason for hope?
We had like half a reason, adding the two of us together earlier.
Were you able to find another reason for hope this week?
Yes, in fact, I did.
I had actually so much fun following This Reason for Hope.
There are threads about it, which I encourage you to look up on Twitter if you're still on it, because one of my least favorite people on earth, Matt Walsh, self-described theocratic fascist, had an event in Iowa this week.
And protesters turned up and made life for both Matt Walsh And his, you know, couple of fans who showed up.
His, I think, around 150 fans who showed up for his screening of his, you know, transphobic film, What is a Woman?
And his speech made life pretty hellish for them through good old civil disobedience through Marching, and chanting, and blocking, you know, the extra exits, so they all had to fly out through the one exit, so they had to walk past the protesters.
They had to wait, traffic was blocked, and they just had a miserable, miserable time, and that did make me very happy.
And it also shows that people are willing to turn up and to face people who come to hear a theocratic fascist speak about why trans kids and trans people should be harassed and are willing to show them that, you know, there's people who won't see this stand.
Yeah, sometimes I think Schadenfreude is real and like should be, is like completely acceptable.
Mine comes from, it was a political report from Juan Perez.
I want to give credit for that.
But basically looking that, you know, we talked about recent elections in Illinois and Wisconsin, but he highlighted one of the things that came out is that in a number of school board elections in those states, The kind of quote-unquote anti-woke right wing sort of takeovers that have, you know, culture wars that have taken place in so many school boards.
They really flamed out and they failed to take those school boards.
Republicans took note of this.
A lot of Democrats took note on this.
And I think I took hope from the fact that it demonstrates that this can be combated.
It's not universal.
Not every case that makes the national news is the only case.
But also, again, this point that I will also make, you know, bringing us back to things like DeSantis, is that We see all of this in media presentations and give a certain sense of it, but that these are out of step with the mainstream of most Americans.
Most Americans are not comfortable with the idea of their kids never learning about sex or gender or never learning about slavery or racism.
They want their kids to know about these things.
They want their kids to be good people, and they think that this is part of that.
So I took hope in that.
We need to say goodbye.
I want to thank you, Annika, again for joining us and tremendous insights.
And I'm always envious of the journalistic acumen that you bring.
So thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks so much for having me.
It's always great to be here.
Yeah.
And to everybody, thank you for listening.
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